Published by Tachyon Publications, 2021, 336 pages. London, the turn of the 20th century. A pervasive fog covers the city, and strange things are happening, known as “the Peculiarities”. Women are giving birth to litters of rabbits, people are transforming into trees and animals, and vicious, not-quite-human Elegants are prowling the streets. The Peculiarities also …
Category: Fantasy / Sci-Fi
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida: Shehan Karunatilaka
Published by Sort of Books, 2022, 368 pages. “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, …
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Nostalgia: Mircea Cărtărescu
Translated from Romanian by Julian SemilianPublished by Penguin and New Directions, 2005, 332 pages. Original version published in 1989. 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 Taiga Syndrome: Cristina Rivera Garza
Translated from Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva KanaPublished by And Other Stories, 2019, 128 pages. Original version published in 2012. “‘But you must know about the taiga syndrome, right?’ he asked...‘It seems,’ he continued, almost whispering, ‘that certain inhabitants of the taiga begin to suffer terrible anxiety attacks and make suicidal attempts to …
The Black Locomotive: Rian Hughes
Published by Picador, 2021, 400 pages. “It had been designated Anomaly 36. “The previous thirty-five anomalies had all been examined, evaluated, excavated and catalogued; then work had continued on the undocumented Crossrail tunnel extension under central London, the one that would never appear on any map.” The construction of a secret Crossrail tunnel linking Buckingham …
XX—A Novel, Graphic: Rian Hughes
Published by Picador, 2020, 992 pages. “...the Signal might already have the ability to manipulate its environment in subtle ways. In minds, where it can be thought, an idea can finally find some kind of expression. It can influence the behaviour of the person who thinks it. It can inspire people to spread the idea. …
The Night Circus: Eric Morgenstern
Published by Harvill Secker, 2011, 400 pages. “The circus arrives without warning. “No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.” And just as suddenly as it appeared, it is gone. Welcome to Le Cirque des Rêves, or the …
Vultures in the Living Room and Other Stories: Lula Falcão
Translated from Portuguese by Helena Cavendish de Moura with Andrew Michael BrownPublished in a bilingual edition by Casa Forte Press, 2017, 123 pages. Original version published in 2017. Lula Falcão is an award-winning journalist, political advocate and writer. His criticism of the current President Jai Bolsonaro has landed him on the list of “intellectuals to …
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1Q84: Haruki Murakami
Translated from Japanese by Jay Rubin and Philip GabrielPublished by Vintage, 2011, 944 pages. Original version published in 2009-2010. Prepare to walk into Haruki Murakami’s strange world. You can slip through the thin barrier between this world and an alternate one simply by taking an emergency exit off a highway or ghost-writing a particular book. …
Dissipatio H.G.—The Vanishing: Guido Morselli
Translated from Italian by Frederika RandallPublished by The New York Review of Books, Inc., 2020, 168 pages. Original version published in 2012. What would happen to the planet if the entire human race was to disappear? In this novella, Guido Morselli imagines a world empty of people. The book is narrated by the one man …
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