Published by Faber / HarperCollins, 2022, 548 pages. “My thinking here is to put everything in the order of how it happened, give or take certain intervals of a young man skunked out of his skull box, some dots duly connected. But damn. A kid is a terrible thing to be, in charge of nothing. …
Category: Fiction
Tokyo Express: Seichō Matsumoto
Translated from Japanese by Jesse KirkwoodPublished by Penguin, 1971, 149 pages. Original version published in 1958. The bodies of a man and a woman are found on the beach on Kyushu. The way the bodies are lying, and the empty bottle of orange juice near them—which was found to contain cyanide—seems to point to a …
Monkey King—Journey to the West: Wu Cheng’en
Translated from Chinese by Julia LovellPublished by Penguin, 2021, 339 pages. First published in English in 1942, translated by Arthur Waley. Original version published in 1592. Some books never age but feel as fresh as if they were written yesterday. Monkey King is one of these: a Chinese classic, written in the 16th century. Its …
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Fresh Dirt from the Grave: Giovanna Rivero
Translated from Spanish by Isabel AdeyPublished by Charco Press, 2023, 157 pages. Original version published in 2020. A mad aunt threatens to reveal a family secret; a Japanese woman forms a bond with her quiet lodger; and two orphans are taken in by their alcoholic aunt. These short stories by a Bolivian writer are a …
Search Sweet Country: Kojo Laing
Published by Penguin, 1986, 351 pages. “Back in the streets Accra had one eye shut: at nine o’clock, the taxis were driving towards sleep; and with the open eye, with the one bright headlight, they moved to the cines, the wake-keepings, the spiritual churches, the still-talking compounds, the society meetings, the discos, the night-classes, the …
Small Things Like These: Claire Keegan
Published by Faber & Faber, 2021, 116 pages. 1985. It is almost Christmas in New Ross, a small town in Ireland. Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, is making his deliveries before the holidays. The bitter cold means that he has a lot of orders to fill. Furlong is the son of an unmarried …
Dear Wednesday: Kat De Moor
Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers2024, 202 pages. Original version published by Grupo Editorial Círculo Rojo SL, 2021, 218 pages. Natalia Missidenti is on the train back to Geneva. Reaching for her umbrella, which has slipped to the back of the luggage rack, she finds a box. She looks around: it does not seem to …
Homegoing: Yaa Gyasi
Published by Penguin, 2016, 305 pages. Effia and Esi, two Asante women, born in Ghana—then known as the Gold Coast—are half-sisters but unaware of each other’s existence. They go on to lead very different lives, and the paths they take affect the generations that follow. The book begins in the late 18th century. The British …
Cloud Cuckoo Land: Anthony Doerr
Published by 4th Estate, 2021, 577 pages. “Maybe in the old days men did walk the earth as beasts, and a city of birds floated in the heavens between the realms of men and gods. Or maybe, like all lunatics, the shepherd made his own truth, and so for him, true it was.” “‘I know …
The House of Doors: Tan Twan Eng
Published by Canongate, 2023, 306 pages. British Malaya, 1921. The writer William Somerset Maugham (referred to in the book as Willie) is staying with his old friend Robert Hamlyn and his wife Lesley. Willie is going through a difficult time: his writer’s block is compounded by the fact that he has just learned that he …
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