Translated from Spanish by Fionn PetchPublished by Charco Press, 2017, 97 pages. Original version published in 2011. “Ever since people raised their heads for the first time to observe the stars and began telling them apart by nothing more than the invisible threads of frozen silver that link them, they also began to tell stories.” …
Category: The reading challenge
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 …
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 …
Older Brother: Daniel Mella
Translated from Spanish by Megan McDowellPublished by Charco Press, 2018, 148 pages. Original version published in 2017. In the summer of 2014, during one of the biggest storms to hit the coast of Uruguay, Alejandro is killed in a lightning strike. Ale, as he was known, was aware that there was an electrical storm brewing. …
This Tilting World: Colette Fellous
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 …
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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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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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 …
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