Fiction in translation

Book SynopsisSet in the 1960s, Nakedness is the tale of a young man who has just completed his military service and gone straight to Randava to surprise Marika, the beautiful woman with whom he’s been corresponding for some time. The two have never met in person however, and when the young man arrives at her door, he quickly becomes entangled in a bizarre mystery: Marika claims that she has never written to him; in fact, she appears to be involved with someone else. And none of her flatmates will admit to sending the letters. Humiliated, he prepares to return to Riga, but is convinced by one of Marika’s flatmates to stay a little longer – a decision that throws him even deeper into the web of conflicting relationships he has unwittingly entered. Each clue he uncovers only makes things more confusing, and eventually the young man’s own secrets and mendacity are also revealed. The nakedness that results from being deprived of our deceptions can be unpleasant, but it may be a necessary part of growing up and facing the world. Skujiņš is an original stylist capable of deploying acute psychological observation as well as clever and often witty imagery, and Uldis Balodis has managed to retain this in his excellent English translation. This novel will introduce the reader to a different world precisely because of the writing and the freshness of the dialogue, and not so much for the society it depicts, which resembles in some ways the mass society that also existed in Western Europe at the time, reminding us that even in those more hopeful times, the human condition was still a struggle with desires, ambitions and the image of ourselves we wish to project.

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Book SynopsisThe significance of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book to our musical canon is well known; the remarkable story of its copyist and compiler, Francis Tregian, less so. Born into Cornish Catholic nobility and plumb into the choppy waters of the Elizabethan Age, he must rely on his surpassing skill as a musician to survive.In this Prix des Libraires (Booksellers Prize) winning novel, Anne Cuneo deftly recreates the musician’s journey across Renaissance Europe, which sees him befriending Shakespeare, swapping scores with William Byrd and Monteverdi, and playing in the court of Henri IV of France.The result is as gripping as it is authentic: an epic, transcontinental choreography in which Europe’s monarchs tussle with pretenders to their thrones, and ordinary people steer between allegiances to God, nation and family. Trade Review‘Francis Tregian’s extraordinary journeys through war-torn Europe keep readers riveted to the page and on the edge of their seats.’ -- Jean-Marie Volet * World Literature Today *‘Anne Cuneo’s magnificent book offers a humanist investigation of the most discerning kind.’ -- Philippe-Jean Catinchi * Le Monde *‘His adventures transport us, with a jangle of spurs, from one conspiracy to another, from Shakespeare in his playhouse, to the battle camp of Henri IV. At the invitation of Tregian's novelist biographer, no reader could fail to be swept up in the excitement.’ -- Laurence Liban * L’Express *‘Tregian’s Ground certainly has many cinematic qualities – of the best kind . . . The vivid, free-flowing translation here is by Louise Rogers Lalaurie and Roland Glasser. This more than does justice to what is a marvelously rich and multi-layered piece of work . . . Serious students of either history or music are not going to be disappointed here.’ -- Andrew Green * Classical Music Magazine *‘This novel is based on a historical figure and, as is the typical benchmark for works in the genre, Cuneo’s empathetic and informed immersion into Tregian’s world gives the novel its claim to prestige. Cuneo handles the historical detail with a deft touch — it is sufficient but not excessive — and intersperses it well with vivacious dialogue and an authoritative, carefully researched knowledge of old London.’ -- Ben Paynter * LA Review of Books *‘It's not always that a writer with an interesting life writes interesting fiction. In this case Anne and her equally talented translators have it sussed – this is totally engrossing . . . by the time we take our leave of Francis as he awaits my Lady Death we are breathless and amazed, not to mention chuffed, to have made his acquaintance. And the really good bit? Tregian's Ground is another novel from & Other Stories, the publishing house that proves once again crowd funding knows a good thing when it sees it.’ * Bookbag *‘Francis is a worthy main character and I wanted the best for him, even when I felt he made the wrong choices.’ * Historic Novel Review *‘[A] big, fat, absorbing historical novel that is by turns swashbuckling and tender . . . that sweeps us along excitingly and paints a series of vivid pictures . . . strongly cinematic . . . The English translation of Tregian’s Ground does full justice to this long book with its finely calibrated tone and many historical, literary and musical allusions, and it reads beautifully throughout. It’s a lovely, engaging novel that really is a song for tolerance and culture, especially music, and for talented, creative individuals thriving even in the most brutal of times.’ -- Jean Morris * Shiny New Books *‘an unparalleled contribution to the Bildungsroman genre.’ * Glasgow Review of Books *

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Book SynopsisThis brilliant translation by Frank Perry won the 2017 Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize and the 2019 Bernard Shaw prize At a run-down brothel in Caudal, Spain, the prostitutes are collecting stray dogs. Each is named after a famous male writer: Dante, Chaucer, Bret Easton Ellis. When a john is cruel, the dogs are fed rotten meat. To the east, in Barcelona, an unflappable teenage girl is endeavouring to trace the peculiarities of her life back to one woman: Alba Cambo, writer of violent short stories, who left Caudal as a girl and never went back. Mordantly funny, dryly sensual, written with a staggering lightness of touch, the debut novel in English by Swedish sensation Lina Wolff is a black and Bolano-esque take on the limitations of love in a dog-eat-dog world.Trade Review'Wolff's prose has a quality of "otherness" entirely in keeping with the surreal atmosphere of the novel. This strange, provocative debut sits well alongside the work of Roxane Gay, Katherine Angel, Maggie Nelson, Zoe Pilger and Miranda July ... a cool, clever and fierce addition to the canon of modern feminist literature.' Sarah Perry, The Guardian ------- '[A] filmic offering ... channelling the spirit of Pedro Almodovar. A thoroughly invigorating novel.' Lucy Scholes, The Independent ------- 'Oddly compelling ... a European postmodern novel steeped in alienation and ennui.' Library Journal ------- 'The author demonstrates a marvelous command of language and creates characters with real depth, lending the book a sensual vibe and an acerbic wit that force its emotional truths to rise above the grunge of its hard-boiled setting. A poetic, unsentimental drama that offers a meditation on love in all its disparate forms.' Kirkus Reviews ------- 'Wolff has had enough of the big swinging dicks of masculine literature. [Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs is] clever and challenging and distinctive.' Galen O'Hanlon, The Skinny ------- 'Wolff manoeuvres with great skill through her breathtaking multitude of worlds and an equally impressive cast of characters. Bret Easton Ellis ... takes the reader on a roller-coaster from the tragic to the comical, with hints of the mysterious and magical scattered in between - it is a testimonial of a dead person remarkably full of life.' The Bookbag, 5 Stars, January Book of the Month ------- 'A book that you just want to give people and say: take a look at this, read it, experience it. I would have liked to devote the entire review to quoting sentences and paragraphs from the novel - it is almost as if that were the only way of adequately conveying the gravity, depth and lightness of Lina Wolff's prose, her tender yet pitiless character descriptions, her distinctive but also natural way of piecing together the novel's disparate parts into a shimmering whole.' Eva Johansson, Svenska Dagbladet

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Book SynopsisA plague has brought death to the city. Two feuding crime families with blood on their hands need our hard-boiled hero, The Redeemer, to broker peace. Both his instincts and the vacant streets warn him to stay indoors, but The Redeemer ventures out into the city's underbelly to arrange for the exchange of the bodies they hold hostage.Yuri Herrera's novel is a response to the violence of contemporary Mexico. With echoes of Romeo and Juliet, Roberto Bolano and Raymond Chandler, The Transmigration of Bodies is a noirish tragedy and a tribute to those bodies - loved, sanctified, lusted after, and defiled - that violent crime has touched.Trade Review'The Transmigration of Bodies represents a highpoint in the genre of the novel. Herrera has been slowly building an oeuvre constructed on a singular conception of the world, in which literature's past and present form a continuum. Reading him gives one the sense of diving into his library, a place that is unashamed of belonging to a tradition and being well-read and much-underlined.' Alvaro Enrigue, author of Sudden Death ---------- 'The Transmigration of Bodies is a magnificent book and its author one of the few indispensable Latin American writers of our times.' Patricio Pron, author of My Fathers' Ghost Is Climbing in the Rain ---------- 'Bracingly unbookish ... The after-effect is more like that of a video game or Marvel comic, with both the brightness and unabashed flatness those entail. Darkly satisfying ... Swift, slick images and one-liners glitter at regular intervals.' James Lasdun, The Guardian ---------- 'Herrera packs his slim book with the sex, booze and nihilism of a better Simenon novella ... Dillman brings out a gritty, pulpy flavor in the writing.' Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal ---------- 'A novella in nine dramatic acts loaded with images, moments suspended in time that evolve into an extended dream, or rather a cautionary tale ... The author of playful, prophetic, unnerving books that deserve to be read several times, with dialogue so telling it eats into your brain rather like the worm in the Redeemer's preferred mescal, Herrera is a writer for our doomed epoch.' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times ---------- 'Herrera's brilliantly surreal turns of phrase mirror the strangeness of the world: he knows that brutal everyday truths are best revealed through dreams. Blood-soaked, driven deep and expertly written.' Jeff Noon, The Spectator ---------- 'Yuri Herrera [is] my favorite of the new Mexican writers. The Transmigration of Bodies goes straight for the soul. Unsettling and deep, Herrera transmigrates us to a Mexico that feels like a metaphysical condition, a timeless kingdom in which the living are forever dancing with the dead.' John Powers, NPR Fresh Air ---------- 'The Transmigration of Bodies takes the conventions of gumshoe fiction and transfers them to a charnel-house world that makes nonsense of the genre's habitual moral opposites ... There's plenty to admire about this allegorical vision of a country under lockdown, where violence and death have ceased to be the motors for fiction, instead becoming the backdrop of everyday life.' Bookforum ---------- 'Herrera's characteristic concision goes a step further here, his skill for expression more impressive in its restraint than its excess. This is a harsh novel, as are those from a borderland besieged by extreme violence, but it's also oddly comforting, in large part due to its exceptional literary quality.' El Pais -------- 'In Herrera's slim, amusing book, [he] strips Romeo & Juliet to its essence and sets it against a plague that symbolises Mexico's recent violent history.' Publishers Weekly ---------- 'Yuri Herrera's novels are like little lights in a vast darkness. I want to see whatever he shows me.' Stephen Sparks, Green Apple Books, San Francisco, CA ---------- 'This is as noir should be, written with all the grit and grime of hard-boiled crime and all the literary merit we're beginning to expect from Herrera. Before the end he'll have you asking how, in the shadow of anonymity, do you differentiate between the guilty and the innocent?' Tom Harris, Mr B's Emporium, Bath ---------- 'Both hysterical and bleak, The Transmigration of Bodies builds an entire world in 100 pages. Herrera's ability to express everything in so few words, his skill of merging the argot of the streets with the poetry of life is unrivalled. The world his characters inhabit is dangerous and urban, like a postcard sent from the ends of the earth. Reading his compact novels is both exhilarating and unforgettable.' Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore, Houston, TX ---------- 'A fabulous book full of low-life characters struggling to get by. It's an everyday story of love, lust, disease and death. Indispensable.' Matthew Geden, Waterstones Cork, Ireland ---------- 'Reading The Transmigration of Bodies was akin to being enveloped in a dream state, yet one that upon waking somehow makes profound sense. Another truly magnificent novel from one of the most exciting authors to emerge on the world stage for aeons.' Ray Mattinson, Blackwell's, Oxford ---------- 'A microcosmic look at the lives of two families straight out of a Shakespearean drama. Pick it up and you won't put it down till you've finished.' Grace Waltemyer, Posman Books in Chelsea Market, NY ---------- 'A work replete with the gritty, informal prose first displayed in Signs - rooted firmly in the modern world yet evoking the feel of an epic divorced from time ... a cross between Cormac McCarthy and a detective novel, an incisive portrait evoking a Mexican Inherent Vice.' Marina Clementi, Seminary Co-op Bookstore, Chicago, IL ---------- 'The Transmigration of Bodies reads like a fever dream: an intense, enthralling examination of how people live in a city of the dying and the dead. It takes an extraordinary amount of skill to combine elements of noir, political commentary, hardboiled crime, and allegory (not to mention Shakespeare, with a seasoning of existential ennui) and keep the novel moving, or in this case, racing along. Herrera, clearly, has at least that much talent, and then some.' Thomas Flynn, Volumes Bookcafe, Chicago, IL

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Book SynopsisGrains of sand, bridges, shampoo, a bike, board games, yoga, sellotape, birds, balloons, tattoos, wandering hands, tweezers, maths, fish, letterboxes, puppets, a vacuum cleaner, a ball of string – and love. In this novel of yous and mes, of hims and hers, Pagano choreographs the objects, gestures, places, and persons through which love is made real.Trade Review'Trysting reveals what only literature can: the basic irrationality, the arbitrary enchantment, but also the residual grace within the feeling of love. A multitude of anonymous male and female characters show us in what ways we are seduced by each other: a scent, a movement, a way of being, a way of making love.' Alexandre Gefen, Magazine litteraire ---------- 'Though she insists on brevity, Pagano never abandons complexity and holds fast to the animal sensuality that forms the bedrock of every couple's relationship.' Clementine Goldszal, Les Inrockuptibles ---------- 'It's familiar but never banal. Having nothing of the a performance, and everything of a sharing of confidences, it is all of an incredible delicacy.' Olivia de Lamberterie, Elle

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Book SynopsisGathered for the first time in English and spanning his entire career, Vampire in Love offers a selection of the Spanish master Enrique Vila-Matas’s finest short stories. An effeminate, hunchbacked barber on the verge of death falls in love with a choir boy. A fledgling writer on barbiturates visits Marguerite Duras’s Paris apartment and watches his dinner companion slip into the abyss. An unsuspecting man receives a mysterious phone call from a lonely ophthalmologist and visits his abandoned villa. The stories in Vampire in Love, selected and brilliantly translated by Margaret Jull Costa, are all told with Vila-Matas’s delightful erudition and wit, and his provocative questioning of the interrelation of art and life.Trade Review‘A writer who has no equal in the contemporary landscape of the Spanish novel.’ -- Roberto Bolaño‘Highly original, both lucid and ludic.’ -- Valerie Miles * The Guardian *‘He absorbs the reader into a singular territory in which life and literature are a shared enterprise.’ -- Valerie Miles * New York Times *‘Arguably Spain’s most significant contemporary literary figure.’ -- Joanna Kavenna * New Yorker *‘Enrique Vila-Matas is a consistently rich and challenging contemporary Spanish-language novelist’ * World Literature Today *

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Book SynopsisIn the court of the King, everyone knows their place. But as the Artist wins hearts and egos with his ballads, uncomfortable truths emerge that shake the Kingdom to its core. Part surreal fable and part noir romance, this prize-winning novel from Yuri Herrera questions the price of keeping your integrity in a world ruled by patronage and power.Trade Review'Herrera's metaphors grasp the freedom, and the alarming disorientation, of transition and translation.' Maya Jaggi, The Guardian----------'Short, suspenseful ... outlandish and heartbreaking.' John Williams, New York Times----------'Herrera packs his slim book with the sex, booze and nihilism of a better Simenon novella.' Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal----------'Yuri Herrera's tiny, beautiful novels each conjure myth and metaphor from a contemporary experience in a precise location, transformed by archaic-colloquial prose.' Lorna Scott-Fox, Times Literary Supplement----------'Playful, prophetic, unnerving books that deserve to be read several times.' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times-----------'Darkly satisfying.' James Lasdun, The Guardian----------'Yuri Herrera combines a dreamlike setting with vigorous style.' Anthony Cummins, Times Literary Supplement-----------'My favorite of the new Mexican writers.' John Powers, NPR Fresh Air-----------'The Transmigration of Bodies takes the conventions of gumshoe fiction and transfers them to a charnel-house world that makes nonsense of the genre s habitual moral opposites.' Bookforum----`Mesmerising & stunningly crafted 5!’ Rebecca Choudhury, Waterstones Birmingham


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Book SynopsisA little girl lives happily with her mother in war-torn Paris. She has never met her father, a prisoner of war in Germany. But then he returns and her mother switches her devotion to her husband. The girl realizes that she must win over her father to recover her position in the family. She confides a secret that will change their lives. ----- Why Peirene chose to publish this book: 'This is a poetic story about a girl's love for her father. Told from the girl's perspective, but with the clarity of an adult's mind, we experience her desire to be noticed by the first man in her life. A rare examination of the bonds and boundaries between father and daughter.' Meike Ziervogel, PublisherTrade Review'A delicate, discreet novel. Like its little heroine. Impressive.' SUD OUEST DIMANCHE ----- 'Sizun's beautifully controlled and simple story captures the surprisingly clear gaze of a little girl who discovers how adults excel in the art of concealment.' LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR ----- 'This story brings to mind, like a slap in the face, our forgotten childhood memories. We remember the way adults fail to hear the tiny cries of the heart.' MARIE CLAIRE

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Book SynopsisMarcelino lives alone on his parents' farm, set deep in the beautiful but impoverished countryside of northern Spain. It's the place where he grew up, the place where he doted on his beloved baby brother and protected his mother from his father's drunken rages. But when Marcelino's brother tricks him out of his house and land, a moment of anger sparks a chain of events that can't be reversed. Marcelino flees to the wild peaks of rural Asturias, becoming a cult hero as he evades authorities. Into this unconventional crime story, Astur weaves fables about the sun and the moon, tales of death and love, and reveals a community and a way of life that may soon be lost. Of Saints and Miracles is a sensuous and poetic portrayal of an outcast's struggle to survive in a changing world, and a seamless blend of the tragic and the majestic.Trade Review'Meticulous and vivid ... mesmerising.' ASYMPTOTE; 'Ambitious and unpredictable - the best kind of new spin on a timeless story.' WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS; 'An astonishing novel that marks Astur out as a novelist of unique brilliance.' LUNATE; 'Melancholic and somewhat unnerving ... a beautiful book.' EUROPEAN LITERATURE NETWORK; 'A fierce, passionate book - at home in every genre.' PATRICK MCGUINNESS; 'An extraordinary feat of writing.' SOPHIE HUGHES; 'This literary novel has the seal of determined originality, and is the admirable work of an author worth following.' EL CULTURAL;'With a sensuous style that produces an almost physical effect, Astur plays with time, earth, and violence, weaving together a plot that finds its logic in disorder, like every real tragedy.' ABC CULTURAL; 'One of the most exquisite writers of Spanish literature.' THE OBJECTIVE

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Book SynopsisThe island of Otterøya, a rural backwater of Norway, provides the setting for Book Two of Tiller's multi-award winning Encircling trilogy. Its singular premise continues: an enigmatic central character, David, has lost his memory and his friends and family write letters at the behest of his psychiatrist about the lives they once shared. The encircling narratives offered by two childhood friends and the midwife who attended his birth, reveal both the roots of his waywardness and, in a shocking twist, the traumatic secret of his identity. Tiller uses a carefully scored polyphony of voices to present this epic saga of dysfunctional lives misshapen by poverty. As in the work of our own Ken Loach or Mike Leigh, its strength lies in its close domestic focus. Encircling: Book 2 is an intimate and modern portrait of Norwegian life that is both searingly honest and uncomfortably true. Encircling 2 is the second volume of a multi-award winning trilogy, published to acclaim in Norway.

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Book SynopsisThe Mystery of Sintra road begins when two friends are kidnapped by several masked men, who, to judge by their manners and their accent are men of the best society. One of the friends is a doctor, and the masked men say that they need him to assist a noblewoman, who is about to give birth. When they reach the house, they find no such noblewoman, only a dead man. Ea de Queiroz wrote this spoof ''mystery'' with his friend Ramalho OrtigÆo, publishing it in the form of a series of anonymous letters in the Dirio de Notcias in 1870.

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Book SynopsisWith high hopes, Captain Riber embarks with his young bride Aurora on a voyage to exotic destinations. But they are an ill-matched pair; her naive illusions are shattered by the realities of married life and the seediness of society in foreign ports, whilst his hopes of domestic bliss are frustrated by his wife's unhappiness. Life on board ship becomes a private hell, as Aurora's obsession with Riber's adventures as a carefree bachelor begins to undermine his sanity. Ultimately both are betrayed by a hypocritical society which imposes a warped view of sexuality on its most vulnerable members. Amalie Skram was a contemporary of Henrik Ibsen, and like him a fierce critic of repressive social mores and hypocrisy. Many of her works make an impassioned statement on the way women of all classes are imprisoned in their social roles, contributing to the great debate about sexual morality which engaged so many Nordic writers in the late nineteenth century. Her female characters are independent, rebellious, even reckless; but their upbringing and their circumstances combine to deny them the fulfilment their creator so painfully won for herself.

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Book SynopsisOften referred to as Sweden's Charlotte Bronte, Fredrika Bremer (1801-1865) was widely translated during her lifetime and became internationally acclaimed as the author of an impressive series of novels and travel books. The Colonel's Family first appeared in two parts in 1830-31 as part of a series which she called Sketches from Daily Life - a title which at an early stage declared her lifelong preoccupation with the details of her domestic day. What was less immediately apparent to her contemporaries was her courage in abandoning the prevailing conventions of insipid romantic fiction in order to explore more profound social and moral problems. Her novel is now recognised as a sensitive exploration of the problems of a frustrated, silenced woman, a creature of strong repressed passions, in an era of highly constrictive marital conventions. The striking narrative style is a combination of the picaresque, the sentimental, the realistic, the comic and even the farcical. This translation of a classic of Swedish literature preserves the freshness and idiosyncratic flavour of the original. Sarah Death has over thirty years' experience as a translator from Swedish and has won the George Bernard Shaw Prize three times. In 2014 she was awarded the Royal Order of the Polar Star for services to Swedish literature. She has translated books in a wide variety of genres including children's stories, crime fiction, literary criticism, novels by Nobel laureate Selma Lagerloef and the work of many contemporary writers. She lives and works in Kent.

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Book SynopsisSet during Carnival in Haiti 1938, a young and beautiful woman named Hadriana drinks a mysterious potion on her wedding day and collapses at the altar. She is buried and later resurrected by an evil sorcerer and, as a zombie, enters the collective memory of her town of Jacmel. Hadriana's conversion serves as the inciting incident into an exploration of the strange and esoteric on the island, where Voodoo and Catholicism keep a symbiotic relationship, young women turn into zombies, young men turn into lascivious butterflies and nothing is quite what it seems. Hadriana in All my Dreams is a frolic through mystery and eroticism that reveals vital truths about the nature of humanity.

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Book SynopsisOn the cusp of womanhood, Daina Tabūna's heroines are constantly confronted with the unexpected. Adult life seems just around the corner, but so are the kinds of surprise encounter which might change everything. Two siblings realise they're too old to be playing with paper dolls. A girl develops a fixation with Jesus. And a disaffected young woman stumbles into an awkward relationship with an office worker. The narrators of these three stories each try, in their own way, to make sense of how to behave in a world that doesn't give any clear answers.Trade ReviewAuthor Daina Tabūna (born in Riga, Latvia in 1985) has an innate skill in communicating voice to the reader. All three stories in The Secret Box seem to spring from some truth or experience in the author’s life, from which she spins out a narrative with a viewpoint that is seamlessly consistent and vibrantly alive.' -- Jo Manby * Mslexia Max *A quote that I absolutely loved from this story was “Without warning, the time had arrived where it wasn’t our dolls that had to be beautiful and sexy, but us ourselves”. To me this perfectly sums up what the transition to becoming a teenager is like for a young girl. I commend Daina for highlighting this issue and for showing what society expects from women, even from a young age. -- Marie Humble * Cuckoo Review *

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Book SynopsisSpring is a deeply moving novel about family, our everyday lives, our joys and our struggles, beautifully illustrated by Anna Bjerger.I have just finished writing this book for you. What happened that summer nearly three years ago, and its repercussions, are long since over. Sometimes it hurts to live, but there is always something to live for.Spring follows a father and his newborn daughter through one day in April, from sunrise to sunset. It is a day filled with the small joys of family life, but also its deep struggles. With this striking novel in the Seasons quartet, Karl Ove Knausgaard reflects uncompromisingly on life's darkest moments and what can sustain us through them.Utterly gripping and brilliantly rendered in Knausgaard's famously pensive and honest style, Spring is the account of a shocking and heartbreaking familial trauma and the emotional epicentre of this singular literary series.Trade ReviewEntirely ingenious. Knausgaard isn’t afraid to be gauche, anxious, vulgar, inconsistent, portentous, sentimental. He makes virtues of what, in literary novels, are often counted faults. And he makes them moving. * Daily Telegraph *Spring features Knausgaard unbound. . . the book’s blunt, unforced telling brings the larger project’s meaning into sudden, brilliant focus… Knausgaard has assembled this living encyclopedia for his daughter with a wild and desperate sort of love, as a way to forge her attachment to the world, to fasten her to it... Fall in love with the world, he enjoins, stay sensitive to it, stay in it. * The New York Times *Heavy but not heavy-handed, this true noir of the North is dark, bleak and moody. This story about life that’s set over the course of single day will move and disturb in equal measure. * Monocle *An unexpected treat… A lovely piece of work. * Sunday Telegraph *Oodles of musing on life and art that’s by turns meandering and electrifying. * Metro *[Karl Ove Knausgaard] observes a subject so closely, mining so far into its essence – its quiddity – that the observations transcend banality and become compelling. -- Peter Murphy * Irish Times *For anyone who is curious about this writer... Spring makes for an excellent introduction. It is the shortest book he has ever written, but it is all muscle, a generous slice of a thoughtful, ruminative life. * The Washington Post *If you still haven’t tried Knausgaard... try Spring. It’s poignant and beautiful… you’ll get him and get why some of us have gone crazy for him. * Los Angeles Review of Books *A radical, thrilling departure from the first two volumes of his Seasons Quartet... this moving novel stylistically resembles his acclaimed My Struggle series... A remarkably honest take on the strange linkages between love, loss, laughter, and self-destruction, a perfect distillation of Knausgaard’s unique gifts. * Publishers Weekly *Knausgaard’s assets are on full display, including his precise writing style and his unerring sense of detail … it is all muscle, a generous slice of thoughtful, ruminative life. -- Rodney Welch * Washington Post *

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Book Synopsis‘With the intimacy of a person who has lived the tragedy himself but with the restraint of a true artist, Hamid Sulaiman tells a powerful tale of Syria’s descent into cataclysm while reminding us of those still tending the seeds of the revolutionary spring.’Joe SaccoWinner of the 2017 PEN Translates AwardWinner of the 2017 Burgess GrantIt is spring 2012 and 40,000 people have died since the start of the Syrian Arab Spring. In the wake of this, Yasmin has set up a clandestine hospital in the north of the country. The town that she lives in is controlled by Assad’s brutal regime, but is relatively stable. However, as the months pass, the situation becomes increasingly complex and violent. Told in stark, beautiful black-and-white imagery, Freedom Hospital illuminates a complicated situation with gut-wrenching detail and very dark humour. The story of Syria is one of the most devastating narratives of our age and Freedom Hospital is an important and timely book from a new international talent.Trade ReviewUrgent, cogent and compelling… Freedom Hospital is genuinely shocking at times, but Francesca Barrie’s impressive translation also finds the black humour that tends to have a natural home in graphic novels… Yes, Freedom Hospital is a must read, but its tone, mood and form somehow make it as entertaining as it is informative and thought-provoking. A graphic novel might just be “the” piece of creative writing to come out of the horrifying mess that is Syria in the 2010s. -- Ben East * National *With the intimacy of a person who has lived the tragedy himself but with the restraint of a true artist, Hamid Sulaiman tells a powerful tale of Syria’s descent into cataclysm while reminding us of those still tending the seeds of the revolutionary spring. -- Joe SaccoThis eye-opening graphic novel is a powerful and moving introduction to the realities of the war in Syria. Sulaiman's stark black and white artwork brilliantly conveys the moral, political and emotional shades of grey rarely shown on the news. -- Stephen CollinsHamid Sulaiman's shocking inside story of an ongoing people's revolution against one of the world's most brutal regimes is eye-opening, explosive and utterly necessary. The chiaroscuro-heavy artwork, more dark than light, seems drawn in Sulaiman's heart's blood. -- Neel MukherjeeIf you want insight into the complex situation in Syria, read this book. It provides a stark vision of life in a war zone but, like Freedom Hospital itself, it never loses hope. -- Mary TalbotHeartbreaking and funny, tender and troubling; this is a vital piece of art about the great humanitarian tragedy of our age. -- Andrew McMillanThe artwork is beautiful... It's a necessary, powerful book. -- James Bluemel, director of EXODUSSyrian cartoonist Sulaiman’s debut novel follows the desperate lives, noble struggles, and violent deaths of people tied to an underground hospital during the Syrian civil war... The art’s flat blacks, stark whites, and heavy lines give the work an almost impressionistic feel, bringing to the real-world images a rotoscoped look... A heartbreaking and eye-opening primer to the quagmire of a generation. * Kirkus *Sulaiman’s stripped back black and white art reminded this reader of both the work of Marjane Satrapi but also more broadly 2000AD (this must be in the future, your mind shrieks, it can’t possibly be happening now, on the same planet I’m on)... as a piece of work it’s to be applauded... a story that deserves to be read. * Bookmunch *Drawn in a stark, chiaroscuro style, Sulaiman uses the simplest of imagery to convey intense, harrowing drama. It’s a subtle technique that hits like a hammer... Despite its painful subject matter, Sulaiman imbues Freedom Hospital with its fair share of gallows humour... Even when Freedom Hospital is at its bleakest, Sulaiman’s optimism shines through. Many of his characters die in acts of altruism and meaningless violence, but his focus is always on the strength and resilience of community. -- Josh Franks * Ink *

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Book SynopsisA critique of a woman's midlife, middle-class crisis of conscience, told through the astute and clever voice of one of France's most prolific writers.

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Book SynopsisThis collection of five subtly wrought stories from Amatmoekrim brings her short fiction into the English language for the first time. Ranging from the speculative ‘Jacques d’Or’ to the radical ‘De Radicaal’, this collection is a journey through Amatmoekrim’s pre-occupation with what kind of world we are creating. Her often cheerful and entertaining writing is threaded with threatening undertones, creating a haunting effect on the reader.

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Book SynopsisReturning to her archetypally ‘fresh and clear’ (Faithful) nonfiction, Mountain is a moving and memorable autobiographical account of a young woman making a trip to the mountains she visited so often as a child. Now grown and with her partner, past and present collide to create an impressive consideration of love and childhood, nostalgia and hope. Never before published in any language, this will also be Hofstede’s English language debut.

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Book SynopsisTaken from his highly successful collection, these two stories take unconventional positions towards short story archetypes. The Tourist Butcher is an unflinching tale about a serial killer who prepares his victims for a culinary dish, while Memories in Aluminium Foil follows the nightmares and existential crisis of a psychology student who receives a slice of human brain in aluminium foil as a gift from his biologist roommate.In the original Dutch collection, Ouariachi stated that his goal was to ‘bring the short story back to the campfire’, allowing his stories to hold up a mirror to the reader, rather than telling them what to achieve. These two stories, appearing in English for the first time, demonstrate his success: he has created a pair of dark, horrifying underworlds for the reader’s mind to get lost in, whilst maintaining a language that is light and graceful.

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Book SynopsisA young woman delves into the circumstances of her mother’s death ahead of her own marriage, interrogating a woman who witnessed her mother’s death and would later come to play a crucial role in her life. An exploration of the human (in)capacity for (self-)deception and knowledge, the story offers a nuanced portrait of contemporary (Korean) social mores. As with all Cheon’s work to date this beautifully crafted story places women at its core, and explores form and genre (in this case epistolatory) while subtly weaving into the text a deep interrogation of social issues.

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Book SynopsisA retired wrestler struggles with amnesia and anxiety after he is invited to return to his home town for an event. Back in once-familiar surroundings, he wrestles to make sense of things as he is confronted by faces, scenes and smells recalled from a celebrated past.

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Book SynopsisA poet reflects on the lives of the different generations of women around her as she contemplates her own divorce from a socially-engaged photographer; her feelings are complicated by the ethics of public/private, art/life divisions, as well as the country’s contemporary history. The story reveals the raw complexity of gender dynamics in a society still hobbled by the demands forced on its people through war and ideology and rapid modernization; it is a good reminder of the different feminisms that do and must exist.

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Book SynopsisThe story takes place on a stairwell, all in about a minute’s time, while the narrator’s partner seizes her by the hair. The narrator had gotten caught, after running out of the apartment to try to escape assault. While she tries desperately to avoid falling down the stairs, she has a series of flashbacks about a friend who committed suicide years earlier. In this brief moment, she searches her memories for any signs she may have missed, and feels guilt for not having finished writing his story.

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Book SynopsisLonglisted for the International Man Booker Prize. Two venturesome women on a journey through the land of their fathers and mothers. A wrong turn. A bad decision. They had no idea, when they arrived in Morocco, that their usual freedoms as young European women would not be available. So, when the spry Saleh presents himself as their guide and saviour, they embrace his offer. He extracts them from a tight space, only to lead them inexorably into an even tighter one: and from this far darker space there is no exit. Their tale of confinement and escape is as old as the landscapes and cultures so vividly depicted in this story of where Europe and Africa come closest to meeting, even if they never quite touch.Trade Review‘The gifted Dutch writer Tommy Wieringa is a bold, intelligent stylist, unafraid of exposing the ugliness of society juxtaposed with the vagaries of human nature. A taut, intense contemporary thriller of multiple exploitations … The full mercilessness of the migrant dilemma is confronted here to devastating effect.’ -- Eileen Battersby * The Observer *‘Brilliantly paced, this slim novel delivers a high-voltage adrenaline rush while expertly weaving in commentary about displaced world citizens … A cinematic, edge-of-your-seat thriller.’ STARRED REVIEW * Kirkus Reviews *‘It has the grip of a nightmare that is all too plausible.’ -- David Mills * The Sunday Times *‘This brutally searing mini-masterpiece has haunted me all year … a razor-sharp exploration of migration.’ -- Anthony Cummins * Daily Mail * ‘A savagely effective little novel … A nasty masterpiece of narrative tension; it’s brutally spare.’ -- Anthony Cummins * Evening Standard *‘The sentences are concise, propelling the action along and keeping readers on the edge of their seats … a vital must-read.’ -- Clayton McKee * Asymptote *‘The Death of Murat Idrissi is a powerful tale of identity, relationships and the desire to both fit in and to escape … The Death of Murat Idrissi is a dark and deeply profound tale that examines the fragile humanity of ordinary people and exposes just how cheaply a life can be valued.’ FOUR STARS -- Erin Britton * New Books Magazine *‘A lucidly written reflection on the migrant crisis, by a Dutch master storyteller.’ -- Rose Shepherd * Saga Magazine *‘As scintillating as it is unforgiving, this tiny diamond of a novel from Dutch author Tommy Wieringa is such a masterpiece of compression it could stand as an object lesson for students of creative writing … [A] deceptively simple, yet intricately layered, tale of complicity and exploitation.’ -- Cameron Woodhead * The Age *‘Wieringa’s writing and Garrett’s translation are elegant. From the creation of the Strait of Gibraltar to the aftermath of Murat’s death, it is as if each sentence, each word, has been chosen with care. Both the writing and story merge into a beautiful symmetry, where it’s not possible to appreciate the devastating story without appreciating the paradoxically beautiful writing. I was able to easily slip within the minds of each character, understand their motives and anxieties. For such a short novel, it felt very full … [A] compact novella pulling powerful punches. A must read.’ -- Alice Farrant * Shiny New Books *‘Based on a shocking true story, this novel will make you question your belief in humanity … The book is short, a fast read, at an almost breathless pace. It will make you appreciate where you are now.’ -- Sophie Foster * Q Weekend *‘The prose is tight, the story packed into 100 pages, stripped of superfluous detail as a short story might be … Engaging and thought-provoking.’ -- Anne Goodwin * Annecdotal *‘All of a sudden the pace takes off, rocketing the reader to a satisfying conclusion.’ -- Lauren Novak * Adelaide Advertiser *‘A powerful and moving tale. It confronts the horror and cruelty of the migrant dilemma with understated but stark honesty.’ -- Graeme Barrow * Daily Post *‘[A] sleek literary thriller … While the underdeveloped Murat functions primarily as a political symbol, the women’s ill-fated journey leads to an emotionally complex and ultimately chilling transformation. Wieringa hits the mark with this intelligent outing.’ * Publishers Weekly *Praise for A Beautiful Young Wife: ‘Wieringa takes us on a journey deep into the psyche of an ageing male in this potent work … No words are wasted in this thought-provoking love story.’ * Herald Sun *Praise for A Beautiful Young Wife: ‘Brilliantly written … the last few pages are mesmerising.’ * The Saturday Age *Praise for Joe Speedboat: ‘Joe Speedboat is never just another would-be inspirational read about overcoming adversity … Expertly translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett, Tommy Wieringa's novel offers a rewarding journey into the unfamiliar. It is also witty, thoughtful and surprisingly tender.’ * The Independent (UK) *Praise for Tommy Wieringa: ‘The best contemporary novels are a quest made out of literary and moral ambition. Those who have successfully pursued this Holy Grail in recent times are Bolaño with his The Savage Detectives, Sebald in Austerlitz, Coetzee with Disgrace and the late Philip Roth. From now on, to that august list must be added the name of Tommy Wieringa.’ * Le Figaro *‘Brilliantly paced, this slim novel delivers a high-voltage adrenaline rush while expertly weaving in commentary about displaced world citizens … A cinematic, edge-of-your-seat thriller.’ STARRED REVIEW * Kirkus Reviews *‘Trim, arresting story of the refugee crisis that reminds us how easy it is to dehumanise others for personal gain and self-preservation. No heroes in this one.’ -- Blake Jordan * Napa Bookmine *‘The title of Tommy Wieringa’s novel, The Death of Murat Idrissi, reveals its tragic ending: Murat, the Moroccan protagonist, will die. You know this. Yet you wait in heightened anticipation for what will happen next. The novel reads like a short story but packs such a punch that the reader is left gasping, overwhelmed by dark moments introduced casually … exploring the details that determine who occupies the top rung in any social hierarchy and who is delivered into darkness, be it a shanty or the car boot that was Murat’s final resting place.’ * Necessary Fiction *‘Echoes of Don Quixote and the Odyssey frame the journey of the young women Ilham and Thouraya in this latest from award-winning Dutch author Wieringa … In this taut, psychologically powerful tale, longlisted for the 2019 International Booker Prize, Wieringa’s masterly descriptions create a sense of foreboding. Wieringa excels at characterisation while raising serious questions surrounding identity and immigration in a deceptively brief work. Highly recommended.’ STARRED REVIEW -- Jacqueline Snider * Library Journal *

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Book SynopsisWhen his fireworks factory job ends explosively and his wife returns to work, Jose is surprised to realise he has a talent for keeping house: childcare, tidying, cleaning, cooking, gardening, he excels at it all. On Thursdays, he hangs out and drinks good wine with his jazz-loving neighbour. But when Jose's new talents take a sudden and gruesome turn, life, death, resurrection, and domesticity unexpectedly converge. In one single, hypnotic paragraph, Petite Fleur harnesses the unpredictability of Aira and the mysticism of Tolstoy in a discordant riff on suburban life.Trade ReviewPraise for Petite Fleur: 'As vertiginous, airtight and intense as a dream.' Yuri Herrera ---------- 'You'll read Petite Fleur in a single sitting, carried along by the lively rhythm and a wacky plot leavened by a blend of darkness and cruelty. We don't often come across this kind of novel, a drama played for laughs.' Le Figaro ---------- 'An absolute masterpiece.' Marie Claire (France) Praise for Iosi Havilio: 'Iosi Havilio's remarkable first novel brings news of an intriguing world' Martin Schifino, The Independent ---------- 'An ambiguous tale that verges on dark comedy ... With skill and subtlety, the novel hints that a whole society might labour under an illusion of liberty.' The Economist ---------- 'A haunting tale set in the aftermath of an apocalypse ... Iosi Havilio has caused a literary storm in Argentina' Amanda Hopkinson, The Independent ---------- 'Look out for the much-praised Iosi Havilio.' Boyd Tonkin, The Independent ---------- 'Deliberately unshowy, so that plot twists can unfold in the quietest ways.' Fatema Ahmed, Prospect ---------- 'With minimalist beauty and exquisite strangeness, Iosi Havilio offers a mesmerising addition to the literature of solitude.' Chloe Aridjis ---------- 'Havilio's passion lies with the powerless. An inexhaustible stream of eccentric, believable characters, the down-and-out, downtrodden marginal citizens of Buenos Aires, parades through his fiction.' Nick DiMartino, Shelf Awareness ---------- 'This surreal novel is both dense enough and short enough to warrant re-readings and will especially appeal to fans of the TV series Twin Peaks.' Publishers Weekly

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Book SynopsisSeeing double rows of elegant lime trees around the main square of his hometown of Colonel Pringles, our narrator - who could well be the author himself, although nothing is guaranteed in a book by Cesar Aira - suddenly recalls the Sunday mornings of his childhood, when his father would take him to gather the lime-flower blossoms from which he made tea. Beginning with his father, handsome and `black' and working-class, and his strikingly grotesque mother, the narrator quickly leaps from anecdote to anecdote, bringing to life his father's dream of upward mobility, the dashing of their family's hopes when the Peronist party fell from power, the single room they all shared, and his mother's litany of political rants, which were used - like the lime-flower tea - to keep his father calm. Aira's charming fictional memoir is a colourful mosaic of a small-town neighbourhood, a playful portrait of the artist as a child and an invitation to visit the source of Aira's own extraordinary imagination.Trade Review''Although comprised of what can seem like individually minor creations, Aira’s project is no less ambitious than Proust’s, and for those of his fans who cannot read his work in Spanish, the arrival of each new title is a bittersweet occasion. It has taken 14 years for The Lime Tree to reach us in English, and that is too long to wait. We want more, and we want it yesterday.' Patrick Flanery, The Spectator---------`Aira’s work is varied and extensive, but “The [Lime] Tree” may be one of its best points of entry, affirming the existence of a Latin American literature that refuses to conform to the conventions and stereotypes of magical realism, social realism or other clichés about fiction from this part of the globe.’ Patricio Pron, New York Times-----------'Hail Cesar!' Patti Smith----------'Bewitching and bewildering ... Compulsively readable ... Aira's writing - with its equal measures of rich complications and airy whimsies - combines brevity with so many possible meanings.' Arifa Akbar, Financial Times----------'Aira writes at full tilt, going where the words take him (a style he calls "constant flight forward") so that reading him is dizzying.' Jane Housham, The Guardian----------'If there is one contemporary writer who defies classification, it is Cesar Aira. His novels seem to put the theories of Gombrowicz into practice, except, and the difference is fundamental, that Gombrowicz was the abbot of a luxurious imaginary monastery, while Aira is a nun or novice among the Discalced Carmelites of the Word. Sometimes he is reminiscent of Roussel (Roussel on his knees in a bath red with blood), but the only living writer to whom he can be compared is Barcelona's Enrique Vila-Matas.' Roberto Bolano----------'Aira is firmly in the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges and W. G. Sebald.' Mark Doty, Los Angeles Times----------'Aira is one of the most provocative and idiosyncratic novelists working in Spanish today, and should not be missed.' New York Times Book Review----------'Along with a daring sense of fun, Aira has a playful imagination and the ability to spin a yarn as intricate as a spider's web.' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times-----------'Cesar Aira is writing a gigantic, headlong, acrobatic fresco of modern life entirely made up of novelettes, novellas, novelitas... In other words, he is a great literary trickster, and also one of the most charming.' Adam Thirlwell----------'Aira's works are like slim cabinets of wonder, full of unlikely juxtapositions. His unpredictability is masterful.' Rivka Galchen

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Book SynopsisPlucked from her life on the streets of post-apocalyptic Santo Domingo, young maid Acilde Figueroa finds herself at the heart of a voodoo prophecy: only she can travel back in time and save the ocean - and humanity - from disaster. But first she must become the man she always was - with the help of a sacred anemone.Tentacle is an electric novel with a big appetite and a brave vision, plunging headfirst into questions of climate change, technology, Yoruba ritual, queer politics, poverty, sex, colonialism and contemporary art. Bursting with punk energy and lyricism, it's a restless, addictive trip: The Tempest meets the telenovela.Trade Review`Rita Indiana is fearless and brilliant and Tentacle is her finest novel, an unforgettable experience.' Junot Diaz'Indiana is truly a renaissance woman. Not only is she one of the most exciting Dominican authors in recent years, she is also a musical force to be reckoned with. [...] She's one of those rare artists whose music you can either dance to or sit down and listen to as if it were a great novel.' Alt.Latino, NPR.org`Reads like an extended song. . . . So fast-paced that it must be swallowed whole, for setting it aside is as dangerous as jumping from a speeding motorcycle.' El Pais on Papi ---- `Rita Indiana is unclassifiable. Tentacle is a kind of pulp fiction for educated classes, a wild but carefully conceived combination of sci-fi adventure, art-world-cum-hipster-satire, eco- and socially-aware thriller, with a work of Caribbean studies breaking in from the side. It works. The tone is cool and nonchalant. The characters achieve that; the author never intrudes between them and us ... When the denouement comes it is brutal and irresistibly attractive.'Judith von Sternburg, Frankfurter Rundschau ----`Merengue star Indiana knows how to get things dancing. Her literary tricks come from the oral traditions of voodoo and Santeria. Many of Tentacle's characters are reincarnations of earlier lives and linked to those lives. In this way she infects the visible world with the invisible world.' Ralph Hammerthaler, Suddeutsche Zeitung ----- `Rita Indiana is comfortable with the language of modern technology, but her joy in storytelling, the effervescence of her imagination and the way she wraps stories within stories are all firmly part of a Latin American tradition: Tentacle recalls important works from the sixties like Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.' Eva Karnofsky, Deutschlandfunk Radio ---- `A great novel. There's so much in it: the history of the Dominican Republic, politics and of course religion. Music is referenced, and biology, conservationism too, and it's full of wit, thanks to the way Rita Indiana tells it.' SWR2 Radio ---- 'A fasten-your-seat-belt, strap-on-your-crash-helmet novel of magic, time travel, art, buccaneers, ecological disaster, and more. Unlike any dystopian novel you've read, Indiana pushes and stretches the form like an octopus working its way through a maze to pose fundamental questions about gender, identity, and society. This book should make Rita Indiana a literary superstar.' Josh Cook, Porter Square Books, Boston, MA, and author of An Exaggerated Murder ---- `Tentacle reaches back and forward through the ages, harnessing the fluidity of time, gender, and the natural world to reflect on colonial history and imagine a deeply disturbing future. [...] Obejas's English version certainly captures some of that vernacular feel, mobilizing US slang as well as Spanish syntax and vocabulary, reminding readers that while this is a story with a global vision, it has a Caribbean setting.' - Ellen Jones, Los Angeles Review of Books ---- `An electric novel with a big appetite and a brave vision.' - Tor.com ---- `Tentacle shapeshifts dizzyingly around three time spans and a loosely connected group of characters, and takes on huge themes, including race and gender, the impact of tourism, apocalyptic events and ecological disaster. [...] Whether we would really want to change the past, given the opportunity, is one question posed in this blast of a novel; what it is to act beyond self-interest is another. Tentacle reads like Kathy Acker with a tighter narrative grip.' - Suzy Feay, The Guardian ---- 'Where to begin? Rita Indiana's Tentacle has the settings, themes, and expansiveness of a much larger book, but it blends that ambition with a host of irreverence (along with some nods to the music of Giorgio Moroder, which is never a bad thing). It's a time-travel story, a meditation on gender and sexuality, and an art-world satire-as well as, arguably, a satire of `chosen one' narrative tropes. To say that this is unlike anything else you'll read this year is probably stating the obvious.' - Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders ---- 'From beginning to end, Tentacle is a strange, unnerving, and at times beautiful book that critiques global inequality and the politicization of climate change.' - Amy Brady, Chicago Review of Books ---- 'Tentacle is not a book that produces catharsis. It is the opposite. It is a book that demands reflection from its reader and then, hopefully, action. [...] The cruelty of the past is also that of the present - a reality ensured by those who cling to power and its many cloaks: white supremacy, misogyny, and transphobia. If the future is to be different, it will be up to the marginalized and to those who are willing to disinvest in privilege. Our planet's future rests quite literally, the novel suggests, with the fate of the oppressed.' - Kristie Soares, Los Angeles Review of Books ---- 'Tentacle is as strange and beautiful a sea-change as its epigraph from The Tempest suggests ... Achy Obejas brings the volume to English language readers with a social burja-cyborg flare - at once witchy, almost shamanisitically intuitive about the nature of language, and yet precise.' - Alexandra Marracini, Times Literary Supplement

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Book SynopsisTo Leave with the Reindeer is the account of a woman who has been trained for a life she cannot live. She readies herself for freedom, and questions its limits, by exploring how humans relate to animals. Rosenthal weaves an intricate pattern, combining the central narrative with many other voices - vets, farmers, breeders, trainers, a butcher - to produce a polyphonic composition full of fascinating and disconcerting insights.Wise, precise, generous, To Leave with the Reindeer takes a clear-eyed look at the dilemmas of domestication, both human and animal, and the price we might pay to break free.Trade Review'This polyphonic novel portrays a merciless war waged by humanity on wild nature. This is the battleground where the author tears to pieces today's education, imposed behaviours and conventions.' Elle (France)' "Tigon, leopon, pumapard, jaglion, tiguar, jagulep, leoger, tigoness, lipard, jagress . . .' Oliva Rosenthal's book is like the chimerical animals she lists on the first page. It is a hybrid, a strange and disconcerting cross; a sphinx of a book: half-human, half-beast.' Les Inrockuptibles ---- 'In To Leave with the Reindeer, Olivia Rosenthal recounts the painfulmetamorphosis of an obedient animal into a liberated woman . . . There's no complacency in this intense work; it is moving in its precision and in the perfect match between voice and subject.' Canard Enchaine ---- 'Apparently lurching, disparate, this novel about domestication in fact coheres, born by a strong rhythmic sensibility and by subtle play on repetition. Poetic and humorous, To Leave with the Reindeer explores our illusions, the destruction of our childhood dreams and the savagery that we hide deep within ourselves.' Telerama ---- 'Olivia Rosenthal subtly layers short paragraphs, swinging between the daily life of her homo sapiens and clinical statements about animal life. [...] This is a novel that will haunts its reader for days. And that will, above all, awake the animal in us." L'Express --- 'Brilliant, exciting, and never moralizing.' Vogue (France) --- 'Book after book, Rosenthal has taken care to dress her iconoclasm in a unique approach made up of stylistic accumulations and shrewd collages.' Livres Hebdo --- `To Leave with the Reindeer offers startling and frequently beautiful ruminations on the way the tension between wildness and domesticity affects both humans and beasts. By eschewing most of the qualities of a traditional novel, Rosenthal's book takes risks, which offer luminous moments.' Kirkus Reviews ---- `Olivia Rosenthal captures the world of the child with inchoate wants and needs, inexplicable to others and herself, in vivid and concise vignettes, against a background of information and opinions about animals and how we treat them - for food, education and, then, to make ourselves feel better after destroying their habitats. This is rich, allusive and evocative.' Lucy Dallas, The Times Literary Supplement ---- `captivating and strange novel' Dundee University Review of the Arts ---`Poetic, factual, intimate and clinical.’ Tony Messenger, Review31

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Book Synopsis'I don't expect anyone to believe me,' warns the narrator of this novel, a Mexican student called Juan Pablo Villalobos. He is about to fly to Barcelona on a scholarship when he's kidnapped in a bookshop and whisked away by thugs to a basement. The gangsters are threatening his cousin-a wannabe entrepreneur known to some as 'Projects' and to others as 'dickhead' - who is gagged and tied to a chair. The thugs say Juan Pablo must work for them. His mission? To make Laia, the daughter of a corrupt politician, fall in love with him. He accepts . . . though not before the crime boss has forced him at gunpoint into a discussion on the limits of humour in literature. Part campus novel, part gangster thriller, I Don't Expect Anyone to Believe Me is Villalobos at his best. Exuberantly foul-mouthed and intellectually agile, this hugely entertaining novel finds the light side of difficult subjects - immigration, corruption, family loyalty and love - in a world where the difference between comedy and tragedy depends entirely on who's telling the joke.Trade Review'A funny, moving account of status, power and immigration, which also dips into comic literary theory and author hang-ups. Highly entertaining, with a magnificent sucker-punch finish.' Paul Ewen----'An eccentric hybrid, combining pulpy crime fiction . . . with avant-garde archness. Villalobos's take is refreshingly exuberant.'Houman Barekat, The Guardian----'A testament to the vibrancy of the Latin American novel.' Nick Burns, Literary Review----'Villalobos's chaotic, feverish narrative works - it is a challenging, but rewarding read.' Lucy Popescu, Financial Times----'A wild-eyed, motor-powered, hilarious blast about kidnapping, gangsters and political corruption.' Jane Graham, Big Issue----'So propulsive it's nearly impossible to stop reading. . . This is a hilarious novel, and it's brilliant and bittersweet, too, in surprising ways. Pitch-perfect from start to finish.' Kirkus starred review----'A postmodern thriller and intellectual satire that fizzes with verbal gusto and black humour' Max Liu, The i----'A fast-paced, irreverent tale. . . intellectually nimble, wildly entertaining, and undeniably filthy.' Publishers Weekly----'A fantastical world so powerful and mesmerising that it's almost impossible to leave it.' Morning Star----'I Don't Expect Anyone to Believe Me does for The Savage Detectives what The Big Lebowski does for The Big Sleep. . . . This is a comic novel with something for everyone-humor, both high and low, with plenty of jokes to go around. Then again, humor described is humor denied, so when I say I laughed my ass off, I don't expect anyone to believe me.' Southwest Review

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Book SynopsisThese are the children of revolutions, and this is their story. This is the Caribbean. This is Argenis Luna: an artist who no longer paints, a heroin addict who no longer uses, and an overgrown child trying to make sense of his inheritance in a country where his once-revolutionary father is now part of the ruling elite. Thrown out of rehab in Havana, with Goya's tyrannical god Saturn on his mind, Argenis picks his way through the detritus of an abandoned generation: the drag queens, artists, hustlers and lovers trying to build lives amidst the wreckage. Mesmerising and visionary, Made in Saturn is a hangover from a riotous funeral, a rapid-fire elegy for the revolutionary spirit, and a glimpse of hope for all who feel eclipsed by those who came before them.Trade Review‘Nothing human is alien to Ms. Indiana. Like France’s brilliant punk-realist Virginie Despentes, she sees through the costumes of class and ideology. Her characters are raggedly real [...] A wild and liberating book.’ Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal ----'Dominican writer Rita Indiana made a splash in 2018 with the unclassifiable Tentacle. Made in Saturn, the tale of a drug-addicted artist going clean, promises to be less baffling but equally hip.' Suzi Feay, Financial Times ----'A deeply nuanced, atmospheric, and graphic depiction of mental illness, drug addiction, and recovery.' Kirkus Reviews ---‘Award-winning queer Dominican author Rita Indiana makes a blazing comeback to the rap game...Her critically acclaimed novels, such as Tentacle, thoroughly dissect the relationships between gender, class and race in Caribbean society...Her sixth novel, Made in Saturn, is due for release in 2020 via British publisher And Other Stories.’ Suzy Exposito, Rolling Stone ----‘Captures the Caribbean setting and complex political history with vibrant detail.’ Book Riot ----‘A powerful but quiet story about a young artist lost in the shuffle of politics and revolution; an artist who cannot be saved by his talent, who cannot find solace in the hedonism of drug use, and still must find a way to be a human being in a turbulent world. A vibrant, yet complex take on the "sad young literary man" story and another brilliant work by an author whose stature in world literature will only continue to grow.’ Josh Cook, Porter Square Books----- ‘Rita Indiana, with Tentacle, already showed that she could fulfill the promises made in Papi. Would it be possible to go further? How far would her narrative power go? Made in Saturn is the answer to these questions, and it is not only a book that's new, like all of Indiana's works, but it is a book that is good. Very good. A Duchampian Goya, we might say, if it wouldn't be scandalous to some. [...] Argenis Luna, the protagonist of this novel, is both a mythological figure and a pariah on Earth. After living with him for ten pages we understand and love him. His contradictions are our own. He will live beside us forever.’ El País ----‘Rita Indiana...is a voice with power and personality. She demonstrates it in her latest novel Made in Saturn, in which the children of all the revolutions that promised a free Latin America but ended in failure are embodied in Argenis, a character as real as he is magical.’ UDL Libros link: Udllibros.com ----‘Each of her novels is marked by a concept; each is part of something larger. Made in Saturn, for example, is positioned as complement to Tentacle, and the author has announced that there will be a new novel to complete the trilogy. What unites these books is the critique of power. It is a contemporary and rebellious art, ready to fight.’ El Tiempo ----‘Compared to Tentacle, which drew on science fiction and were you could sense the influence of Lovecraft, Made in Saturn practises a kind of scathing hyperrealism in a Caribbean setting weighed down with corruption, ideological ruin and outrageous consumption.’ Revista de Letras ---‘Through her stark portrait of the protagonist and her unmistakably Caribbean prose, Rita Indiana shows why she is one of the most attractive voices in Latin American literature today’ Sin Embargo ----‘Ovid told the story of the god Saturn who, for fear of being dethroned, ended up devouring his children. Many centuries later, Francisco de Goya painted the scene in one of his most emblematic works. And, now, Rita Indiana has borrowed, once again, the myth, to revisit it in fiction. In her latest novel, the deity appears to be the very revolution that aimed to bring freedom to Latin America and failed in the attempt, leaving multiple and abandoned children around her. Offspring like Argenis—protagonist of the story with which Indiana, one of the most talented voices of current Caribbean literature—portrays that lost generation that continues to struggle so as not to be devoured.’ABC----'Rita Indiana’s voice is lyrical and transgressive, attractive and original. Siren songs, her books’ irresistible force captivates readers from their first lines and doesn’t let them go. Made in Saturn is a wonderful, absorbing read, and both classic and modern. El Cultural

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Book SynopsisMalmoe, Sweden. A cellist meets a spun-out junkie. That could have been me. His mind starts to glitch between his memories and the avant-garde music he loves, and he descends into his past, hearing all over again the chaotic song of his youth. He emerges to a different sound, heading for a crash. From sprawling housing projects to underground clubs and squat parties, Wretchedness is a blistering trip through the underbelly of Europe's cities. Powered by a furious, unpredictable beat, this is a paean to brotherhood, to those who didn't make it however hard they fought, and a visceral indictment of the poverty which took them.Trade Review'An utterly phenomenal read: a masterclass in hyper-modernist experimentation, voice and form. Embracing the bitter realities of addiction, prejudice and inner-city turmoil, Tichy's rapid prose roves internal dialogues, places, vernaculars and circumstances to expose a singular, absorbed world struggling to keep itself afloat. Through a complex network of characters, friends and strangers we're made to think about the ways the human spirit can fall into despair, its ability to establish resolve, to love and remember, and the myriad philosophies it leaves us with.' Anthony Anaxagorou----'A deeply musical book . . . and it is testament to Nichola Smalley's skill that this musicality survives translation . . . Wretchedness is sensitive and compelling.' Jon Day, Financial Times----'[The] tension between polyphony and cacophony is exhilarating . . . this furious novel's brevity is deceptive; getting through it requires stamina, but our brief stay in the cellist's mind is powerfully, nightmarishly unforgettable.' Peter Brown, The TLS----'What matters [in this novel] is how it all sounds, the clashes and stresses in the language and the energy of the surface, how it strives, ascends, descends, and trembles, like a tug-of war between weight and levity (to paraphrase a description from the book of Scelsi's Fourth String Quartet).' Caleb Klaces, The White Review----'Wretchedness is a wild intoxicant of language, momentum, and voice. Andrzej Tichy is a master of despair.' Patty Yumi Cottrell ----'Some kind of holy/unholy meeting of Thomas Bernhard and The Geto Boys, Wretchedness is an anguished, brutal, beautiful piece of phantasmagoric-realism, an act of remembrance through imagination, animated by rhythm, and pouring past you with the inevitability of the tide coming in. Brilliantly written, superbly translated, this small book packs in more sadness and moments of epiphany, more hopelessness and hope, more surviving - more life! - than most writers manage in a whole career. Remarkable.' Will Ashon ----'The past is so close behind in Nichola Smalley's translation of Tichy's precise maelstrom of memory, music and survival - on the margins of this and every city - that you can smell the chemicals on its breath. There's nothing to lose and too much to lose; no escape and all our escapes. Keep going. Read it and be thankful for Andrzej Tichy.' Tony White ----'A bravura, urgent head-trip of a novel, replete with compassion, rage, and gimlet-eyed observation on every page. Essential reading - us English-speakers are lucky to have Tichy's work available in translation at last.' Luke Kennard ----'A powerful, voice-driven novel that remains in the mind long after the final page. Tichy brings everything to life: circumstances and people we'd rather ignore, with a flow resembling music.' Derek Owusu ----'The pleasures of this book are immediate, brilliant and deeply unreasonable. Every person and every thought is intensely present. It demeans nothing.' Caleb Klaces ----'Wretchedness is a red-blooded ode to the most invisible and unwanted in society - immigrant workers, the homeless, addicts, and those born into the hardest of circumstances. Tichy's gasping, polyphonic prose flies through time and space and drug-induced states, flinging us between disturbing recollections, hopeless presents, and deferred or tainted futures - all connected by bittersour camaraderies and the remedying power of music.' Jen Calleja----'Graphic depictions of crime, racism, poverty, drug use and violence are rendered through paragraph-free slabs of text that propulsively veer between voices and minds, times and locations. As well as the Swedish estates, the novel draws on Tichy's experiences of living in Hamburg and London to paint a picture of a pan-European community of the excluded passing through squats, underground clubs, petty scams and cash-only employment. [...] Tichy's early creative life centered on music and there is a sense of musicality inherent Wretchedness.' Nicholas Wroe, Guardian ----'Visceral . . . a fascinating read, the real-life details of which further bolster the fiction . . . This is nightmarish, impressionistic literature whose disjointed sentences have an associative flow that accumulates to a shocking whole.' Sarah Gilmartin, Irish Times ----'There is a kind of unholy music in this powerful, punchy, perceptive novel.' Eithne Farry, Daily Mail ----'The polyphony of voices is tightly interwoven . . . arranged into a narrative resembling a complex musical composition . . . The book ends abruptly, as an avant-garde piece of music might, but the vibrations continue to fill the air.'Anna Aslanyan, The Guardian ----'A blurry tornado of voices and timelines, this short novel unspools over eight paragraphs of run-on sentences swirling around the memories of a cellist raised on an estate outside Malmoe . . . the novel builds to an unexpectedly heart-stopping . . . finale, with a frame-breaking time-slip that invites us to reconsider everything we've just read as a stylistically radical expression of survivor's guilt.'Anthony Cummins, Book of the Day The Observer ----'An inventive, linguistically adept experiment.' Kirkus Reviews

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Book SynopsisAn underemployed chef is pulled into the escalating violence of his neighbour's makeshift porn channel. An elderly piano student is forced to flee her home village when word gets out that she's had sex with her thirty-something teacher. A hose pumping cava through the maquette of a giant penis becomes a murder weapon in the hands of a disaffected housewife. In this collection from the winner of Sweden's August Prize, Lina Wolff gleefully wrenches unpredictability from the suffocations of day-to-day life, shatters balances of power without warning, and strips her characters down to their strangest and most unstable selves. Wicked, discomfiting, delightful and wry, delivered with the deadly wit for which Wolff is known, Many People Die Like You presents the uneasy spectacle of people in solitude, and probes, with savage honesty, the choices we make when we believe no one is watching ... or when we no longer care.Trade Review'Spirited . . . darkly funny.' Eithne Farry, Daily Mail----‘Witty, acerbic short stories . . . wickedly thrilling . . . brilliantly unsettling.’ Baya Simons, FT----‘Wolff revels in turning the tables on expectation and convention. Each story [starts] without preamble, ostensibly casual, but always with authority.’ Catherine Taylor, Irish Times----‘[Wolff] explores the choices we make when we think no one is watching.’ Dazed----‘Nothing thwarts quite as excruciatingly as thwarted desire. Wanting what they can’t have is a speciality of many of these characters.’ Stuart Walton, Hong Kong Review of Books----‘Dark, wicked and funny.’ Francesca Brown, The Stylist----‘Wolff excels with the disaffected and the weird.’ Kirkus Reviews----‘Wolff shows us that while conventionality is, indeed, death, the opposite isn’t true: unconventionality isn’t life, and it won’t automatically make you happy.’ Marta Balcewicz, Ploughshares----‘A good short story collection feeds our desire for interesting characters and good storytelling without demanding a large time commitment. Lina Wolff’s Many People Die Like You certainly meets those criteria. Her characters traverse compelling plots that often take them and us to unexpected and often uncomfortable places. Each of her well-crafted stories ends with enough left unexplained to keep us thinking beyond that last page and with the lingering pleasure of a story well-told. I do not often re-read, but these stories have enough complexity to bring me back to them again.’ The Raven Bookstore, Kansas----'An immediate success for Lina Wolff ... Many People Die Like You is a more than promising debut. Lina Wolff is a skilled stylist and a good storyteller.' Arbetarbladet ----'Several of the stories are so funny that you'd probably bring joy to your neighbours if you read them aloud.' Skanska Dagbladet ---- 'Many People Die Like You is full of life in motion. Depicted with such certainty that even the narrator's voice must at times give way to the swelling language. And so, Lina Wolff has arrived as one of the important voices in Swedish literature. Not least because of the freedom the texts create for themselves. A freedom full of pleasure and humor alongside ever-present earnestness.' Helsingborgs Dagblad ----'Lina Wolff either quickly visits people who are happening to have a good, perhaps heightened conversation. Or, she tells a story with a beginning and end. Two approaches to the short story, here both are equally exciting to read. ' Kultureytt, Radio SR P1----'It's a matter of course of Lina Wolff's way of writing, as though each formulation and twist has been there all along, just waiting to be written down by her. Perhaps it is a matter of self-esteem, combined with a drive that draws you instantly and relentlessly into her stories. / ... / Wolff creates a hypnotic pull around her characters, making the reader wish they could remain in the story, how crass and chewy the lives portrayed can seem. The main characters are as often men as they are women, and Wolff writes with equal ease from a female and a male perspective. Human as humans are: sad and comical, petty and grand. ' Svenska Dagbladet ----'Wolff's brilliant language, twisted intrigue and black humor makes this debut the best I've read this year.' Femina magazine (5 of 5 stars) ----Many People Die Like You is a fantastic short story collection. It's quiet, thoughtful and, in spite of all the suffering, very funny. ' Vi magazine

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the 2022 Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize Shortlisted for the Premio Valle-Inclan prize for its translation Through war and its aftermaths, a woman fights to keep her daughters safe. Like peasants through the ages, she desperately slashes and burns in order to make a place for her children to return to. A country girl sees her village sacked and her beloved father disappeared. She is taken to the mountains to join the guerrillas, who force her to give up the baby she conceives. Surviving the rebellion, and now a woman, she sets out to find her daughter, travelling across the Atlantic with meagre resources. She returns to a community in which civilians, the militia and the ex-guerrilla fighters have to live together in a society riddled with distrust, fear and hypocrisy. Hernandez's narrators have the level gaze of ordinary women reckoning with extraordinary hardship. Denouncing the ruthless machismo of combat with quiet intelligence, Slash and Burn creates a suspenseful, slow-burning revelation of rural life in the aftermath of political trauma.Trade Review'An intensive reading experience . . . What Slash and Burn - named after a method of agriculture both destructive and regenerative - shows is the difficulty of creating a new life after war or other trauma.' John Self, The Guardian----'A brilliant evocation of civil war and its bitter legacy.' Lucy Popescu, The Observer----'Slash and Burn investigates with brilliance and compassion the depth of desolation, violence and loss the civil conflict inflicted on a scarred society.' Morning Star----'This is a book that uses indirect narration to create accounts that are both detailed and expansive, putting the personal first but speaking for the collective and from a more vulnerable part of society, really demonstrating the multi-layered meaning of being a survivor.' Sounds and Colours----'An indictment of the inherent misogyny of war and an homage to the women who tirelessly fight for justice and survival on all fronts. But hers is not simply a literature of denunciation, for in the same pages she shows, with fierce heart, the ways women refuse to be crushed, the sometimes broken ways they manage to take care of each other and struggle to survive.' John Gibler----'Extraordinary and utterly gripping, a work of brutally profound beauty and universal significance.' Philippe Sands----'What does it truly mean to be at peace following a war? Slash and Burn is a deeply thoughtful and empathetic examination of how a civil war is inherited, and how it affects subsequent generations of women. Stylistically brave and thematically bold, it is essential, necessary reading for understanding the transition from combatant to civilian, and what historical and national trauma look like on a personal level.' Julianne Pachico----'After reading far too many books about the Central American guerrilla told by and about men, I welcome this terrific novel that delves into the stories of women who come of age during and after war. In Slash and Burn, the aspirations, labour and education of women, as well as motherhood, love, reconciliation and exile, are tied together in sharp, profound prose you can't stop reading.' Lina Meruane----'It is astonishing that someone can write in such a clean and transparent way about a turbulent past. Claudia Hernandez's prose is the controlled breathing of someone who knows that memory is another battlefield. Claudia Hernandez, like her protagonists, lucid and tough women, knows how to cross these battlefields. Slash and Burn confirms that she is one of the best writers in our language.' Yuri Herrera----'Claudia Hernandez is one of the most groundbreaking short story writers from Central America, with a way of approaching the story that is closer to Virgilio Pinera o Felisberto Hernandez than to the realist tradition. Her five story collections prove this. Now, with her first novel, Claudia Hernandez takes on a new challenge: telling the recent history of El Salvador through three generations of women scarred by civil war, poverty and emigration. A pulsating feminine universe, full of energy and courage, despite the permanent threat of violence that surrounds it. An intense and moving novel, and a very intriguing way of storytelling that will captivate the reader.' Horacio Castellanos Moya----'Slash and Burn is an incisive look into the lasting wounds of El Salvador's Civil War. It is a tale of generational healing and resilience centred on its women. Hernandez is a calm, cutting voice on how what is broken must be put back together.' Ryan Gattis----'Slash and Burn reimagines the country through the voices of mothers, daughters and wives. The female gaze cuts sharp in this retelling.' Gabriela Aleman----'Claudia Hernandez's extraordinary novel Slash and Burn has an embattled, unsentimental narrative style, with swift shifts of point of view to voices that are often telling her characters what isn't possible, and a future tense that dramatizes the (im)possibilities for her and her family. Slash and Burn is destined to become a classic.' Mauro Javier Cardenas----'There is a surreal, dreamlike quality to this challenging story. . . it abounds with memories of violence told in a third person bordering on the first, both because of the randomness of events depicted and the naivety and warmth of the language that recounts the almost childlike aspects of the war, always through eyes and a voice that are, above all, feminine.' The Spanish Bookstage, "Weekly Choice"

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisCensored in Latvia until 2003 Translated by Jayde Will. Originally written in 1967 and not released in its uncensored form until 2003, Bels’s infamous novel, Insomnia, has become a classic of Cold War writing and continues to exert a major influence over Latvian literature. The story is filtered through the thoughts, emotions and fantasies of the main character, a man of detachment who is content to observe his fellow tenants and the wider world around him from the tired luxury of his apartment and daily routines. When a young woman, fleeing some unknown threat and in desperate need of help, comes into his orbit, he’s forced out of this inertia and into the active role of protector. There begins a quest which, for both of them, has the power to jolt them into a new way of being and living. This edition contains the official transcripts of the investigative reports regarding the banning of the book, as well as a statement by Bels himself. Translated from the Latvian by Jayde Will. Insomnia is part of the Parthian Baltic project which was launched on time for the London Book Fair 2018. The poetry collections were launched at the Wheatsheaf Parthian Poetry Festival in April 2018.

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Book SynopsisFemke, her mother Trijn and her grandfather have very different ideas about how to run their family farm. Tensions between mother and daughter are growing; Femke wants to switch to sustainable growing principles, whilst her mother considers this an attack on tradition. To make matters worse, their home province of Groningen is experiencing a series of earthquakes caused by drilling for gas at a site close to their farm. While the cracks and splinters in their farmhouse increase, the authorities and the state-owned gas company refuse to offer the local farming community any help. In Shocked Earth, Saskia Goldschmidt investigates what it means to have your identity intensely entwined with your place of birth and your principles at odds with your closest kin. And how to keep standing when the world as you know it is slowly falling apart.Trade Review'Shocked Earth shows us the impact of natural disasters on people's lives. This is what literature can do.' Nieuwsweekend; 'Goldschmidt manages to portray the lives of farmers in great literary style, and with authentic vocabulary.' Het Parool; 'Goldschmidt writes eloquently... showing the way the North of the Netherlands is held captive by the gas sourcing business.' NRC; 'In order to be able to write Shocked Earth, Saskia Goldschmidt moved to a rural region ... worked on a dairy farm and spoke to its inhabitants. This effort pays off in this thorough novel with a lot of empathy, showing how the earthquakes ... forever change the lives of the people trying to keep this business going.' Dagblad van het Noorden; "Shocked Earth exquisitely captures the way our lives and identities are interwoven with the land we live on, and how its destruction will ultimately be our own. A powerful portrait of a family, an exploration of love and grief, it is perhaps most of all an essential call to action - I was both heartbroken and inspired." Helen Sedgwick; "A novel with great ambitions, which remains credible." Faithful; "Last weekend I read the book in one breath. How little did I know about the problems and life in the Groningen countryside ... I will definitely recommend this beautiful novel!" Ria van Halem, bookseller Boekaa Verkaaik

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Book SynopsisWhen the body of a woman is discovered in a fisherman’s net in Quebec’s Gaspé Peninsula, new recruit Detective Sergeant Joaquin Moralès is thrown in at the deep end… First in a beautifully written, atmospheric and addictive new series. ***Runner-up for the Scott Moncrieff Prize for Translations from French*** ‘Wonderfully atmospheric … I genuinely couldn’t put this book down’ Gill Paul 'You might want to grab this release if you've read everything by Louise Penny and need more Quebecois noir to feed your crime-loving tendencies’ Crime Fiction Lover ________________ Truth lingers in murky waters… As Montrealer Catherine Day sets foot in a remote fishing village and starts asking around about her birth mother, the body of a woman dredges up in a fisherman’s nets. Not just any woman, though: Marie Garant, an elusive, nomadic sailor and unbridled beauty who once tied many a man’s heart in knots. Detective Sergeant Joaquin Moralès, newly drafted to the area from the suburbs of Montreal, barely has time to unpack his suitcase before he’s thrown into the deep end of the investigation. On Quebec’s outlying Gaspé Peninsula, the truth can be slippery, especially down on the fishermen’s wharves. Interviews drift into idle chit-chat, evidence floats off with the tide and the truth lingers in murky waters. It’s enough to make DS Moralès reach straight for a large whisky… Both a dark and consuming crime thriller and a lyrical, poetic ode to the sea, We Were the Salt of the Sea is a stunning, page-turning novel, from one of the most exciting new names in crime fiction. ________________ Praise for Roxanne Bouchard: ‘Colourful, authentic characters with the kind of flavour that can only be inspired by real locals. So good it’ll make you want to pack your bags and drive straight to the seaside’ Journal de Montréal ‘Lyrical and elegiac, full of quirks and twists’ William Ryan ‘Asks questions right from page one’ Quentin Bates ‘An isolated Canadian fishing community, a missing mother, and some lovely prose. Very impressed by this debut so far’ Eva Dolan 'A tour de force of both writing and translation’ Su Bristow 'The translation from French has retained a dreamily poetic cast to the language, but it's det-fic for all that, as DS Joaquin Morales, transplanted from balmy Mexican shores to a remote Quebecois fishing community, investigates a woman's death at sea. This is the first book by Bouchard, renowned Canadian playwright and author, to be translated into English' Sunday Times 'Characters are well-drawn, from Moralès, the cop, and his sturdy inspector, Marlène, to the husky fishermen who were Marie's devoted suitors three decades ago. There's a comic element: the chef at the bistro, a mine of misleading information; the alcoholic priest who was never ordained - and the appalling undertaker who was once a used-car salesman and never forgot the spiel … An exotic curiosity, raw nugget’ Shots MagTrade Review"This book is the definition of atmospheric."--Book Riot

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Book SynopsisDoppelganger consists of two stories that skillfully revisit the question of "doubles" (famously explored by Stevenson, Dostoyevsky and others), and how an individual is perpetually caught between their own beliefs and those imposed on them by society. `Arthur and Isabella' is a story of the relationship between two elderly people who meet on New Year's Eve - a romantic encounter which turns into a grotesque portrayal of the loneliness of old age. The second story `Pupi' - a strange mirror of the first - centres on the life of a man who ends up on the streets and associates only with street-sellers the rhinoceroses in the zoo. Together these tales crate the highly original atmosphere that Drndic t is famous for in all her works.Trade Review"The capacity to see the bricolage of a reticent, morally compromised, elegiac past-and, more unsettlingly, how that past might see us-is a central feature of the work of the Croatian writer Dasa Drndic." Dustin Illingworth, Paris Review; `Drndic is relentless; her righteousness is passionate. Human anguish seeps from the pages, yet her writing proves unexpectedly exhilarating.'m Eileen Battersby, LA Review of Books; `Dasa Drndic is a writer who digs tunnels and refuses to make compromises; her prose attracts the same uncompromising readers.' Zdravko Zima, Novi List

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Book SynopsisThe protagonist in Dogs and Others is the first openly lesbian character in modern Serbian literature, but she is also so much more than that, as she encapsulates the zeitgeist of her generation. Coming of age in 1970s Belgrade, then the capital city of thriving, socialist Yugoslavia, we follow Lida and the bohemian life she leads, made more complicated by the trials and tribulations of her eccentric family. The whole novel breathes with a raw sensibility so aptly captured in the voice of the heroine - a striking, rebellious, overtly feminist and somewhat neurotic young woman.Trade ReviewBiljana Jovanovic came into the Serbian literary scene as a new phenomenon. . Such girls in literature bring with them spite, devastating erotica, a new language, and new rules, especially when the old rules break down painfully..." Svetlana Slapsak, ; ". . . a rich amalgam of unvarnished bohemian life in socialist Belgrade, narrative experimentation, a sensitive but provocative depiction of family life in the shadow of old age, disability, and `madness'. . . " WORDS without BORDERS; "In her novel Dogs & Others, Biljana Jovanovic went a step further in breaking down all taboos regarding women's sexuality in Serbian literature." LOM (Serbian publisher)

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Book SynopsisThe Fig Tree is a novel composed of the intertwining stories of the family of Jadran, a 30-something who tries to piece together the story of his relatives in order to better understand himself. Because he cannot understand why Anja walked out of their shared life, he tries to understand the suspicious death of his grandfather and the withdrawal of his grandmother into oblivion and dementia. With all his might, Jadran tries to understand the departure of his father in the first year of the war in the Balkans as he also tries to comprehend his mother, with her bewildering resentment of his grandfather, and her silent disappointment with his father. The Fig Tree is a multigenerational family saga, a tour de force spanning three generations from the mid-20th century through the Balkans wars of the 90s until present day. Vojnovic is a master storyteller, and while fateful choices made by his characters are often dictated by the historical realities of the times they live in, at its heart this is an intimate story of family, of relationships, of love and freedom and the choices we make.Trade Review"The Fig Tree is an exquisitely rendered novel, it's a big and satisfying read, and among others calls to mind Colum McCann's TransAtlantic and Orhan Pamuk's Silent House." Kon-teksti

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