May 23, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

International Booker Prize Winner 2023

The winner of the International Booker Prize 2023 has been announced tonight in London.
Here are the six books on the shortlist, that were under consideration for the prize.

International Booker Prize shortlist 2023

The winner is the Bulgarian novel Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov translated by Angela Rodel.

Blurb

Winner of the International Booker Prize 2023

A ‘clinic for the past’ offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time.

An unnamed narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to scents, and even afternoon light. But as the rooms become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a ‘time shelter’, hoping to escape the horrors of modern life – a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present.

Intricately crafted, and eloquently translated by Angela Rodel, Time Shelter cements Georgi Gospodinov’s reputation as one of the indispensable writers of our times, and a major voice in international literature.

Judges’ Verdict

Here’s what the judges had to say about the winning novel:

‘Our winner, Time Shelter, is a brilliant novel, full of irony and melancholy. It is a profound work that deals with a very contemporary question: What happens to us when our memories disappear? Georgi Gospodinov succeeds marvellously in dealing with both individual and collective destinies and it is this complex balance between the intimate and the universal that convinced and touched us.

‘In scenes that are burlesque as well as heartbreaking, he questions the way in which our memory is the cement of our identity and our intimate narrative. But it is also a great novel about Europe, a continent in need of a future, where the past is reinvented, and nostalgia is a poison. It offers us a perspective on the destiny of countries like Bulgaria, which have found themselves at the heart of the ideological conflict between the West and the communist world.

‘It is a novel that invites reflection and vigilance as much as it moves us, because the language – sensitive and precise – manages to capture, in a Proustian vein, the extreme fragility of the past. And it mixes, in its very form, a great modernity with references to the major texts of European literature, notably through the character of Gaustine, an emanation from a world on the verge of extinction.

‘The translator, Angela Rodel, has succeeded brilliantly in rendering this style and language, rich in references and deeply free.

‘The past is only ever a story that is told. And not all storytellers have the talent of Georgi Gospodinov and Angela Rodel.’

Time Shelter wasn’t on my radar, but I may have to consider it now.

I have read and really enjoyed Still Born by Mexican author Guadalupe Nettel and I am currently reading Whale by South-Korean author Cheon Myeong-kwan and I’m planning to read Boulder by Catalan author Eva Baltasar.

Have you read any from the shortlist? Any thoughts on Time Shelter?

Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia tr. Zoë Perry

Charco Press Brazilian Literature novella Brazilian author, Ana Paula Maia’s Of Cattle and Men, was an interesting and confronting story that in parts was hyper realistic in a visceral way, and fable-like in other ways. It is the fourth book I’ve read this year from the Charco Press Bundle 2023.

Set in a place where there is a one-man owned slaughter-house, not far away a hamburger processing plant, the author creates a small world that concerns men and their relationship to meat and their relationship to the beings who provide it.

Two enclosures, one for cattle and one for men, standing side by side. Sometimes the smell is familiar. Only the voices on one side and the mooing on the other distinguish the men from the ruminants.

Humanity has been able to consume meat in part because they are separated from the process of how to turn something sentient into something edible.

Man’s Need for Ritual

Here, we meet Edgar Wilson, stun operator, who has ritualised his occupation and believes that it has an effect on the animal.

Edgar picks up the mallet. The steer comes up close to him. Edgar looks into the animal’s eyes and caresses its forehead. The cow stomps one hoof, wags its tail and snorts. Edgar shushes the animal and its movements slow. There is something about this shushing that makes the cattle drowsy, it establishes a mutual trust. An intimate connection. With his thumb smeared in lime, Edgar Wilson makes the sign of the cross between the ruminant’s eyes and takes two steps back. This is his ritual as a stun operator.

He has a dark history and holds little compassion for men who are carelessly cruel. It brings out his own.

Milo decides to keep quiet. He knows Edgar Wilson’s loyalty, his methods, and he knows that Zeca really was useless. No one had reported him missing, and if anybody came looking for the boy, he would simply say he never showed up for work again. That he doesn’t know where he’s gone off to. Just as no one questions death in the slaughterhouse, the death of Zeca, whose rational faculties were on par with the ruminants, would surely be ignored. Senhor Milo knows cattlemen, he’s cut from the same cloth. No one goes unpunished. They’re men of cattle and blood.

Recently the animals waiting in the holding area have become unsettled and strange, unexplained happenings have been occurring. The men stay up into the night to investigate and try to find the suspected predator that is disturbing the animals and worse.

How Language Eviscerates and/or Exposes

I thought this novella was quite incredible and it evoked all kinds of memories and thoughts, that may not be like many other readers.

Firstly, the realism of the slaughter house. Although this novel concerns what seems like a small scale operation, the attention to detail in its execution and the evocation of all the senses in that environment immediately reminded me of memories I would rather forget.

When I was a university student, one summer I needed to find a job allied to the agricultural industry. I wrote to a family friend who was a ‘stock agent’ asking if he knew of an opportunity. He suggested a “freezing works” (an interesting choice of name used in New Zealand and Australia to describe a slaughterhouse at which animal carcasses are frozen for export) and so I began my summer working in this enterprise’s pay office, transferring data from daily timesheets into a ledger that would eventually be input into a computer to generate their pay. Far from the action, except that one of my roles was to go and collect those time sheets from the different departments. And that is where and how, I witnessed, with every one of my senses, everything.

Benevolent Bovines and Other Sentient Beings

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Secondly, the question of what an animal intuits and feels. Being raised on a 1,600 acre sheep and cattle farm, I can acknowledge that as humans, we are conditioned to accept certain realities and often made to participate in them, until the age of free will. Within childhood, in my case, we occasionally had access to a ‘farm animal’ as a pet – the relationship building that can occur between the human and the animal is undeniable, but equally, not every human will allow that relationship to occur.

Our pet lambs (after the annual school pet day) were put back into the flock; my pet calf, I rescued from one fate (slaughter), to have her destined for another (to become the ‘house cow’), providing daily milk to the family; she could therefore keep her offspring for six months. There was on occasion, an attempt to ‘mother’ one newborn (orphan) onto another, an act that could result in the false mother killing the strange newborn, despite it being dressed in the skin of her own dead lamb.

There is indeed a knowing.

For a few moments, Edgar Wilson yields to the late afternoon sun that has not yet fully set, but that is rushing headlong into a moonless, starless night. He knows how to listen in silence, even when others are just sighing or snorting. Life in the country has made him like the ruminants, and being a cattleman, he is able to strike a perfect balance between the fears of irrational beings and the abominable reverie of those who dominate them. He sinks two fingers into the paint can and marks the foreheads of the four cornered cows.

In Of Cattle and Men, Ana Paula Maia shows man’s inhumanity to man and his denial that an other meat-producing species might have awareness, consciousness or feeling. So the men are confused by what is occurring and they look only towards what they know, that which man is capable of; therefore they suspect other men, each other. They disbelieve what is in front of them, what they see.

Because what if those animals had agency?

Certainly not my usual kind of read, but I read this novella in one sitting, intrigued by the premise and captivated by the writing. Brilliantly portrayed, evocative of place and confronting to humanity’s blindness, I’d definitely read more by Ana Paula Maia.

Ana Paula Maia, Author

Ana Paula Maia (Brazil, 1977) is an author and scriptwriter and has published several novels, including O habitante das falhas subterráneas (2003), De gados e homens (2013), and the trilogy A saga dos brudos, comprising Entre rinhas de cachorros e porcos abatidos (2009), O trabalho sujo dos outros (2009) and Carvão animal (2011). Her novel A guerra dos bastardos (2007) won praise in Germany as among the best foreign detective fiction.

As a scriptwriter she has worked on a wide range of projects for television, cinema and theatre. She won the São Paulo de Literatura Prize for Best Novel of the Year two years in a row: in 2018 for her novel Assim na Terra como embaixo da Terra, and in 2019 for Enterre Seus Mortos.

May 8, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel tr. Rosalind Harvey

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023, Still Born is the fourth novel by Mexican writer Guadalupe Nettel, and one that stood out for me to read. It was a book that once I turned the very first page, I was unable to put it down. A fiercely compelling narrative around a highly emotional subject, told in a neutral linguistic style that demands attention.

To Be or Not to Be

The story covers a short period in the lives of two independent and career-driven women, Laura and Alina, friends who have initially declared they do not wish to have children.

My friends, for instance, could be divided into two groups of equal size: those who considered relinquishing their freedom and sacrificing themselves for the sake of the species, and those who were prepared to accept the disgrace heaped on them by society and family as long as they could preserve their autonomy. Each one justified their position with arguments of substance. Naturally, I got along better with the second group, which included Alina.

Mexican literature Later, Laura, to ensure pregnancy doesn’t occur accidentally, takes the drastic measure of having her tubes tied, forever removing that risk.

It’s not that kids annoy me altogether. I might even find it entertaining watching them play in the park or tearing each other apart over some toy in the sandpit. They are living examples of how we would be as humans if the rules of etiquette and civility did not exist.

Alina changes her mind, now in a committed relationship, she becomes pregnant.

What follows each of these decisions is not what either woman expects.

Of Fledglings and Changelings

Photo by Kati Tuomaala on Pexels.com

Laura finds herself increasingly involved with the care and in the company of her depressed neighbour’s son, surprised by the awakening of a protective and nurturing aspect.

Alina is given all kinds of dire expectations from medical specialists who pronounce on her unborn baby, a genetic condition they say will not allow it to live. This causes her and her partner great distress, without reckoning on the will of a tiny life-form that desires against all prediction and preparation otherwise – to exist.

There is a word to describe someone who loses their spouse, and a word for children who are left without parents. There is no word, however, for a parent who loses their child.

The descriptions of the medical encounters are delivered in such a black and white, scientific manner, that we feel profoundly that which is unspoken; the confusion and emotional turmoil of two people who should be feeling ecstatic, being crushed by words delivered as if they were already true. Devastation. Probabilities delivered as facts. In hindsight, lies.

The style of language employed by the writer, in mimicry to the attitudes of the medical staff is neutral, impersonal. Presented as objective, it avoids any personal opinion or emotion. Doctors. Highly trained in precise linguistic delivery, the reader experiences acutely how inhumane it is.

The narrative is so straightforwardly delivered and was so familiar to something I have experienced first-hand, that it felt like I was reading nonfiction. I am sure that any woman who has spent weeks in a post-natal ward will read this and feel a similar sense of deja-vu. I am sure there must be a personal experience(s) wrapped behind this text somewhere.

Brood Parasites

La hija unica Mexican literary fiction Meanwhile, outside Laura’s apartment a pair of pigeons with two eggs in their nest (a refuge she tried to destroy without success), appear to have been subject to a brood parasite.

Brood parasitic birds such as the cuckoo, lay their eggs in the nests of others, sparing themselves the inconvenience of rearing their own young.

Alina too brings in a young woman as a nanny to help with the needs of her newborn daughter, a woman whose role at times usurps the natural mother, giving rise to both appreciation and resentment.

It is a story of the complexity of birthing and raising offspring and the unconventionality that certain circumstances bring about, that can potentially create hybrid parenting situations, where one steps in for the other. It also highlights the little explored experience of a pregnancy that doesn’t follow expected patterns, that delivers an anomaly, something few imagine or are ever prepared for.

Maternal Instinct & Survival

Choosing Laura as the narrator of the story, one who is often at a distance from the more turbulent and harrowing events that Alina is going through, is another way that the author softens the impact of her experience. We are not close enough to be brought down by it and the urgency of her own situation, from which she is also one step removed, keeps the reader from dwelling too long on any on situation. It is like the maternal, survival instinct. The mother keeps busy and active to avoid the slippery slopes of sadness or despair.

I found this novel stunning, shocking, brilliant and in many ways familiar. It was a riveting read, a visceral encounter of all that surrounds the decision or not to become a mother, a carer and how the most insistent of intentions can mould, evolve and change according to our nature and circumstances.

Highly Recommended.

Guadalupe Nettel, Author

Guadalupe Nettel ©Lisbeth Salas_slice

Guadalupe Nettel was born in Mexico and grew up ‘between Mexico and France’.

She is the author of the international award-winning novels The Body Where I Was Born (2011), After the Winter (2014, Herralde Novel Prize) and Still Born (2020). She has also written three collections of short stories. Nettel’s work has been translated into more than 15 languages and has appeared in publications such as Granta, the White Review, El País, the New York Times, La Repubblica and La Stampa. She currently lives in Mexico City.

Rosalind Harvey is a literary translator and educator from Bristol, now based in Coventry in the West Midlands, UK.

‘Many demands weigh on mothers. They are always compared to an unattainable stereotype, one that has made women feel inadequate. Not to mention those who decide to remain childless, who are rarely represented in literature up to now. To me, Still Born is a novel which affirms female choices and which challenges patriarchal ideas of motherhood and maternal instinct.

‘I would like this novel to help readers realise that human diversity – especially that of children with neurological conditions and women of all kinds – is always beautiful and interesting and that there is no reason to fear or reject it.’ Guadalupe Nettel

May 6, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

The Remains by Margot Glantz tr. Ellen Jones

How to describe this incredible literary masterpiece. A lyrical elegy of tempo rubato.

A Symphony of Reluctant Grief

Translated Allen Jones Mexican Jewish literature A divorced woman, Nora Garcia (a cellist), returns for her deceased ex-husband Juan’s, (a pianist and composer) funeral; back to a Mexican village from her past, through the art and music they played and navigated together.

A lyrical and rhythmic form of elegy that, rather than speak about the person who has passed, we experience something of a past version of that person; they are almost present, seen through the distorted lens of a reluctant, grieving ex. We can almost hear his continuous and relentless explanations to his often-time audience of one.

It felt like listening to a symphony in words, as like with music, thoughts and conversations repeat with slight changes over time.

Revelatory thoughts of the woman who knew a man best, observing the body, imagining the isolation and neglect of a heart, that brought this death about. The incantation going into detail of the functions and dysfunctions of the heart, both as the pump that irrigates the body and the metaphor for feelings of love and neglect.

The heart has impulses that reason doesn’t know.

A Different Kind of Garden Party

El rastro Margot Glantz The novel is set in the present, on the afternoon that the body is displayed in the coffin in a room, and our narrator is a guest like many others, who aren’t sure to whom, they ought to offer condolences. She overhears snippets of conversations, adding to the cacophony of her own reflections.

Its not like death goes around whispering in our ear, though, does it? It just arrives, suddenly, when we least expect it. Silence falls and I move away – he’s right, I think, death doesn’t whisper in our ear, it just arrives, alone, without warning us in advance. I don’t care how simple dying or anything else is for that matter, even if it was that simplicity that made his heart explode, made it shatter into pieces (mine too), yes, life, the absurd wound that is life, yes, it’s true, the heart is only a muscle that irrigates the body, keeping it alive, a muscle that one day fails us.

Bach, Beethoven, Gould & Open Heart Surgery

Photo by Gimmeges on Pexels.com

Scenes and topics of conversation from the past circulate through her mind as she observes all around her. Much of it is about music, about their preferences, their differences told through how revered pianists played the music of Bach, Beethoven and more.

In her grief, she writes intense descriptions of a person talking to her, observing visual elements, lips moving, facial gestures, drifting off and away, out of her own body, hearing nothing of the tedious chatter. Her thoughts range from music, pianists, the genius castrati voices of eighteenth century Italian opera, to the intricacies and origins of open-heart surgery.

Grief arrives unbidden, tears overflow, the intellect refuses it, reprimands her, convinces her she doesn’t care. The body does not comply. She recalls evenings spent listening to great pianists, their heated arguments, wondering if it was due to their diametrically opposed ways of seeing the world.

Though I don’t profess to know too much about the world of classical music or the work of all the names mentioned – the way Glantz takes the reader on a voyage through these subjects, venturing into them in depth, returning again in brief, then jumping into subjects of the heart – was compelling to read, in a mesmerising way.

Her reassessing of her relationship, observing the many people come to farewell the man she doesn’t know whether she loved or despised, while in the throe of grief, bewilderment and loss, showing us how lives intersect and continue to have a presence in the mind of another, long after separation.

“Life is an absurd wound: I think I deserve to be given condolences.”

Margot Glantz, Author (1930- )

Margo Glantz fused Yiddish literature, Mexican culture, and French tradition to create experimental new works of literature.

Margot Glantz Author Mexican A prolific essayist, she is best known for her 1987 autobiography Las genealogías (The Family Tree), which blended her experiences of growing up Jewish in Catholic Mexico with her parents’ immigrant experiences. She also wrote fiction and nonfiction that shed new light on the seventeenth-century nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Among her many honors, she won the Magda Donato Prize for Las genealogías and received a Rockefeller Grant (1996) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1998).

Glantz demonstrates tremendous versatility as an individual and as a writer in the creative ways in which she blends her multiple cultural, religious and literary affinities. She unabashedly resists classification or categorisation of any kind and therefore identifies herself neither as a Jewish writer nor as a composer of personal narrative, nor as a Sor Juanista, the term used to refer to those scholars who devote themselves to the study of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Belonging to no single one of these groups or schools of thought, she is an enigmatic amalgam of all of them. Glantz’s multiplicity is what makes her unique, and failure to recognize any component of her being would diminish her diversity.

Despite being one of the most iconic figures in Latin American literature, her work is hardly known in English. Charco Press now bring her work to a new audience with this excellent translation by Ellen Jones.

April 20, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

International Booker Prize Shortlist 2023

The shortlist of six books for the International Booker Prize has been announced.

The titles are:

Boulder by Eva Baltasar, translated by Julia Sanches
Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, translated by Chi-Young Kim
The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé, translated by Richard Philcox
Standing Heavy by GauZ’, translated by Frank Wynne
Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel
Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel, translated by Rosalind Harvey

The books on this year’s shortlist originated from Bulgaria, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Mexico, South Korea and Spain.

Collectively this group of novels acts as a reflection of the societies they each inhabit, in particular the place and role of women, the effect and deconstruction of colonial legacies and the absurdities if nationalism.

Motherhood as a theme is explored, outside the nuclear family, within modern lives, changing attitudes and age-old challenges. Still Born and Boulder explore women coming to terms with biology and the body, while tending with the severe emotional consequence of their decisions.

You can read book blurbs of the six titles shortlisted in my earlier post here.

I’m planning to read Still Born and being a fan of Maryse Condé, who has said this will be her last novel, I’ll eventually read her novel too. Incredibly, having lost her sight, she has narrated this novel orally through her husband and translator Richard Philcox. It seems somehow apt, given her own research into the life of her grandmother, whom she never knew, also told to her orally and written about in her novel Victoire, My Mother’s Mother.

Are you planning to read any of these titles? Any predictions to win?

March 16, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

International Booker Prize Longlist 2023

The International Booker Prize 2023 longlist has been announced. It features work from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, including three writers whose work appears in English for the first time, and books translated from 11 languages.

This Year’s Judges

The panel of judges is chaired by the prize-winning French-Moroccan novelist, Leïla Slimani. The panel also includes Uilleam Blacker, one of Britain’s leading literary translators from Ukraine; Tan Twan Eng, the Booker-shortlisted Malaysian novelist; Parul Sehgal, staff writer and critic at the New Yorker; and Frederick Studemann, Literary Editor of the Financial Times.

The 2023 judges are looking for the best work of international fiction translated into English, selected from entries published in the UK or Ireland between May 1, 2022 and April 30, 2023. The books, authors and translators the prize celebrates, offer readers a window into the world and the opportunity to experience the lives of people from different cultures.

The shortlist of six books will be announced on Tuesday, April 18. The winning title will be announced at a ceremony in London on May 23, 2023.

The Longlist

International Booker longlist 2023 covers

The list includes one of my favourite authors, Maryse Condé, who was nominated back in 2015 when the prize was for a lifetime of work, I have read eight of her novels and there are more to explore, including her latest below.

The novels that made the list traverse elements of Korean fairy tale, French horror, Caribbean gospel, Indian melodrama, Scandinavian saga – and East Germany’s answer to Trainspotting.

Listed below is a short description of the book and then the judges comment:

Boulder by Eva Baltasar (Spain), translated by Julia Sanches (Queer love and Motherhood, Intense)

Eva Baltasar demonstrates her pre-eminence as a chronicler of queer voices navigating a hostile world – in prose as brittle and beautiful as an ancient saga.

Working as a cook on a merchant ship, a woman comes to know and love Samsa, who gives her the nickname ‘Boulder’. When the couple decide to move to Reykjavik together, Samsa announces that she wants to have a child. She is already 40 and can’t bear to let the opportunity pass her by.

Boulder is less enthused but doesn’t know how to say no – and so finds herself dragged along on a journey that feels as thankless as it is alien. With motherhood changing Samsa into a stranger, Boulder must decide where her priorities lie, and whether her yearning for freedom will trump her yearning for love.

“Boulder is a sensuous, sexy, intense book. Baltasar condenses the sensations and experiences of a dozen more ordinary novels into just over one hundred pages of exhilarating prose. An incisive story of queer love and motherhood that slices open the dilemmas of exchanging independence for intimacy. “

Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan (South Korea), translated by Chi-Young Kim (Epic Adventure-Satire -Fairytale)

An adventure-satire of epic proportions, which sheds new light on the changes Korea experienced in its rapid transition from pre-modern to post-modern society.

Set in a remote village in South Korea, Whale follows the lives of three linked characters: Geumbok, an extremely ambitious woman who has been chasing an indescribable thrill ever since she first saw a whale crest in the ocean; her mute daughter, Chunhui, who communicates with elephants; and a one-eyed woman who controls honeybees with a whistle. A fiction that brims with surprises and wicked humour, from one of the most original voices in South Korea.

“A carnivalesque fairytale that celebrates independence and enterprise, a picaresque quest through Korea’s landscapes and history, Whale is a riot of a book. Cheon Myeong-Kwan’s vivid characters are foolish but wise, awful but endearing, and always irrepressible. This is a hymn to restlessness and self-transformation.”

The Gospel According to the New World by Maryse Condé (Guadeloupe/France), translated by Richard Philcox (Literary fiction -Caribbean influence)

A miracle baby is rumoured to be the child of God. Award-winning Caribbean author Maryse Condé follows his journey in search of his origins and mission.

Baby Pascal is strikingly beautiful, brown in complexion, with grey-green eyes like the sea. But where does he come from? Is he really the child of God? So goes the rumour, and many signs throughout his life will cause this theory to gain ground.

From journey to journey and from one community to another, Pascal sets off in search of his origins, trying to understand the meaning of his mission. Will he be able to change the fate of humanity? And what will the New World Gospel reveal?

“Maryse Condé is one of the greatest Francophone authors and the great voice of the Caribbean. In this book she proves again what a gifted storyteller she is. The narration is lively and fluid, and we feel carried away by this story as we do by the fables of our childhood. She takes liberties, finding references in the Bible as well as in Caribbean myths. The book borrows from the tradition of magic realism and draws us into a world full of colour and life. This is a book that succeeds in mixing humour with poetry, and depth with lightness.”

Standing Heavy by GauZ’ (Ivory Coast), translated by Frank Wynne (French) (Immigrant story – shifting perspectives – Paris)

A unique insight into everything that passes under a security guard’s gaze, which also serves as a searingly witty deconstruction of colonial legacies and capitalist consumption.

Amidst the political bickering of the inhabitants of the Residence for Students from Côte d’Ivoire and the ever-changing landscape of French immigration policy, two generations of Ivoirians attempt to make their way as undocumented workers, taking shifts as security guards at a flour mill. This sharply satirical yet poignant tale draws on the author’s own experiences as an undocumented student in Paris.

“A sharp and satirical take on the legacies of French colonial history and life in Paris today. Told in a fast-paced, and fluently translated, style of shifting perspectives, Standing Heavy carries us through the decades – from the youthful optimism of the decolonisation of the 1960s to the banal realities of daily shift work on the margins of contemporary consumer society – to deliver a fresh perspective on France that is critical, funny and human.”

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria), translated by Angela Rodel (Alzheimers -Memory-Humour)

A ‘clinic for the past’ offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time.

An unnamed narrator is tasked with collecting the flotsam and jetsam of the past, from 1960s furniture and 1940s shirt buttons to scents, and even afternoon light. But as the rooms become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a ‘time shelter’, hoping to escape the horrors of modern life – a development that results in an unexpected conundrum when the past begins to invade the present.

Intricately crafted, and eloquently translated by Angela Rodel, Time Shelter cements Georgi Gospodinov’s reputation as one of the indispensable writers of our times, and a major voice in international literature.

“A wide-ranging, thought-provoking, macabre and humorous novel about nationality, identity and ageing, and about the healing and destructive power of memory. It asks the question: what is our place in 20th century history, when that history seems to be constantly shifting? ‘Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be,’ they say, and this book shows us – in moving, funny and disturbing ways – how and why.”

Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth (Norway), translated by Charlotte Barslund (Dark suspense – Mother-daughter rship)

‘To mother is to murder, or close enough,’ thinks Johanna, as she looks at the spelling of the two words in Norwegian.
Recently widowed, Johanna is back in Oslo after a long absence to prepare for a retrospective of her art. The subject of her work is motherhood and some of her more controversial paintings have brought about a dramatic rift between parent and child.

This new proximity, after decades of acrimonious absence, set both women on edge. Before too long, Johanna finds her mother stalking her thoughts, and herself stalking her mother’s house.

“This is a dark, chilling book. One of its tricks is to rely on a narrator who is an anti-heroine, and who can be annoying because of her narcissism and her malice. That’s what makes her real and what makes us care about her. This novel provides a very fine and cruel understanding of family relationships: the violence of the mother-daughter dynamic, which reminds us of Marguerite Duras; the impossibility of getting to know each other within the same family; family life as a prison of secrets and silence. Vigdis Hjorth manages to create a lot of suspense – a thriller-like tension – and what is amazing is that you never really know whose side you are on.”

Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv by Andrey Kurkov (Ukraine), translated by Reuben Woolley (Russian) (Black humour – magic realism – borderland city)

Shot through with Kurkov’s unique brand of black humour and vodka-fuelled magic realism, Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv is an affectionate portrait of one of the world’s most intriguing cities.

Strange things are afoot in the cosmopolitan city of Lviv, western Ukraine. Seagulls are circling and the air smells salty, though Lviv is a long way from the sea. A ragtag group gathers round a grave – among them an ex-KGB officer and an ageing hippy he used to spy on. Before long, Captain Ryabtsev and Alik Olisevych team up to discover the source of the ‘anomalies’.

Meanwhile, Taras – who makes a living driving kidney-stone patients over cobblestones in his ancient Opel Vectra – is courting Darka, who works nights at a bureau de change despite being allergic to money. The young lovers don’t know it, but their fate depends on two lonely old men, relics of another era, who will stop at nothing to save their city.

“The escapades of Kurkov’s loveable eccentrics provide a frame for an intriguing portrait of Lviv in the 2000s, a melancholy borderland city that finds itself recalling a troubled past as it sits on the cusp of an uncertain future. This is a book full of magic that is always grounded, cosiness that is always on the edge of being unsettled, and dark humour that is always affectionate.”

The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier (France), translated by Daniel Levin Becker (Literary Horror – the marginalised – rural France)

This gripping tale of the violent irruptions of the past into the present, from a major contemporary French writer, is a deft unravelling of the stories we hide from others – and from ourselves.

Buried deep in rural France, little remains of the isolated hamlet of the Three Lone Girls, save a few houses and a curiously assembled quartet: Patrice Bergogne, inheritor of his family’s farm; his wife, Marion; their daughter, Ida; and their neighbour, Christine, an artist.

While Patrice plans a surprise for his wife’s fortieth birthday, inexplicable events start to disrupt the hamlet’s quiet existence: anonymous, menacing letters, an unfamiliar car rolling up the driveway. And as night falls, strangers stalk the houses, unleashing a nightmarish chain of events.

“This impressive and fascinating book reconciles two primal feelings: empathy and dread. It is a very scary book, rooted in the traditions of horror. It is as scary as when we listened to stories about ogres and wolves as children. The writing is formidable. The slow rhythm of the sentences creates tension as much as the situation itself. Mauvignier also describes brilliantly an abandoned rural France where there is a sense of marginalisation and humiliation.”

While We Were Dreaming by Clemens Meyer (Germany), translated by Katy Derbyshire (reunification – shattered dreams – hope)

Startlingly raw and deeply moving, this extraordinary debut novel from one of Germany’s most ambitious writers is full of passion, hope and despair.

Rico, Mark, Paul and Daniel were 13 when the Berlin Wall fell in autumn 1989. Growing up in Leipzig at the time of reunification, they dream of a better life somewhere beyond the brewery quarter. Every night they roam the streets, partying, rioting, running away from their fears, their parents and the future, fighting to exist, killing time. They drink, steal cars, feel wrecked, play it cool, longing for real love and true freedom.

“As walls fall and political systems collapse, a group of youngsters in Leipzig are pitched into a helter-skelter world of partying, violence, drugs, crime and techno music. Energetic, blunt and hard-charging, While We Were Dreaming skillfully captures with pathos and anger the sense of what happens when all the certainties of the grown-up world evaporate and the future is up for grabs. The story of German unification as it did not appear on your TV screen.”

Pyre by Perumal Murugan (India), translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan (Tamil) (Love -Social discrimination – Caste)

Young love is pitted against social discrimination in Perumal Murugan’s powerful and compelling novel, set in the rural Tamil Nadu of 1980s.

Saroja and Kumaresan are in love. And in danger. After a whirlwind romance they marry in a small southern Indian town, before returning to Kumaresan’s family village. But the newlyweds are harbouring a dangerous secret: they belong to different castes, and if the villagers find out they will be in grave peril.

Faced with venom from her mother-in-law, and pointed questions from her new neighbours, Saroja struggles to adjust to a lonely and uncomfortable life. Kumaresan throws himself into building a business, hoping to scrape together enough money for them to start over somewhere new. But as vicious whispers encircle the couple, will their love be enough to keep them safe?

“An intercaste couple elopes, setting in motion a story of terrifying foreboding. Perumal Murugan is a great anatomist of power and, in particular, of the deep, deforming rot of caste hatred and violence. With flashes of fable, his novel tells a story specific and universal: how flammable are fear and the distrust of others.”

Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel (Mexico/France), translated by Rosalind Harvey (Parenting – freedom – relationship compromises)

Guadalupe Nettel’s gripping and insightful fourth novel explores one of life’s most consequential decisions – whether or not to have children.

Alina and Laura are independent and career-driven women in their mid-thirties, neither of whom have built their future around the prospect of a family. Laura has taken the drastic decision to be sterilised, but as time goes by Alina becomes drawn to the idea of becoming a mother.

When complications arise in Alina’s pregnancy and Laura becomes attached to her neighbour’s son, both women are forced to reckon with the complexity of their emotions, in Nettel’s sensitive and surgically precise exploration of maternal ambivalence.

“Two best friends share an aversion to ‘the human shackles’ of motherhood, only to discover that life has other plans. With a twisty, enveloping plot, the novel poses some of the knottiest questions about freedom, disability, and dependence – all in language so blunt it burns.”

A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding by Amanda Svensson (Sweden), translated by Nichola Smalley (Family saga – cult – changelings)

This joyful family saga about free will, forgiveness, and interconnection poses a question: are we free to create our own destinies or are we just part of a system beyond our control?

In October 1989, a set of triplets is born, and it is at this moment their father chooses to reveal his affair. Pandemonium ensues.

Over two decades later, Sebastian is recruited to join a mysterious organisation, where he meets Laura Kadinsky, a patient whose inability to see the world in three dimensions is not the only intriguing thing about her. Meanwhile, Clara has travelled to Easter Island to join a doomsday cult, and the third triplet, Matilda, is in Sweden, trying to escape from the colour blue.

Then, something happens that forces the triplets to reunite. Their mother calls with worrying news: their father has gone missing and she has something to tell them, a 25-year secret that will change all their lives.

“When a set of adult triplets learn that one of them might have been switched in the hospital after their birth, each of them become convinced that they are the changeling. Amanda Svensson’s raucous, sprawling debut takes on the enigmas of our origins, riddles of human consciousness and animal cognition, doomsday cults, and the most bedeviling of mysteries – the minds and choices of our closest intimates.”

Ninth Building by Zou Jingzhi (China), translated by Jeremy Tiang (Cultural Revolution – interconnected stories – shared humanity)

Ninth Building A fascinating collection of vignettes based on the author’s life in China during the Cultural Revolution.

Revisiting his experiences as a boy in Beijing and then as a teenager exiled to the countryside, Zou captures a side of the Cultural Revolution that is seldom talked about – the sheer tedium and waste of young life under the regime, as well as the gallows humour that accompanies such desperate situations.

“A kaleidoscopic and understated collection of interlocking tales of life in an apartment building under the Cultural Revolution – the daily tedium of its inhabitants, lit by brief and tenuous moments of shared humanity.”

March 3, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Céspedes (1952) tr. Ann Goldstein

I absolutely loved reading this, what a discovery! And brilliantly translated by Ann Goldstein.

Transgressive Writing

Italian feminist writing classic 1940s 1950ss Valeria Cossati is a 42 year old Italian working wife, married with two children; one Sunday she is drawn to want to purchase a notebook in a local grocery store, a shop that is only permitted to be open on a Sunday, to sell tobacco. This purchase is her first act of transgression, the shopkeeper will allow it, but insists she hide the notebook in her coat.

The FORBIDDEN NOTEBOOK.

As if tainted by this scurrilous act, the notebook becomes something she must hide, for within its pages, she reveals her innermost thoughts, something she has not shared with anyone for years.

A Drawer Of Her Own, A Name of Her Own

From the first day she has the notebook in her home, she no longer feels safe, her husband, or one of her children might find it. She realises there is no place in her home that is private to her. In front of the family she tells her daughter she disapproves of her having a drawer she keeps locked.

Mirella responded energetically that if she studies so much, it’s because she wants to start work, to be independent, and to leave home as soon as she’s of age: then she’ll be able to keep all her drawers locked without anyone being offended.

Asking why she might want a drawer, at the suggestion that perhaps she too might like to keep a diary, the family laugh at her:

“What would you write, mamma?” said Michele.

Michele, her husband, since his mother died, he has started to call Valeria Mamma, a habit she enjoyed at first but increasingly resents.

Now I see it was a mistake; he was the only person for whom I was Valeria.

In Solitude I Meet Myself, A Stranger

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

She writes late at night or at a time when the family aren’t at home, she wills them to leave (buying them tickets to a football match saying it was a gift from clients), so she can have time with her thoughts on the page.

Through her journal entries we discover that the words she speaks aloud to her family are often the opposite of what she is thinking. She never admits to resting, upholding the image of hard-working mother and wife.

I never confess it. I’m afraid that if I admitted I’d enjoyed even a short rest or some diversion, I would lose the reputation I have of dedicating every second of my time to the family. No one would remember the countless hours I spend in the office or in the kitchen or shopping or mending but only the brief moments I confessed I’d spent reading a book or taking a walk.

She criticizes and judges her daughter’s behaviour. Mirella is almost finished her law degree and starts working part time for a prominent lawyer, she is seeing an older, successful and sophisticated man – still a minor, she is reminded so by her mother – yet in the notebook, Valeria admires the independence her daughter is developing, the confidence she exhibits.

Mirella challenges her mother, when Valeria makes her take dinner to her brother who must have been tired after studying all day, she reminds her that they too have been working all day.

When she returned, she said “That is what disgusts me mamma. You think you’re obliged to serve everyone, starting with me. So, little by little, the others end up believing it. You think that for a woman to have some personal satisfaction, besides those of the house and the kitchen, is a fault, that her job is to serve. I don’t want that, you understand? I don’t want that.” I felt a shiver run down my spine, a cold shiver that I can’t get rid of. Yet I pretended indifference to what she said. I asked her ironically if she wanted to start being a lawyer in her own home.

I Am My Own Worst Enemy

In contrast, the lazy son Riccardo, who wants to go to Argentina, who neglects his studies, who speaks to his girlfriend in an authoritative manner, can do no wrong. When he makes an error of judgement, his parents laugh it off. Valeria is resentful when she realises her son is gaining a form of strength from his girlfriend that she couldn’t give him.

I wonder how – with her meager words, her motionless face – she can have bestowed on him such happy confidence…Michele says it’s always like that: the only thing that can spur a man is love for a woman, the desire to be strong for her, to win her.

Meanwhile, when her daughter displays the strength she yearns for in her son, she will have the opposite reaction.

I had to intervene, as when they were children, but, as then, I had the impression that Mirella was the stronger, and for that reason alone I would have liked to hit her.

The Cage Opens, My Inner Self is Overpowering Me

denial silence inability to express forbidden

Photo by Kat Smith on Pexels.com

The manner in which she writes begins to affect her appearance to others, for it injects an atmosphere of fear into her life, it is as if this activity of daring to write her feelings is highly subversive. For someone usually so cool on the outside, so conformist to what a wife and mother in the 1940’s is perceived to be, the act of writing ignites a disturbing consciousness raising of a deep, inner, feminist desire for expression. Daily, she will explore this on the page, it will morph into an increased awareness, understanding and ultimately change her behaviour.

Her domestic discontent, the suppression of her innermost thoughts, having awakened and found a dangerous outlet, will escape their rigid enclosure and infect everything. She will become at odds with herself.

A Slow Rebellion, A Feminist Awakening

It is compelling and strange, the act of writing begins to have an effect on her relationships at home and at work, it precipitates a kind of mid-life crisis. The stirring up of long suppressed emotions and the witnessing of how a new generation of youth are entering adulthood, awakens a wave of desire and revolt that she both resists and can’t hold back, as her dissatisfaction with her life creates a restlessness that threatens to disrupt and erupt their imperfect equilibrium.

It is a subject explored by Virginia Woolf and others, a subject equally important today, the need for a safe space, time, a notebook – for women to connect to that aspect of themselves that isn’t in service to others, to their inner creativity, expression, joy – to arrive at the place of realising that they too deserve that.

Highly Recommended.

Alba de Céspedes, Author

Alba de Céspedes (1911-1997) was a bestselling Italian-Cuban novelist, poet and screenwriter. The granddaughter of the first President of Cuba, who helped lead Cuba’s fight for independence, she was the daughter of a Cuban diplomat and his Italian wife, raised in Rome, Italy. She kept alive her family’s political commitment, often running afoul of Italy’s Fascist regime.

Married at 15 and a mother by 16, she began her writing career after her divorce at the age of 20. She worked as a journalist throughout the 1930’s while also taking an active part in the Italian partisan struggle and was twice jailed for anti-fascist activities, in 1935 and in 1943 after she had joined a resistance radio program, broadcasting from Bari under the pseudonym Clorinda.

By the 1950s, she was known throughout Italy. For years she wrote a popular advice column, tackling questions about marriage, infidelity and love with meditations on art and philosophy. These columns steered readers toward a modern, more secular morality, one that stressed women’s equality.

After the fall of fascism, she founded the literary journal Mercurio and went on to become one of Italy’s most successful and widely translated authors.

The New York Times’s reviewer called de Céspedes “one of the few distinguished women writers since Colette to grapple effectively with what it is to be a woman.”

Two Sherpas by Sebastián Martínez Daniell tr. Jennifer Croft

Two Sherpas is a wonderful novel where not much happens, but we see inside the minds of two men, one a young man at the beginning of his adulthood and the other who has many more years of experience from which to reflect back on.

Contemplation From Above

wp-1676027658016 They stand at the edge of a crevice looking down on their client, a British climber.

Tourists… thinks the old Sherpa, who isn’t old or, properly speaking, a Sherpa. They always manage to do something, these people – these tourists, he thinks. Then says. With an ambiguous gesture he indicates the void, the ledge where the body of an Englishman lies prone and immobile, and he says:

‘These people…’

And so breaks the silence. If the deafening noise of the wind ravelling over the ridges of the Himalayas can be considered silence.

Over the course of the novel, what the to men say to each other could be written on one page, but instead, the pages contain their thoughts, their pasts, their aspirations, the current predicament.

A Little Known History

Some chapters, most of which are less than one page of text, rather than beginning with just a number, contain a title, for example between thee and five sits the following:

People From the East

Five hundred years prior, a nomadic people with a tradition of seasonal migration across the central Chinese province of Sichuan initiates a process of gradual westerly motion. In exile, they become pariahs: refugees who must seek their new station in the mountains. The locals baptise them according to their cardinal origins. People (pa) from the East (Shar): Sherpas.

These chapters inform us of various historical facts, information that creates context around the two men. We learn how these people came to be called sherpas and how that name was a convenient way to refer to men whom they could use to assist them, without having to acknowledge their humanity.

A chasm between Flavius and Marrullus

Photo by cottonbro studioPexels.com

The young Sherpa is in school and has plans for further study. He is taking a theatre workshop.

It should be understood that climbing licences are a common phenomenon in the Nepalese school system: the Ministry of Education periodically prints supplements so that students who earn their keep as mountain guides can keep up with their classmates.

He will soon play the role of Flavius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The omniscient narrator talks about Flavius and Marullus, co-conspirators against Caesar who are out of touch with the lives and perspectives of the common people, they don’t understand how commoners could support such a man, so they attempt to sabotage their ideas, they drive everyone away.

A Too Often Celebrated History

We also learn of the various expeditions to Mount Everest, of a western ambition to conquer, of casualties, of a hierarchy of importance, one that continues today, long after Caesar’s Roman rule. We read of the loss of lives of local people in avalanches, of suffering families.

The foreigners who reach the summit believe that they have outperformed the species and, at least for an instant, they see themselves as demigods…For them, for the tourists, we are pack animals, the older man would say. Creatures capable of doing with relative ease what for human beings constitutes a feat. They see us as mules, beings with bones structures suited to lugging great weights. They see it as perfectly logical for Sherpas to summit. They ought to think of us as Titans, deities with powers unattainable by mere mortals. But they don’t. When they reach the summit, they’re the ones who are the heroes. It is they who have achieved mountaineering glory, the – so called- miracle of besting, of overcoming themselves.

Mt Everest In effect, the novel itself is like an ascent, a trek that stops periodically to look back, to observe both the reality of current conditions, of local lives, and the persistent effects of imperialism. And then it looks down into the crevice, taking its time to dig deeper into the subject, into the influences that might have caused this dissonance, this treatment of people, this naming of others.

It uses as a reference, European philosophical and theatrical references, plotting them side by side with facts relating to ‘people of the east’, and this present situation, where one from the west lies deep in a crevice, outside his territory, being observed by two from the east.

Silence is a theme that occurs throughout the novel, one we are reminded of, as it repeats in the text, in metaphor and in reality on the mountainside. It is this theme of silence that lead me to follow up reading this novel with Abdulrazak Gurnah’s excellent Admiring Silence (my review here), where he too uses it as a theme for dealing with the effect of prejudice of a colonial flavour.

Career Choices On the Edge

Throughout their time at the edge of the crevice, the younger man has considered and reconsidered his choice of future profession, his thoughts will take from contemplating engineering, to international relations, to playwright, to the line he must speak in the opening of the upcoming play.

“Home, you idle creatures, get you home!”

Two Sherpas is sheer brilliance, a book that had me hooked in anticipation from its opening pages. The intelligent juxtaposition of different literary elements, enthralling peaks that form a narrative, its thought provoking references, motivate the reader to consider their perspective of past events, of language, while maintaining a level of intrigue for the present dire situation. It’s a wake up call.

Cover Art

I want to highlight the simplicity and brilliance of the cover art by Pablo Font, each time I receive one of Charco Press’s books I like to linger on the cover design, this one is an apt depiction of the story. Mesmerising.

Highly Recommended, another great choice of Latin American literature, superbly translated by Jennifer Croft, thanks to Charco Press

Sebastián Martínez Daniell, Author

Sebastián Martínez Daniell was born in Buenos Aires in 1971. He has published 3 novels, Two Sherpas (2018) is his third novel, and is published in English by Charco Press in Feb 2023.

He is one of the co-founders of the independent publisher Entropía and is a literature lecturer at the National University of the Arts in Buenos Aires.

February 16, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

The Art of Losing by Alice Zeniter tr. Frank Wynne

Most Popular Library Book of 2022

The Art of Losing by Alice Zeniter was the winner in 2022 of the Dublin Literary Award, an award where all books nominated are chosen by librarians around the world. As a result, this book went on to become the most borrowed book in Ireland, though it was nominated by the Bibliothèque publique d’information, France.

Three Generations of Family From 1930’s Algeria to Present Day Paris

Spanning three generations, beginning with Ali, born in a mountain village of the Kabyle region of northern Algeria, his son Hamid, also born there but whisked away to France with his parents in 1962, when threats and violence arrived in the village, endangering their lives, to Naima, born in France – the one who seeks answers to questions about who they are, why they had to leave and the stigma that surrounds their identity.

wp-1676027504150 Written in three parts, each is an immersion in that era and life, showing how swiftly families change when they cross into another culture, how foreign they become to their own, how important it is to heal the wounds of the past, to acknowledge, understand and have tolerance for differences; how fear passes down ancestral lines, how connection is important.

The prologue begins on a day near the end of what is to come. Naima has a hangover, a phrase repeats in her mind, her cousin’s words, demanding ‘Have you forgotten where you come from?’ She is preparing for an exhibition, an event that will take her back to her roots in Algeria.

As with many that use a prologue, it is a good idea to reread it after finishing the book, it has little context in the beginning. To be honest, I don’t find its placement at the beginning either helpful or intriguing. The book didn’t need it.

A Kabylian Mountain Village

And so we return to the 1930’s, a better place to begin the story.

In the 1930’s, Ali is a poor adolescent boy from Kabylia. Like most boys in his village, he is hesitating between breaking his back in small family fields dry as sand, tilling the lands of a colonist or some farmer richer than he is, or going down to the city, to Palestro, to work as a labourer.

Photo by Alin Luna on Pexels.com

The family fortune changes, first when their father dies in a rockslide, then when Ali and his brothers are caught in a flash flood and manage to not only save themselves, but trap a floating olive press that almost drowns them. It becomes key in changing their circumstance and before long they buy olive groves of their own.

The wealth of Ali and his brothers is a blessing that rains down upon a wider circle of cousins and friends, binding them into a larger, concentric community. It takes in many of the villagers, who are grateful. But it does not make every one happy. It overthrows the erstwhile supremacy of another family, the Amrouches, who, it is said, were rich back when lions still roamed.

Though it is 100 years since the colonisation of Algeria by the French, life in the mountainous hamlets still runs according to clannish loyalties. Rifts exist between villagers, each sides with their own clan, it brings no hatred or anger, in the early days it is simply a matter of pride, of honour. However, whenever there is a debate or decision, they naturally take opposite views.

A qaid (local leader appointed by the French) warns them of bandits, men who say they are fighting for the independence of the country, said to have been manipulated by Egyptian revolutionaries and Russian communists. When the freedom fighters appear, they will tell them they are not outlaws, ‘we are Kabyles, Muslims, like you’.

The villagers waver between exaltation and fear. Exaltation because everyone here believes that the French have no right to what the mountain lands offer to the Kabyles. Fear because of the word ‘we’, used so casually by this man that no one here has ever seen.

Things hot up and eventually they will be warned against listening to French propaganda and threaten those affiliated with them, (WW2 war veterans) should they continue to claim their war pension. This group become referred to collectively as harki. As will be their descendants, anyone who admits their family left in 1962.

First Generation Transition

Camp de Rivesaltes 1962 France When they flee to France, they are initially housed in the ‘Camp de Rivesaltes‘ and subsequently sent to a social housing community in Normandy. Hamid is the eldest of what will soon become a family of 10 children. He is the go-between, the first to receive the French education, to learn what is expected of them, to encounter racism, to want to escape the entrapment of a family that will always be seen as outsiders.

Perhaps if his childhood had been like Clarisse’s, he would have done something else, he would have taken the time she suggested to to discover what he truly loves, what he wants to devote his days to doing, but he has not been able to shake off entirely the obligation of the utilitarian, the efficient, the concrete, nor has he been able to shake off a notion of the civil service as a grail where he is fortunate to be allowed to work.

At night, as he sets his alarm clock, he sometimes thinks that it takes much longer than he expected to escape, and that if he has not put as much distance between himself and his childhood as he would have liked, the next generation can carry on where he left off. He imagines that what he is really doing in the stifling little room that serves as his office is amassing shares in freedom that he will be able to pass on to his children.

He is free to marry for love, but he carries a legacy of silence into it. Outside the country of his birth, he is not judged like his father was for initially not producing a son. Hamid will raise only girls. One of them, Naima will tell their story.

“Every family is the site of a clash of civilizations.” Pierre Bourdieu, Sociologist, Algeria 1960

A Mystery of Identity and Repercussion for Multiple Generations

On discovering her father and therefore her family are referred to as harki, Naima sets out to discover what exactly this means and what her grandfather and others like him might have done to be so distrusted by their own. Despised at home and unwelcome in the country that has given them citizenship due to their efforts and support during WW2 – and left them stranded thereafter.

The path to acceptance is a lonely road and an almost impossible one without losing one’s identity completely; something must be let go, given up – each successive generation moves further away from their roots, knowing less and less about who they were.

The War That Made Heroes of Some & Traitors of Others

Naima’s investigation into her grandfather Ali’s past, reminds us of others who joined the cause to fight in WW2, of the Battle of Monte Cassino, in Italy. Like men from other colonial countries, he fought, yet as a consequence, for defending France, for being a war veteran, became perceived by many in his own country as a traitor.

As I read about this, I stopped and went to check a few of my own ancestral documents and sure enough, my grandfather too fought in the Battle of Monte Cassino, a raw subject he never talked of, that gave him nightmares for years. He lost his best friend there. In his division alone 1,600 New Zealanders lost their lives. These men were always regarded as heroes.

Looking Back, Healing Wounds, Learning Whose Version of a Story?

The Art of Losing brilliantly portrays these lives over three generations to bring Algerian history alive in a way that is rare to come across. Though there is a depth of research behind it, the pace never slows, in the hands of this storyteller, artfully using her characters, their relationships and circumstances to present an historical perspective and explain why sometimes silence and burying ones pain seem like the only way to survive, to manage disappointment. But then successive generations are challenged in relationships to break old patterns and heal wounds they may have inherited without even knowing the cause.

The novel ends with a retrospective art exhibition of a man Lalla, named in homage to Lalla Fatma N’Soumer (1830-1863) a Kabylan leader of resistance against the French, an Algerian Joan of Arc.

History is written by the victors, Naima thinks as she drifts off to sleep. This is an established fact, it is what makes it possible for history to exist in only one version. But when the vanquished refuse to admit defeat, when, despite their defeat, they continue writing their own version of history right up to the last second, when the victors for their part, write their history retrospectively to show the inevitability of their victory, then the contradictory versions on either side of the Mediterranean seem less like history than justifications or rationalizations sprinkled with dates and dressed up as history.

Perhaps that is what kept former residents of Bias so close to the camp they loathed; the could not bring themselves to break up a community that had reached an agreement on the version of history that suited them. Perhaps this is a foundation of communal life that is too often overlooked yet absolutely essential.

The original French version l’art de perdre was published in 2017, the English translation in 2021, and in Sept 2021 the French president Emmanuel Macron, made an official apology and asked for forgiveness for the French treatment of Algerian Harki fighters, for abandoning them during their home country’s war of independence. Trapped in Algeria, many were massacred as the country’s new leaders took brutal revenge. Thousand of others were placed in camps in France, often with their families, in degrading and traumatising conditions.

A Must Read novel. Highly Recommended.

Alice Zeniter, Author

Alice Zeniter was born in 1986. She is the author of four novels; Sombre dimanche (2013) won the Prix du Livre Inter, the Prix des lecteurs de l’Express and the Prix de la Closerie des Lilas; Juste avant l’oubli (2015) won the Prix Renaudot des lycéens.

l’art de perdre (2017) won the Prix Goncourt de Lycéens and 5 other French literary awards, in translation as The Art of Losing (2021) it won the Dublin Literary Award (2022) and was among the 20 top-selling Francophone books for two years in a row.

“I decided I wanted to learn more, but I wasn’t particularly interested in doing all this research for myself. My own self isn’t of huge interest to me, whereas anything that taps into the collective, and the political, this I care about.” Alice Zeniter

On her Inspiration from French sociologist Nicole Lapierre (author of Sauve qui peut la vie)

“…in it, she says that we need to learn how to tell their story like we do Odysseus’s. That migrant’s stories aren’t about pity, no, they’re about a never-ending journey, a story of craft and resourcefulness, of strength and beauty, of repeated departures, and until we manage to tell these stories in that way, we are abandoning them, leaving them to at best be pitied, and at worst be hated and feared. And that’s when I realised that the story I was researching, which dated from the early 1960s, completely echoed these current events. It is the story of populations locked in camps built far from urban centres, hidden away so that many will be able to say they didn’t know, that they don’t want to know or bother with these realities, with typhus and lice… This is when I realised that there might be an emergency to write about this motif, focusing on the fact that any migration is first an emigration, and removing that part from the story amputates people, it condemns them to misunderstandings. And that’s also when I decided to write this story in three acts. The emigration, the arrival which never really arrives and the third generation which, despite knowing nothing about the land of origin, has never been able to fully arrive either, as French people.”

Alice Zeniter is a a French novelist, translator, scriptwriter and director. She lives in Brittany.

January 30, 2023 by Claire 'Word by Word'

Dublin Literary Award Longlist 2023

With books nominated by 84 international libraries from 31 countries across Africa, Europe, Asia, the US, Canada, South America, Australia, and New Zealand, the full longlist of 70 novels has been announced for the Dublin Literary Award 2023. The €100,000 award is presented annually for a novel written in English or translated into English.

The nominations include 29 novels in translation and 14 debut novels. Among the translated books are novels originally published in Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, Hindi, Korean, Slovene, Icelandic, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, French, Dutch, Portuguese and more.

The international panel of judges who will select the shortlist and winner, features Gabriel Gbadamosi, an Irish and Nigerian poet, playwright and critic based in London; Marie Hermet, a writer and translator who teaches creative writing and translation at the Université Paris Cité; English writer Sarah Moss who is the author of eight novels and teaches creative writing at UCD; Doireann Ní Ghríofa who is a bilingual poet, essayist, translator and author of A Ghost in the Throat; and Arunava Sinha who translates fiction, non-fiction and poetry from Bengali to English and has won several translation awards in India.

The shortlist will be revealed on 28th March and the winner on 25th May 2023.

I have read two of the novels, the wonderful East German Marzhan, mon Amour which I adored, an uplifting semi-autobiographical novella that is a celebration of community, and the Irish novella Small Things Like These, I’m one of the few who didn’t get on with this novel, despite its popularity.

It’s a wide-ranging selection and it will be interesting to see what makes the shortlist. There are a few familiar authors I’m interested in who I’ve read before like Elif Shakaf, Louise Erdrich, Kim Thúy and Yewande Omotoso and those I’m aware of, that I’d like to try like the award winning Canadian author Omar El-Akkad.

Let me know what you’ve enjoyed or are tempted by in the comments below:

The Longlist

Below are all the titles on the longlist, with their genre and the country of origin of the author plus the comments made by the nominating library(s).

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56 Days (Crime/Thriller Fiction) by Catherine Ryan Howard (Ireland)

“a gripping and unputdownable thriller. Its structure is interesting going between the present, when a body has been found, and the 56 days preceding this gruesome discovery. Though fictional it deals realistically with the horrors of the real-life pandemic situation that the world had experienced during the previous two years.” – Cork City Libraries

912 Batu Road (Historical/Migration Fiction) by Viji Krishnamoorthy (India of Tamil/Hokkein-Chinese)

912-Batu-Road Viji Krishnamoorthy’s sweeping debut novel deftly weaves together vibrant fiction and meticulous research on the heroic exploits of Malayan wartime heroes – Sybil Kathigasu, Gurchan Singh and many others – who fearlessly fought for their beloved country.

“This novel was chosen for its interesting history and patriotisms of Malaysia and Malaysians. It displays how Malaysia is a harmonious country that embraces multiracial aspects.” – National Library of Malaysia

A Particular Madness (Fiction) by Sheldon Russell (USA)

“In his novel, Russell explores mental illness through the experience of the main character: Jacob Roland. Set in Oklahoma, the novel showcases the reality of rural America at a time when mental illness was often misunderstood and mistreated, as it still is today.” – Oklahoma Department of Libraries, USA

After Story (Fiction) by Larissa Behrendt (Australia)

After Story Larissa Behrendt

“It’s a beautifully written story, fascinatingly revealed via alternating perspectives from a mother and daughter using overseas literary travel to try to mend a difficult relationship, and illuminating the complex nature of familial ties, buried grief and historical trauma.” – Libraries Tasmania, Australia

All’s Well (Fiction/Horror) by Mona Awad (Canada)

A piercingly funny indictment of our collective refusal to witness and believe female pain.

“The plotting is a clever mishmash of Shakespeare, obviously MacBeth and All’s Well That Ends Well, though there’s a little Tempest thrown in as well. But Awad doesn’t make herself a slave to what Shakespeare dictates. She has entwined the Scottish play so brilliantly in a brutal theatre production of All’s Well, that the power plays, the ghosts, the betrayals, the madness, are seamlessly incorporated. How Awad came up with all this is fascinating.” – Cleveland Public Library, USA

An Unusual Grief (Fiction) Yewande Omotoso (Barbados/Nigeria/South Africa)

“We were absolutely blown away by An Unusual Grief. Felt an instant connection to the book, perhaps because it has a local setting or the daily issues of life that it confronts. While it deals with grief, it is not a gloomy book, thanks in large part to the art of storytelling that Omotoso displays throughout the novel. It is a beautifully written book that is raw in its emotion as it covers and conveys the many layers of grief.” – City of Capetown Library and information Services

Bad Girls (Fiction) by Camila Sosa Villada (Argentina) tr. Kit Maude (Spanish)

“We really loved this novel. The heroines are transgender women whose lives are absolutely complicated… They are rejected by the whole society and especially by those who use to deal with them as prostitutes.

The novel shows a solidarity and a humanity that delighted us. And even though the story is rather tragic there is a craziness and a hymn to life and joy that makes this book unforgettable.” – Bibliothèques municipales de Genève, Switzerland

Bitter Orange Tree (Literary Fiction) Jokha Alharthi (Oman) tr. Marilyn Booth (Arabic)

“Narrated in first person, the story unfolds vividly in prose full of pictures, stories, names and objects of a childhood and youth in the Middle East and the richness of Arabian culture. All these narrative elements mingle with dreams of the young woman and regrets of missed chances to close up on her own self. Bitter Orange Tree is the coming-of-age of a young woman that still has yet to fully explore her own identity.” – Stadtbücherei Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Bodies of Light (Literary Fiction) by Jennifer Down (Australia)

“Bodies of Light has been nominated by popular vote from public library staff across Victoria.” – State Library of Victoria, Australia

Bolla (Fiction) by Pajtim Statovci (Albania/Finland) tr. David Hackston (Finnish)

“Albanian protagonist, Arsim, is a brilliant student and just married to his young wife. He’s also in love with a person who is wrong for him in two ways: Miloš is a man and a Serb. Violence takes Arsim over and he get punished both physically, mentally and socially. Bolla is a phenomenal literal study of love, loneliness, passion and violence. It pictures the horrors of war and living a secret life.” – Helsinki City Library, Finland

Bone Memories (Fiction) by Sally Piper (Australia)

“Bone Memories is a brilliant and devastating novel about a mother’s grief for her lost daughter, Jess, and a son’s grief about losing his mother. It begins sixteen years after Jess’s murder, with the victim’s family continuing to grapple with the lives they face ahead and their memories of her. The novel is set in Queensland and is written by Brisbane-based author Sally Piper.” – State Library of Queensland Australia

Brisbane (Historical Fiction) by Eugene Vodolazkin (Ukraine) tr. Marian Schwartz

Brisbane is a new novel by the the international bestselling author Eugene Vodolazkin – the winner of the Big Book Award, the Leo Tolstoy Yasnaya Polyana Award, and the Read Russia Award, the finalist of the Russian Booker Award. Vodolazkin also won the Solzhenitsyn Prize in 2019. He is a modern Thinker and Peacemaker who continues to develop traditions and heritage of a grand philosophical novel. – All Russia State Library for Foreign Literature

Burntcoat (Science Fiction/Dystopia) by Sarah Hall (UK)

“A love story taking place during a deadly pandemic, a story about dealing with an unknown virus and loss while at the same time creating a life during dire circumstances and creating art – subtle and heartbreaking.” – Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Switzerland

Case Study (Literary Fiction) by Graeme Macrae Burnett (UK)

“Macrae Burnett has created a dynamic work that has excellent characterisation with acute observation. The writing is layered but there is no use of superfluous words. While the themes are profound, the style is both intriguing and playful . He has created a book that is thought provoking and a compulsive read.” – Limerick City and County Libraries, Ireland

Cloud Cuckoo Land (Science Fiction/Fantasy) by Anthony Doerr (US)

“This book had good storytelling in spades. Each of the characters has a relationship with a librarian, Zeno and Seymour with the librarians in Lakeport, Idaho, Anna with scribes in Constantinople, Omeir with Anna, and Konstance with the AI controller of her ship. This beautifully written book is a shining example of hope.” – Bács-Kiskun Megyei Katona József Könyvtár, Hungary

Cold Enough For Snow (Literary Fiction) by Jessica Au (Australia)

“Cold Enough for Snow is something like an ephemeral waterfall. The story, of a woman and her mother travelling in Japan, unfolds with grace – not a thundering cascade but a slow trickling that still has the power to, in time, soften the rock below into shape. The prose is elegant and unpretentious, making inferences but not enforcing meaning. The story speaks to the complexity of our relationships with those we love, and also nods towards some of the richness and value of travel and being present outside of our regular environments.The novel pushes and pokes at notions of identity, belonging and perception; invoking colour and description to honour the importance of observation, care and attention. It is a work of great softness and strength.” – The National Library of Australia

Crossroads (Domestic Fiction) by Jonathan Franzen (US)

“Suspense” – Öffentliche Bücherei -Anna Seghers, Germany

Daughter of the Moon Goddess (Fantasy Fiction) by Sue Lynn Tan (Malaysia/Hong Kong)

“Daughter of the Moon Goddess is jam-packed novel that follows Xingyin on her path to self-discovery as she tries to free her mother and herself from their eternal confinement on the moon.

Inspired by Chinese Mythology’s Chang’e, each word of this novel is thoughtfully chosen and crafted poetically, taking you on an almost dreamy adventure from start to finish. There is amazing world building done by Tan and a wonderful female protagonist that is strong and determined. This novel is filled with magic, powerful creatures, secrets, betrayals, amazingly written battle scenes, and even a love triangle – though that doesn’t shadow over anything. Wonderful, adventurous book.” – Kansas City Public Library, USA

Devotion (Historical Fiction) by Hannah Kent (Australia)

“The story and the characters of the book are so perfect. We love Hannah’s Kent writing and the way that it just connects with our thoughts, mind, and soul.” – Veria Central Public Library, Greece

Em (Historical/Literary Fiction) by Kim Thúy (Vietnam/Canada) tr. Sheila Fischman (French)

“Kim Thúy seals words into packets, plain and firm as an encyclopedia entry; shimmery and taut as an ode; pitted and unbendable as a curse, lays them edge to corner to end to say, do you see it now? Do you?” – Hartford Public Library, USA

Falling is like Flying (Fiction) by Manon Uphoff (Netherlands) tr. Sam Garrett (Dutch)

“Falling is Like Flying is an impressive novel in which author Manon Uphoff demonstrates what literature is capable of. With all her literary power, Uphoff manages to reveal a history that seems almost impossible to tell. A history of sexual abuse by a dominating father called the Minotaur is uncovered in a devastating personal mythology. In this novel, the Minotaur is finally overcome in his labyrinth by the power of language.” – KB, National Library of the Netherlands

Fight Night (Fiction) by Miriam Toews (Canada)

“Told in the unforgettable voice of nine-year old Swiv, this is a story of life, death, birth and intergenerational trauma that is both hilarious and heart-breaking. Swiv, the youngest of three fierce women, is worrying about her aging grandmother’s health and her pregnant mother’s mental health. All while her feisty (and deeply mortifying) grandmother tries to impart life lessons about fighting – both to survive and to find joy.” – Toronto Public Library, Canada

Four Treasures of the Sky (Historical Fiction) by Jenny Tinghui Zhang (China/US)

“This debut novel is a stunner, historical fiction at its best (captivating, illuminating and provoking) in its depiction and portrayal of the horrors of racism, discrimination, abuse and greed.

The author has threaded a deep understanding of Chinese calligraphic arts, that goes beyond artistic standards; referenced an eponymous heroine in a classic Chinese novel; included historical events about Chinese Americans that have been relegated and left to fade away; revealed the graphic horror of a childhood cut short; and created a protagonist who continuously reinvents herself, in order to survive, and also to discover who she really is. It is no small achievement that Jenny Zhang has written a book of arresting beauty about horrific events.” – Los Angeles Public Library, USA

Glory (Literary Fiction) by NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe)

“Bulawayo’s reimagining of the overthrow of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s infamous authoritarian ruler, features a cast made up entirely of talking animals (Mugabe is the Old Horse). Bulawayo’s gift for storytelling is dazzling.” –Boston Public Library, USA

“The use of language in the novel colourful, poetic and also comedic illustrates the absurdity and surreal nature of a police state , built with the structure of animal stories that are typical of African tradition.”–Biblioteca Vila de Gràcia, Barcelona, Spain

Grand Hotel Europa (Fiction) by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer (Netherlands) tr. Michele Hutchison (Dutch)

“It is a monumental novel about loss, the immigration crisis, the history and future of Europe, Mass tourism and many more themes. A phenomenal read which lets you think about modern day Europe.” – De Bibliotheek Utrecht, The Netherlands

How High We Go in the Dark (Science Fiction/Short Stories) by Sequoia Nagamatsu (Japan/US)

“This novel in interlinked stories presents a complex and deeply humane look at grief and survival in a post-apocalyptic world. “– Multnomah County Library, USA

Iron Curtain: A Love Story (Historical/Literary Fiction) by Vesna Goldsworthy (Serbia/UK)

“Iron Curtain uses a bitter-sweet story of a doomed love affair between Milena, a communist Red Princess, and Jason, a self-declared Irish Marxist poet, to probe the political divisions of Europe which continue to affect us all. It echoes the myth of Medea in its gripping tale of Western betrayal and Eastern revenge.

It is a spellbinding novel: vividly original, tense and often hilarious in its extraordinary evocation of two wildly contrasted worlds. It brings to mind the best political fiction from Eastern Europe, such as the works of Pasternak and Kundera, now in an inimitable British-Serbian woman’s voice. With the passing of the period of optimism which followed the fall of the Berlin Wall the fractured world described in this novel has an ominous resonance today.” – Belgrade City Library, Serbia

Kurangaituku (Literary Fiction/Mythology) by Whiti Hereaka (New Zealand)

“Kurangaituku takes readers on an immersive journey through deep time with its shape-shifting lead character. An exploration and reclamation of indigenous storytelling, it shows how language can create, shape, give life and destroy, with “one hundred lifetimes or more able to be lived by a single being.

The world of Kurangaituku is visceral and sensual, and Hereaka’s flowing and hypnotic prose is made for reading aloud. Its looping narrative structure is seamlessly woven together with the book’s double-sided and interlocking format, reflecting the Māori worldview of the circularity of life and death, transfiguration and rebirth and allowing the story to be formed and reformed in the space between author and audience. A multi-dimensional and unforgettable book.” – Auckland Council Libraries

“Kurangaituku is the retelling of a legend and so much more. It is about the power of our voices to tell our own story. It is about the importance of story to ourselves and to our culture, and the destructive nature of someone else telling or supplanting our story as part of colonisation. An amazing, thought-provoking, beautifully lyrical work. ‘Do you see what their stories have done?…They have made monsters of us both’.” – Christchurch City Libraries

Late Summer (Literary Fiction) by Luiz Ruffato (Brazil) tr. Julia Sanches (Portuguese)

“Late Summer is an excellent reflection on the effects of isolation. A book that shows both a portrait of contemporary society, in which social classes have ruptured any form of a dialogue between them, and a realistic story of a man tortured by his unsuccessful attempt to redeem his past.

The main character, Oséias, abandoned by his wife and son, decides to go back to his hometown after twenty years away. On a six-day journey trying to reconnect to his family, as a flaneur, he retraces his boyhood and shares by streams of consciousness old memories and thoughts mingled with a detailed narrative of the events of the journey. The novel also unveils the feeling of inadequacy present in our time and presents a philosophical and perennial question of belonging.” – Sistema Nacional de Bibliotecas Públicas/Biblioteca Demonstrativa do Brasil

Lessons in Chemistry (Popular Fiction) by Bonnie Garmus (US)

“Author Bonnie Garmus provides an original storyline that is refreshing, humorous, and very timely.” -Miami-Dade Public Library

” This is a brilliant story – of a woman who is determined to make her mark on the world and not willing to let anyone get in her way. She’s feisty, heroic, and intelligent, and she unwittingly becomes the star of a TV cookery show, aimed at teaching the nation how to make food that matters. The show becomes a call to arms to the millions of women who follow her ‘lessons in chemistry’ encouraging all to ‘use the laws of chemistry and change the status quo.’” -Norfolk Library, UK

“Great story of women empowerment set in the 1960’s.” – Laramie County Library System, US

Loose Ties (Fiction) by Yara Nakahanda Monteiro (Portugal) tr. Sandra Tamele

“This book is both a story of love and of war, a contemporary tale that deals with the past, a call for the independence of women as political beings. And of their own bodies in search of freedom.

Yara Monteiro revisits a personal and collective history, in which the lives of expatriates who suffer the discomfort of a painful isolation are retraced. This novel is a deep, funny, and courageous novel that gives Angolan women a voice, while reflecting on identity issues.” – Biblioteca Pública Municipal do Porto, Portugal

Love in the Big City (Literary Fiction) by Sang Young Park Korea) tr. Anton Hur

“The novel follows the life of a young gay man in Seoul. It delves into identity, growth, pain through a queer lens. The story is set in Seoul but has a western sensibility. It is relatable and universal for readers of all background. The narrative is simple but intense and sensory with both humour and emotion. And there is in the end surprising poignancy and depth. Award-winning for its unique literary voice and perspective. The translation is great.” – Bucheon City Library, Republic of Korea

Love Marriage by Monica Ali (Bangladesh/UK)

“A clash of cultures evolves into a delicate examination of the ways in which both immigrant and non-immigrant families have shaped their children, diffusing unexplored suffering across generations.” – Milwaukee Public Library, USA

Love Novel by Ivana Sajko (Croatia) tr. Mima Simić

“Love Novel tells the story of a young married couple whose relationship is affected by the struggles of everyday reality. They are fighting for the survival of their love and the meaning of life in conditions of extreme economic insecurity. The lack of communication affects the relationship resulting in slow deterioration, followed by general dissatisfaction. This “love novel” becomes relevant again in today’s situation of new economic crises that we all face.” – Rijeka City Library, Croatia

Lovelier, Lonelier (Fiction) by Daryl Qilin Yam (Singapore)

“Lovelier, Lonelier is a strong study of character and explores the emotional impact of love and loss in a narrative that spans multiple countries. The writing is self-assured in its ability to connect the various characters through a number of personal tragedies. The novel tackles meaningful themes such as the nature of reality, the role of chance, intergenerational trauma, and the power of art to redeem or destroy.” – National Library Board of Singapore

Magma (Literary Fiction) by Thóra Hjörleifsdóttir (Iceland) tr. Meg Matich

“Magma is the first novel by Thóra Hjörleifsdóttir. In the book, she talks about the dark side of love and invisible violence. The main character Lilja falls in love with a man and is ready to go to great lengths for him. When she stops setting limits for him, Lilja loses control of herself and reality. A very interesting and well written book about a difficult subject that paints a picture of an abusive relationship.” – Reykjavík City Library, Iceland

Marzahn, Mon Amour (Uplifting Fiction) by Katja Oskamp (Germany) tr. Jo Heinrich – read my review here

“It is a book that allows a deep insight into the daily lives of the so called ordinary people. The author treats each of them with respect and approaches with careful empathy.” – Stadtbüchereien Düsseldorf, Germany

Matrix (Fiction) by Lauren Groff (US)

“Matrix stands out for its exquisite use of language, particularly Groff’s seamless weaving of psalms and liturgical texts into the narrative, marrying the miraculous and the mundane into one ecstatic tapestry of feminine power.” – Richland Library, USA

Nettle and Bone (Fantasy/Horror Fiction) by T. Kingfisher

“The book mixes fantasy and feminist elements that are not exaggerated but instead very convincing because of Kingfisher’s thoughtful narrative style. This is adult fantasy literature far away from cliché featuring unique characters and surprising incidents.” – Universitätsbibliothek Bern, Switzerland

Of Fangs and Talons by Nicolas Mathieu (France) tr. Sam Taylor

“A bleak tale of the disenfranchised, in this case the factory workers and others living in a small town in the Vosges region of France. Things start to go downhill when the factory is set to close, then it gets worse. Compelling enough to want to read all in one sitting. Very excellent.” – The State Library of South Australia

Open Your Heart (Auto-fiction) by Alexie Morin (France) tr. Aimee Wall

“Open your Heart is an autobiographical novel depicting the story of two friends linked by a condition of illness and operation at a young age. A strong narrative that shed light through sufferings, power beyond discomfort, without restraint.” – Bibliothéque de Québec, Canada

Paradais (Literary Fiction) by Fernanda Melchor (Mexico) tr. Sophie Hughes (Spanish)

“The pace and intensity of the narration transmits all the sorrow, anger, and frustration that might make one empathize with some characters; and yet the novel is also relentless to show how coward self-justification and the inexcusable, selfish relief of one’s anger can make a victim as vile as any victimiser. The author thus depicts in few pages the complexity of human beings and of the context of their actions.” – Biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegas, Mexico

Scattered All Over the Earth (Science Fiction/Dystopia) by Yoko Tawada (Japan) tr. Margaret Mitsutani

“In a not too distant future, Japan has disappeared from the face o the earth due to an environmental catastrophe. In Yoko Tawada’s latest novel, we follow Hiruko, a climate refugee on her trip through Europe searching for someone else who speaks her mother tongue. Others join her and the small group is traveling from one bizarre and thoroughly comical situation to the next. It is fascinating how Tawada manages to combine the themes of our time in this first part of a planned trilogy: climate change, migration, globalization – and above all the key question: What does language mean for identity and human community?” – Zentral und Landesbibliothek, Berlin, Germany

Sea of Tranquility (Speculative/ Science Fiction) by Emily St. John Mandel (Canada)

“A fantastic (in all senses of the word) novel that somehow weaves a mystery and time travel and colonies on the moon and a pandemic and a double homicide together into a beautiful, life-affirming story.” – Winnipeg Public Library, Canada

“A masterpiece of speculative fiction, tying together historical fiction, time travel and references to our own experiences living through the Covid-19 pandemic in an ultimately hopeful exploration of the nature of existence and human connection. A time traveling detective sent to gather evidence about a rift in the fabric of reality is the thread that draws together disparate characters across centuries including an author very similar to St John Mandel herself. She writes beautifully, rendering the old growth forests of British Colombia and decaying moon colonies of the future equally with equal parts romance, imagination and vivid detail, instilling nostalgia for both. Captivating, deceptively light, Sea of Tranquility nevertheless touches on weighty topics—colonialism, the environment, loneliness, morality in a thought-provoking way.” – Ottawa Public Library, Canada

She’s a killer (Fiction) by Kirsten McDougall (New Zealand)

“Set in the very near future in New Zealand where the effects of climate change are really beginning to bite and affect both our physical world but also our society. The book is multi-layered, often very funny in a dark way, contains many layers of twists and turns and is a fabulous read to boot. It’s a fast-paced thriller which boasts great and complex characters. It’s both personal and intimate and about New Zealand and also the World simultaneously, dealing with global issues and events in a unique fashion.” – Wellington City Library, New Zealand

Silent Winds, Dry Seas by Vinod Busjeet (Mauritius/US)

“We are happy to nominate this novel from a local writer. The writing is engaging and evocative. The poetry of language successfully evokes a richly tropical, multi-sensual ambience. The scents are olfactible, colours brilliant, heat diaphoretic. The author skillfully dramatizes and limns distinctive and fascinating characters: Vishnu’s extended and extensive family, and community members and neighbours, fully developing their individual personalities and visages. They are not cardboard, they breathe. The plot itself incorporates global historical events as well as those in the Mauritian march to independence that serve to place the story in time. The end result is that you enjoy a quick-paced story while learning a bit about a place you never have been. A thoroughly enjoyable read.” – DC Public Library, USA

Small Things Like These (Fiction) by Claire Keegan (Ireland) – Read my review here

“With exceptional grace, economy and storytelling skill, Keegan has penned a classic story of moral courage that encapsulates so much of what it means to be human today. This short novel is bigger than any award but deserves all the recognition it can get.”– Chicago Public Library

“A tiny, perfect novel reminding us of a shameful part of Ireland’s history, seen through the eyes of a coal merchant whose eyes are opened to the iron grip of the Catholic church on the hearts and minds of his community. Heart-breaking and thought provoking.” – Waterford City and Council Library Services

“116 pages of beautifully written prose, the story centres around Bill Furlong, his upbringing, and his empathy to the inmates of the local Magdalene convent. Claire Keegan’s sublime and moving novel, covering the weeks before Christmas 1985, shows the importance of facing up to our past, and the historic collusion between Church, State, and Irish society. As Bill’s wife remarked; “If you want to get on in life, there’s things you have to ignore, so you can keep on.” – Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Libraries, Dublin

“The master storytelling is in Furlong, as the gentle quiet hero. The reader would follow him to the darkest pits and back, and we do. This is a really important novel for a society where absolute authority has reigned. By the end of this book, the soul feels a little healed. “– Galway Public Libraries

Song for the Missing (Historical Fiction) by Pierre Jarawan (Lebanon/Germany) tr. Elisabeth Lauffer (German)

“2011. During the troubled times of the Arabic Spring, Amin recalls the year 1994, when he, as an orphan, came with his Grandma from Germany to Lebanon. He remembers the taboo of speaking about the 17.000 missing people in Lebanon and the silent grief of their relatives. Little by little, Amin discovers that his parents belong to the missing persons. With his friend Jafar, Amin roams Beirut and its traumatized population, until he meet a story teller, who sparks Amin’s interest in books.

Rooted in the oral storytelling traditions of the Orient and passionate, Pierre Jarawan narrates stories of the people of Lebanon to make the reader feel what is lost. A touching, political novel and a varied family story. “– Leipziger Städtische Bibliotheken, Germany

Sons of the People: The Mamluk Trilogy (Historical Fiction) by Reem Bassiouney (Egypt) tr. Roger Allen (Arabic)

“Set against a historical backdrop, Sons of the People: The Mamluk Trilogy sheds light on the last days of the Mamluk dynasty before its downfall. The Mamluks were defeated by the Ottoman troops in 1517 at the battle of Marj Dabiq, after which Tuman Bay was beheaded. The incidents of the trilogy start with the story behind the construction of the mosque of Sultan Hassan, whose architect is the offspring of a Mamluk prince who married an Egyptian girl, Zineb, under duress. Eventually, the mosque appears to be the dominant motif in the trilogy, which creates a well-wrought narrative, helping Bassiouney to depict a vivid picture of the social, political and economic life in Egypt under the rule of the Mamluks; a period that has always raised very controversial questions concerning its cultural and political inheritance. With the second story, the narrative shifts to different times where the very mosque becomes a bloodbath of the fighting Mamluks. In the final one, the conquering army ravishes the riches of mosque. Reem Bassiouney is a distinguished Egyptian novelist. She also received the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.” – Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt

The Anomaly (Popular Fiction) by Hervé Le Tellier (France) tr. Adriana Hunter

“In this highly original and inventive novel, Hervé le Tellier introduces his characters in chapters very different in tone to mix such genres as thriller, science-fiction, comedy or spy novel. Though mostly entertaining in tone with its use of pastiche and satire, the novel also tackles darker issues such as homophobia in the world of hip hop, cancer, child abuse, intricate love affairs, unethical business. This puzzling speculative fiction with its spatio-temporal rift also questions our perception of reality and ourselves.” – Bibliothèque publique d’Information, Paris, France

The Antarctica of Love(Literary Fiction) by Sara Stridsberg (Sweden) tr. Deborah Bragan-Turner

“Inni, a prostitute and drug addict, is brutally murdered in a forest. From the realm of the dead, she recounts her broken life. Rhythmically, her story returns to the end point of her existence, when the Hunter has ushered her into his car for a final journey. Carried by a powerful and poetic writing, this book sublimates the unbearable.” – Bibliothèque Municipale de Reims, France

The Bones of Barry Knight (Social Justice Fiction) by Emma Musty (UK)

“The Bones of Barry Knight is a contemporary novel focusing on a refugee camp in an unnamed country. It is very moving as it depicts the impact of war on everyday people. It is raw and unflinching, but also full of poignant beauty.” – Redbridge Library London, UK

The Book of Form and Emptiness (Literary Fiction/Magic Realism) by Ruth Ozeki (US)

“This beautifully written book deals with issues of family love, mental illness, grief and loss, and the importance of friends. It is philosophical, heart-breaking and empowering, and it is also full of joy.” -Dunedin Public Libraries, NZ

“The newest title from a beloved local author, this book takes place between the public library and the youth psych ward. It is simultaneously whimsical, philosophical, and heart-wrenching. It blends sympathetic characters and a vigorous engagement with everything from our attachment to material possessions to the climate crisis.” -Vancouver Public Library, Canada

The Clockwork Girl (Historical/Gothic Fiction) by Anna Mazzola (UK)

“A thoroughly immersive read, captivating and utterly thrilling. It’s easy for the reader to ensconce oneself in its masterfully crafted, self-contained universe. The historical setting is commendably subtle, suggested rather than imposed upon the reader. Simply superb!” – Tampere City Library, Finland

The Forests (Fiction/Dystopia) by Sandrine Collette (France) tr. Alison Anderson (French)

“The world is on fire. Only armed with love and hope, the young Corentin begins a terrible journey to the remote Valley of Forests, looking for Augustine his adoptive grandmother. A powerful and frightening post-apocalyptic novel.” – Réseau de Bibliothéques de Colmar, France

The Good Women of Safe Harbour (Uplifting Fiction) by Bobbi French (Canada)

“The Good Women of Safe Harbour by Bobbi French is a brilliant novel with rich characters and a strong sense of place. Set in Newfoundland in the final, beautiful summer of Frances Delaney’s “small” life, this book is wildly joyful and deeply sad. It challenges the reader to reevaluate the ways in which we see our lives, the good and the bad. This novel handles such difficult topics as mental illness, assisted suicide, abortion and mothers separated from their children while never for a moment leaving the central premise that life is beautiful and precious and must be celebrated. This book is a celebration.” – Newfoundland and Labrador Public Libraries, Canada

The Island of Missing Trees (Fiction) by Elif Shafak (Turkey/UK)

“This was a beautifully written book that wove true historical events into a thought provoking and emotional book. The characters are fully formed and bring to life the story of turmoil, betrayal, the need for understanding and acceptance , flitting between the present day and 1970s. The Fig Tree was a particularly unique narrator – and a reminder of the impacts of war of community and nature.” – Glasgow Life, Scotland

“A love story and a history of a long-lived conflict in the Island of Ciprus, love and hate, memory and trauma are perfectly represented.” -Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III – Napoli

“The Island of Missing Trees is a cleverly constructed novel with a touch of magical realism. It is masterfully told and written in an elegant language. Shafak explores the consequences of the civil war on ordinary lives and future generations. Highlighted themes are migration, homophobia, religion, loss and family secrets. Shafak inspires and delivers a beautiful, powerful novel full of empathy and hope.” – Openbare Bibliotheek Brugge (Bruges Public Library)

“This novel provides a human and compassionate account of tragic, traumatising, troubling and turbulent past of Cyprus. It shows us fractured communities torn apart by war, partition, division, religion, love, loss, grief, migration, the natural world, and the search for a sense of identity and belonging that refuses to be denied. Shafak writes through the prism of hope, moving on, renewal and healing, of the need to tell the stories of the past, rather than burying them, addressing the issues that hurt, and extend our concern and eyes to the natural world, to recognise its central integral place, like the fig tree growing in the tavern, within humanity and connect with it in the way our ancestors would have done.” – Rede de Bibliotecas de Lisboa

The Lincoln Highway (Popular Fiction) by Amor Towles (US)

“This title was the most popular 2021-22 Adult Fiction book read by Iowa City Public Library patrons last year.” – Iowa City Public Library

The Magician (Literary Fiction) by Colm Tóibín (Ireland)

“A beautifully written fictionalised biographical novel about Thomas Mann. He struggles to come to terms with disaster in his family, hidden desire and nationality. He opposes Nazism and has to flee from Germany to the United Stated and Switzerland. The novel triggers you to (re)read the work of Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann.” – Openbare Bibliotheek, Gent, Belgium

The Masterpiece by Ana Schnabl (Slovenia) tr. David Limon

“What really interests the author and what she excels at showing is the human condition, the motivations and desires of her characters. In rich literary prose, she discusses the cost of personal autonomy and the explosive power of love. She also provides insight into the writing process and sheds light on a vital component of producing art with the aid of her protagonists.” – Ljubljana City Library, Slovenia

“With The Masterpiece, Ana Schnabl proved her stylistic exceptionality, you don’t skip lines with her.” – Mariborska Libraries, Slovenia

The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard (Norway) tr. Martin Aitken

“The Morning Star is a staggering, ambitious work about the small and the grand things. We meet a collection of people, loosely connected, who each get to tell their story. One night, in the middle of regular life, an enormous star appears in the sky. Nobody knows what it is, and after a little while things go back to normal. But not quite.” – Solvberget Library and Culture Centre, Norway

The Sentence; A Novel (Fiction) by Louise Erdrich (US)

“The Sentence is a captivating and inventively crafted novel. Tookie, the main character, is a middle-aged Native American woman just getting by and working in a Minneapolis bookstore that specialized in subjects of Indigenous culture and history. We get to know Tookie and her friends and family very well. They are each unique yet very believable. Even the eccentric ghost who appears intermittently is believable. This novel has it all: a compelling plot, sometimes heart-breaking, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny; inventive word play; and a lively cast of colourful characters trying their best to honour their indigenous identities amid often cruel and inhospitable surroundings. – New Hampshire State Library, USA

The Trees: A Novel (Popular Fiction) by Percival Everett (US)

“The Trees is a powerful social satire of lasting importance.” – Free Library of Philadelphia, USA

The White Bathing Hut (Fiction) by Thorvald Steen (Norway) tr. James Anderson

“Since he was a youth he has lived with a rare muscle disease, but only when he is in his 60s and sitting in a wheelchair does he learn the truth about his grandfather and uncle, who had the same hereditary disease, and that his own mother never has told the truth.” – Olso Public Library, Norway

The Wonders (Literary Fiction) by Elena Medel (Spain) tr. Lizzie Davis and Thomas Bunstead

“Elena Medel’s first novel is a poetic and vivid portrait about two Spanish working-class women, Alicia y María, who are limited by class and gender dynamics. The novel stands out for its rhythmic prose and unforgettable characters.” – Biblioteca de Andalucía, Spain

Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria) tr. Angela Rodel

“A dystopian vision of Europe and the world in the face of a personal and collective memory breakdown leading to ‘a flood of the past’. Smuggling poetry into fiction, his style is both poetic and philosophical yet readable, funny, self-ironic. Gospodinov’s literature is coming from a small language and territory in the periphery of Europe, but has the power of giving meaning and empathy through great narrative voices and storytelling skills.

He is the most read author not only at the Sofia City Library, but also at the libraries across the country. A number of meetings about the novel were held in the library with various readers, provoking interesting discussions. ” – Sofia City Library, Bulgaria

Tomb of Sand (Literary Fiction) by Geetanjali Shree (India) tr. Daisy Rockwell (Hindi)

“This is an amazing and experimentally written book. Geetanjali Shree’s playful tone and exuberant wordplay results in a book that is engaging, funny, and utterly original, at the same time as being an urgent and timely protest against the destructive impact of borders and boundaries, whether between religions, countries, or genders, highly recommend it, especially since it gives an insight to many customs and habits of India. A rare gem of a novel.” – India International Centre, India

What Strange Paradise by Omar El-Akkad (Canada)

“The refugee crisis told through the eyes of a child highlights the difficult circumstances of a group of Syrians on a boat in the Mediterranean, but underscores a sense of humanism binding all people together. ” – San Diego Public Library, USA

Where You Come From by Saša Stanišić (Bosnia-Herzegovina/Germany) tr. Saša Stanišić (German)

“Saša Stanišić and his mixed family (Serbian and Bosnian) flee from Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and end up in Heidelberg, Germany, where they struggle to integrate, to a large extent because of the low paying jobs available to immigrants. Saša Stanišić tells his personal story in a touching, exciting and stylistic outstanding narrative Style. The novel was successful adapted for the Theater and won the German Book Prize in 2019.” – Stadtbücherei Heidelberg, Germany

“Third novel from internationally acclaimed and bestselling Bosnian-German author Saša Stanišic. The story follows a young refugee and his family who fled to Germany from Yugoslavia in the 1990s. A heartwarming and moving reflection on the process reshaping ones identity between countries, cultures and languages.” – Stadtbibliothek Bremen, Germany

Young Mungo (Fiction) by Douglas Stuart (Scotland/US)

“This is Stuart’s follow up to his debut Booker Prize-winning novel, Shuggie Bain, and while both books define themselves by a fractured Glaswegian family with an unreliable and fragile mother, Young Mungo turns toward the fifteen-year-old title character (named after the patron saint of Glasgow) as he navigates both first love and unrelenting danger.

This is a challenging novel of cruelty and carelessness where conflict – ideological and physical – persists, but Stuart’s compassionate mastery of language and storytelling provides an unexpected and gleaming tenderness.” – Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, USA

Blurb

Judges’ Verdict

Further Reading

Man’s Need for Ritual

How Language Eviscerates and/or Exposes

Benevolent Bovines and Other Sentient Beings

Ana Paula Maia, Author

To Be or Not to Be

Of Fledglings and Changelings

Brood Parasites

Maternal Instinct & Survival

Guadalupe Nettel, Author

A Symphony of Reluctant Grief

A Different Kind of Garden Party

Bach, Beethoven, Gould & Open Heart Surgery

Margot Glantz, Author (1930- )

This Year’s Judges

The Longlist

Transgressive Writing

A Drawer Of Her Own, A Name of Her Own

In Solitude I Meet Myself, A Stranger

I Am My Own Worst Enemy

The Cage Opens, My Inner Self is Overpowering Me

A Slow Rebellion, A Feminist Awakening

Alba de Céspedes, Author

Further Reading

Contemplation From Above

A Little Known History

A chasm between Flavius and Marrullus

A Too Often Celebrated History

Career Choices On the Edge

Cover Art

Sebastián Martínez Daniell, Author

Most Popular Library Book of 2022

Three Generations of Family From 1930’s Algeria to Present Day Paris

A Kabylian Mountain Village

First Generation Transition

A Mystery of Identity and Repercussion for Multiple Generations

The War That Made Heroes of Some & Traitors of Others

Looking Back, Healing Wounds, Learning Whose Version of a Story?

Alice Zeniter, Author

On her Inspiration from French sociologist Nicole Lapierre (author of Sauve qui peut la vie)

The Longlist