Translated from French by Sophie LewisPublished by Les Fugitives, 2019, 190 pages. Original version published in 2017. “[B]ut now it’s over, my novel is damaged, the world is damaged, I too am deeply wounded, something has happened here, something real, but everything can still begin, everything can begin again, I firmly believe it... “I must …
Category: Fiction
Mother’s Beloved—Stories from Laos: Outhine Bounyavong
Translated from Lao by Bounheng Inversin, Roger Rumpf, Jacqui Chagnon, Thipason Phimviengkham and William GallowayPublished by University of Washington Press, 1999, 198 pages. A poor cobbler finds a way to make his contribution to his country's war effort; a young man offers strangers lifts on his bicycle; and a young woman tries to return a …
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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 Almost Wife: Gail Anderson-Dargatz
Published by Harper Avenue, 2021, 304 pages. “What you see in the bush is rarely what’s really there.” Kira is engaged to the handsome and rich Aaron with whom she has a child, Evie. They live in a beautiful house with Olive, Aaron’s 13-year-old daughter from his first marriage. Aaron loves his daughters and seems …
Lucina’s Letters: Barbara Francesca Murphy
Published by Austin Macauly Publishers, 2022, 222 pages. Three girls playing in a forest are pestered by a young boy. When they cannot get rid of him, they throw him into a nearby river to teach him a lesson. They expect him to crawl out, repentant. But the boy drowns. When the girls realize they …
The Death of the Perfect Sentence: Rein Raud
Translated from Estonian by Matthew HydePublished by Vagabond Voices, 2017, 176 pages. Original version published in 2015. On 20 August 1991, Estonia formally declared its independence from the Soviet Union, even as Soviet authorities were trying to crush this movement. Set during the last days of the Soviet Union in Estonia, The Death of the …
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We Are All Birds of Uganda: Hafsa Zayyan
Published by Penguin/Random House, 2021, 384 pages. This is the story of a Ugandan family of Indian origin, told from the perspectives of two men: Hasan in 1960s Kampala, who writes letters to his dead wife, and Sameer, a young ambitious man in London in the mid-2000s. Hasan’s family is originally from Gujarat, but he …
A Passage North: Anuk Arudpragasam
Published by Granta Books and Hogarth Press, 2021, 304 pages. This is a story about loss and obsession, about ghosts from the past and the violence of war. Krishan gets a call one day informing him of the death of Rani, his grandmother’s caregiver. The funeral is to be held in a village in northern …
Grey Bees: Andrey Kurkov
Translated from Russian by Boris DralyukPublished by MacLehose Press, 2021, 352 pages. Original version published in 2018. Set in the period after the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea, this book by Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov is particularly timely, given the war that is now unfolding in Ukraine. Sergey Sergeyich lives in Little Starhorodivka, an almost …
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 …
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