Norman. University of Oklahoma Press. 2013. ISBN 9780806143576
Love, grief, and memory form the thematic triad in Rudolfo Anaya’s The Old Man’s Love Story, a novel that speaks to our shared h…
FICTION
- Andrew Bromfield, tr. Evanston, Illinois. Northwestern University Press. 2012. ISBN 9780810126626 A Displaced Person: The Later Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin round…
- Jonathan Hunt, tr. New York. Faber & Faber. 2013. ISBN 9780865479371 Giorgio Vasta’s Time on My Hands is a yearlong adventure in the footsteps of a young boy in Palermo, Sicily, whose lif…
- Anthea Bell, tr. Minneapolis. Graywolf. 2013. ISBN 9781555976439 Whatever “light” the utopian vision of communism brought people, it fades under the grinding duress of “real socialism” as it is lived…
- Will Firth, tr. New York. Black Balloon. 2013. ISBN 978936787050 This postmodern, postcommunist picaresque hilariously skewers Croatian, Western, and global culture as it follows the rapid descent of…
- 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 mor…
- New York. Hogarth. 2013. ISBN 9780770436407 After reading A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, I can only echo the amazement of other reviewers: that such an accomplished novel is Ant…
- Cromer, England. Salt. 2012. ISBN 9781907773280 Whereas much exile literature foregrounds educated urbanites voicing nostalgia for lost cultures, Adnan Mahmutović portrays Bosnian villagers who renoun…
- Chicago. Haymarket. 2012. ISBN 9781608461752 Kangkala, 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 moveme…
- Sam Garrett, tr. New York. Hogarth. 2012. ISBN 9780770437855 Not since watching the film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover has bearing witness to others’ fine dining been so voyeur…
- Bamenda, Cameroon. Langaa Research & Publishing CIG (African Books Collective, distr.). 2012. ISBN 9789956727377 This absorbing novel vividly brings the African diaspora to life. The main characte…
- 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 litera…
- New York. Riverhead. 2012. ISBN 9781594488177 Patrick Flanery’s first novel, Absolution, captures the complicated philosophies and mores of the educated and liberal occupants (in addition to…
- Nice, France. Editions Baie-des-Anges. 2013. ISBN 9782917790502 Without the back-cover photograph and blurb indicating that Jean Emelina is a retired professor of the University of Nice–Sophia Antipo…
- André Naffis-Sahely, tr. & afterword. London. Arabia Books. 2012. ISBN 9781906697426 When 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 9781555976262 Translated at last, Per Petterson’s second novel is a portrait of the artist as a young rebel. Its style and themes…
- 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 suicidal C…
- 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 released…
- Tallahassee, Florida. Cheeky Frawg. 2012. ISBN 9780985790400 After reading the singular stories in Swedish author Karin Tidbeck’s first collection, what lingers in the mind is their deadpan strangenes…
- Paris. Gallimard. 2013. ISBN 9782070126699 Marie 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 years.…
- Paris. P.O.L. 2013. ISBN 9782818017852 The 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 “uncertain…
- New York. Knopf. 2013. ISBN 9780307962577 Set against Charles Taylor’s rule of Liberia, Alexander Maksik’s novel transmutes the bloody madness of civil war into the advancing disorientation of Jacquel…
- Victoria Cribb, tr. New York. Seven Stories. 2012. ISBN 978-1609804268 Ovar LoveStar is the seventy-one-year-old chairman of a vast corporate entity whose tendrils infiltrate every aspect of life. In…
- Helen Constantine, ed. Margaret Jull Costa, tr. New York. Oxford University Press. 2012. ISBN 9780199583270 Madrid Tales is a wonderful collection of short stories written by a diverse cadre…
- Pasadena, California. Red Hen Press. 2013. ISBN 9781597092685 Andrew Lam, author of the essay collections Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora and East Eats West: Writin…