London. Oneworld. 2014. ISBN 9781780744940 Like many publishers, Oneworld sends out its review copies accompanied by publicity materials. From these we learn that Claire Hajaj inherits a shared P…
FICTION
New York. Europa Editions. 2014. ISBN 9781609452346Arctic Summer is the title of an unfinished novel by E. M. Forster about the tension between marriage and friendship that results when…
Dick Cluster, tr. San Francisco. City Lights Books. 2014. ISBN 9780872866225A Corner of the World is a love story with a sad ending. The ending is predictable from the beginning, expecte…
Paris. Gallimard. 2014. ISBN 9782070146314 Eugène Ébodé, of Cameroonian origin but having lived and worked in France for many years, was one of ten African writers invited by Fest’Africa to…
Belgrade. Laguna. 2014. ISBN 9788652117499Over the past decade, several excellent post-Yugoslavia novels have been published on genocide and the Holocaust. This indicates a strong writers’ need f…
David Kurnick, tr. Los Angeles. Semiotext(e)/MIT Press. 2014. ISBN 9781584351344In 1975 Argentine writer Julio Cortázar returned home to Paris from Brussels, where he had been participating in a…
Angela Rodel, tr. New York. Black Balloon (Consortium, distr.). 2014. ISBN 9781936787135Virginia Zaharieva is a Bulgarian author, journalist, and psychotherapist. She has written three books…
Salar Abdoh, ed. & tr. Brooklyn, New York. Akashic Books. 2014. ISBN 9781617753008Tehran 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 9781597099592With her timely first novel, The Meaning of Names, Karen Gettert Shoemaker presents us with two unique main conflicts: the great f…
Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone, ed. Faridoun Farrokh & Sara Khalili, tr. New York. Feminist Press at CUNY. 2014. ISBN 9781558618688The Shipwrecked: Contemporary Stories by Women from Iran empha…
London / New York. Viking. 2014 / 2015. ISBN 9780241004920 / 978052542971The best historical novels impose familiar tensions upon unfamiliar locales and eras, making place and time come alive with acc…
Chris Andrews, tr. New Haven, Connecticut. Yale University Press. 2014. ISBN 9780300196092Severina is a multifaceted novel that exposes the complicated maneuvers which make up the dénouements…
Andrew Bromfield, tr. London. And Other Stories. 2014. ISBN 9781908276360In his novel The Matiushin Case, author Oleg Pavlov delves deep into the psyche of a troubled young man during the las…
Melanie Mauthner, tr. Brooklyn. Archipelago Books. 2014. ISBN 9780914671039Our Lady of the Nile (Notre-Dame du Nil, 2012) won the Prix Renaudot, the French Voices Award, as wel…
Eric Selland, tr. New York. New Directions. 2014. ISBN 9780811221504The Guest Cat is, at its heart, a novel of loss, told in sparse, precise prose unencumbered by sweeping rhetorical flourish…
New York. Hogarth / Random House. 2014. ISBN 9780553418842In a 2008 interview occasioned by publication of his novel The Fire Gospel, Michel Faber said, “I think there is that very basic year…
Ros Schwartz, tr. London. Seagull Books (University of Chicago Press, distr.). 2014. ISBN 9780857421647The only fully functioning police state I have had personal experience with is Syria, which…
Paris. Minuit. 2014. ISBN 9782707323996Second 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 9782330033729Kamel 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 V…
Tim Mohr, tr. New York. Europa. 2014. ISBN 9781609452292Alina 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 “superhe…
Athens. Metaichmio. 2013. ISBN 9789605661908To aficionados of children’s fiction, Alkē Zei has long been a familiar name. His award-winning and much-translated novels and story collections are re…
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 9789881604606Dorothy Tse’s collection of short stories transports the reader through a series of shocks and revelations into a complex realm pendulat…
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 eloq…