Fiction in translation

Book SynopsisWhen a priceless Leonardo is stolen from the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, the Hungarian government tries to hush things up and the police show themselves to be completely clueless. Thank goodness for Milla Anderson! A gifted reporter for one of Budapest's daily newspapers, she picks up the trail in Palermo-and of course an international gang is soon hot on her heels. When a Hungarian detective is apparently liquidated and the oily Schoenberg-Belmonte begins insinuating his way into Mrs. Anderson's hotel, things start to look very dangerous indeed. This fast-paced crime story and lighthearted romantic comedy, set against a backdrop of Mediterranean scenery and fascist menace in Italy and Hungary between the wars, is Miklos Banffy at his best. Now published in English for the first time, translated by Thomas Sneddon.

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Book SynopsisBorn in Transylvania in the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Miklos Banffy lived to witness both the zenith of that Empire and its fall. The short stories in this collection, from the tale of the idle young man dawdling pleasantly in Venice to the Romanian villager meditating revenge on his tormentor, draw on the author's experiences of life, love, sacrifice, betrayal and courage, and reveal, as a recurring leitmotif, an indomitable will to survive. The translator, Thomas Sneddon, lives in Budapest where he teaches translation at the Peter Pazmany University.

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Book SynopsisAs in so many cities in the heat of growth, Breda, Spain, is home to a modest construction company that wants to take advantage of the booming times to construct a luxury housing-complex in the suburbs. Although between the business partners there are differences of opinion and fears about such an ambitious project, the expectation of the sumptuous benefits push them to go through with the scheme. Then suddenly one day, the corpse of one of the partners appears inside one of the newly constructed buildings. Detective Ricardo Cupido delves into a passionate investigation where the alibis matter less than the dark and desolate description of the human condition.Trade ReviewPraise for Blood of the Angels (1900850834, GBP11.99):'A new novel by the Spanish author of Depths of the Forest, which received outstanding reviews. A man facing various crises discovers that a gun has been stolen from a safe-deposit box containing his late mother's effects' - Nicholas Clee, The BooksellerPraise for Depths of the Forest (1905147481, GBP7.99):'Utterly absorbing and brilliantly translated, this should appeal even to those not normally attracted to crime fiction' - Guardian 'A most welcome addition, not just to crime fiction, but to literature in general' - The Independent 'Fascinating modern Spanish baroque from an enterprising small publisher' - DJ Taylor, Books of the Year, The Independent

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Book Synopsis'Davidsen writes like an assassin. Brilliant! More, more!' Fay Weldon'One of Denmark's top crime writer' Joan Smith, Sunday TimesLISE CARLSEN, a successful arts journalist trying to smooth over the cracks in a failed marriagePER TOFTLUND, a crack member of Denmark's secret service, a lone wolf: unattached, without a family and fanatically committed to his workVUK, a highly skilled political assassin who has lost everything in the bloody collapse of the former Yugoslavia.As plans are made for a controversial Iranian author to make a rare public appearance in Copenhagen, these three separate and lonely lives suddenly find themselves on a collision course. Trapped in a world of secret deals and private passions, organized crime and uncontrolled media frenzy, Lise, Per and Vuk struggle to confront a tainted past, a compromised present and an extremely uncertain future. One man protects an author, while another signs up for murder.From its terse beginnings to its unnerving, blood-splattered climax, Leif Davidsen has written a taut political thriller that will not only entertain and enlighten but chill to the bone.Translated from the Danish by Barbara J. HavelandTrade ReviewOne of Denmark's top crime writers, Davidsen puts a cop and a journalist against the assassin, throwing them together in an unexpected relationship as they try to outwit the killer. This is the dark side of globalisation, in which ideology and greed forge a grim international alliance against democracy and freedom of speech -- Joan Smith * Sunday Times *Resonates because one can't dismiss its frightening truth -- Paul Binding * Independent *I believed every word of it - the danger, the action, the politics of power and fear. Davidsen writes like an assassin. Brilliant! More, more! -- Fay WeldonDavidsen's taut, disciplined thriller pits professional assassin Vuk, a Serbian raised in Denmark, against Detective Insp. Per Toftlund -- Publishers Weekly

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Book SynopsisJulian Monasterio has suffered three severe blows: his wife walking out on him; his mother dying; and his 6-year-old daughter displaying signs of psychological damage. Then his father's old pistol is stolen, and so begins much more than a straightforward murder novel. As the novel delves into the private and professional lives of its characters, the layers of the mystery are revealed. Linked to it all, is the slow love that develops between sad and lonely Julian and his daughter's young teacher, brought together by their love of his emotionally withdrawn daughter.Trade Review'His writing style is literary, elegant, almost formal. His crime books weave the investigations of his gentle private eye, Ricardo Cupido, with an analysis of the dark side of remote Spain' - Observer

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Book SynopsisWritten originally in Me'phaa, First Rain is a selection of poems that emerged from the poet responding to the death of his grandmother who declared to him in 2005: I will die in the days when the first rains come. The work mourns both the loss of a grandmother, and the fading away (like her sight in later life) of a culture and language that hold so much history and pride. In this way, they address social, racial and gender inequalities, environmental abuses and injustices faced by native peoples in Latin America - issues that have resonance globally. As the poet recounts: In the face of the wind, grab the stones that are falling upon us, one of his grandmother's phrases, refers to people standing up to injustice. This collection, Hubert Matiuwaa's first ever in English, is a gathering of stones.

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Book SynopsisTwo music producers pack up their studio – along with their dreams of ever making it in the industry – after too many bands fail to pay their bills… A woman takes up an invitation to visit an ex-lover in Arizona, only to find his apartment is no bigger than a motel room… A former drama student runs into an old classmate from ten years before, hardly recognising the timid creature he’s become… Each character in Larissa Boehning’s debut collection experiences a moment where they’re forced to confront how differently things turned out, how quickly ambitions were shelved, or how easily people change. Former colleagues meet up to reminisce about the failed agency they used to work for; brothers-in-law find themselves co-habiting long after the one person they had in common passed away; fellow performers watch as their careers slowly drift in opposite directions. Boehning’s stories offer a rich store of metaphors for this abandonment: the downed tools of a deserted East German factory, lying exactly where they were dropped the day Communism fell; the old, collected cameras of a late father that seem to stare, wide-eyed, at the world he left behind. And yet, underpinning this abandonment, there is also great resilience. Like the cat spotted by a demolition worker in the penultimate story that sits, unflinching, as its home is bulldozed around it, certain spirits abide.Trade Review'Just as her stories seem made up of random incidents yoked casually together by place or time, so, too, does their very telling appear contingent, uncertain. It’s as though she has created her own literature of non sequiturs, stops and starts - yet each detail... is rivetingly real and mysterious, mimesis and metaphor both... These quiet, idiosyncratic stories are highly articulate even in their silences.' - Dundee University Review of the Arts

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Book SynopsisUnder the Israeli occupation of the '70s and '80s, writers in Gaza had to go to considerable lengths to ever have a chance of seeing their work in print. Manuscripts were written out longhand, invariably under pseudonyms, and smuggled out of the Strip to Jerusalem, Cairo or Beirut, where they then had to be typed up. Consequently, fiction grew shorter, novels became novellas, and short stories flourished as the city's form of choice. Indeed, to Palestinians elsewhere, Gaza became known as 'the exporter of oranges and short stories'. This anthology brings together some of the pioneers of the Gazan short story from that era, as well as younger exponents of the form, with ten stories that offer glimpses of life in the Strip that go beyond the global media headlines; stories of anxiety, oppression, and violence, but also of resilience and hope, of what it means to be a Palestinian, and how that identity is continually being reforged; stories of ordinary characters struggling to live with dignity in what many have called 'the largest prison in the world'.Trade ReviewA welcome reminder of the universality of human relations' - The Guardian; 'Tales that reflect that depth and the variety and universality of the Gazan experience' - The Irish Times

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Book SynopsisIraq + 100 poses a question to contemporary Iraqi writers: what might your home city look like in the year 2103 - exactly 100 years after the disastrous American and British-led invasion of Iraq? How might that war reach across a century of repair and rebirth, and affect the state of the country - its politics, its religion, its language, its culture - and how might Iraq have finally escaped its chaos, and found its own peace, a hundred years down the line? As well as being an exercise in escaping the politics of the present, this anthology is also an opportunity for a hotbed of contemporary Arabic writers to offer its own spin on science fiction and fantasy.

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Book SynopsisThis anthology brings together ten short stories that go beyond the postcards and snapshots, and introduce us to real residents of Rio – young dancers training to be the next stars of samba, exhausted labourers press-ganged into meeting an impossible deadline, nostalgic drag queens… that make Rio the ‘marvellous city’ it is.

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Book SynopsisKhartoum, according to one theory, takes its name from the Beja word hartooma, meaning ‘meeting place’. Geographically, culturally and historically, the Sudanese capital is certainly that: a meeting place of the Blue and White Niles, a confluence of Arabic and African histories, and a destination point for countless refugees displaced by Sudan’s long, troubled history of forced migration. In the pages of this book – the first major anthology of Sudanese stories to be translated into English – the city also stands as a meeting place for ideas: where the promise and glamour of the big city meets its tough social realities; where traces of a colonial past are still visible in day-to-day life; where the dreams of a young boy, playing in his father’s shop, act out a future that may one day be his. Diverse literary styles also come together here: the political satire of Ahmed al-Malik; the surrealist poetics of Bushra al-Fadil; the social realism of the first postcolonial authors; and the lyrical abstraction of the new ‘Iksir’ generation. As with any great city, it is from these complex tensions that the best stories begin.Trade Review'An exciting, long-awaited collection showcasing some of Sudan's finest writers. There is urgency behind the deceptively languorous voices and a piercing vitality to the shorter forms. These writers lay claim over the contradictions and fusions of the capital city - Nile and drought, urbanization and village ties, what is African and what is Arab.' - Leila Aboulela

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Book SynopsisThe Sea Cloak is a collection of 11 stories by the author, journalist, and campaigner, Nayrouz Qarmout. Drawing from her own experiences growing up in a Syrian refugee camp, as well as her current life in Gaza, these stories stitch together a patchwork of different perspectives into what it means to be a woman in Palestine today. Whether following the daily struggles of orphaned children fighting to survive in the rubble of recent bombardments, or mapping the complex, cultural tensions between different generations of refugees in wider Gazan society, these stories offer rare insights into one of the most talked about, but least understood cities in the Middle East. Taken together, the collection affords us a local perspective on a global story, and it does so thanks to a cast of (predominantly female) characters whose vantage point is rooted, firmly, in that most cherished of things, the home. Translated from the Arabic by Perween Richards.Trade Review'All the arts are close to us because they allow us to recontextualise, to understand where we are, what we are, who we are. The Sea Cloak by Nayrouz Qarmout re-contextualises things so we really understand the world from the point of view we always knew was there.' - Ali Smith; 'Explosive, resonant images are conjured in Qarmout's confident, arresting voice.' - The Guardian

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Book SynopsisThis is one of Scandinavia's top crime writers in the tradition of Henning Mankell. It was one of those days in February of which there are far too many, despite its being the shortest month of the year. February is the year's parenthesis. The tax forms have already been sent in and the tourist season has not yet started: there is nothing on the schedule. Greyish-brown slush lay in the gutters and the hills around the city were barely visible through the fog. Like the golden buttons on the waistcoat of a forgotten snowman, you could just make out the lights of the funicular up the hillside and the street lamps were lit even in the middle of the day...In this crime drama detective Varg Veum's adventures lead him into a dark world of privileged teenage girls who have been drawn into drugs and prostitution. The situation worsens when the local judge is discovered in a luxury hotel, dead and clad only in women's lingerie. Called in by anxious parents to look for a missing daughter and explain the judge's death, Varg finds clues that lead him only deeper into Bergen's criminal underworld.Trade Review"'An intriguing reworking of an old idea' Time Out"

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Book SynopsisThis novel by esteemed Swiss writer Max Frisch is an exploration of the question: 'Why don't we live when we know we're here just this one time, just one single, unrepeatable time in this unutterably magnificent world?!' This outcry against the emptiness of ordinary, everyday life uttered by the hero of Frisch's book is countered by 'an answer from the silence' he meets when face to face with death. "When An Answer from the Silence" begins, the protagonist has just turned thirty and is engaged to be married and about to start work as a teacher. Frightened by the idea of settling down, he journeys to the Alps in a do-or-die effort to climb the unclimbed North Ridge, and by doing so prove he is not ordinary. But having reached the top he returns not in triumph, but in frostbitten shock, having come dangerously close to death. This highly personal early novel reflects a crisis in Frisch's own life, and perhaps because of this intimate connection, he refused to allow it to be included in his 'Collected Works in the 1970s'. Now available in English, this distinctive book will thrill fans of Frisch's other works.Trade Review"Frisch is a great, and even an inspiring, writer, because he gives us the unique sense that the act of analysis is a passionate act, impelled by our fear of the world's dissolution and our knowledge of our own fragility."-Newsday"

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Book SynopsisCommissario Soneri returns home for a hard-earned autumn holiday, hoping to spend a few days mushroom picking on the slopes of Montelupo. This isolated village relies on the salame factory founded in the post-war years by Palmiro Rodolfi, and now run by his son, Paride. On arrival, Soneri is greeted by anxious rumours about the factory's solvency and the younger Rodolfi's whereabouts. Not long afterwards, a decomposing body is found in the woods. In the shadow of Montelupo, carabinieri prepare to apprehend their chief suspect - an ageing woodsman who defended the same mountains from S.S. commandos during the war.Trade Review'A master storyteller' Barry Forshaw, Independent. * Independent *'A rich, rewarding read' Laura Wilson. * Laura Wilson *'A broodingly atmospheric and engaging crime thriller' Mail on Sunday. * Mail on Sunday *'Varesi exposes a dark history that still has the power to unsettle' Joan Smith, Sunday Times. * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisParma. A multiple pile-up occurs on the autostrada into the city. A truck transporting cattle skids off the road. Dozens of cows and bulls go on the rampage, injured and crazed. In the chaos, the burned body of a young woman is found at the side of the road. Her death has no apparent link to the carnage. Commissario Soneri is assigned the case. It is a welcome distraction: his mercurial lover Angela has decided to pursue other options, leaving him even more morose than usual. The dead woman is identified as Nina Iliescu, a Romanian immigrant whose beauty had enchanted a string of wealthy lovers. Temptress, muse, angel - she was all things to all men. Her murder conceals a crime and a sacrilege, and even in death she has a surprise waiting for Soneri.

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Book Synopsis1977. Poised between the secular values of socialism and the conservatism of a tenuously balanced government, Istanbul is a fractured city haunted by demons of its own making. Along with thousands of other left-wing activists, Oak's interest in politics leads him to join the annual May Day rallies. There he encounters Zuhal, a fearless girl with a gun. As battles rage between nationalists and socialists, Oak witnesses the violent suppression of dissident minorities by his fellow citizens. The bewitching Zuhal begins to shape his ideals, bringing him face to face with disillusionment, and death.Trade Review'Accomplished, fascinating and relevant' Aftenposten. * Aftenposten *

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Book SynopsisHave you ever just clicked with someone? - the sequel to the international bestseller Love Virtually about a relationship conducted by email.Love Virtually ends as Leo leaves Austria for America. He and Emmi have still not met, but the intensity of their e-mail correspondence has been threatening Emmi's marriage. Leo returns from Boston and gradually resumes his e-mail contact with Emmi. But he has plans to settle down with Pamela, the woman he met in America. In an attempt to draw a line under their relationship, Emmi and Leo at last agree to meet in person.Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch and Katharina BielenbergTrade Review'A brilliantly complex and sophisticated love story ... thought-provoking and engrossing' Metro . * Metro *Just what you need. -- Wendy Holden * Daily Mail *Perhaps the first great romantic novel of the internet age. * Sunday Express *A modern romance that feels both fresh and traditional -- Rebecca Wilson * Sunday Times *I couldn't put it down ... like a jilted lover, when I reached the end I wanted more. -- Danielle Goldstein * Time Out *

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Book SynopsisRejected by his tribe and hunted by the kin of the man he killed, Ukhayyad and his thoroughbred camel flee across the desolate Tuareg deserts of the Sahara. Between bloody wars against the Italians in the north and famine raging in the south, Ukhayyad rides for the remote rock caves of Jebel Hasawna. There, he says farewell to the mount who has been his companion through thirst, disease, lust and loneliness. Alone in the desert, haunted by the prophetic cave paintings of ancient hunting scenes and the cries of jinn in the night, Ukhayyad awaits the arrival of his pursuers and their insatiable hunger for blood and gold. Gold Dust is a classic story of the brotherhood between man and beast, the thread of companionship that is all the difference between life and death in the desert. It is a story of the fight to endure in a world of limitless and waterless wastes, and a parable of the struggle to survive in the most dangerous landscape of all: human society.Trade Review"A true journey into the human psyche." - Cairo Magazine * "The desert setting is al-Koni's strength: its expanse, desolation, and mystery are powerfully evoked." - Margaret Obank, Banipal * "Al-Koni's novels are aesthetic renderings of the passions of the desert and of the rich legends and cosmology of his people. An encyclopaedic writer who has digested mythologies of the ancient world and literature of the modern world, al-Koni has both a poetic bent and a mystical inclination." - Ferial Ghazoul, Al Ahram Weekly"

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Book SynopsisSalim the coachman tells enchanting tales, but suddenly he is struck dumb. Just as Scheherazade told tales to save her life, Salim's friends must spin yarns to save his speech. Set in Damascus in 1959, the novel alternates the real lives of our storytellers with stories from the distant past. These are neither fables nor fairy tales with everlasting, happy endings, and they often require readers to suspend their disbelief. Each chapter is preceded by a one-line hint of what is to come, such as 'How one person's true story was not believed, whereas his most blatant lie was.'

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Book SynopsisIn the dark of night, Hanan al-Hashimi awakens from a nightmare, confused and shaken. Roaming the house in search of some reassurance, she is drawn towards the streak of light under her husband's bedroom door. Little does she know that the beckoning glow will turn her life on its head, unsettling her fragile mind and sending her servant Aliyah tumbling back to the dusty alleyways of her childhood. Banished from her mistress's villa in the small hours of the morning, Aliyah's route back to her old neighbourhood is paved with the memories of the family she left behind and the mistress she betrayed. Exhausted by the night's events, both maid and mistress seek refuge in sleep. In their dreams, the women's memories - of troubled childhoods, loneliness, love and their lives together - combine seamlessly to narrate the story of two Damascene women's search for security and tenderness. From the tinroofed shack of Aliyah's family home, to the isolated grandeur of Hanan's imprisoning villa, the characters' recollections journey through Damascus, painting a portrait of the city in all of its contradictions: poverty and luxury, dormancy and change. Samar Yazbek's quick-paced narrative balances intense drama with the insightful portrayal of her characters' precarious mental states. Bizarre and darkly humorous, yet with clear emotional realism Cinnamon is a tale from the inner world of the women of Damascus.Trade Review'[Her novel] is a defiant and resonating cry. Ground-breaking...it merits our attention and concern.'

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Book SynopsisPBS Recommended Translation for Spring 2013The Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf is brought to life by American poet Meghan Purvis in a vigorous contemporary translation. Written across a range of poetic forms and voices, this rendering captures the thrust and gore of battle, the sinister fens and moorlands of Dark Age Denmark, and the treasures and glories of the mead-hall. But can the hero defeat his blood-thirsty foes, save the Geats from being wiped off the map, and claim his just rewards?Combining faithful translation with innovative re-workings and poems from alternative viewpoints, Purvis has created an exciting new interpretation of Beowulf – full of verve and the bristle of language.Meghan Purvis received her MA and PhD in Creative Writing from UEA. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Rialto, The Frogmore Papers and Magma. She won the 2011 Times Stephen Spender Prize for an excerpt from her translation of Beowulf; another poem was commended. She lives in Cambridge.

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Book SynopsisIn the beginning the page was blank and without form, and the scribe sat in front of it, a world forming inside his head. The world grew large, spilling out of him and on to the page. The scribe shaped the world into an island. He named it Fagero, and populated it with an assortment of likely and plausibly unlikely characters, and saw that it was good for his purposes.The people of Fagero were often divided against each other but united in their appreciation of their happy little island. Then the dead bodies began to arrive: hordes of them, washing ashore with no identification and no one to claim them.The island was changing, and the small-town quirkiness becoming less restrained. And the bodies kept arriving, forcing Fagero's inhabitants to confront the unhappy truth that, even on their remote island, the world's horrors and injustices could not be ignored. This was prescient at the time of writing and is sadly relevant in 2016, the year of this English translation.A Happy Little Island is an elaborate tale told with style and intelligence.The number and variety of Sund's Dramatis Personae make Fagero the perfect stage for an encounter between common humanity and the insularity and fear of change that affect all cultures.Trade Review"In A Happy Little Island, Sund entertains readers in the manner we now expect of him. He achieves this through his ability to invent and exaggerate, with a narrative force to match oral storytelling. He relies on his skilled use of language and his high spirits, humour and serious intent ... and also his empathy with the beliefs his characters hold." - Lyskamsken.net; "Despite all the tall tales, black humour and eccentric characters portrayed with gusto, the small society Lars Sund describes with his unfailing sense for language and visual description is wholly credible. The individual characters have their own way of expressing themselves, and the reader can really hear them. Every episode is visualised in the reader's head like a scene from a film." - Hufvudstadsbladet

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Book SynopsisA political thriller set mainly in Estonia during the dying days of the Soviet Union, but also in Russia, Finland and Sweden. It follows a group of young pro-independence dissidents who have an elaborate scheme for smuggling copies of KGB files out of the country, and whose fates are entangled, through family and romantic ties, with the security services who are tracking them. It describes the curious minutiae of everyday life, offers wry observations on the period through personal experience, and asks universal questions about how interpersonal relationships are affected when caught up in momentous historical changes. This sometimes wistful examination of how the Estonian Republic was reborn after a long hiatus speaks also of the courage and complex chemistry of those who pushed against a regime whose then weakness could not have been known to them.

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Book SynopsisAs the First World War comes to an end, chaos takes over in much of Europe and even the victors sense that the old certainties have been lost in the massacre. In Latvia it appears that two centuries of Russian rule are coming to an end, but other powers and destabilising factors persist. Pauls Bankovskis's novel examining this most important of years in his country's history reveals how a new republic emerged from disorder and chance, gradually but also erratically. Painstaking in his research, he even walked himself the full length of the escape route to Finland taken by his protagonist. This is the story of a year and its far from unified people. Two different Latvias, almost a century apart, one looking uncertainly to the future and the other uncomprehendingly to the past, inhabit very different eras and use each other to inform their own actions.Trade Review"Two Latvians, two different periods, with almost a century between them. One of them, in the autumn of 1917, is not entirely sure whether it is worth it for Latvians to attempt and establish their own country. There is still time until November 18th, and his thoughts on it could change, if one could give him an answer to the question 'Why?' The second comes upon this same question today. That which seemed already self-evident to many in 1918 suddenly doesn't seem that way anymore. This is a story about an improbable encounter between these two characters." - Text from the Annual Latvian Literature Award

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Book SynopsisLevas Ciparis, the anti-hero of this masterly critique of life in the late Soviet Union, is a man alone and he desperately wants to belong. He is obstructed in this quest by his own innocence and decency, which occasionally cause him to act with absurd inflexibility. In fact, the irresolvable tension between moral probity and necessary compromise is one of the many themes of this novel: "Yes, I truly did believe that if I took up the work of the Komsomol, I would, being an honest, sufficiently pure, persistent person, most certainly be capable of changing and enriching that community." In part, the first-person narration describes the process of being disabused of that delusion. Ciparis is dead and writes letters to his estranged friend Tomas Kelertas, with whom he has something of a love-hate relationship, which became more obsessive after their estrangement. The randomness of life does not always work against Ciparis, as he recounts his experiences from sickly child in a basement flat to his final moments in Leningrad when all options fall away. The system can work in his favour - primarily through a marriage that gains him a father-in-law who is a powerful, intelligent and utterly corrupt politician at the very top of the Soviet regime in Lithuania - but ultimately there is no place for him in that society or perhaps anywhere. Memoirs of a Life Cut Short is full of ideas, doubts and insightful observations on human behaviour borne along on a helter-skelter plot.

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Book SynopsisThe newly independent Estonia may be moving forward from its dark past, but not quickly enough for young lovers Oskar, an Estonian university student, and Erika, a Baltic German descended from a now defunct nobility. The old prejudices remain, and they are strong between the Baltic Germans and the Estonians who once worked on their estates. After meeting Erika's grandfather to request her hand in marriage, Oskar questions the source of his love: is he merely a slave pining after his master? Does he really love Erika as a person, or is he subconsciously drawn to her ancestry and the dynamics of the old order? Published in 1935, I Loved a German is one of the final and best-known works of celebrated Estonian author A.H. Tammsaare. It has been praised for its psychological realism, its diary format and its rare Baltic German perspective, and has been adapted for both stage and screen.

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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 SynopsisCorrado Alvaro's Fear in the World was published a decade before Orwell's 1984, but is not well known outside Italy, perhaps because of the timing of the publication just before the Second World War. Alvaro had visited the Soviet Union as a journalist, but was probably motivated to write this dystopian novel by aspects of modernity that concerned him, particularly the use of fear for political purposes, not only in the Russia. He is interested in the psychology of fear and the extent to which individuals and the crowd participate in their own regimentation. The names of countries, cities and leading political figures such as Stalin are never referred to, but as in the works of Orwell, they are clearly there from the descriptions: the author was writing in a Fascist country against a Fascist censor and had to cut his cloth accordingly. This is a dark novel, not quite as dark as 1984, but it is more claustrophobic. The feel of inevitability is there from the first page, and it is experienced as we do in real life. The imagined takes us closer to where we really are. There is a love affair at the core of this novel, which is the cause of their problems, or quite possibly perceived by the lovers as the cause and therefore became the cause. The modern Leviathan appears to be a well-oiled machine, but towards the end it becomes clear that this is merely an appearance of efficiency and omniscience, but appearances can be powerful. Alvaro is particularly interested in how the state uses quasi-religious mechanisms and rituals to assert its power. The central character returns to the country after a long period abroad, and see things initially through foreign eyes, living a life similar to the one Alvaro did when in Russia. He is not a natural rebel, and very much wants to fit in, but it seems difficult to achieve. The regime boasts that it has an ally in history, but destiny is elusive, however much the characters feel that they are driven by it.

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Book SynopsisBuenos Aires, 1992. Hacker Felipe Félix is summoned to the vertiginous twin towers of magnate Fausto Tamerlán and charged with finding the witnesses to a very public crime. Rejecting the mission is not an option. After a decade spent trying to forget the freezing trench in which he passed the Falklands War, Félix is forced to confront the city around him – and realises to his shock that the war never really ended. A detective novel, a cyber-thriller, an inner-city road trip and a war memoir, The Islands is a hilarious, devastating and dizzyingly surreal account of a history that remains all too raw.Trade Review'Carlos Gamerro has written one of the most ambitious novels about the war.' Jonathan Blitzer, The Nation --------- 'Gamerro picks history's what-the-fuck moments, which when found in fiction are so strange as to knock the reader momentarily out of the imaginary world.' Ben Bollig, The Guardian --------- 'Exhilarating, inventive and consistently absorbing.' Stuart Evers, The Guardian --------- 'A bravura piece of writing, with a cinematic sweep, sustained drama, and pitch-perfect dialogue.' Martin Schifino, The Independent --------- 'The reader is dragged headlong by Barnett's athletic translation - a highly addictive comic voice, its peaks of hectic farce underlaid by a delicate, deadpan absurdism.' Lorna Scott Fox, TLS --------- 'A weird and wonderful thriller - rife with surreal horror and rampant bad taste.' Anthony Cummins, The Observer --------- 'A genre-bending book' Anne McElvoy, BBC Radio 3, Night Waves --------- 'A generational, landmark novel' Andrew Graham Yooll, BBC Radio 3, Feature: Malvinas Madness --------- 'A danger-laden, mind-bending and ultimately redemptive quest. [...] There are more ideas here than most writers would fit in 10 novels.' Tom Bunstead, The Independent on Sunday --------- 'I urge you to find and read a copy of this important novel.' Matthew Crockatt, Huffington Post UK --------- 'A complex and ambitious exploration of how history is memorialised' Michael Sopp, The Literateur 'A dark and uproarious novel' Untitled Books --------- 'Gamerro displays great lyricism in his descriptions of the land of la pampa. He has a poet's touch on the visions and themes he explores throughout the story. It's a triumph.' Ed Hart, Sounds and Colours --------- 'Capacious in its scope; substantial in its themes; fluid in its movements; piercing in its wit; gripping in its horror, astringent in its social critique; and heartbreaking in its rendering of human frailties. Were it originally published in English, it would be a Booker Prize contender.' Rod Jackman, Philadelphia Review of Books --------- 'Gamerro's balls-out novel is a delirious mash-up - [His] gross, bleakly funny, violence-saturated satire of a psychologically damaged society hung up on impossible myth relies on epic hyperbole, masterfully translated by Ian Barnett. There is enough invention here for four novels, but this multilayered nightmare vision is deftly rendered and devastating in its intensity.' Siobhan Murphy, Metro (UK) [20 June 2012, not online] --------- 'Incredible powerful, keeping me alert and uncomfortable and deeply engaged on multiple levels from the intellectual to the dramatic.' Steve Himmer, Necessary Fiction

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Book SynopsisAll Dogs are Blue is a scurrilously funny tale of life in a Rio insane asylum. Its raw style and comic inventiveness signal a major voice in Brazilian literature. Sadly, the author died, aged 43, soon after it was published in 2008. An extraordinary autobiographical fiction that speaks of mental illness and its controversial treatment.Trade Review'When I finished reading the book I was so completely taken by it that I could only think about translating it into Spanish and finding a publisher for it. That's what I did.' Juan Pablo Villalobos, author of Down the Rabbit Hole and Quesadillas ------ 'Rodrigo de Souza Leao is an exceptional author and has had a major impact on contemporary Brazilian literature.' Paulo Scott ------'Life is lived intensely and with gusto at the asylum in Rio. All Dogs are Blue kept me curious and it kept me laughing ... Souza Leao is a mind-blowing poet; his attitude seems to be something like: Why not flaunt the language(s) that madness has taught me?' Deborah Levy ------ 'A firecracker of a book' The Independent on Sunday ------ 'Full of heart and soul, All Dogs Are Blue is one of the most powerful reading experiences I've had. A masterpiece.' Cristhiano Aguiar, one of Granta's Best of Young Brazilian Novelists ------'A firecracker of a book' The Independent on Sunday ------'Souza Leao's autobiographical novel - weaves the lives of the poor with the insane, and poetry with psychosis.' The Independent ------'[Rodrigo de Souza Leao's] writing fizzes with vertiginous energy'. Nick Caistor, The TLS ------'Souza Leao uses a kind of language his schizophrenia has taught him, creating a poetry that's at one moment absurd and the next heartbreakingly self-aware. It's an innovative, original book.' Justin Alvarez, The Paris Review ------'All Dogs are Blue is a novel as moving as it is full of humour and irony.' Antonio Moura, Brazilian poet ------'All Dogs Are Blue is sometimes ugly, often beautiful and always alive - and it is unforgettable' The Literateur ------'A candid, frenetically paced portrayal of mental illness that lurches between the darkest realms of consciousness and the most elevated and poetic' Culture critic ------'At once surreal and poignant this is one of the strangest and most haunting pieces I read this year.' Julia Bell, Books of the Year, Writer's Hub ------'This is a stunning story full of heartbreaking sadness and dark comedy in equal measures' We Love This Book ------ 'Like no other book in the world...All Dogs Are Blue is no book for literary purists, but is a great read for anyone who can embrace the human spirit.' Douglas Messerli, Rain Taxi --------- 'His writing is genuinely thrilling at times, pushing realism to the modernist limits of hallucination with unexpected turns-of-phrase and darkly drawn images undercut by punchlines that seem to materialise out of nowhere' Totally Dublin ------'Souza Leao's autobiographical account of schizophrenia is written with tremendous verve and perspicuity, crisply translated by Zoe Perry and Stefan Tobler. All Dogs are Blue is a profound examination of the tricks and quirks of a fragile mind and Souza Leao demonstrates with startling humour how easy it is to tip from sanity into delusion.' Lucy Popescu, Huffington Post ------'The novel's pained, honest prose left me reeling for much of its length - the headlong rush of prose and ideas becomes breathtaking - for all of the things that we don't know about this brief, crushingly moving book's narrator, we do know that he was once a child; we can experience something of that innocence, and the heart at his core. It's an indication of why we should care about this man, and what warm decency lies at the beginnings of this particular narrative.' Tobias Carroll , Volume 1: Brooklyn ------'All Dogs Are Blue is a captivating and brilliant stream of consciousness novella about mental illness in a Brazilian asylum. Souza Leao's semi-autobiographical story is fantastic - I would go as far as to say that this book is the Brazilian equivalent of The Bell Jar. I wouldn't say this lightly as The Bell Jar is one of my favourite books.' Jessica Patient, A View from Here

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Book SynopsisSigns Preceding the End of the World is one of the most arresting novels to be published in Spanish in the last ten years. Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. He explores the crossings and translations people make in their minds and language as they move from one country to another, especially when there's no going back. Traversing this lonely territory is Makina, a young woman who knows only too well how to survive in a violent, macho world. Leaving behind her life in Mexico to search for her brother, she is smuggled into the USA carrying a pair of secret messages - one from her mother and one from the Mexican underworld.Trade Review'Yuri Herrera is Mexico's greatest novelist. His spare, poetic narratives and incomparable prose read like epics compacted into a single perfect punch - they ring your bell, your being, your soul. Signs Preceding the End of the World delivers a darkly mythological vision of the U.S. as experienced by the "not us" that is harrowing and fierce. The profoundly dignified, mind-boggling Makina, our guide and translator, is the heroine who redeems us all: she is the Truth.' Francisco Goldman, author of Say Her Name ------- 'Yuri Herrera must be a thousand years old. He must have travelled to hell, and heaven, and back again. He must have once been a girl, an animal, a rock, a boy, and a woman. Nothing else explains the vastness of his understanding.' Valeria Luiselli, author of Faces in the Crowd ------- 'Herrera never forgets the turbulent and moving humanity of his protagonist: adroit, angry, ineluctable, Makina is destined to become one of the essential characters of Mexico's new literature ... Herrera creates a radically new language ... and condenses into a few pages what other authors need hundreds to convey.' Jorge Volpi, author of In Search of Klingsor ------- 'Yuri Herrera's Signs Preceding the End of the World is a masterpiece, a haunting and moving allegory about violence and the culture built to support and celebrate that violence. Of the writers of my generation, the one I most admire is Yuri Herrera.' Daniel Alarcon, author of At Night We Walk in Circles ------- 'Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera confirms his status as a storyteller skilled at creating intense storylines and using original language. It is as adept at depicting wretched conditions as it is of elevating the humble and everyday to symbolic dimensions. And that symbolism, to be sure, has something of the Kafkaesque.' Arturo Garcia Ramos, ABC ------- 'It's fair to say that Yuri Herrera follows in the footsteps of compatriot Juan Rulfo, perhaps the master par excellence of creating limbos, spectral spaces in which the characters - real Schrodinger's cats - reside halfway between the living and the dead.' Javier Moreno, Quimera ------- 'The book amazes with the precise and persuasive beauty of its words. New words are created or transformed in order to tell what cannot be told.' Maria Jose Obiol, El Pais ------- '[T]his marvellously rich, slim novel is working on many levels ... Herrera's great achievement lies in elevating the harsh epic of "crossing" to the "other side" to soaring myth. There are allusions to Odysseus, Orpheus and the Styx, the river of Greek mythology that was a border to the Underworld; as well as Mesoamerican stories of shapeshifting and rebirth ... Herrera's metaphors grasp the freedom, and the alarming disorientation, of transition and translation ... Translator Lisa Dillman has found a language both blunt and lyrical for Herrera's many neologisms.' Maya Jaggi, The Guardian ------- 'Short, suspenseful ... outlandish and heartbreaking.' New York Times ------- 'Mr. Herrera's writing is poetic and defamiliarizing; translator Lisa Dillman has done well to capture his neologisms, which shift the setting into the surreal ... In this legend-rich book, to immigrate is to enter forever the land of the shades.' Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal ------- 'Indeed, the nine short chapters tell a very straightforward quest story, and Herrera plants dangerous criminals and vigilant border patrollers around every corner. But it's the imagery, by turns moving and nightmarish, that makes this brief book memorable... This is a haunting book that delivers a strange, arresting experience.' Publishers Weekly ------- 'Francisco Goldman's declaration on the cover of this book, that Yuri Herrera is Mexico's greatest novelist, sold me. I admire Goldman's own work, so the recommendation couldn't have come from a more trusted source.' Jonathon Sturgeon, Flavorwire ------- 'This is a gravity greater than earth's norm. Incidents, phrasings that suggest the novel could shift to another realm continue. They are pregnant with potentiality, and tension of potentiality is one of life's great pleasures, even, especially, in the discomfort that comes with it. It creates only one of the ways that Signs Preceding the End of the World holds you in rapture ... Signs is a novel of language, meant to be translated because it is so aware of the journeys language takes, from one to another, and within their boundaries.' P.T. Smith, Bookslut ------- 'This is a gorgeous, crisp little thing. And although Signs ... is no epic - accounting for chapter breaks it clocks in at under 100 short pages - Yuri Herrera has managed to achieve such extraordinary scope, of space and meaning, without any sense of hurry or clutter ... Signs ... is an important work, given the tenor of the immigration debate in the US and internationally. Herrera and Makina make a mockery of old-order American patriotism, which is easy to do but tough to actually pull off. The whole book is in fact a tiny exercise in bold and clever writing done with verve.' Angus Sutherland, The Skinny ------- '[A] short, brutal, urgent missive of a book ... Herrera's prose, as translated by Lisa Dillman, has some of McCarthy's doomy intonations, his terse impressionism, and his obvious debts to Beckett, Hemingway and Faulkner ... There's the same nervy hovering around the edge of allegory and never quite committing to the jump. And the landscape, of course, is the same ... But Herrera is-well-better ... Herrera writes literature. Signs Preceding packs a fractal complexity into its furiously concentrated sentences; it's slangy, impish, iterative, slightly manic even at its saddest. Herrera has everything McCarthy doesn't: humour, kindness, politics that don't stink.' Pete Mitchell, The Quietus ------- 'Signs Preceding the End of the World is filled with layers of meaning and symbolism, with Herrera's brilliant command of visual metaphors effortlessly weaving together a host of narrative threads ... his use of complex symbolism throughout, and his gift for transforming abstract idioms and metaphors into concrete images makes Signs Preceding the End of the World a worthy examination of what it is to 'cross the border.' Debjani Biswas-Hawkes, Literateur ------- 'Signs Preceding the End of the World is one of the most arresting novels to be published in Spanish in the last ten years. Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. He explores the crossings and translations people make in their minds and language as they move from one country to another, especially when there's no going back.' Literalab ------- 'Yuri Herrera is one of Mexico's proudest literary exports, and his Signs Preceding the End of the World ... reads like scripture, the received words of an all-knowing wise man.' Jane Graham, The Big Issue ------- 'Perky crowd-funded publishers & Other Stories are rapidly gaining a name for unearthing hidden gems of world literature and this novel by Mexican author Yuri Herrera can only enhance that reputation. Set on the Mexican/US border, it tells a deceptively simple tale that is simultaneously beguiling and harrowing ... In nine short chapters and barely 100 pages, Herrera gives us the beating heart of his protagonist. Resourceful and feisty, Makina pursues her twin tasks with determination but with a shrewd appreciation of her chances of success.' Peter Whittaker, New Internationalist ------- 'The story's tough young heroine is Makina ... The author has created Makina both street-smart and observant and we can see how she is capable of defending herself. We hear too, in her inner voice, the by-play of the two languages, what she calls 'latin' and 'anglo', and how they can fuse into a third with varying proportions according to circumstances ... Talented, polyglot translator Lisa [Dillman] has risen to the challenge by creating a language that is not jarringly americanised and still conveys the thought processes of a latin-tongued protagonist in an exciting English translation. This is another example of the sterling work of the publisher & Other Stories.' Michael Johnston, Akanos Publishing ------- 'Both author and translator deserve praise for creating and successfully interpreting this distinctive voice, which stays with you long after the book is finished.' Workshy Fop ------- 'Herrera has written a novel that connects the contemporary with the timeless'. Jason DeYoung, 3:am ------- 'Herrera's work is a double edged sword, poetic for its sparseness, but leaving the reader hungry for more. A highly-rewarding gulp of a novella, jam-packed with all the intrigue of an epic.' Eloise Stevens, Sounds and Colours ------- 'It might be a re-telling of the Odyssey at the Mexican border.' Janet Potter, The Millions ------- 'Yuri Herrera's Signs Preceding the End of the World is one of those rare volumes that manages to explore language in a new way, tell a compelling story, and create memorable characters all at the same time ... The author's immense talent is evident in each page, in just about every sentence of the novel ... The author employs language and a literary perspective you won't soon forget, his images haunting like a dream.' Alina Cohen, The Rumpus ------- 'Stunning ... It's not the story itself, but Herrera's brilliant telling of it, his ability to capture his subject's thoughts, fears, and desires and so eloquently convey all that she's experiencing, that will leave you spellbound, aching for more.' Typographical era ------- 'To write in such a short and simple style, yet to deliver something as moving and memorable takes great skill.' David Dickinson, The Journal ------- 'The narrative invites reflection on the migrant experience and cultural difference; it also supplies the excitement of an adventure with gangsters, guns and false leads ... Yuri Herrera combines a dreamlike setting with vigorous style.' Anthony Cummins, Times Literary Supplement ------- 'Two words: Read it. In nine short chapters you encounter all the magic of Alice in Wonderland, the darkness of Dante's Inferno, the dystopia of McCarthy's The Road ... The language is wonderful, at times completely original, to capture the feel of the original.' JM Schreiber for Guardian Books Blog ------- 'There's grit, and there's an attention to detail, but reality drifts in through filters throughout. It gets under your skin in weird ways.' Tobias Carroll, Vol1Brooklyn ------- 'A profoundly important book, and one of the few such works to also have the distinction of being a profoundly enjoyable book.' Pop Matters ------- 'In its hundred-odd pages, Signs Preceding the End of the World manages to be many things at once: an allegory, a dark myth, an epic, a compelling meditation on language.' Adam Levy, Music and Literature ------- 'This is a novel of carefully rendered details, given to the reader gracefully, as if they are simple or casual observations ... The brilliance of this novel is that, as grounded as it is in physical experiences, it is this psychological space that it most inhabits ... A novel whose thinness belies its depth, Signs Preceding the End of the World makes me rejoice that more of Herrerra's work will soon be published for English readers. It is such a blessing that this work, first published in Spanish six years ago, has made the crossing.' Literary Review US -------- 'Signs is full of exhilarating moments, sharp, economic turns, both at plot and sentence level ... Personal and expansive, dense but compact, Signs Preceding the End of the World offers its readers a timeless and timely epic in miniature.' Biblioklept ------- 'A dazzling little thing, containing so much more than the width of its spine should allow. I am in awe-filled love with its heroine: Makina is a vibrantly real presence in a shadowy world of constant threat; her voice perfectly rendered; her unflappable poise tested, but never broken.' Gayle Lazda, London Review Bookshop, London ------- 'If you start highlighting what stuns you about Signs Preceding the End of the World, Yuri Herrera's debut novel in English, every page will be mottled with fluorescent lines. Herrera writes in prose that feels like you are standing on both sides of the uncanny valley while something beautiful happens below and above you, creating a delectable unease, cut through with the simple joy of precise and surprising images. Herrera will draw the obvious comparisons to Roberto Bolano, but Signs Preceding the End of World should also find a home next to Jesse Ball and Italo Calvino.' Josh Cook, Porter Square Books, Boston, and author of An Exaggerated Murder -------- 'Herrera gives us what all great literature should-poetic empathy for dire situations in a life more complex and dynamic than we imagined. And Other Stories gives us what all publishers should-access to this world. I always want more.' Lance Edmonds, Posman Books (Chelsea Market branch), New York, NY ------- 'Several things occurred while I read Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera: I didn't stop talking about it to other book people. When I finished it, I immediately flipped back to the beginning. And then, while waiting for the train, a bird pooped on me. I could go into the beautiful sentences, the structure, or the imagery. But really, a bird pooped on me - right on the shoulder, in the most obvious place - and I didn't even notice until I put the book down.' Jess Marquardt, Greenlight, Brooklyn, NY ------- 'Yuri Herrera's Signs Preceding the End of the World is a lyrical border crossing with touches of Kafka." Alexander Dwinell, Unnameable Books, Brooklyn, NY ------- 'This book pulled me out of my little life into one altogether unfamiliar and absorbing - with the help of its bulletproof heroine, it explores what happens to people and languages when they cross borders, and recreates these new linguistic worlds in the translation without affectation. I am glad it made it over the Rio Grande and onto my shelf.' Georgia Newman, Foyles (Charing Cross Road branch), London -------- 'What begins as an odyssey is steered into profound allegory depicting the burdens we are willing to shoulder for family and the prospect of a life we never asked for.' Mark J Walker, Waterstones (High Wycombe branch), High Wycombe

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Book SynopsisIf death comes to a loved one, can we grieve alone? When all around is in ruins, can we confine our lives to one beautiful room constructed out of art, or love, or family ties? And when the words we know prove inadequate, can we turn to the language of birds? In an arty mansion in Milan’s industrial zone, two men are shown one of the last remaining Futurist noise machines – an Intonarumore – and a painful old truth surfaces. A musician travels to three continents to see her siblings before returning to Johannesburg; her home is plundered every night around her as she composes a requiem. A man follows his male lover from London to Berlin’s clubbing scene and on to a ruined castle in which the lover’s family lives. He is looking for an antidote. The protagonists in SJ Naudé’s South African Literary Award-winning short story collection are listening out for answers that cannot be expressed. Offering fresh perspectives on gay, expat and artistic subcultures and tackling the pain of loss head on, Naudé’s stories go fearlessly and tenderly to the heart of our experiences of desire, love and death.Trade Review'Cool and intelligent, unsettling and deeply felt, Naude's voice is something new in South African writing.' Damon Galgut (from his Introduction to The Alphabet of Birds) ------- 'The connections between the pieces are resonant, and they gradually reveal themselves as a set of variations on themes, making for an unusually tight-knit and satisfying volume. Naude's debut was acclaimed in the Afrikaans literary world, marking the arrival of a questioning, cosmopolitan writer. This English translation will bring him the wider readership he deserves.' Ivan Vladislavic, author of Double Negative and The Restless Supermarket ------- 'The astonishingly diverse stories in SJ Naude's remarkable collection The Alphabet of Birds count among the best in Afrikaans, built on recurring motifs and elements such as music; departure and travel; fairy tales and myths; illness, dissolution, dying and death; cities; a search for provenance and origins; forgetting and remembering; instinct and reason; that which is said or described versus that which remains unsaid or incapable of description forever; and the places and shapes of love in human relationships. For any reader who would like to keep up with what is happening at the forefront of Afrikaans literature, this collection is truly unmissable. ' Andre Brink ------- 'For the discerning reader the substantial stories in this collection provide a feast of rare originality and revelatory power. In exquisitely honed classical prose and with acute psychological insight Naude shows how the social forces of our time bear upon the private lives of individuals. He is one of those rare South African writers who can subtly balance a relentless investigation of contemporary political conditions with an informed interest in the shape of mourning and desire in his characters.' Marlene van Niekerk ------- 'Here is the beginning of something extraordinary. Profound, complex, luminously written, and brilliantly orchestrated, SJ Naude's first collection establishes him indubitably as a writer who will reshape the contours of South African literature in years to come.' Neel Mukherjee ------- 'Beautifully shaped and often heartbreaking stories ... At once unsettling and deeply moving, this collection announces the arrival of a writer of great humanity and style.' Patrick Flanery ------- 'Naude controls the tone in a magnificent manner in all seven stories ... it is as if, in the process of writing, he is giving texture to our increasingly strange planet. A new order has arrived, with its own laws of behaviour ... This is fresh, calculated Afrikaans, and an equally fresh approach to things South African, somewhat similar to the approach to 'the old days' in the film District 9.' Eben Venter, Volksblad ------- 'Makes one truly excited about what else this author will produce ... an extremely rewarding reading experience.' Jacomien van Niekerk, Tydskrif vir letterkunde ------- 'Naude's honest confrontation of [complex] questions is unsettling ... the response he is guiding us towards in these disturbing yet uplifting stories is openness.' Alison Kelly, Times Literary Supplement ------- '[C]ompressed and economical, it lends itself to moments rather than histories, to nuance and detail rather than "skimming over the surface of this country," ... The stories themselves seem palpably to search for a new mode of expression, at least intermittently: music, dance, noise, and mathematics are just some of the avenues his characters explore in a place where language seems increasingly limited ... in Naude, openness and sincerity create surprising moments of great emotional authenticity.' Anneke Rautenbach, L. A. Review of Books -------- Think Leonard Cohen without the "Hallelujah", think Naude. Your brain will have images emblazoned on it for some time to come ... Lyrical, powerful and intensely moving. You will not readily forget this book.' David J Dickson, The Journal ------- 'Naude's tales are lyrical, but unsentimental and precisely focused on the essentials, dense with detail and references, but stripped of any excess ... the collection creates an incisive portrait of the excitement and dislocation that are caused by modern man's mobility in a global world ... It is rare to find a debut with this degree of maturity and polish. Rush out to get your copy, but allow yourself the time to read it attentively. You will be richly rewarded.' Louise Viljoen, Rapport ------- 'Makes any serious reader excited about the future of the short story in Afrikaans ... strongly recommended.' Cilliers van den Berg, Die Burger ------- 'South African expats confront dislocation and illness in this soulful, well-written debut story collection ... whether examining the corrupt health-care system of South Africa or the "borderless world's financial elite" in places such as London and Dubai, Naude remains a breathtaking, tender writer.' Publishers Weekly ------- 'Elegiac longing hangs over these stories, as each character strives for a sense of place and purpose, which they struggle to name, even to themselves.' Peter Whittaker, New Internationalist ------- 'The collection of short stories offers an informed insider's exploration of the country's politics through its ostracised sub-cultures and communities ... Themes of origins and travel, among others, are what link these otherwise diverse stories that are intelligent yet simple.' Antonia Charlesworth, The Big Issue in the North ------- 'As the stories progress, identities of gender and sexuality also begin to blur as Naude skilfully evokes a brave new world where everywhere is everywhere and nothing is as certain as it might once have been ... It's a uniquely South African spin on a universal battle: the fight to understand who you are and what your place in the world might be.' Ross McIndoe, The Skinny ------- 'S J Naude's simple but elegant prose creates stories that are incredibly realistic yet the atmosphere is such that the reader experiences a slowly building terror of everything being on the verge of falling apart - that these characters' lives are as fragile and brittle as the bones of birds, and possibly as hollow ... It's this kind of desperation to find communication and connection that makes these stories such a profoundly affecting read.' Adam Ley-Lange, We Love This Book ------- 'Throughout The Alphabet of Birds, Naude manages to use individual stories to explore political situations, and therefore illuminates without preaching ... The stories in The Alphabet of Birds maintain a consistently high quality, managing to be coherent in tone whilst also featuring enough diverse subject matter and locations to ensure that interest levels don't drop. Overall, the collection exceeded my expectations - it looks like it could be another exciting year for And Other Stories.' Thom Cuell, Workshy Fop ------- 'There is no limbo here; only the sharp edge of a knife, and on each side equally strange realities. Naude's The Alphabet of Birds display a dizzying array of textures, refracting the various facts and facets of our microcosmos. Naude's book becomes a meditation on the nature of loss, a striking series of portraits that reflects, with full honesty, without sentimentality, the constancy of the human condition.' Jeffrey Zuckerman for The Rumpus ------- 'Naude's cool, incisive prose acts as a scalpel, laying bare the sinews and tendons of the stories he is telling. The Alphabet of Birds, translated here from the original Afrikaans by Naude himself, is not a collection for the faint of heart but it does not leave us entirely without hope. The protagonists are ever searching for more in the face of disaster. And sometimes in this accelerating world of cascading information, we need to cut through the noise to get at the heart of the matter. In Naude, we have an able surgeon.' Cassie Hay, Literary Review (US)

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Book Synopsis1975. The cusp of Argentina’s Dirty War. The magnate, Fausto Tamerlán, has been kidnapped by guerrillas, who as part of their ransom demands have stipulated the placement of a bust of Eva Perón in all ninety-two offices of Argentina’s leading construction company, Tamerlán & Sons. Tamerlán’s head of procurement, Ernesto Marroné, is the man tasked with the job, but he soon finds out that his is a mission for executives of a heroic disposition. His subsequent picaresque journey plunges him into a world of occupied factories, the slums of Buenos Aires and the utopian Evita City. Equipped with his trusty copy of Don Quixote: The Executive-Errant, Marroné is a modern knight who finds himself forced to penetrate the ultimate Argentinian mystery: Eva Perón – that maid of myth and legend whom we know as Evita. A stand-alone novel in its own right but also a prequel to his first novel, The Islands (And Other Stories, 2012), Carlos Gamerro’s caustic and utterly original novel is a shattered window onto Argentina’s recent past.Trade Review'The more we laugh at the tragicomic hero Ernesto Marroné, this child of rigorous capitalism turned Montonero revolutionary, the more we empathise with Gamerro, the father of this child who is convinced he can apply the sermons of self-help manuals to breathe new life into the Revolution.' -- Silvina Friera * Página *‘The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón is a Salman Rushdie-style retelling of a nation's history from the recollections of an oddball individual, as Carlos Gamerro delves back into a vital passage of Argentina's past from the skewed perspective of a man fundamentally unsuited to his own time . . . The result is a comically charged and slyly satirical tale that strips away the high rhetoric of history and politics, and reveals the squabbling egos underneath.’ -- Ross McIndoe * The Skinny *‘Finally, the novel’s translation deserves high praise. The collaborative effort between the bilingual Gamerro and Ian Barnett turns colourful Spanish prose into funny, distinctly British English that evokes the novel’s working-class bruisers and prim-and-proper business sharks with equal aptitude.’ -- Arthur Dixon * World Literature in Review *‘[A] hilarious political satire . . . Carlos Gamerro provides a comical glimpse into a slice of Argentina’s political past. Here we have an entertaining, absorbing and thought-provoking piece of literature with a loveable protagonist.’ -- Dami Okhiria * Buzz *‘[A] masterful work of comic fiction that opens up a fascinating period in international history. By aiming his barbs at all sides of the political spectrum, Carlos Gamerro exposes the inherent corruption of human nature. As the country becomes increasingly unstable, the chapters grow ever more surreal, culminating in a finale of glorious ridiculousness. This is the work of a master satirist and comes highly recommended.’ * Booktrust *‘Gamerro navigates extreme situations of war and . . . crime with a practiced hand and plenty of humour . . . With its eccentric mixture of politics, terror, domestic minutiae, and business rhetoric, the story of Marroné’s entrance to the guerrilla echelons is a biting commentary on Argentina’s Dirty War . . . a thorough probe at the uglier seams in society, and ultimately, the making of an unlikely hero, The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Peron is satire at its finest.’ -- Karen Rigby * Foreward Reviews *‘This is a bold and imaginative novel which deserves to be celebrated, a reminder that fiction can still take risks and provide the odd shock.’ -- Tom Cuell * Workshyfop *

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