Published by Solaris, 2023, 345 pages. Beatriz marries Rodolfo Solórzano, a wealthy landowner, to escape her circumstances as a poor relative who is treated by her aunt as a servant. But when she arrives at the Hacienda San Isidro, the home that is to be her domain, it is not at all as she had …
Category: Historical fiction
Mephisto: Klaus Mann
Translated from German by Robin SmythPublished by Penguin, 1977, 263 pages. Original version published in 1936. “What do men want from me? Why do they pursue me? Why are they so hard? All I am is a perfectly ordinary actor...” Hendrik Höfgen is, first and foremost, an actor. In fact, that could describe him entirely. …
A Bookshop in Algiers: Kaouther Adimi
Translated from French by Chris AndrewsPublished by Serpent's Tail, 2020, 146 pages. Original version published in 2017. “This will be a library, a bookstore, a publishing house, but above all a place for friends who love the literature of the Mediterranean.” 1936, Algiers. Edmond Charlot, a Frenchman born in Algeria, opens a bookshop, Les Vraies …
Enemies at Home: Lindsey Davis
Published by Hodder, 2014, 385 pages. Rome, 89 AD, during the reign of Emperor Domitian. Valerius Aviola and Mucia Lucilia, a recently married middle-aged couple, are found murdered in their rented ground-floor apartment. It seems to be a burglary gone wrong: a large quantity of silverware was taken, and the porter Nicostratus was badly beaten. …
Star 111: Lutz Seiler
Translated from German by Tess LewisPublished by And Other Stories, 2023, 495 pages. Original version published in 2020. East Germany, November 1989. The Berlin Wall has fallen. Carl Bischoff, a student, is heading home, summoned by a telegram from his parents saying, “we need help please do come immediately your parents”. When Carl gets home, …
The Eighth Life (for Brilka): Nino Haratischvili
Translated from German by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin.Published by Scribe, 2019, 934 pages. Original version published in 2014. “And I’m afraid of these stories. These stories that constantly run in parallel, chaotically; that appear in the foreground, conceal themselves, interrupt one another. Because they connect and break through each other, they betray and mislead, …
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Wandering Stars: Tommy Orange
Published by Harvill Secker, 2024, 317 pages. “We come from prisoners of a long war that didn’t stop even when it stopped.” In 2018, Tommy Orange published his debut novel, There There, which follows a group of Native Americans in Oakland, California, as they prepare for a powwow. Wandering Stars, in a sense, nests that …
Venus in Copper: Lindsey Davis
Published by Arrow Books / Random House, 1991, 318 pages. Rome, AD 71. Marcus Didius Falco, a private investigator who sometimes works for the Emperor Vespasian, is in jail, mostly because he has earned the enmity of the Chief Spy Anacrites. Falco had been sent to Campania by the emperor to clear up Anacrites’s mess, …
Perestroika—An Eye for an Eye, A Tooth for a Tooth: João Cerqueira
Translated from Portuguese by Garry Craig PowellPublished by 8th House Publishing, 2024, 394 pages. Original version published in 2024. This is the portrait of a dictatorship and its aftermath, told through the lives of ordinary people as well as those in power. Set in a fictional Eastern European country called Slavia, the first part of …
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Equator: Miguel Sousa Tavares
Translated from Portuguese by Peter BushPublished by Bloomsbury Press, 2008, 396 pages. Original version published in 2003. It is a rainy morning in December 1905, and Luís Bernardo Valença is on a train from Lisbon to Vila Viçosa: he has been summoned by the King of Portugal. He has no idea why the King wants …
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