New York. Riverhead. 2012. ISBN 9781594488177Patrick Flanery’s first novel, Absolution, captures the complicated philosophies and mores of the educated and liberal occupants (in addition…
FICTION
- Nice, France. Editions Baie-des-Anges. 2013. ISBN 9782917790502Without the back-cover photograph and blurb indicating that Jean Emelina is a retired professor of the University of Nice–Sophia An…
- André Naffis-Sahely, tr. & afterword. London. Arabia Books. 2012. ISBN 9781906697426When Rashid and Omar spend an hour together on a flight from Algiers to Constantine, the former decides he will…
- Don Bartlett, tr. Minneapolis, Minnesota. Graywolf. 2012 (©2011). ISBN 9781555976262Translated at last, Per Petterson’s second novel is a portrait of the artist as a young rebel. Its style and th…
- Ben Ryder Howe, ed. Joshua Cohen, intro. Champaign, Illinois. Dalkey Archive. 2013. ISBN 9781564788160 To understand the mind of those who live in the veiled, history-bound, intellectually s…
- Jennifer Marquart, tr. Rochester, New York. Open Letter. 2013. ISBN 9781934824702 Open Letter Books takes chances with German writers, and for this we should be thankful. Last September, it…
- Tallahassee, Florida. Cheeky Frawg. 2012. ISBN 9780985790400After reading the singular stories in Swedish author Karin Tidbeck’s first collection, what lingers in the mind is their deadpan strangeness…
- Paris. Gallimard. 2013. ISBN 9782070126699Marie NDiaye’s new novel, with perhaps the most complex plot of any of her works, tells a story of four generations, taking place over more than fifty ye…
- Paris. P.O.L. 2013. ISBN 9782818017852The narrator of Christine Montalbetti’s latest novel is a French writer who has decided to spend a few months in Kyoto in order to work on a book, an “uncert…
- New York. Knopf. 2013. ISBN 9780307962577Set against Charles Taylor’s rule of Liberia, Alexander Maksik’s novel transmutes the bloody madness of civil war into the advancing disorientation of Jacqueli…
- Victoria Cribb, tr. New York. Seven Stories. 2012. ISBN 978-1609804268Ovar LoveStar is the seventy-one-year-old chairman of a vast corporate entity whose tendrils infiltrate every aspect of life. In A…
- Helen Constantine, ed. Margaret Jull Costa, tr. New York. Oxford University Press. 2012. ISBN 9780199583270Madrid Tales is a wonderful collection of short stories written by a diverse cadre o…
- Pasadena, California. Red Hen Press. 2013. ISBN 9781597092685Andrew Lam, author of the essay collections Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora and East Eats West: Writing…
- New York. Riverhead. 2013. ISBN 9781594487293When we meet the protagonist of Mohsin Hamid’s novel, he is “huddled on the packed earth” under his mother’s cot, feverish and suffering from hepatiti…
- Douglas Brinkley, ed. Johnny Depp, intro. New York. Infinitum Nihil / Harper. 2013. ISBN 9780062248398It is customary when a reviewer has personal or business relationships with the aut…
- Antony Shugaar, tr. New York. Europa. 2012. ISBN 9781609450656I Hadn’t Understood follows a lawyer named Vincenzo Malinconico who lives in Naples and has an ex-wife, two children, and a…
- Madrid. Editorial Funambulista. 2012. ISBN 9788494029325What is most striking about Diego Cornejo Menacho’s third novel is how his proliferating imagination frees just about every known narrative…
- Clifford Endres & Selhan Endres, tr. London. Telegram. 2012. ISBN 978-1846591488Selçuk Altun’s sixth novel, The Sultan of Byzantium, positions itself as a skillfully constructed tribute t…
- Michael Hofmann, tr. New York. Other Press. 2012. ISBN 9781590513248Critically acclaimed throughout European literary circles, Swiss author Peter Stamm achieved his breakthrough in the United States w…
- Adriana Hunter, tr. London. Atlantic. 2012. ISBN 9781848874183Set in World War II, during the Nazi occupation of Belgium, Noah’s Child recounts the story of Joseph, a ten-year-old c…
- Paris. Seuil. 2013. ISBN 9782021003949Alain Mabanckou is one of the most widely read and discussed African writers today. After publishing a number of well-received novels and winning several prizes,…
- New York. W.W. Norton. 2012. ISBN 9780393083217Sylvia Plath did it with the oven door ajar. John Kennedy Toole did it with a garden hose. Hart Crane did it with the famous farewell, “Goodbye, eve…
- David Williams, tr. Brooklyn, New York. Archipelago. 2012. ISBN 9781935744320Mama Leone, by Miljenko Jergović (b. 1966), has an interesting structure: the first part of the book, “W…
- Brian Bergstrom & Lucy Fraser, tr. Oakland, California. PM Press (IPG, distr.). 2012. ISBN 9781604865912“My wish is for the words in these stories to . . . lodge themselves within the b…
- Bristol. Tangent. 2012. ISBN 9781906477608My Mother Was an Upright Piano is Tania Hershman’s second collection of very short stories—her first, The White Road and Other Stories, was…