Published by Sort of Books “All stories are recycled and all stories are unfair. Many get luck, and many get misery. Many are born to homes with books, many grow up in the swamps of war. In the end, all becomes dust. All stories conclude with a fade to black.” Maali Almeida, a gay Sri …
Continue reading The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida: Shehan Karunatilaka
Translated from Spanish by Frances RiddlePublished by Charco Press “She has to take the train into the city at ten o’clock...right after the medication has managed to persuade her body to follow her brain’s orders.” Elena is a woman with advanced Parkinson’s. Her daughter Rita was found hanging from the belfry in the local church. …
Published by Peepal Tree “In this instant my trance of introspection vanished. I knew it was actually happening. I stood and listened. There could be no doubt. It had nothing of the imaginary about it. It was a flute, clear, leisurely, distant. A tuneless, wandering trickle of treble notes coming from out of the trees …
Continue reading My Bones and My Flute—A Ghost Story in the Old-Fashioned Manner: Edgar Mittelholzer
Translated from Serbian by Ellen Elias-BursaćPublished by Restless Books “We had no choice but to continue doing what we’d come there to do: guard and watch over the passing of people and goods through the checkpoint. To be honest, we hadn’t even been told whether the checkpoint was on a border lying between two countries …
Review by Susan T. LandryPublished by Knopf and Headline Publishing Group I can't remember the exact circumstances that led me to plunge into Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet two years ago. I am a reasonably omnivorous reader, but rarely choose historical fiction when looking for a new book to get lost in. Not sure why, exactly; maybe …
Translated from Romanian by Julian SemilianPublished by Penguin This collection of three short stories and two novellas, set mainly in Bucharest, was written during Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime and published in 1989, the year his regime fell. Nostalgia was originally published under the title Visul ("The Dream"), which seems appropriate: the pieces are fairly dreamlike and …
Published by Picador and Michael Joseph (also published as The Eight Detectives) An editor goes to a remote Mediterranean island to meet a reclusive writer, whose book her publisher wants to reprint. In 1937, Grant McAllister drew up a set of mathematical rules for a murder mystery, and wrote seven stories to illustrate these rules. …
Translated from Spanish by Megan McDowellPublished by Charco Press In the summer of 2014, during one of the biggest storms to hit the coast of Uruguay, Alejandro is killed in a lightning strike. Ale, as he was known, was aware that there was an electrical storm brewing. He worked as a lifeguard and knew how …
Published by Akashic Books and Cassava Republic Press “Lagos never sleeps. Ever. It stays awake long after New York has faded in a long drawn-out yawn, matched only by the vigil of Cairo. ... “By the way a man sits smoking on the hood of his burned-out Mercedes-Benz, it is clear he wants you to …
Published by Fourth Estate Things are not going well for Nelson. His girlfriend Ixta has left him, and his acting career is floundering. His older brother has moved to the United States, promising to help Nelson move there, but has made no attempt to start the process. So when Nelson’s hero, the playwright Henry Nuñez, …
Continue reading At Night We Walk in Circles: Daniel Alarcón
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