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 …
Category: Fiction
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 …
Of Strangers and Bees: Hamid Ismailov
Translated from Uzbek and Russian by Shelley Fairweather-VegaPublished by Tilted Axis Press, 2019, 446 pages. Original version published in 2001. “Life in exile! May it be cursed. Once you have become a stranger, a stranger you shall remain; you may endeavour to make friends, but the task is a difficult one, full end to end …
The Widows of Malabar Hill: Sujata Massey
Published by Soho Press, Inc., 2018, 400 pages. This is more than just a crime novel: by setting it in India in the early 1900s, Sujata Massey paints a vivid portrait of the country and especially of the lives of the women at the time. The book starts in Bombay in 1921. The British are …
Ghost Stories: M.R. James
Published by Penguin and Oxford University Press, 1931, 361 pages. “I was conscious of a most horrible smell of mould and of a cold kind of face pressed against my own...”The Treasure of Abbot Thomas M.R. James is one of the best—if not the best—ghost story writer in the English language. Born in 1862, he …
Love After Love: Ingrid Persaud
Published by Faber Books, 2020, 416 pages. Domestic abuse, homophobia, family secrets...and love. Ingrid Persaud packs it all into this novel set in Trinidad. Betty was married to Sunil, an abusive man, who didn’t stop at hurting his wife but also hit his young son. “That man gave you love you could feel. He cuff …
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