Belgrade. Laguna. 2014. ISBN 9788652117499
Over the past decade, several excellent post-Yugoslavia novels have been published on genocide and the Holocaust. This indicates a strong writers’ need for r…
FICTION
David Kurnick, tr. Los Angeles. Semiotext(e)/MIT Press. 2014. ISBN 9781584351344 In 1975 Argentine writer Julio Cortázar returned home to Paris from Brussels, where he had been participating in a meet…
Angela Rodel, tr. New York. Black Balloon (Consortium, distr.). 2014. ISBN 9781936787135 Virginia Zaharieva is a Bulgarian author, journalist, and psychotherapist. She has written three books of poetr…
Salar Abdoh, ed. & tr. Brooklyn, New York. Akashic Books. 2014. ISBN 9781617753008 Tehran Noir is one of the new books in the Akashic Books noir series, which was launched in 2004. It has…
Pasadena, California. Red Hen Press. 2014. ISBN 9781597099592 With her timely first novel, The Meaning of Names, Karen Gettert Shoemaker presents us with two unique main conflicts: the great…
Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone, ed. Faridoun Farrokh & Sara Khalili, tr. New York. Feminist Press at CUNY. 2014. ISBN 9781558618688 The Shipwrecked: Contemporary Stories by Women from Iran emph…
London / New York. Viking. 2014 / 2015. ISBN 9780241004920 / 978052542971 The best historical novels impose familiar tensions upon unfamiliar locales and eras, making place and time come alive with ac…
Chris Andrews, tr. New Haven, Connecticut. Yale University Press. 2014. ISBN 9780300196092 Severina is a multifaceted novel that exposes the complicated maneuvers which make up the dénouement…
Andrew Bromfield, tr. London. And Other Stories. 2014. ISBN 9781908276360 In his novel The Matiushin Case, author Oleg Pavlov delves deep into the psyche of a troubled young man during the la…
Melanie Mauthner, tr. Brooklyn. Archipelago Books. 2014. ISBN 9780914671039 Our Lady of the Nile (Notre-Dame du Nil, 2012) won the Prix Renaudot, the French Voices Award, as well as…
Eric Selland, tr. New York. New Directions. 2014. ISBN 9780811221504 The Guest Cat is, at its heart, a novel of loss, told in sparse, precise prose unencumbered by sweeping rhetorical flouris…
New York. Hogarth / Random House. 2014. ISBN 9780553418842 In a 2008 interview occasioned by publication of his novel The Fire Gospel, Michel Faber said, “I think there is that very basic yea…
Ros Schwartz, tr. London. Seagull Books (University of Chicago Press, distr.). 2014. ISBN 9780857421647 The only fully functioning police state I have had personal experience with is Syria, which I vi…
Paris. Minuit. 2014. ISBN 9782707323996 Second novels are often where literary careers are made or, on the contrary, where they founder. Julia Deck’s second novel for Éditions de Minuit amply fulfills…
Arles, France. Actes Sud. 2014. ISBN 9782330033729 Kamel Daoud, well known in Algeria for his political columns that criticize the government, has turned to literature to describe the complex heritage…
Paula Haydar & Nadine Sinno, tr. Austin. University of Texas Press. 2014. ISBN 9780292763074 Who’s Afraid of Meryl Streep? (aptly reminding us of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virgi…
Tim Mohr, tr. New York. Europa. 2014. ISBN 9781609452292 Alina Bronsky’s deftly translated novel is a coming-of-age story as well as one of coming to terms with oneself and the world. Our “superhero”…
Athens. Metaichmio. 2013. ISBN 9789605661908 To aficionados of children’s fiction, Alkē Zei has long been a familiar name. His award-winning and much-translated novels and story collections are renown…
New York. Akashic Books. 2014. ISBN 9781617752407 “America damages girls,” Flora says, verbalizing the suspicion of her Haitian father, Frisner, in New York. Sagesse’s mother repeatedly sings a Creole…
Nicky Harman, tr. Hong Kong. Muse. 2014. ISBN 9789881604606 Dorothy Tse’s collection of short stories transports the reader through a series of shocks and revelations into a complex realm pendulating…
Alistair Ian Blythe, tr. Prague. Twisted Spoon Press. 2014. ISBN 9788086264448 Anyone raised even in the vestigial remnants of an oral culture will respond at some level to the tales in this eloquent…
Frank Wynne, tr. New York. Bloomsbury. 2015. ISBN 9781620402245 Boualem Sansal dedicates this novel to illegal immigration. The term harraga is an Arabism that literally means “path burners,…
Artarmon, New South Wales. Giramondo. 2014. ISBN 9781922146533 A Million Windows is whimsical fiction, nearly satirical. In its delivery of a sustained monologue, the novel evokes Nabokov’s H…
Portland, Oregon. Tin House Books. 2014. ISBN 9781935639817 Highly regarded as an influential writer and critic in the world of independent music, Sean Michaels writes his first full-length work of hi…
Susan Bernofsky, tr. New York. W.W. Norton. 2014. ISBN 9780393347098 “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed into a gigantic insect.” This is how generations…