Translated from Russian by Lisa C. HaydenPublished by Oneworld Publications, 2020, 255 pages. Original version published in 2014. One Friday, Anatolia Sevoyants put her affairs in order and lay down to breathe her last. She had been bleeding heavily for days, although her periods had stopped some years ago, and she was convinced she was …
Continue reading Three Apples Fell from the Sky: Narine Abgaryan
Published by OneWorld, 2014, 688 pages. “If it no go so, it go near so.” “[E]ven though the Singer is the center of the story, it really isn’t his story. Like there’s a version of this story that’s not really about him, but about the people around him, the ones who come and go that …
Continue reading A Brief History of Seven Killings: Marlon James
Translated from Kazakh and Russian by Zaure Batayeva, Shelley Fairweather-Vega and Sam BreazealePublished by Gaudy Boy, 2022, 267 pages. This collection of women’s stories from Kazakhstan is the first of its kind. The Kazakh word “amanat” has many meanings, as the translators explain in their introduction. It is “a promise entwined with hope for the …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Continue reading Brer Rabbit Retold: Arthur Flowers, illustrated by Jagdish Chitara
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, …
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