Andrew Bromfield, tr. Evanston, Illinois. Northwestern University Press. 2012. ISBN 9780810126626A Displaced Person: The Later Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin rounds…
FICTION
- Jonathan Hunt, tr. New York. Faber & Faber. 2013. ISBN 9780865479371Giorgio Vasta’s Time on My Hands is a yearlong adventure in the footsteps of a young boy in Palermo, Sicily, whose life…
- Anthea Bell, tr. Minneapolis. Graywolf. 2013. ISBN 9781555976439Whatever “light” the utopian vision of communism brought people, it fades under the grinding duress of “real socialism” as it is li…
- Will Firth, tr. New York. Black Balloon. 2013. ISBN 978936787050This postmodern, postcommunist picaresque hilariously skewers Croatian, Western, and global culture as it follows the rapid descent of q…
- Mumbai. Almost Island. 2013. ISBN 9788192129518 In three books published over a period of eighteen years, Sharmistha Mohanty has been showing, with increasing consistency and verve, that there is…
- New York. Hogarth. 2013. ISBN 9780770436407After reading A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, I can only echo the amazement of other reviewers: that such an accomplished novel is…
- Cromer, England. Salt. 2012. ISBN 9781907773280Whereas much exile literature foregrounds educated urbanites voicing nostalgia for lost cultures, Adnan Mahmutović portrays Bosnian villagers who renounc…
- Chicago. Haymarket. 2012. ISBN 9781608461752Kangkala, a calypsonian, is the narrator of Earl Lovelace’s Caribbean saga. A self-styled “poet of the revolution,” he was active in the Black Power mo…
- Sam Garrett, tr. New York. Hogarth. 2012. ISBN 9780770437855Not since watching the film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover has bearing witness to others’ fine dining been so voyeuri…
- Bamenda, Cameroon. Langaa Research & Publishing CIG (African Books Collective, distr.). 2012. ISBN 9789956727377This absorbing novel vividly brings the African diaspora to life. The main char…
- New Haven, Connecticut. Yale University Press. 2013. ISBN 9780300176698 How to represent evil and torture bearably, enhance or put into perspective a lasting and frequently trite and polemical li…
- 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…
- 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…