New York. Knopf. 2013. ISBN 9780307596901Claire Messud is a confident and stylish writer, as she has proven in previous novels such as The Emperor’s Children. Those adjectives set her ap…
FICTION
- James Coon et al., ed. Warsaw. New Europe Writers. 2012. ISBN 9780956859815It is difficult to get a coherent sense of Ljubljana from the sixty-six items in Ljubljana Tales, but a few things a…
- Madrid. Caballo de Troya. 2013. ISBN 9788415451204Working women are the protagonists of Diario de campo, the first novel by Rosario Izquierdo Chaparro (b. 1963). The author is a sociologist a…
- Højbjerg, Denmark. Hovedland. 2013. ISBN 9788770703581Ole Hyltoft’s Copenhagen trilogy (see WLT July 2006 and January 2008) spans an entire century. In the first volume the milieu i…
- Minneapolis, Minnesota. Graywolf. 2013. ISBN 9781555976422On Sal Mal Lane belongs to that subgenre of postcolonial literature that treats ethnonational violence resulting from decolonization.…
Brendan Riley, tr. Champaign, Illinois. Dalkey Archive. 2013. ISBN 9781564788733 The first of Mexican author Álvaro Enrigue’s six books to be published in English, Hypothermia compr…- Patty Paine et al., ed. Highclere, Berkshire. Berkshire Academic Press (ISBS, distr.). 2013. ISBN 9781907784125This is a beautifully produced book with large-size pages and glossy paper. It contains s…
- Paris. Mercure de France. 2013. ISBN 9782715234536 An earthquake is one manifestation of the forces of nature. In the province of L’Aquila, Italy, an extracom is subject to two other for…
- Gillian Ania & Doug Thompson, tr. Leicester, England. Troubador. 2013. ISBN 9781780882642Paola Capriolo’s The Dual Realm was first published in Italian in 1991 and translated into English…
- Minneapolis, Minnesota. Graywolf. 2013. ISBN 9781555976408The final words of Nigerian author A. Igoni Barrett’s debut collection of short stories are “love does not mean marriage, a baby, forever. Lov…
- Norman. University of Oklahoma Press. 2013. ISBN 9780806143576Love, grief, and memory form the thematic triad in Rudolfo Anaya’s The Old Man’s Love Story, a novel that speaks to our shared hu…
- Andrew Bromfield, tr. Evanston, Illinois. Northwestern University Press. 2012. ISBN 9780810126626A Displaced Person: The Later Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin rounds…
- Jonathan Hunt, tr. New York. Faber & Faber. 2013. ISBN 9780865479371Giorgio Vasta’s Time on My Hands is a yearlong adventure in the footsteps of a young boy in Palermo, Sicily, whose life…
- Anthea Bell, tr. Minneapolis. Graywolf. 2013. ISBN 9781555976439Whatever “light” the utopian vision of communism brought people, it fades under the grinding duress of “real socialism” as it is li…
- Will Firth, tr. New York. Black Balloon. 2013. ISBN 978936787050This postmodern, postcommunist picaresque hilariously skewers Croatian, Western, and global culture as it follows the rapid descent of q…
- Mumbai. Almost Island. 2013. ISBN 9788192129518 In three books published over a period of eighteen years, Sharmistha Mohanty has been showing, with increasing consistency and verve, that there is…
- New York. Hogarth. 2013. ISBN 9780770436407After reading A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, I can only echo the amazement of other reviewers: that such an accomplished novel is…
- Cromer, England. Salt. 2012. ISBN 9781907773280Whereas much exile literature foregrounds educated urbanites voicing nostalgia for lost cultures, Adnan Mahmutović portrays Bosnian villagers who renounc…
- Chicago. Haymarket. 2012. ISBN 9781608461752Kangkala, a calypsonian, is the narrator of Earl Lovelace’s Caribbean saga. A self-styled “poet of the revolution,” he was active in the Black Power mo…
- Sam Garrett, tr. New York. Hogarth. 2012. ISBN 9780770437855Not since watching the film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover has bearing witness to others’ fine dining been so voyeuri…
- Bamenda, Cameroon. Langaa Research & Publishing CIG (African Books Collective, distr.). 2012. ISBN 9789956727377This absorbing novel vividly brings the African diaspora to life. The main char…
- New Haven, Connecticut. Yale University Press. 2013. ISBN 9780300176698 How to represent evil and torture bearably, enhance or put into perspective a lasting and frequently trite and polemical li…
- New York. Riverhead. 2012. ISBN 9781594488177Patrick Flanery’s first novel, Absolution, captures the complicated philosophies and mores of the educated and liberal occupants (in addition…
- Nice, France. Editions Baie-des-Anges. 2013. ISBN 9782917790502Without the back-cover photograph and blurb indicating that Jean Emelina is a retired professor of the University of Nice–Sophia An…
- André Naffis-Sahely, tr. & afterword. London. Arabia Books. 2012. ISBN 9781906697426When Rashid and Omar spend an hour together on a flight from Algiers to Constantine, the former decides he will…