London. Fitzcarraldo. 2018. 272 pages.
From the opening chapter of Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, we already know that the aging protagonist, Janina Dusezjko, ha…
FICTION
Trans. Helen Stevenson. New York. Soft Skull Press. 2018. 176 pages. Last year, Black Moses stood as a testament to Alain Mabanckou’s literary prowess, positing a journey of growth amid the g…
Edinburgh. Charco Press. 2018. 154 pages. In Resistance, Julián Fuks explores how the horror of life under an oppressive government—in this case, the military dictatorship in 1970s Argentina…
New York. New Directions. 2018. 144 pages. Although there were many intellectual currents, social and political upheavals spanning over four centuries that shaped the contours of the European Renaissa…
New Haven, Connecticut. Yale University Press. 2018. 223 pages. The notion of a modern Frankenstein is far from unique. With Desirable Body, however, Hubert Haddad crafts a mesmerizi…
Budapest. Magvetö. 260 pages. Ernö Szív is the pseudonym of László Darvasi, one of Hungary’s best fiction writers. Darvasi has published over two dozen books under his name, intermittently with the “E…
Belgrade. Laguna. 2018. 389 pages. Svetlana Slapšak, an award-winning essayist and candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005, has followed up her acclaimed debut novel, Ravnoteža (Equilibri…
Chicago. Swan Isle Press. 2018. 177 pages. Roberto Ransom’s openings are not just that. The first story in Missing Persons is about a pet lizard grown big enough to devour its adoptive family…
New Delhi. Aleph. 2018. 261 pages. Missing, Sumana Roy’s first novel after her highly acclaimed first work of nonfiction, is a modern retelling of the oldest Hindu epic, the Ramayana…
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Paris. Editions de l’Herne. 2017. 68 pages. Paris. Editions de l’Herne. 2017. 342 pages. In the French literary world, publication in the Pléiade amounts to canonization of an author for the genera…
Northampton, Massachusetts. Interlink Books. 2018 (©2016). 283 pages. “Go on, pour,” Yasmin says as she has Abu Azab cauterize the leg of a rebel soldier with scalding hot oil after she has amputated…
Los Angeles. DoppelHouse Press. 2018. 224 pages. Malva, the debut work of Dutch poet-turned-novelist Hagar Peeters, had my commitment by page 6; for serious students of Chilean poet Pablo Ner…
Brooklyn, New York. Restless Books. 2018. 209 pages. To catalog the atrocities carried out in Emiliano Monge’s The Arid Sky is to be reminded that humanity will never run out of ways to infli…
Easthampton, Massachusetts. Small Beer Press. 2018. 320 pages. At once lyrical and experimental, stunningly original and deeply rooted in myth, the stories that make up Ambiguity Machines and Othe…
New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2018. 232 pages. In Kudos, Rachel Cusk continues to reinvent the genre of autofiction, seamlessly merging life and art. In this eagerly anticipated conc…
Montreal. Drawn & Quarterly. 2018. 203 pages. It’s no secret that graphic novels have come of age in the twenty-first century in the sense that they are now taken seriously by readers and reviewer…
Toronto. Book*hug. 2018. 240 pages. Part domestic drama, part investigative thriller, and all intersectionality, D. Nandi Odhiambo’s fourth novel foregrounds the tension of interracial and queer relat…
Manchester, UK. Comma Press. 2018. 196 pages. There could not be a more appropriate way to represent Riga than with a short-story collection. The Baltic nations, and Latvia certainly not least among t…
New York. Atlantic Monthly Press. 2018. 368 pages. In writing workshops, I caution students against relying on coincidence to drive plot, as events that happen by chance are generally less interesting…
San Francisco. Tachyon. 2018. 288 pages. The alternate history subgenre of speculative fiction, and especially alternate history written by Jewish writers, often takes the form of meditations on the r…
New York. Knopf. 608 pages. Haruki Murakami’s massive, elegantly eerie sixteenth novel, Killing Commendatore, is a successful, surreal mashup of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, F.…
Evanston, Illinois. Northwestern University Press. 2018. 308 pages. In Manzoor Ahtesham’s charming and thoughtful The Tale of the Missing Man, protagonist Zamir Ahmed Khan has a mysterious il…
Arles. Actes Sud. 2018. 221 pages. Christian Garcin’s new novel puts individuals on stage who are rarely given voice in contemporary fiction. Hoyt Stapleton, Matthew McMulligan, and Steven Myers are h…
Edinburgh. Charco Press. 2018. 226 pages. Having garnered the praise of Juan Cárdenas and Juan Villoro, young Colombian author Margarita García Robayo is being published for the first time in English…
Minneapolis. Coffee House Press. 2018. 152 pages. Comemadre begins in 1907 in Buenos Aires. A doctor at a sanatorium is in love with a nurse. Other doctors are also in love with the nurse. Ot…