Fiction in translation

Book SynopsisSince ancient times, Jiwo village and its forests have been a sanctuary. Man, beast and those somewhere in between live in harmony, all part of a timeless chorus, until one day a discordant note strikes with the emergence of the tyrant Tang Laotuo and his son Tang Tong, stripping the land bare to feed their expanding industrial empire.Among the natives in the spreading dusty haze is the beautiful hedgehog spirit Mei Di, and her headstrong husband Liao Mai. Their home is a rural utopia threatened by the foul noise and smoke belching from the Tang’s factories.As the bulldozers rumble ever closer, the change not only strains the lovers’ relationship but also puts Jiwo’s age-old balance in jeopardy. A reckoning will surely come one day, and as silence falls, will anyone still remember the old songs?

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Book SynopsisA city of stories – short, fragmented, amorphous, and at times contradictory – Tehran is an impossible tale to tell. For the capital city of one of the most powerful nations in the Middle East, its literary output is rarely acknowledged in the West. This unique celebration of its writing brings together ten stories exploring the tensions and pressures that make the city what it is: tensions between the public and the private, pressures from without – judgemental neighbours, the expectations of religion and society – and from within – family feuds, thwarted ambitions, destructive relationships. The psychological impact of these pressures manifests in different ways: a man wakes up to find a stranger relaxing in his living room and starts to wonder if this is his house at all; a struggling writer decides only when his girlfriend breaks his heart will his work have depth... In all cases, coping with these pressures leads us, the readers, into an unexpected trove of cultural treasures – like the burglar, in one story, descending into the basement of a mysterious antique collector’s house – treasures of which we, in the West, are almost wholly ignorant.

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Book SynopsisPalestine + 100 poses a question to twelve Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048 - a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba? How might this event - which, in 1948, saw the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes - reach across a century of occupation, oppression, and political isolation, to shape the country and its people? Will a lasting peace finally have been reached, or will future technology only amplify the suffering and mistreatment of Palestinians? Covering a range of approaches - from SF noir, to nightmarish dystopia, to high-tech farce - these stories use the blank canvas of the future to reimagine the Palestinian experience today. Along the way, we encounter drone swarms, digital uprisings, time-bending VR, peace treaties that span parallel universes, and even a Palestinian superhero, in probably the first anthology of science fiction from Palestine ever.

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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 SynopsisWinner of a PEN Translates! grant. Selected as a 'book to look out for in 2017' by The Guardian and BuzzFeed Books. In these witty, postmodern stories, Yoon riffs on pop culture, experiments with punctuation, flirts with sci-fi and, in a metafictional twist, mocks his own position as omnipotent author. Highly literary, his narratives offer an oblique reflection of contemporary Bangkok life, exploring the bewildering disjunct and oft-hilarious contradictions of a modernity that is at odds with many traditional Thai ideas on relationships, family, school and work.Trade Review'Formally inventive, always surprising and often poignant, with the publication of this fluid and assured translation of The Sad Part Was, Prabda Yoon can take his place alongside the likes of Ben Lerner and Alejandro Zambra as a writer committed to demonstrating that there's life in the old fiction-dog yet.' - Adam Biles, author of Feeding Time --- 'An entrancing and distinctive collection. Yoon's limpid prose faces up to large, transcendental questions, all the while flickering with beautiful other-worldly images and flashes of deadpan humour.' - Mahesh Rao, author of One Point Two Billion

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Book SynopsisWinner of an English PEN award With her days split between a passionate marriage and a high-octane television studio job, Homi is a thoroughly modern young woman – until one day she is approached by a yogi in the street. This mysterious figure begins to follow her everywhere, visible only to Homi, who finds him both frightening and inexplicably arousing. Convinced that the yogi is a manifestation of fate, Homi embarks on a series of increasingly desperate attempts to prove that her life is ruled by her own free will, much to the alarm of her no-nonsense husband and cattily snobbish mother. Her middle-class Kolkata life, and the relationships that define her identity, are disturbed to the point of disintegration. Following the inexorable pull of tradition, the mystic forces that run beneath the shallow surface of our modern existence like red earth beneath the pavements, Homi ends up in Benaras, the holy city on the banks of the Ganga, where her final battle with fate plays out.Trade ReviewPraise for Panty: `An unnerving, ominous and beautiful meditation on the loneliness of modern life.’ — The Guardian. Praise for Abandon: `Abandon is a bold, important and formidable novel about the demands of life and the responsibilities we have, both to others and to ourselves.’ — Lucy Scholes, The National

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Book SynopsisNo Presents Please is a vivid evocation of city life, exploring the sub-locales and spatial identities of Mumbai and the struggles of small-town migrants.Jayant Kaikini’s gaze takes in the people living on the margins – a bus driver who, when denied annual leave, steals the bus to travel home; a slum dweller who catches cats and sells them for pharmaceutical testing; a father at his wit’s end who takes his mischievous son to a reform institution. From Irani cafes to chawls, old cinema halls to local trains, the author seeks out and illuminates moments and feelings of existential anxiety, pathos and tenderness. In these sixteen prize-winning stories, cracks in the curtains of the ordinary open up to possibilities that might not have existed, but for this city, which surprises with its epiphanies, fantasies and ambitions.

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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 SynopsisFeaturing two brand new short stories, this chapbook is Heerma van Voss’ first translation into English. In his typical style, these stories feature compelling, well-wrought characters that suck the reader into their simultaneously hilarious and heart-breaking lives. Once again in these selections from his Dutch short story collection De derde persoon, Heerma van Voss has produced unputdownable fiction.

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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 SynopsisOriginally published in Dutch in 2017, this essay is a critique on the intellectual hold of destructive, non-sustainable capitalism on Western thought. It challenges the way that Soviet and Chinese totalitarianism has been used to discredit the idealism of 19th century communism.Reaching out from the intellectual and historical legacy of Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg, Peek investigates what he sees as the inevitable failure of capitalism, and argues for a fairer redistribution of knowledge, power and income.

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Book SynopsisThis will be Polak’s first short story collection, as well as her first translation into English. The collection will bring together five of her most compelling stories, exploring a range of vivid human relationships ranging from pets to food, and lovers to family. All previously published by magazines including NRC or collections including Onze dieren, these stories will surprise, delight and move their readers.

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Book SynopsisTaken from the author’s Dutch short story collection Nederzettigen, this trio of stories is follows various individuals trying to build an existence, who need to feel at home somewhere. Each character is displaced in a different way but, wherever they come from, all the characters have a conflicting longing for change and stability. In crystal clear language, Van Hassel tells three tales about restless times in a fragmented society.

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Book SynopsisThroughout these stories, Maartje Wortel plays an ingenious game with her readers. Small events have major consequences, while the major events fade into the background. Her stories are alienating and completely logical at the same time, chaotic and orderly, funny and loud – all written in her characteristic idiosyncratic prose.

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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 SynopsisHom Yun's meticulously ordered life of reading books and drinking coffee receives a jolt when a mysterious cultural foundation unexpectedly agrees to fund his film proposal: a blend of fiction and documentary, a tone-poem constructed around a lyrical narrative, set around Scythian graves in the High Altai mountains. Desperate to be taken on as his assistant, the foundation's secretary follows him from their offices and begins a night of crossed wires, dislocation, and reality seen through glass, darkly. One of South Korea's most astonishingly sui generis authors, Bae Suah mixes the cerebral and the pungently physical, the mundane and the wildly surreal, in a characteristically potent blend.

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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 Synopsis‘In a certain sense, nothing had changed — two men in a house and a half-century passing without a ripple — but seen with the light from a different angle, none of it had remained the same.’ What is the purpose of a man? Living in a disused farmhouse with his elderly father, Paul Krüzen is not sure he knows anymore. The mill his grandfather toiled in is closed, the glory of the Great Wars is long past, and it has been many years since his mother escaped in the arms of a Russian pilot, never once looking back. What do they have to look forward to now? Saint Rita, the patron saint of lost causes, watches over Paul and his best friend Horseradish Hedwig, two misfits at odds with the modern world, while Paul takes comfort in his own Blessed Rita, a prostitute from Quezon. But even she cannot protect them from the tragedy that is about to unfold. In this darkly funny novel about life on the margins of society, Dutch sensation Tommy Wieringa asks what happens to those left behind. Trade Review‘A tale of people who have been left behind because they are not going anywhere, told with bitter humour … The Blessed Rita reveals just how much we have in common.’ -- David Mills * The Sunday Times *‘Delivered with style and humour.’ -- Harry Strawson * Literary Review *‘This book is, to get to the bare necessities, a joy … make sure you read this book… a masterful, humane, not at all heavy, account of lives lived with quiet desperation and an even quieter joy.’ -- Joe Horgan * Irish Examiner *‘Tommy Weiringa paints a compelling portrait of marginalised society.’ -- Lucy Popescu * The Tablet *‘This novel full of autobiographic humus sizzles with ambition … In The Blessed Rita, Wieringa quietly revels in scenes struck sweetly with an exuberance of colour, deposited with careless writer’s joy and grimly comedic tones. He writes like a fearless showboat in a bar, tethering his listeners to his every word … From these miniscule, damaged lives, Tommy extracts a very sensual book, drunk with language and written with a stylistic precision you will envy.’ FOUR STARS * De Volksrant *‘With a good eye for remarkable stories and sharp dialogues, Wieringa sketches an inky black portrait of a meagre emotional life and a perverse small-town culture.’ * De Standaard *‘A tragicomedy of Joe Speedboat-calibre, on village souls lost amidst the modern times and the poignant clumsiness of male friendships. A wonderful novel.’ * VPRO Gids *‘It is his best book, his master hand has developed itself again. The depth is deeper, the views stretch farther. His style approaches perfection, or surpasses it. His use of figurative language is economical. It’s used only when it’s dead-on.’ FIVE STARS * Algemeen Dagblad *‘The masterful The Blessed Rita is at once both The Great Twente Novel and completely European … The Blessed Rita tells the story of a shrinking life in a shrinking region — but Wieringa’s version of that familiar story feels like the ultimate one. Because: it’s described in flawless bulls-eyes of sentences that are rich in metaphor and symbolism, but which don’t cross over into melodrama. Precisely for that reason, they evoke associations with the style of Wieringa’s literary role model James Salter … Wieringa displays his full abilities as a storyteller and manages them masterfully … In the end this story is not just about big themes like shrinking regions, xenophobia or the revenge of the man-driven-into-dire-straits, but Wieringa also concerns himself with the people — he brings the big story back down to human proportions. The novels ends with a surprisingly tender and tragic note — Wieringa doesn’t only show it, he lets you feel it.’ FIVE STARS * NRC Handelsblad *‘Wieringa said this novel “cost blood, sweat and tears”, but there is not a single moment in which you feel that four year struggle. The way in which he reconciles the tragedy of the “bumpkins” with a literary tumble in wet spring grass is astonishing. At the same time, when it comes to content, you aren’t left with empty hands: migration is a burning issue, and lives that hopelessly run aground and are beyond saving transcend the ages. Just like this novel.’ FIVE STARS * Het Nieuwsblad *‘Tommy Wieringa demonstrates with The Blessed Rita that he belongs in the pantheon of Dutch literature. Amidst all of the desolation, compassion proves to be the dominant tone … Wieringa’s personal involvement can be felt in everything. Being familiar with the landscapes, the colours and the light, he brings the region stirringly to life … With an equally masterful precision he describes the leaden grey lives of his characters. In a vortex of tragicomic scenes he paints the desolation and the deadlock of life at the edge of the abyss. No one can save these hopeless causes, not even their patron saint Rita. And yet they can count on our sympathy, so convincing is the compassion that Wieringa evokes … More than just the story of a lost man, this is a portrait of a time in which those who can’t keep up, lose out. A lament for those left behind, and an ode to two clumsy men who despite the disappointment keep taking care of one another.’ * De Tijd *‘In terms of style and imagery, Wieringa’s best book … Wieringa’s style in The Blessed Rita is more powerful and concentrated than ever … Though you can hear the writer speaking warily through his characters about the new times, in which the animals have disappeared from the pastures, in which the sick are only interested in their smartphones, it doesn’t wallow in nostalgia. The Blessed Rita is an ode to the Twente region, but above all it is a funny and moving plea for compassion. Compassion for those who are rooted and no longer able to move in a rapidly developing world – the hopeless causes.’ * Trouw *‘Tommy Wieringa writes about his hopeless causes with empathy; he looks at them with old, wise eyes; he does them justice.’ (Book of the Month) * Vrij Nederland *‘The Blessed Rita is a wonderfully beautiful book, even without the plot-driven apotheosis.’ * Telegraaf *‘An ode to the silent ones of the Twente region.’ FOUR STARS * Elsevier *‘With Tommy Wieringa you expect a masterpiece, just as you did with writers like Willem Elsschot. And he never disappoints.’ * De Nieuwsbv, NPO Radio 1 *‘Critical, dark, and profound fiction.’ * Le Monde *‘An elegiac and beautifully written portrayal of a Dutch border village at the coalface of a New Europe, and a haunting tale of a man struggling to find purpose in a rapidly changing world, walking a tightrope between goodness and unresolved rage.’ -- Arnold Zable‘The Blessed Rita is ‘the patroness of hopeless causes, of barren women and women who were unhappily married, as well as butchers and meat traders’. Tommy Wieringa tells an engrossing, sometimes funny, and, at its end frightening, story of the mixed fortunes, virtues, and vices of many of the kinds of people who need her succour. He depicts their lives though changing times, cultures, and political circumstances with insight, humane wisdom, and an eye for detail and ear for tone that is given only to someone whose heart is as lucid as his mind is sharp. He does it in prose that is always simple, yet which becomes poetry so unexpectedly that it takes one’s breath away.’ -- Raimond Gaita‘A strange and interesting novel ... Wieringa’s story of a changing world has its own unnerving power.’ FOUR STARS -- Penelope Debelle * SA Weekend *‘This novel full of autobiographic humus sizzles with ambition ... In The Blessed Rita, Wieringa quietly revels in scenes struck sweetly with an exuberance of colour, deposited with careless writer's joy and grimly comedic tones. He writes like a fearless showboat in a bar, tethering his listeners to his every word ... From these minuscule, damaged lives, Tommy extracts a very sensual book, drunk with language and written with a stylistic precision you will envy.’ FOUR STARS * De Volkskrant *‘It is his best book, his master hand has developed itself again. The depth is deeper, the views stretch farther. His style approaches perfection, or surpasses it. His use of figurative language is economical. It's used only when it’s dead-on.’ FIVE STARS * Algemeen Dagblad *‘Tommy Wieringa is a prolific and respected Dutch writer and this novel shows his gift for observation and detail as well as for prose.’ -- Sam Garrett * The Age *‘The ideas in The Blessed Rita are on the verge of breakthrough. The motifs are so relevant, so contemporary that they’re not quite defined in our societal vocabulary. Yet, Tommy Wieringa’s exploration of them is in no way half-baked … The Blessed Rita is a commendable book worth anyone’s time. Its ideas, you can’t help but think, will only become more relevant, more defined, and more urgent as we realise that people like Paul cannot be forgotten or ignored. It’s a book to take with you as a guide into the future, or one to read as you look back on the past through a melancholic, though cathartic and forgiving lens. The book’s main strength (not at all its only one) is Wieringa’s fluency in an unspoken language. He translates for us those who cannot speak for themselves or who cannot be heard. He can talk to and for anyone, it seems, even those who may not seem worth it.’ -- Remy Greasley * NB *‘I thought the writing was super … it is such a worthwhile narrative. Poetic language, frequent humour and bleak atmosphere make the story thrum with emotion. The translation by Sam Garrett has retained an authentic and particularly Dutch atmosphere, so that the entire reading experience is of quality and depth … The Blessed Rita is literary, engaging and atmospheric. It takes the reader into the heart both of a Dutch community as well as an ordinary man with scalpel sharp precision. I really enjoyed reading it.’ * Linda's Book Bag *‘The Blessed Rita is a compelling portrait of the forgotten, and Tommy Wieringa makes a convincing case for empathy with those living on the margins of society. There is a chilling beauty to many bleak landscapes and this stark portrait of a remote Dutch community, expertly translated by Sam Garrett, reminds us that the same is true in literature … Wieringa’s novel is firmly situated in a rural topography. Sam Garrett has skilfully translated the vernacular of the countryside into simple, concise language, and brilliantly captures Paul’s subtle shifts in tone enabling the reader to sympathise with this flawed character.’ -- Lucy Popescu * BookBlast® Diary *‘Depressing as Paul’s flatland life may sound, The Blessed Rita is often as funny a novel as any Carl Hiaasen and as lyrical as any Cormac McCarthy, those American masters of other endless vistas. But there is also something very much Wieringa’s own in the way he teases out Paul’s descent into the heart of his own darkness … The new Dutch masters may be writers instead of painters who, like Wieringa, haunt us with portraits of people trying to keep breathing even as the waters rise around them.’ -- Jonathan Levi * The Dutch Riveter *‘The book is apparently semi-autobiographical but it is one in which Wieringa imagines a life not lived … Wieringa explores themes of loneliness and connection, of loyalty and ambition … The Blessed Rita finds its centre in a likeable but hopeless main character who it is easy to empathise with. Wieringa perfectly captures the beauty and stagnation of the rural Netherlands and the choices open to the people who stay there. At times bleakly comic, and at times dark and truthful, this is another tough novel from Wieringa that is well worth the effort.’ -- Robert Goodman * Pile by the Bed *‘This short but wonderful novel … is a boon for the reader. The book is not driven by the events and occurrences, which do indeed feature, but more by the author’s mastery. This book is, to get to the bare necessities, a joy … Tommy Wieringa has quite the illustrious reputation and with this novel it is really not hard to see why. This is a masterful, humane, not at all heavy, account of lives lived with a quiet desperation and an even quieter joy … If reviews could be condensed with anything approaching such wonderful simplicity this one would just say: make sure you read this book.’ -- Joe Horgan * Irish Examiner *‘I loved how the author was unafraid to take the mood of the novel into difficult / unpopular places with themes of familial obligation, rejection of sexual compromise, fanatical loyalty to flawed friends, and encroaching mental collapse. I’ve always been interested in characters who are illogically wedded to a place or a situation, and the self-loathing, frank internal monologues of Paul were refreshingly real and believable, even if it made for glum reading at times.’ * The Dutch Are Weeping *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 *

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Book Synopsis"Extraordinary and unforgettable characters" WORLD LITERATURE TODAY"Rich and many layered . . . fascinating" CHRISTOPHER MOSELEYWhen Baroness Valtraute von Bruegen's officer husband's body is severed in two she is delighted to find that the lower half has been sewn onto the upper body of the humble local Captain Ulste. She conceives a child only to see the return of her husband in one piece. What happens next is both indescribably funny and darkly painful. A beautifully written Surrealist novel-cum-political allegory, Flesh-Coloured Dominoes transports the reader between 18th-century Baltic gentry and the narrator's life in the modern world. The connection between the two narratives gradually becomes clear in a mesmerising fantasy of love, lust, and loss as Skijuns creates a work of sublime art that is funny, moving, enlightening and philosophical in equal measure.Translated from the Latvian by Kaija StraumanisTrade ReviewSkujins is a master at personae and a cosmopolitan writer, filling his landscapes with extraordinary and unforgettable characters * World Literature Today *

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Book SynopsisHelen's adoptive brother has killed himself. According to the internet, there are six possible reasons for suicide. But Helen knows better: she knows that six reasons is only shorthand for the abyss. Helen also knows that she alone is qualified to launch a serious investigation into his death, so she purchases a one-way ticket back to Milwaukee, her hometown. There, as she attempts to uncover why someone would choose to die, she will face her estranged family, her brother's few friends, and the overzealous grief counsellor, Chad Lambo; she may also discover what it truly means to be alive.Sorry to Disrupt the Peace is a dark comedy about suicide - and an introduction to a singular new writer.Trade Review'A tremendously moving act of imagination.' Helen Oyeyemi, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours --------- 'Her voice is unflinching, unforgettable, and animated with a restless sense of humor.' Catherine Lacey, Nobody Is Ever Missing --------- 'A beguiling debut: absurdly funny, surprisingly beautiful, and ultimately sad as fuck.' Danielle Dutton, Margaret the First

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Book SynopsisA wife is suspended in a bird cage; a thirteenth-century visionary senses the foreskin of Christ on her tongue: Fleur Jaeggy's gothic imagination knows no limits. Whether telling of mystics, tormented families or famously private writers, Jaeggy's terse, telegraphic writing is always psychologically clear-eyed and deeply moving, always one step ahead, or to the side, of her readers' expectations. In this, her long-awaited return, we read of an 'eerie maleficent calm, a brutal calm', and recognise the timbre of a writer for whom a paradoxical world seethes with quiet violence.Trade Review'A wonderful, brilliant, savage writer.' Susan Sontag -------- 'Fleur Jaeggy's pen is an engraver's needle depicting roots, twigs, and branches of the tree of madness-extraordinary.' Joseph Brodsky -------- 'She has the enviable first glance for people and things, she harbors a mixture of distracted levity and authoritative wisdom.' Ingeborg Bachmann -------- 'Small-scale, intense, and impeccably focused.' New Yorker -------- 'Startling and original-so disturbing and so haunting.' Cathleen Schine, The New York Review Of Books----'Thank the gods and tip the devil for Fleur Jaeggy!' Claire-Louise Bennett, author of Pond

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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 Synopsis`She thought that it was precisely when things get uncomfortable or can't be shown that something interesting comes to light. That is the point of no return, the point that must be reached, the point you reach after crossing the border of what has already been said, what has already been seen. It's cold out there.'This hybrid novel-part research notes, part fictionalised diary, and part travelogue-uses the stories of polar exploration to make sense of the protagonist's own concerns as she comes of age as an artist, a daughter, and a sister to an autistic brother. Conceptual and emotionally compelling, it advances fearlessly into the frozen emotional lacunae of difficult family relationships. Deserving winner of multiple awards upon its Catalan and Spanish publication, Brother in Ice is a richly rewarding journey into the unknown.Trade Review'This is fast, fluid, exciting narrative; random, philosophical, alive, questioning, full of precise set pieces, sensations, regret, emotion, self-doubt, defiance, curiosity and a feel for history, fact and human behaviour . . .Brother in Ice is a living book and one to give your most discerning friends.' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times ---- 'Brother in Ice is actually a culmination of Alicia Kopf's art exhibitions. Prose weaves around line drawings, archival photos and diary entries, creating a style of writing that reassesses the seemingly arid and barren landscapes of frozen climes to instead encompass what Kopf describes as "live beings with voluptuous, nourishing forms".' Alexandra Kreese, The Story of Things podcast ---- `In an epistolic, polar update of Melville's Moby-Dick, Alicia Kopf's genre-defying book rises as clear and cold as an Arctic sea, floating with ideas that, like icebergs, are buoyed up by meaning and memory below their surface. This is an icy dissection of actuality and history, a frozen etymology of meaning. Slipping from Catalunya to the Ultima Thule, echoing a rapidly changing environment, Brother in Ice deals in personal retrieval and magical supposition in the whiteness of a disappearing world. In the process, it achieves a fugitive poetry all of its own.' Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan ---- `In another country this book would have changed the course of history.' Enrique Vila-Matas, author of The Illogic of Kassel ---- `As if by sleight of hand, Kopf displays a wide range of emotions before us. Like the Poles, they are constantly shifting, and inevitably epic.' Agustin Fernandez Mallo, author of Nocilla Dream ---- `A unconventional look at a world that makes [Kopf] feel uncomfortable . . . a text in which the feats of polar explorers give way to a central autobiographical story about the equally harsh and arid trips through family relationships and within oneself.' El Pais ---- `Simultaneously serious and light, incidental and yet trascendental.' El Periodico ---- `A book, part essay and part autobiography, that is also a chronicle of a generation stalled in a world without horizons or certainties . . . An unusual book and the deserving winner of the Premi Documenta literary award.' La Vanguardia ----- `A compelling metaphorical journey that compares the struggles and strains of family to polar expeditions, this cleverly written and illustrated novel doesn't flinch from its exploration of coming of age in the modern world.' Note Bene

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Book SynopsisSantiago, Chile. The city is covered in ash. Three children of ex-militants are facing a past they can neither remember nor forget. Felipe sees dead bodies on every corner of the city, counting them up in an obsessive quest to square these figures with the official death toll. He is searching for the perfect zero, a life with no remainder. Iquela and Paloma, too, are searching for a way to live on. When the body of Paloma's mother is lost in transit, the three take a hearse and a bottle of pisco up the cordillera for a road trip with a difference.Intense, intelligent, and extraordinarily sensitive to the shape and weight of words, this remarkable debut presents a new way to count the cost of a pain that stretches across generations.Trade Review`The Remainder controls a remarkable range of registers (it is, by turns, lyrical, elegiac, sensual, funny, tragic) ... The author of The Remainder, like her characters, is obsessed with words, those `cracks in language' that house our particular ways of understanding things; thanks, among other things, to the meticulous, obsessive attention to detail of her language, this novel is sure to endure.' Edmundo Paz Soldan, author and professor of Latin American literature at Cornell University`A triumphant debut.' Antonio Skarmeta, El Mercurio ---- `The Remainder redefines the political novel ... The voices in The Remainder are some of the most powerful to have come out of Latin America in the last year.' Barbara Perez, `Granta en Espanol, 5 years later',Instrucciones de Uso ---- `A Chilean road trip reveals new ways to think about historical memory.' Alba Lara, Iowa Literaria ---- `A fundamental book about what it means to mourn the past, about the remainders of a history that refuses to be forgotten. This is the debut we all wish we had written. A spirited, brave, urgent book, capable of weaving the political and the poetic.' Carlos Fonseca ---- `One of the best publications of 2015.' Patricia Espinosa, Las Ultimas Noticias ---- `[a] darkly comic road trip ... [Trabucco-Zeran's] spring-heeled prose moves lightly from lyrical to demotic, bawdy to elegiac.' The Spectator ---- 'intelligent and immersive ... elegaic' TLS ---- 'In a notable translation by Sophie Hughes, Zeran's lyricism and eye for detail shine on the page ... There is plenty to commend in the book's intentions, and in its elegiac ambitions.' The Irish Times ---- `[The Remainder] tells us ... everything about what it is like to grow up in the shadow of other people's unhappiness.' The Big Issue ---- `Striking ... rendered with impressive fluidity.' Katie Da Cunha Lewin,The White Review ---- `[a] darkly comic road trip ... [Trabucco-Zeran's] spring-heeled prose moves lightly from lyrical to demotic, bawdy to elegiac.' The Spectator ---- 'intelligent and immersive ... elegaic' TLS ----'In a notable translation by Sophie Hughes, Zeran's lyricism and eye for detail shine on the page ... There is plenty to commend in the book's intentions, and in its elegiac ambitions.' The Irish Times ---- `[The Remainder] tells us ... everything about what it is like to grow up in the shadow of other people's unhappiness.' The Big Issue ---- `Sharp and colourful, contrasting well with her characters' furious attempts to come to terms with the past ... The Remainder is well translated, stimulating and grapples skilfully with a complex subject.' Michael Eaude, Literary Review----`Thanatofiction at its best and a debut that leaves the reader wanting more.' Kirkus Reviews

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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 SynopsisAn eccentric novelist decides to go back to basics on his journey of self- improvement: he will strip out the literary aspect of his writing and simply improve his handwriting. The novelist begins to keep a notebook of handwriting exercises, hoping that if he is able to improve his penmanship, his personal character will also improve. What begins as a mere physical exercise becomes involuntarily coloured by humorous reflections and tender anecdotes about living, writing, and the sense - and nonsense - of existence. The first book by Mario Levrero to be translated into English, Empty Words is the perfect introduction to a major author and a significant point of reference in Latin American writing today.Trade Review`I half-wondered if Empty Words was his shot at Thomas Bernhard; in particular, the Austrian’s 1982 novel Concrete, about another sickly procrastinator blaming all and sundry for his inability to finish a book, although Levrero – at least on this evidence – feels the sunnier writer, relishing the mundane comedy of household dynamics as much as more cosmic jokes of existence. [...] As a calling card for Levrero’s talent, it’s certainly enticing.’ Anthony Cummins, The Guardian ----`Levrero became a cult figure in his native Uruguay, and after reading this book it’s easy to see why.’ David Hebblethwaite, Splice Magazine ----`An eccentric, funny, and original novel: philosophical but playful, short but obsessive, ironic but desperate, and theoretical but intimate.' Dana Spiotta ----`A lighthearted wisdom beats in every sentence of Empty Words, a little masterpiece by Mario Levrero, who is, to me, one of the funniest and most influential writers of recent times. This book might change your life, or at least your handwriting.' Alejandro Zambra ----Praise for Mario Levrero: ----`We are all his children.' Alvaro Enrigue ----`Levrero is Kafka's `everyday' flip side, a shadow of Camus with a comical take.' El Pais ----`Style and imagination like Levrero's are rare in Spanish-language literature.' Antonio Munoz Molina ----`Mario Levrero is a genius.' Enrique Fogwill ----`Levrero is an author who challenges the canonical idea of Latin American literature. If you really want to complete the puzzle of our tradition, you must read him.' Juan Pablo Villalobos ----Granta ----`Mario Levrero is the great discovery of the century for Latin American literature.' Revista Ñ

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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 SynopsisAs clear and relentless as the cold air, Love unfolds over one winter's evening. Single mother Vibeke and her son Jon have just moved to a small, remote town in the north of Norway. Tomorrow Jon will be nine. As Vibeke gets changed after work, Jon wonders what surprises his mother has prepared for him. He leaves the house certain she will make him a cake. But preoccupied with concerns of her own, she too ventures out. Inextricably linked yet desperately at odds, mother and son make their lonely ways through the unforgiving night. Beautifully translated into English by Martin Aitken, this edition is the twenty-eighth international publication of Love. Hanne Orstavik's astonishing grasp of human fragility and her economy of form power this acknowledged masterpiece of Norwegian literature.Trade Review`Love is Hanne Orstavik's strongest book.' Karl Ove Knausgaard ----'An achingly sad, unsentimental story . . . For a short novel that spans only a few hours in time . . . Orstavik brings us remarkably close to both her characters, shifting effortlessly between them in stark, lucid prose.' Sarah Gilmartin, Irish Times----`[I]n Love, the closeness of the perspectives, the cramming of them together, as if the mother and son are one person, and yet clearly not, feels less about narrative, and more about the limitations of love. We think we know another person, we feel settled in another person, and yet, perhaps every other consciousness is entirely a mystery. That's the power of this particular book. The tiny emotional and atmospheric shifts are often barely perceptible, and yet they add up to much more.' Anita Felicelli, Los Angeles Review of Books ----`Orstavik's mastery of perspective and clean, crackling sentences prevent sentimentality or sensationalism from trailing this story of a woman and her accidentally untended child. Both of them long for love, but the desire lines of the book are beautifully crooked. Jon wants his mother, and to be let in out of the cold...the cold that seems a character throughout this excellent novel of near misses.' Claire Vaye Watkins, New York Times----`[A] haunting masterpiece... The deceptively simple novel is slow-burning, placing each character into situations associated with horror-entering an unfamiliar house, accepting a ride from a stranger-and the result is a magnificent tale.' Publishers Weekly, starred review ----`Prizewinning Norwegian Orstavik follows the parallel courses of a single mother and her 8-year-old son during a night that moves unrelentingly toward tragedy... A nightmarish sense of impending doom hangs over these carefully detailed, tightly controlled pages... icy cold to the core.' Kirkus Reviews ----`[A] creeping sense of unease is racheted up by the cool, lucid prose and how the paragraphs shift between mother and son, clarifying how close they should be and how close they aren't... Multi-award winner Orstavik offers an unsettling read that most will enjoy.' Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal ----`Love can change everything. And it does in this edgy, elegiac and beautifully written novel...What you think will happen doesn't-and what does breaks your heart.' Kerri Arsenault, Oprah.com ----`What was so striking to me about this slim novel was how quiet and circumspect it was given the emotional gut punch it delivered. `Deceptive' is right, sneaky even, and at the risk of falling into the trap of stereotyping Norwegian lit, the power of quietly mushrooming foreboding is strong with Orstavik. As I happen to be flying over the dark and snowy north of Norway as I write this, looking out my window at the icy fjords below, I feel the creep, even at 35,000 feet.' M. Bartley Seigel, Words Without Borders ---- `Love is a beautiful novella of beguiling simplicity, and Martin Aitken's translation has brought it over into an English that is both familiar and alien.' Erik Noonan, Asymptote Journal -----`Love is a deep and vibrantly alive novel... beautifully devastating... This is not your typical love story but rather the sharp-edged account of a boy whose need for attention from his heedless mother is heartfelt and full of yearning.' Lori Feathers, World Literature Today ----`Love is effectively atmospheric... neatly textured with its back and forths... A disturbing little read, nicely, darkly told.'Michael Orthofer, The Complete Review ----`In Hanne Orstavik's Love , the equilibrium between a tense, disquieting plot and a gently experimental binary structure sustain the reader's attention and awe from beginning to end. The aerial beauty of Martin Aitken's translation contributes to make the novel a successful rarity: a book that is at the same time a thriller and a dense literary object. "Perfect" may be the proper adjective to describe it.' National Book Foundation, 2018 Translated Literature Finalist ----`Praise from Booksellers': `Hanne Orstavik crafts an atmosphere of unease out of the ordinary. An old man giving a young boy a pair of skates, a man inviting a woman over for coffee, in Orstavik's hands these seemingly harmless moments become filled with an underlying sense of dread. Longing and loneliness fill these pages, while always there is a sense of the impossibility of real understanding and connection between people. Orstavik is a true observer of human nature and Love is her masterpiece.'Emily Ballaine, Green Apple Books on the Park ---- `Point of view works like a spot of living light in this slender book, with deft perspective shifts occurring between Vibeke, a hardworking, distracted mother, and Jon, her curious, lonely young son, on nearly every page. Mother and son are each on a separate journey, but the reader watches their whole shared life, as memories are folded expertly between breaths in Orstavik's urgent, visually vivid present tense--what a lovely shape. Nothing is wasted. And I'm astonished by the precision and poetry of Martin Aitken's translation from the Norwegian.' Gina Balibrera, Literati Bookstore ---- `Written with a precise elegance...builds to an ending as lonely as our characters. Beautiful and affecting, no word is wasted in this perfect winter read.' Kelsey Westenberg, Pilsen Community Books ----`[Q]uite simply, exceptional...If this book is an indication of Orstavik's talent, then translations of the rest of her work can't come soon enough... [Love] is a short, suspenseful winter's tale crafted in beautifully spare and precise prose. It can be read in a few hours but its singular effects haunt the reader for a long time afterward.' Malcolm Forbes, Star Tribune ----`Love's impeccable English translation by Martin Aitken reflects the economy and self-possession of Nordic prose. Its seamless narration, drawn in counterpoint, reverberates beyond the eerie landscape, lingering in the mind...Love, like love, yields its own gifts.' Fani Papageorgiou, Hyperallergic ----`[Love is] driven home for American readers thanks, in large part, to the translation, by Martin Aitkin. Aitkin's translation is economic, delicate, and pliant, making the narrative shifts between Vibeke and Jon seem effortless, dreamlike.' Brianne Baker, Entropy ---- `Wondrous, uncanny... an innovative yet unassuming structure... candid, glinting prose... This is the brilliance of Orstavik's technique: that we, as readers, can see how often Jon and Vibeke's thoughts converge, while they are each left blindly to await salvation.' Will Harrison, The Hudson Review ----`[Love] is a ruthless analysis of the formal structure of dread-and while the original is two decades old now, the English translation could not have arrived at a more appropriate moment.' Nicholas Dames, Public Books ---- `In this swift, elegantly constructed novel, Hanne Orstavik masterfully conveys a sense of entwined dread and longing that doesn't let up for a second. From the opening page to the powerfully moving finale, this tale of a mother and son is riveting. The characters' inner lives are illumined by a beautiful eeriness, and the translation's precision and clarity do justice to the novel's intensities. Read it: it'll bat around your brain for a long time afterward.' Martha Cooley ----`Love is hard, clear, merciless, and utterly compelling - a prism of the many daily ways we miss each other.'- Rebecca Dinerstein ---- `[Orstavik] gives nothing away for free, there is no overdriven emotion, no sentimentality nor pandering to her public. . . . But thanks to a language rich in its precision, with no loss of simplicity, it becomes an experience to follow her to her conclusion. One knows that one has read something substantial which one would not wish to be without.' Dagbladet ----`Love explores the insurmountable distance between people, the elementary impenetrability of them, and tells us about the difficulty of reading the signals of others. In short, dry sentences, Orstavik relates all the postponed, the possibilities that hang over our lives.'Avant-critiques ---- `Once in a while, there comes a book that takes you by surprise. An unassuming, low-key, seemingly ordinary novel which turns into an experience that makes you fully understand why you love reading so much. ... Orstavik's writing is impeccable, perfect, as haunting as the beauty of her homeland...[Love] will leave you speechless, the way a well-written novella has to do..this one of the most beautiful books I've read this year.' Amalia Gavea, The Opinionated Reader----`As is often the case, sobriety is the condition of emotion: Hanne Orstavik has perfectly put into practice this principle to offer a beautiful novel simple and subtle, meditative and moving.'A.N., L'Humanite ----`Orstavik invites the readers into her two characters' innermost thoughts, seamlessly switching back and forth between their perspectives- often within the same paragraph. Their stories unfold breathlessly close together on the page, suggesting the strong link between mother and son that Vibeke's actions betray.... a creeping sense of tragedy brews within the story...Though Love is only one hundred and twenty-five pages, its careful craft and beautiful details make it worth savoring-right to its haunting but inevitable conclusion.' Samantha Aper, Zyzzyva ----`What could be a simple family story is instead filled with foreboding and anxiety, showcasing the marvels and dangers pulsating just below the surface in our everyday lives. Longing and hopefulness fills these brief pages, leaving readers with a sense of wonder for the average: how a day can be so filled with newness and potential, with menace and tragedy.' Laura Farmer, The Gazette ---- `Hanne Orstavik's exquisite Love, so elemental in its materials and technique, embodies a profound recognition - namely that every search for clarity and connection must proceed through the full awareness of what constrains us.' Ron Slate, On The Seawall ----`From the first page, Orstavik's understated prose and sparse dialogue trace a relationship between mother and son that is as dry and powdery as Jon's failed snowballs. As the novel flits effortlessly between these two points of view, the reader is swept up in two separate egos, each on a muted quest for the human connections they are unable to accept from each other....Martin Aitken is to be applauded for so conscientiously bringing this soft-spoken, full-hearted novel into the English language.' The Arkansas International ----`Love is a book that uses sophisticated literary techniques to harrow readers and keep us in a state of trepidation (and confusion) on these points, right up until its final pages, breathlessly uncertain of the outcome.' - Abe Nemon, The Old Book Appreciator ---`The effect of Orstavik's narrative, alternating abruptly between Jon's story and that of his mother, is beautifully devastating. The prose (wonderfully translated) and pacing set a tone of foreboding tension and impending doom. A short, but very deep, and vibrantly alive novel.' Lori, Interabang Books ----`Love is a book that uses sophisticated literary techniques to harrow readers and keep us in a state of trepidation (and confusion) on these points, right up until its final pages, breathlessly uncertain of the outcome.'The Old Book Appreciator ----`Orstavik reminds us in this novel that love can be a dreadful thing too - when we love we trust, we assume all will be well continue as it always has. A child's love is unquestioning and innocently trusting. Orstavik understands the evil that lies in the betrayal of that - however accidental or merely thoughtless that betrayal is.' Heavenali ----`Vibeke...opens up so many difficult questions about love, about motherhood, about empathy, and also, potentially, what it means when we "like" a fictional character in a novel and when we "hate" them, and why we like some characters and not others, and whether we tend to dislike certain types of characters more than others, and what that might mean.'Strange Bookfellows ----`[Love is] a remarkable novel that will linger long after.'SF Gate ----`[T]here is an inescapable and escalating sense of anxiety as the story unfolds... In many ways Love seems to be taking place within a threshold, an in-between time, a twilight & dawnlight moment that may or may not be completely real... [A] dreamlike adventure... poised at the brink of a looming tragedy.' Michelle Bailat-Jones, Necessary Fiction ----`It is rare to read a novel where the mundane feels so thrilling...The emotional tension Hanne Orstavik created in Love is what makes this a standout read. Martin Aitken was able to provide a brilliant translation from the Norwegian and I can see myself dipping into this one again and again.'Michael, Knowledge Lost ----`As one reads this short but compelling novel, the absence of love, or of love expressed dominates every page.'Book Word

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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 Synopsis

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