Translated from German by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin.Published by Scribe, 2019, 934 pages. Original version published in 2014. “And I’m afraid of these stories. These stories that constantly run in parallel, chaotically; that appear in the foreground, conceal themselves, interrupt one another. Because they connect and break through each other, they betray and mislead, …
Continue reading The Eighth Life (for Brilka): Nino Haratischvili
Published by Harvill Secker, 2024, 317 pages. “We come from prisoners of a long war that didn’t stop even when it stopped.” In 2018, Tommy Orange published his debut novel, There There, which follows a group of Native Americans in Oakland, California, as they prepare for a powwow. Wandering Stars, in a sense, nests that …
Published by Harper Collins Publishers, 2022, 408 pages. Lichen Hall, the Scottish Borders. A place where unmarried pregnant women are sent to give birth and where their babies are given up for adoption. It is not an institution in the way the Magdalene Laundries were; Mrs. Whitlock, the owner of Lichen Hall, has set up …
Translated from French by Sara HanaburghPublished by University of Virginia Press, 2014, 223 pages. Original version published in 1989. This book by Angèle Rawiri, considered the first novelist from Gabon, is about the position of women in a society that has modernized without ridding itself of traditional roles. Emilienne, a woman in a fictional African …
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 …
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, …
Published by John Murray, 2016, 328 pages. I have always loved colour, from the time my mother gave me a set of colour pencils as a child. Colours are an essential part of our world, whether it’s the blue of a cloudless sky or the brown of the earth; the yellow signage on roads, or …
Continue reading The Secret Lives of Colour: Kassia St. Clair
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 …
Continue reading The Extinction of Irena Rey: Jennifer Croft
(Note: This interview was originally conducted in Spanish and translated by Leslie Jones.Lea aquí la versión en español.) Luis Sagasti is an Argentinian writer, lecturer and art critic. Luis’s books include Lenguas Vivas (2023), which was longlisted for the Premio FILBA-Medifé for best novel 2024; Leyden, Ltd. (2019); Por qué escuchamos a Led Zeppelin (2019); Una …
Continue reading Making Connections: An Interview with Luis Sagasti
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 …
Continue reading Perestroika—An Eye for an Eye, A Tooth for a Tooth: João Cerqueira
Talking About Books 