Published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2021, 302 pages “I am the last nomad. … What I am really trying to say is, I am the last person in my direct line to have once lived like that, and now I feel like the sole keeper of my family’s stories.” Shugri Said Salh’s family …
Continue reading The Last Nomad—Coming of Age in the Somali Desert: Shugri Said Salh
Translated from Tamil by N. Kalyan RamanPublished by Eka (Westland Books), 2018, 173 pages. Original version published in 2017. “Once, in a village, there was a goat. No one knew where she was born. The birth of an ordinary life never leaves a trace, does it?” Near a village in Tamil Nadu, an old man …
Continue reading Poonachi, or the Story of a Black Goat: Perumal Murugan
Translated from Dutch by Lucy ScottPublished by Tilted Axis Press, 2023, 230 pages. Original version published in 1982. “I’m Noenka, which means Never Again. Born of two polar opposites, a woman and a man who pull even my dreams apart. I’m a woman, even though I don’t know where being female begins and where it …
Translated from Italian by William WeaverPublished by Picador / Vintage / HarperVia, 1983, 502 pages. Original version published in 1980. “Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was …
Translated from French by Helen StevensonPublished by Serpent's Tail, 2025, 207 pages. Original version published in 2022. “Once you’ve been laid in the earth, time will start to do its work, and for all their good intentions, the people who knew you will gradually forget, till one dry season comes when not a soul ventures …
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025, 246 pages This is the story of three young Tanzanians: Karim, Fauzia and Badar, and their relationship with each other. Karim’s mother Raya lives in Zanzibar and is forced into marrying a much older man by her parents. When she walks out of her marriage, she leaves Karim with her …
Kunzang Choden is a Bhutanese writer. Her books include the first novel in English to be written by a Bhutanese woman, The Circle of Karma (2005); her memoirs, Telling Me My Stories (2025); Membar Tsho: The Flaming Lake (2012); Tales in Colour and Other Stories (2009); Chilli and Cheese: Food and Society in Bhutan (2008); …
Continue reading Stories from Bhutan: An Interview with Kunzang Choden
Translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull CostaPublished by The Harvill Press, 2004, 292 pages. Original version published in 2002. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, a history teacher, is depressed. His colleague, the Mathematics Teacher (never named), suggests he watch a light video to cheer himself up. The video he recommends is one made five years ago called …
Translated from Japanese by Polly BartonPublished by 4th Estate / Ecco, 2024, 452 pages. Original version published in 2017. Rika Machida is an ambitious journalist working at the Shūmei Weekly. She has been trying to get an exclusive interview with Manako Kajii, a woman being held in the Tokyo Detention House for killing three of …
Published by Vintage Books, 1997, 643 pages As publisher of The Washington Post from 1963 to 1991, Katherine Graham oversaw some of the century’s major stories in the US, such as the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. This autobiography tells her story, the story of a woman initially unsure of herself, who was thrust into a …
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