Published by Harper Collins / Minotaur Books, 2021, 383 pages. Bombay, 1892. Bacha and Pilloo, two young women, fall to their deaths from the city’s clocktower. The police conclude that it was suicide. Captain James Agnihotri of the British army is recovering in hospital in Bombay after a skirmish in Karachi with the Pathans, a …
Category: Fiction
Never Did the Fire: Diamela Eltit
Translated from Spanish by Daniel HahnPublished by Charco Press, 2022, 156 pages. Original version published in 2011. How do you live after you lose everything, when the ideals you devoted your life to are gone, when the people you worked with are dead or no longer around? How do you live in close proximity to …
Pynter Bender: Jacob Ross
Published by Harper Perennial, 2008, 452 pages. “[I]n the villages above the canes people did not die. As long as memory lived they did not. They passed. Leaving always something of themselves behind. John Seegal, their grandfather, had passed most of himself over to Birdie, except for the thieving ways, o’course, which came from a …
The Burning Bush Women: Cherie Jones
Published by Peepal Tree, 2004, 158 pages. “We live by our hair.“It never lies.“We welcome rain when our plaits undo of their own volition and retreat into themselves. We are pregnant when our hair turns the colour of beetroot and are about to die when it lies still against our scalps and becomes straight and …
A Heart So White: Javier Marías
Translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull CostaPublished by Penguin, 1995, 279 pages. Original version published in 1992. “[W]e spend our lives in a process of choosing and rejecting and selecting, in drawing a line to separate...identical things and make of our story a unique story that we can remember and that can be told.” “Listening …
Brer Rabbit Retold: Arthur Flowers, illustrated by Jagdish Chitara
Published by Tara Books, 2017, 74 pages. In the late 1800s, Joel Chandler Harris collected stories told by slaves in the southern United States, which he later published. In his version, the stories are told to a little white boy by Uncle Remus, a genial, happy slave, who recounts the adventures of Brer Rabbit, Brer …
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The Anomaly: Hervé Le Tellier
Translated from French by Adriana HunterPublished by Michael Joseph, 2022, 336 pages. Original version published in 2020. March 2021. Air France flight 006 from Paris to New York is nearing JFK airport when it flies into a huge cloud and experiences severe turbulence. After some terrifying moments, the plane emerges and lands. Three months later, …
Co-Wives, Co-Widows: Adrienne Yabouza
Translated from French by Rachael McGillPublished by Dedalus Africa, 2021, 128 pages. Original version published in 2015. Lidou has a good life. He is married to two beautiful women, Ndongo Passy and Grekpoubou. His construction business is doing well: “he was throwing up building after building in the [Central African] Republic, and he’d carry on …
Word Beads—Short Stories: Slavko Milekić
Published by Graphic and Photo Studio Kaligram, 2019, 103 pages. A physician has a heart attack; a man remembers his parent’s relationship while composing a foreword to his father’s unpublished manuscript; and a couple in a foreign country find a way to throw a birthday party for their child although they have very little money. …
Trout, Belly Up: Rodrigo Fuentes
Translated from Spanish by Ellen JonesPublished by Charco Press, 2019, 97 pages. Original version published in 2017. A man put in charge of a trout farm lets his emotions get the better of him; a farmer stands up to armed men; and a man’s friend calls in his debt, forcing the man to sell his …
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