Translated from French by Allison M. CharrettePublished by Restless Books, 2017, 500 pages. Original version published in 2016. This is the first novel from Madagascar to be translated into English. It tells the story of Rafa, a young woman, and Tsito, the boy her father buys her for a slave. Their relationship is closer than …
Category: The reading challenge
Beauty is a Wound: Eka Kurniawan
Translated from Indonesian by Annie TuckerPublished by Pushkin Press, 2016, 480 pages. Original version published in 2002. “One afternoon on a weekend in March, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years. … She had passed away at fifty-two, rose again after being dead for twenty-one years, and from that point …
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: Olga Tokarczuk
Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-JonesPublished by Fitzcarraldo Press / Thorndike Press, 2019, 274 pages. Original version published in 2009. “[S]ometimes I feel we’re living in a world we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what’s good and what isn’t, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves… And then we spend our whole lives struggling with …
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Frankenstein in Baghdad: Ahmed Sadaawi
Translated from Arabic by Jonathan WrightPublished by OneWorld Publications / Penguin, 2018, 272 pages. Original version published in 2013. Ahmed Sadaawi takes the story of Frankenstein and transposes it to Baghdad in the early 2000s, in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq. Bombs go off regularly on the streets and people die every …
The Lights of Pointe-Noire: Alain Mabanckou
Translated from French by Helen StevensonPublished by Serpent's Tail, 2015, 280 pages. Original version published in 2014. Alain Mabanckou left Congo in 1989, when he was 22, and didn’t go back for 23 years, not even when his mother died. Refusing to accept her death, he keeps up the myth that she is alive and …
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La bouche pleine de terre: Branimir Šćepanović
Translated from Serbian into French by Jean Descat, and into English by Lovett Fielding EdwardsPublished by Éditions L'Age d'Homme, 1975, 84 pages. English version published by Longship Press, 1980, 83 pages. Original version published in 1974. Although this book exists in English (as The Mouth Full of Earth), it is out of print. But I …
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Cinnamon: Samar Yazbek
Translated from Arabic by Emily DanbyPublished by Arabia Books, 2013, 124 pages. Original version published in 2008. A woman in Damascus wakes in the night, sees a triangle of light where a door is left ajar and walks in. She finds her maid in bed with her husband. She throws the maid out, and immediately …
Written in Black: K.H. Lim
Published by Monsoon Books Pte. Ltd., 2015, 240 pages. Jonathan is a 10-year-old boy in Brunei. He lives with his father and brother Aaron and sister Jen. His mother has gone away, ostensibly for health reasons, and his older brother Michael left to join a rock band. When the book starts, Jonathan’s uncle, Ah Peh, …
A Land Without Jasmine: Wajdi Al-Ahdal
Translated from Arabic by William Maynard HutchinsPublished by Garnet Publishing, 2012, 94 pages. Original version published in 2008. Over the last year, Yemen has been in the news, its people suffering the ravages of war and famine. I realized that I knew very little about the country, especially what it had been like to live …
Kumukanda: Kayo Chingonyi
Published by Chatto Poetry, 2017, 52 pages. I’ve discovered new poets as part of the reading challenge, and two of them have blown me away. One is Kendall Hippolyte from St. Lucia, and the second is Kayo Chingonyi from Zambia. In north-western Zambia, tribes have an initiation ritual for young boys called kumukunda. During the …
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