Translated from Spanish by Ellen JonesPublished by Charco Press, 2023, 134 pages. Original version published in 2002. “Life is an absurd wound”(from La Última Curda by Cátulo Castillo and Aníbal Triolo) Nora García, a cellist, drives to a village in Mexico for the funeral of her ex-husband Juan, a renowned composer and pianist. As she …
Category: Fiction
Venus in Copper: Lindsey Davis
Published by Arrow Books / Random House, 1991, 318 pages. Rome, AD 71. Marcus Didius Falco, a private investigator who sometimes works for the Emperor Vespasian, is in jail, mostly because he has earned the enmity of the Chief Spy Anacrites. Falco had been sent to Campania by the emperor to clear up Anacrites’s mess, …
The Extinction of Irena Rey: Jennifer Croft
Published by Scribe, 2024, 309 pages. “It was our seventh pilgrimage to the village at the edge of the primeval forest where she lived. ... She loved that forest as much as we loved her books, which, without a fraction of a second’s hesitation, we would have laid down our lives to defend. We treated …
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Perestroika—An Eye for an Eye, A Tooth for a Tooth: João Cerqueira
Translated from Portuguese by Garry Craig PowellPublished by 8th House Publishing, 2024, 394 pages. Original version published in 2024. This is the portrait of a dictatorship and its aftermath, told through the lives of ordinary people as well as those in power. Set in a fictional Eastern European country called Slavia, the first part of …
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The Wildings: Nilanjana Roy
Published by Pushkin Press, 2012, 322 pages. The stray cats of Nizamuddin are on edge. They sense a new cat in their neighbourhood. This is no ordinary feline: this is a Sender. The cats of Nizamuddin, an old neighbourhood of Delhi, can communicate with each other over long distances, not just by mews but by …
The Book of Form and Emptiness: Ruth Ozeki
Published by Canongate, 2021, 550 pages. “Stories never start at the beginning, Benny. They differ from life in that regard. Life is lived from birth to death, from the beginning into an unknowable future. But stories are told in hindsight. Stories are life lived backward.” “Things speak all the time, but if your ears aren’t …
Equator: Miguel Sousa Tavares
Translated from Portuguese by Peter BushPublished by Bloomsbury Press, 2008, 396 pages. Original version published in 2003. It is a rainy morning in December 1905, and Luís Bernardo Valença is on a train from Lisbon to Vila Viçosa: he has been summoned by the King of Portugal. He has no idea why the King wants …
My Oedipus Complex and Other Stories: Frank O’Connor
Published by Penguin, 1963, 239 pages. Stories originally published in 1953 and 1957. “Some kids are cissies by nature but I was a cissy by conviction. Mother had told me about geniuses; I wanted to be one, and I could see for myself that fighting, as well as being sinful, was dangerous.” A child competes …
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A Killer in Winter: Susanna Gregory
Published by Time Warner Books / Sphere, 2003, 488 pages. Cambridge, 1354. “The winter that gripped England was the worst anyone could remember. It came early, brought by bitter north winds that were laden with snow and sleet. The River Cam and the King’s Ditch—usually meandering, fetid cesspools that oozed around the little Fen-edge town …
A Shining: Jon Fosse
Translated from Norwegian by Damion SearlsPublished by Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2023, 46 pages. Original version published in 2023. A man drives without a destination, out of boredom. He continues driving until the road takes him into a forest, and his car gets stuck on the forest road. He gets out of the car and instead of …
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