Published by Penguin Random House, 2021, 288 pages. “Because I’m a novelist, I have to write this almost like a novel, but it is true—as true as I can make it. And I want to say—oh, it is difficult to know what to say! But when I report something about William it is because he …
Category: Fiction
A Raisin in the Sun: Lorraine Hansberry
Published by Signet, Vintage and Berkley Books, 1959, 144 pages. “What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry upLike a raisin in the sun?”–Langston Hughes This is a powerful play about an African-American family trying to realize their dreams in spite of the odds stacked against them. At the centre of the play is the …
The Peculiarities: David Liss
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 …
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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Elena Knows: Claudia Piñeiro
Translated from Spanish by Frances RiddlePublished by Charco Press, 2021, 220 pages. Original version published in 2007. “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 …
My Bones and My Flute—A Ghost Story in the Old-Fashioned Manner: Edgar Mittelholzer
Published by Peepal Tree, 1955, 173 pages. “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 …
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Checkpoint: David Albahari
Translated from Serbian by Ellen Elias-BursaćPublished by Restless Books, 2018, 197 pages. Original version published in 2010. “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 …
The Marriage Portrait: Maggie O’Farrell
Review by Susan T. LandryPublished by Knopf / Headline Publishing Group, 2022, 448 pages. 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 …
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 Eighth Detective: Alex Pavesi
Published by Picador and Michael Joseph (also published as The Eight Detectives), 2020, 291 pages. 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 …
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