translated fiction

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Not a River by Selva Almada (Argentina) tr. Annie McDermott

Not a River has just been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024.

Opening Lines and Book Covers

International Booker Prize longlist 2024 Argentinian literature Spanish translation

I read the opening line and let it tell me as much as possible about the story I am about to read.

“Enero Ray, standing firm on the boat, stocky and beardless, swollen-bellied, legs astride, stares hard at the surface of the river and waits, revolver in hand.”

It’s a Charco Press title, so there is always a thought provoking abstract image on the cover, that never fails to contribute to the understanding of what the book has to say. This one shows twin rivers, fed by tributaries, running red.

It is clear that will be blood, death, perhaps menace and/or violence – and more than one episode. Just as the water of the smaller channels has no choice but to flow into the main river, so too the intent of a man standing firm, awaiting his prey. But who/what else will the river claim?

To Understand Any Story We Circle Back

Not a River tells a story, not in a linear way, but in a circular fashion, beginning with two men El Negro and Enero and a boy Tilo, on a fishing trip; circling back to a previous trip when Eusubio was with them, slowly revealing the memory that is acting on both men and what happened to their friend. The fishing trip is further disturbed by a visit from ‘a local’ whose questions unsettle the trio.

The second tributary/narrative follows Siomara and her two daughters Lucy and Mariela. The girls are entering womanhood, the mother is becoming more protective.

Photo V. Bagacian Pexels.com

Siomara was in one of those phases she sometimes went through, when she was grouchier than usual. Saying no to everything and dealing out punishments and bans for no reason. All because she could see how the two girls were growing, how little by little they were slipping away, how sooner or later they were going to leave her as well.

She lights fires as a way to deal with her emotions, she has done so since she was a girl. She seems to be lighting them a lot recently.

Sometimes she thinks the fire talks to her. Not like a person does, not with words. But there’s something in the crackle, the soft sound of the flames, as if she could almost hear the air burning away, yes, something, right there, that speaks to her alone…
Come on, you know you want to.
It says.

Again the story turns on itself, something has happened here too, sometimes the mother is living in the past, the present too much for her. The girls hear about a dance and plan to go.

Lucy wants to be a hairdresser. She wants to give other woman those moments of peace her mother seems to feel when she is doing her hair.

The narrative moves back and forth like the tide, people in the community are connected and affected by events that occur at the river. Paths cross, fates intertwine. It is necessary to let go of needing to know whether we are in the past or the present. If certain events happened before or after others. We accept each part of the story’s mosaic, see how they fit together, until all the pieces have been laid.

A summer like this one. Twenty years back, a summer like this one. The same island or the next one along or the one after that. In the memory it’s all just the island, with no name or exact coordinates.

The longer the men stay in the forest, the more uneasy they feel about what they have done, what has happened in the past and how unwelcome and out of place they feel. Invited to a dance, they leave their campsite for the evening.

Dreams and a Queue for the Healer

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Enero has a disturbing dream, twice.

Eusubio looked at him and thought for a moment.
We need to go see my godfather. He knows about this stuff.
He said.

Mariela also has a dream, she tells her sister Lucy about it.

And what happened in the dream?
I don’t know, like I say I just had a kind of flashback. It was weird, there were lights and sirens.

There is a sense of the repetitive cycles of the generations, girls hide from their families, they grow up to become a mother who can’t help but try and prevent their child from repeating the same mistakes. To keep them safe.

She pretends not to hear. Still just about strong enough to resist. But for how much longer.
One day, she knows she will answer the fires’s call.

In less than 100 pages, Not a River depicts disparate elements of a broken community, marginalised families, their efforts to bond, heal, escape, punish, revel and cope with the aftermath of it all.

Selva Almada’s paragraphs are like brushstrokes on a canvas, each one contributes to the story and is necessary in order to see beyond it.

The characters in my novel, men and women who live on what the river can provide, are a reflection of what the neo-liberalism of the 1990s has done to Argentina: impoverishing it, condemning a significant part of its citizens to poverty and marginalization.

Selva Almada

Highly Recommended for fans of thought provoking literary fiction.

Further Reading

Tony’s Reading list – review of Not a River

Booker Prize Website: Q & A with Author & Translator

My review of The Wind that Lays Waste

Selva Almada, Author

Selva Almada is considered one of the most powerful voices of contemporary Argentinian and Latin American literature and one of the most influential feminist intellectuals of the region.

Compared to Carson McCullers, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Sara Gallardo and Juan Carlos Onetti, Almada has published several novels, a book of short stories and a book of journalistic fiction. She has also published a film diary, written on the set of Lucrecia Martel’s film Zama, based on Antonio di Benedetto’s novel.

She has been a finalist for the Medifé Prize, the Rodolfo Walsh Award and of the Tigre Juan Award. Her work has been translated into French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Swedish and Turkish. 

Not a River (shortlisted for the Vargas Llosa Prize for Novels) is her fourth book to appear in English after The Wind that Lays Waste (Winner of the EIBF First Book Award 2019), Dead Girls (2020), and Brickmakers (2021).

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International Booker Prize shortlist 2024

The shortlist for the International Booker Prize 2024 has been decided. It features novels from six countries, (Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, South Korea and Sweden), translated from Dutch, German, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.

Chair of judges Eleanor Wachtel said:

‘Our shortlist, while implicitly optimistic, engages with current realities of racism and oppression, global violence and ecological disaster’

Prize Administrator Fiammetta Rocco added:

‘The books cast a forensic eye on divided families and divided societies, revisiting pasts both recent and distant to help make sense of the present’ 

Read Around the World, Other Perspectives

The International Booker Prize introduces readers to the best novels and short story collections from around the globe that have been translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland. Recognising the vital work of translators, the £50,000 prize money is divided equally: £25,000 for the author and £25,000 for the translator(s).

The shortlist was chosen from a longlist of 13 titles announced in March, which was selected from 149 books published in the UK and/or Ireland between May 1, 2023 and April 30, 2024, submitted to the prize by publishers. 

I have read one from the shortlist and it was excellent; Selva Almada’s Not a River (link to my review), the second of her novella’s I have read. Not having read any others on this list, I can’t really comment, but I would love to know what you thought if you have read any of these, or intend to. Brief summaries below.

The Shortlist

Not a River by Selva Almada (Argentina) tr. by Annie McDermott

International Booker Prize longlist 2024 Argentinian literature Spanish translation

Selva Almada’s novel is the finest expression yet of her compelling style and singular vision of rural Argentina.

Three men go out fishing, returning to a favourite spot on the river despite their memories of a terrible accident there years earlier. As a long, sultry day passes, they drink and cook and talk and dance, and try to overcome the ghosts of their past. But they are outsiders, and this intimate, peculiar moment also puts them at odds with the inhabitants of this watery universe, both human and otherwise. The forest presses close, and violence seems inevitable, but can another tragedy be avoided?

Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong (Korea) tr. Sora Kim-Russell, Youngjae Josephine Bae

An epic, multi-generational tale that threads together a century of Korean history. 

Centred on three generations of a family of rail workers and a laid-off factory worker staging a high-altitude sit-in, Mater 2-10 vividly depicts the lives of ordinary working Koreans, starting from the Japanese colonial era, continuing through Liberation, and right up to the twenty-first century. 

What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthum (Netherlands) tr. Sarah Timmer Harvey

A deeply moving exploration of grief, told in brief, precise vignettes and full of gentle melancholy and surprising humour.

What if one half of a pair of twins no longer wants to live? What if the other can’t live without them? This question lies at the heart of Jente Posthuma’s deceptively simple What I’d Rather Not Think About. The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood, and tells of their adult lives: how her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely. 

Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior (Brazil) tr. Johnny Lorenz

A fascinating and gripping story about the lives of subsistence farmers in Brazil’s poorest region.

Deep in Brazil’s neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother’s bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever.

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (Germany) tr. Michael Hofmann

An intimate and devastating story of the path of two lovers through the ruins of a relationship, set against the backdrop of a seismic period in European history.

Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, punishment and the exertion of power. And the world around them is changing too: as the GDR begins to crumble, so too do all the old certainties and the old loyalties, ushering in a new era whose great gains also involve profound loss. 

The Details by Ia Genberg (Sweden) tr. Kira Josefsson

In exhilarating, provocative prose, Ia Genberg reveals an intimate and powerful celebration of what it means to be human.

A famous broadcaster writes a forgotten love letter; a friend abruptly disappears; a lover leaves something unexpected behind; a traumatised woman is consumed by her own anxiety. In the throes of a high fever, a woman lies bedridden. Suddenly, she is struck with an urge to revisit a particular novel from her past. Inside the book is an inscription: a message from an ex-girlfriend. Pages from her past begin to flip, full of things she cannot forget and people who cannot be forgotten. Johanna, that same ex-girlfriend, now a famous TV host. Niki, the friend who disappeared all those years ago. Alejandro, who appears like a storm in precisely the right moment. And Birgitte, whose elusive qualities shield a painful secret. Who is the real subject of a portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush?

The Winner

The International Booker Prize 2024 ceremony will take place from 7pm BST on Tuesday, 21 May. It is being held for the first time in the Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern.

Highlights from the event, including the announcement of the winning book for 2024, will be livestreamed on the Booker Prizes’ channels, presented by Jack Edwards. 

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International Booker Prize Longlist 2024

On 11 March the longlist for the International Booker Prize 2024 was announced. It was a notable celebration for Latin American fiction, with authors representing Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Venezuela on the list. 

The 13 novels cover 10 different languages, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, German, Albanian, Portuguese, Dutch, Korean, Polish and Russian. They span multiple genres and generations, as well as personal and national histories, oppressive regimes and the shadow of colonialism. Though they may seem unfamiliar, many have been bestsellers in their home countries.

Take the Quiz!

If you are not sure which of these books might be your style, you can do what I did, and take their quiz!

-> Quiz: which book from the International Booker Prize 2024 longlist should you read?

I’ll let you know which book they have recommended I read at the end of this post. If you take the quiz, let me know in the comments below which book came up for you.

The 13 Novels on the Longlist

The 13 books chosen by this year’s judges represent the best in translated fiction, published in the English language in the UK and Ireland selected from 149 books published between 1 May 2023 and 30 April 2024.

I have two on my shelf already, but not the one the quiz recommended I should read!

The titles are listed below with a description and the judges’ comment: 

Not a River by Selva Almada (Argentina), tr. Annie McDermott (Spanish) (#1 on my shelf)

– Selva Almada’s novel is the finest expression yet of her compelling style and singular vision of rural Argentina. 

Three men go out fishing, returning to a favourite spot on the river despite their memories of a terrible accident there years earlier. As a long, sultry day passes, they drink and cook and talk and dance, and try to overcome the ghosts of their past. But they are outsiders, and this intimate, peculiar moment also puts them at odds with the inhabitants of this watery universe, both human and otherwise. The forest presses close, and violence seems inevitable, but can another tragedy be avoided?

‘Not A River moves like water, in currents of dream and overlaps of time which shape the stories and memories of its protagonists. Enero and El Negro have brought their young friend and protégé Tilo on a fishing trip along the Paraná River in Argentina. The island where they set up camp pulses with its own desires and angers, tensions equal to those of the men who have come together on its shores. Alongside the story of these grief-marred characters, the author offers those of the women of the town – and what luck to root for or mourn them: the mother whose ever-growing fires engulf us, her two flirtatious, youth-glowed daughters, and the almost-mythical manta ray who becomes one of the guardians and ghosts of this throbbing, feverish novel.’ 

Simpatía by Rodrigo Blanco Calderon (Venezuela), tr. Noel Hernández González & Daniel Hahn (Spanish)

– A suspenseful novel with unexpected twists and turns about the agony of Venezuela and the collapse of Chavismo. 

Set in the Venezuela of Nicolas Maduro amid a mass exodus of the intellectual class who have been leaving their pets behind. Ulises Kan, the protagonist and a movie buff, receives a text message from his wife, Paulina, saying she is leaving the country (and him). Ulises is not heartbroken, but liberated by Paulina’s departure. As two other events end up disrupting his life even further, Ulises discovers that he has been entrusted with a mission – to transform Los Argonautas, the great family home, into a shelter for abandoned dogs. If he manages to do it in time, he will inherit the luxurious apartment that he had shared with Paulina.

‘In this realistic allegory set in Caracas during Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship, we meet Ulises, a former orphan who is desperate for a sense of purpose and belonging. His wife has just announced by text message that she is leaving him and his father-in-law has willed him Los Argonautas, a house of accumulating secrets and mythologies. Much like that of Jason of the Argonauts, Ulises’ inheritance is contingent on the completion of a task: to transform the house into a veterinary clinic and kennel for the stray dogs left behind by the elites who have fled the city. Within the madness and austerity of political corruption and historical revisioning, Ulises devotes himself to one of the saner choices left to him: complete the task by saving the dogs, with the help of his Medea-like lover, Nadine, and the leftover animal rescue and house staff. In doing so he simultaneously creates a chosen family and a practice of care that is a stronger balm for the heart than sympathy.’

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (Germany), tr. Michael Hofmann

– An intimate and devastating story of the path of two lovers through the ruins of a relationship, set against the backdrop of a seismic period in European history. 

Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, punishment and the exertion of power. And the world around them is changing too: as the GDR begins to crumble, so too do all the old certainties and the old loyalties, ushering in a new era whose great gains also involve profound loss. 

‘An expertly braided novel about the entanglement of personal and national transformations, set amid the tumult of 1980s Berlin. Kairos unfolds around a chaotic affair between Katharina, a 19-year-old woman, and Hans, a 53-year-old writer in East Berlin. Erpenbeck’s narrative prowess lies in her ability to show how momentous personal and historical turning points intersect, presented through exquisite prose that marries depth with clarity. She masterfully refracts generation-defining political developments through the lens of a devastating relationship, thus questioning the nature of destiny and agency. Kairos is a bracing philosophical inquiry into time, choice, and the forces of history.’ 

What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma (Netherlands), tr. Sarah Timmer Harvey (Dutch)

– A deeply moving exploration of grief, told in brief, precise vignettes and full of gentle melancholy and surprising humour. 

What if one half of a pair of twins no longer wants to live? What if the other can’t live without them? This question lies at the heart of Jente Posthuma’s deceptively simple What I’d Rather Not Think About. The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood, and tells of their adult lives: how her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely. 

‘A deeply moving exploration of grief and identity through the lives of twins, one of whom dies by suicide. Posthuma delves into the surviving twin’s efforts to understand and come to terms with the loss of her brother, examining the profound complexities of familial bonds. Posthuma navigates delicate themes with sensitivity and formal inventiveness, portraying the nuances of the twins’ relationship and the individual struggles they face. The author skilfully inflects tragedy with unexpected humour and provides a multifaceted look at the search for meaning in the aftermath of suicide. What I’d Rather Not Think About stands out for its empathetic portrayal of love, loss, and resilience.’  

Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo (Italy), tr. Leah Janeczko

– Narrated in a voice as wryly ironic as it is warm and affectionate, Lost on Me seductively explores the slippery relationship between deceitfulness and creativity.

Vero has grown up in Rome with her eccentric family: an omnipresent mother who is devoted to her own anxiety, a father ruled by hygienic and architectural obsessions, and a precocious genius brother at the centre of their attention. As she becomes an adult, Vero’s need to strike out on her own leads her into bizarre and comical situations. As she continues to plot escapades and her mother’s relentless tracking methods and guilt-tripping mastery thwart her at every turn, it is no wonder that Vero becomes a writer – and a liar – inventing stories in a bid for her own sanity.

‘A funny, sharp, wonderfully readable novel in which a fresh, playful voice takes us to the heart of an obsessive, unpredictable family. This engaging book tells the story of a young writer finding her special place where the “most fragile, tender, and comical parts” of herself come dazzlingly to life in wild escapades and moments of unexpected reflection.’ 

The House on Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone (Italy), tr. Oonagh Stransky (#2 on my shelf)

– Narrated against the vivid backdrop of Naples in the 1960s, The House on Via Gemito has established itself as a masterpiece of contemporary Italian literature.

The modest apartment in Via Gemito smells of paint and white spirit. The living room furniture is pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio, and drying canvases must be moved off the beds each night. Federí, the father, a railway clerk, is convinced of possessing great artistic talent. If he didn’t have a family to feed, he’d be a world-famous painter. Ambitious and frustrated, genuinely talented but full of arrogance and resentment, his life is marked by bitter disappointment. His long-suffering wife and their four sons bear the brunt. It’s his first-born who, years later, will sift the lies from the truth to tell the story of a man he spent his whole life trying not to resemble.

‘The House on Via Gemito is a marvellous novel of Naples and its environs during and after the Second World War. The prism for this exploration is the relationship between the narrator and his railway worker / artist father – an impossible man filled with cowardice and boastfulness. His son’s attempt to understand and forgive his father is compelling; we are held through the minutiae of each argument and explosion, each hope and almost-success.’ 

Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior (Brazil), tr. Johnny Lorenz (Portuguese)

– A fascinating and gripping story about the lives of subsistence farmers in Brazil’s poorest region.

Deep in Brazil’s neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother’s bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever. 

‘Bibiana and Belonisía are two sisters whose inheritance arrives in the form of a grandmother’s mysterious knife, which they discover while playing, then unwrap from its rags and taste. The mouth of one sister is cut badly and the tongue of the other is severed, injuries that bind them together like scar tissue, though they bear the traces in different ways. Set in the Bahia region of Brazil, where approximately one third of all enslaved Africans were sent during the height of the slave trade, the novel invites us into the deep-rooted relationships of Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous peoples to their lands and waters – including the ways these communities demand love, gods, song, and dream – despite brutal colonial disruptions. An aching yet tender story of our origins of violence, of how we spend our lives trying to bloom love and care from them, and of the language and silence we need to fuel our tending.’  

The Details by Ia Genberg (Sweden), tr. Kira Josefsson

– In exhilarating, provocative prose, Ia Genberg reveals an intimate and powerful celebration of what it means to be human. 

A famous broadcaster writes a forgotten love letter; a friend abruptly disappears; a lover leaves something unexpected behind; a traumatised woman is consumed by her own anxiety. In the throes of a high fever, a woman lies bedridden. Suddenly, she is struck with an urge to revisit a particular novel from her past. Inside the book is an inscription: a message from an ex-girlfriend. Pages from her past begin to flip, full of things she cannot forget and people who cannot be forgotten. Johanna, that same ex-girlfriend, now a famous TV host. Niki, the friend who disappeared all those years ago. Alejandro, who appears like a storm in precisely the right moment. And Birgitte, whose elusive qualities shield a painful secret. Who is the real subject of a portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush?

‘Ia Genberg writes with a remarkably sharp eye about a series of messy relationships between friends, family and lovers. Using, as she says, “details, rather than information”, she gives us not simply the “residue of life presented in a combination of letters” but an evocation of contemporary Stockholm and a moving portrait of her narrator. She has at times a melancholic eye, but her wit and liveliness constantly break through.’  

White Nights by Urszula Honek (Poland), tr. Kate Webster

– A highly artistic study of death encapsulated in moving stories set in Poland’s Beskid Mountains region.

White Nights is a series of thirteen interconnected stories concerning the various tragedies and misfortunes that befall a group of people who all grew up and live(d) in the same village in the Beskid Niski region, in southern Poland. Each story centres itself around a different character and how it is that they manage to cope, survive or merely exist, despite, and often in ignorance of, the poverty, disappointment, tragedy, despair, brutality and general sense of futility that surrounds them.

‘A haunting series of interconnected stories set in a small town in the Beskid Mountains of Poland, a place enveloped by the continuous daylight of the summer months. Through a cast of characters each facing their own existential crises, Honek crafts a narrative mosaic that explores themes of isolation, identity, death, and the longing for connection. The book’s strength lies in its ability to capture the intense, dreamlike quality of its setting, where the natural phenomenon of “white nights” serves as a backdrop for the characters’ introspective journeys. White Nights is a dark, lyrical exploration of the ways in which people seek meaning and belonging in a transient world.’ 

Mater 2-10 by Hwang Sok-yong (Korea), tr. Sora Kim-Russell & Youngjae Josephine Bae

– An epic, multi-generational tale that threads together a century of Korean history. 

Centred on three generations of a family of rail workers and a laid-off factory worker staging a high-altitude sit-in, Mater 2-10 vividly depicts the lives of ordinary working Koreans, starting from the Japanese colonial era, continuing through Liberation, and right up to the twenty-first century. 

‘A sweeping and comprehensive book about a Korea we rarely see in the West, blending the historical narrative of a nation with an individual’s quest for justice. Hwang highlights the political struggles of the working class with the story of a complicated national history of occupation and freedom, all seen through the lens of Jino, from his perch on top of a factory chimney, where he is staging a protest against being unfairly laid off.’ 

A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare (Albania), tr. John Hodgson

– A fascinating meditation on Soviet Russia, authoritarianism, power structures and a period of great writers. 

In June 1934, Joseph Stalin allegedly telephoned the famous novelist and poet Boris Pasternak to discuss the arrest of fellow Soviet poet Osip Mandelstam. In a fascinating combination of dreams and dossier facts, Ismail Kadare, winner of the inaugural International Booker Prize, reconstructs the three minutes they spoke and the aftershocks of this tense, mysterious moment in modern history. Weaving together the accounts of witnesses, reporters and writers such as Isaiah Berlin and Anna Akhmatova, Kadare tells a gripping story of power and political structures, of the relationship between writers and tyranny. 

‘The core of this brilliant exploration of power is an analysis of 13 versions of a three-minute telephone conversation between the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and the novelist Boris Pasternak in 1934. Each of these is an attempt to understand or justify Pasternak’s troubling, ambiguous response from a slightly different point of view. The book begins with what seem like autobiographical memories of Kadare’s time as a student in Moscow, setting a tone which hovers continually between fiction and non-fiction, between what is real and what is invented. Kadare explores the tension between authoritarian politicians and creative artists – it is a quest for definitive truth where none is to be found.’

The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov (Ukraine), tr. Boris Dralyuk (Russian)

– Inflected with Kurkov’s signature humour and magical realism, The Silver Bone crafts a propulsive narrative that bursts to life with rich historical detail. 

Kyiv, 1919. The Soviets control the city, but White armies menace them from the West. No man trusts his neighbour and any spark of resistance may ignite into open rebellion. When Samson Kolechko’s father is murdered, his last act is to save his son from a falling Cossack sabre. Deprived of his right ear instead of his head, Samson is left an orphan, with only his father’s collection of abacuses for company. Until, that is, his flat is requisitioned by two Red Army soldiers, whose secret plans Samson is somehow able to overhear with uncanny clarity. Eager to thwart them, he stumbles into a world of murder and intrigue that will either be the making of him – or finish what the Cossack started.

‘A surprising book from Ukrainian novelist and journalist Andrey Kurkov, The Silver Bone is a crime mystery set in 1919 Kyiv during a time of chaos, shifts of power and random violence in the aftermath of war. But amidst the brutality is Kurkov’s sense of irony and absurdism. A young engineering student sees his father cut down by Cossacks and, moments later, a sabre cuts off his own right ear. He manages to catch it and keep it in a box, where it can still hear for him, wherever he is. Inspired by real-life, post-First World War Bolshevik secret police files, Kurkov’s novel creates an atmosphere that ranges from 19th century Russian literature to the immediacy of the current war in Ukraine, though it was initially published before Putin’s invasion.’ 

Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener (Peru), tr. Julia Sanches (Spanish)

– A provocative, irreverent autobiographical novel that reckons with the legacy of colonialism through one Peruvian woman’s family ties to both colonised and coloniser. 

Alone in an ethnographic museum in Paris, Gabriela Wiener is confronted with her unusual inheritance. She is visiting an exhibition of pre-Columbian artefacts, the spoils of European colonial plunder, many of them from her home country of Peru. Peering through the glass, she sees sculptures of Indigenous faces that resemble her own – but the man responsible for pillaging them was her own great-great-grandfather, Austrian colonial explorer Charles Wiener. In the wake of her father’s death, Gabriela begins delving into all she has inherited from her paternal line. From the brutal trail of racism and theft Charles was responsible for, to revelations of her father’s infidelity, she traces a legacy of abandonment, jealousy and colonial violence, and questions its impact on her own struggles with desire, love and race in a polyamorous relationship. 

‘A compelling search for identity that explores the complicated relationship between the person you want to be and the stories of the past that might have made you. This is an exploration of colonialism’s surprising effects on a writer investigating her antecedents and ancestors starting from a display case of Peruvian artefacts in Paris and ending in a story of family, love and desire.’ 

The Shortlist

The shortlist of six books will be announced on 9 April 2024.

The winning title will be livestream announced at a ceremony on Tuesday 21 May 2024.

My Quiz Result

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

When I did the quiz for the first time, it came up with the result Undiscovered by Peruvian author Gabriela Wiener.

I did it a second time and I must have changed one of my answers and it came up with Not a River by Selva Almada. I have previously read and enjoyed one of her earlier novels The Wind That Lays Waste (my review here).

The good news is that I do have Not a River on my shelf because it is part of my Charco Press 2024 bundle, so I’ll be reading it next.

Many of these authors are new to me, though I have read Jenny Erpenbeck’s Visitation and Domenico Starnone’s Ties.

I will be looking out for Undiscovered to see if that quiz really does have any insight into my reading preferences! What book did it tell you to read? Let me know in the comments below.

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Dublin Literary Award Shortlist 2024

Back in January, the Dublin Literary Award 2024 announced a longlist of 70 books nominated by 80 libraries including librarians and readers, from 35 countries around the world.

Six novels have now been shortlisted for the award, featuring authors who are American, Canadian, Australian, Romanian and Irish, nominated by public libraries in Romania, Germany, Jamaica, Canada and Australia.

The only one I have read, and it was a 5 star read for me is Sebastian Barry’s Old God’s Time (see my review here) I include the judges’ comments below to help you decide if you are interested in reading any of the nominated titles.

Solenoid sounds interesting and has been highly praised, but 840 pages is too grand of an ask for this reader. Praiseworthy is tempting, but again 740 pages!

The Shortlist of Six Novels

Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry (Ireland) (literary fiction)

– Retired policeman Tom Kettle is enjoying the quiet of his new home in Dalkey, overlooking the sea. His peace is interrupted when two former colleagues turn up at his door to ask about a traumatic, decades-old case. A case that Tom never came to terms with. His peace is further disturbed by a young mother who asks for his help. And what of Tom’s wife, June, and their two children? A beautiful, haunting novel about what we live through, what we live with, and what will survive of us.

Judges’ Comments

Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry is a book about love. It’s a world of precarious balancing, a high wire act in which the ghosts of the past intermingle with the challenges of the present. Here a retired policeman settling into a new stage in his life faces the legacy of an old case. This exploration of trauma, childhood abuse in catholic institutions, memory and the lingering impact of loss is devastating. It deftly avoids the trap of solely being one note in that regard. Barry does something clever here where he elevates the work beyond the confines of its themes into a reading experience that often feels transcendent despite the painful subject matter. It’s impossible to read this novel and not be moved by its mercurial power, the ways in which it shifts ideas of human consciousness. This is a beautiful and, in some ways, tender work. Full of heart, risk and that illusive, rare quality the best storytellers possess, it marks Barry, one of our most gifted talents as a writer who continues to invigorate the novel form. 

‘Outstanding, a revelatory and deeply affecting work. Barry’s meditation on trauma, memory and loss is a book about love that lingers in the body long after reading it.’ — Irenosen Okojie, 2024 Dublin Literary Award Judge

Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated by Sean Cotter (Romania)

– Based on Cărtărescu’s own role as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist’s life and spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics.

On a broad scale, the novel’s investigations of other universes, dimensions, and timelines reconcile the realms of life and art. Grounded in the reality of late 1970s/early 1980s Communist Romania, including long lines for groceries, the absurdities of the education system, and the misery of family life.

Combining fiction, autobiography and history, Solenoid ruminates on the exchanges possible between the alternate dimensions of life and art within the Communist present.

Judges’ Comments

We can imagine (it not fully grasp) a world that has, in comparison to our own, an extra dimension.” In some respects, this is the world of Solenoid. The city of Bucharest in which the narrator is a teacher and failed writer is a place in which what appears to be an abandoned factory contains unexpected caverns, tunnels and a gallery of enormous parasites, where an apparently ordinary, run-down house is built upon an electrical device that causes people lying in bed to float. By turns wildly inventive, philosophical, and lyrical, with passages of great beauty, Solenoid is the work of a major European writer who is still relatively little known to English-language readers. Sean Cotter’s translation of the novel sets out to change that situation, capturing the lyrical precision of the original, thereby opening up Cărtărescu’s work to an entirely new readership.

‘An anti-novel that for all intents and purposes should not exist but still does despite itself, thanks to the overpowering talents of the author and the translator.’ — Anton Hur,  2024 Dublin Literary Award Judge

Haven by Emma Donoghue (Ireland) (historical fiction)

– In 7th-century Ireland, a scholar/priest called Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking two monks – young Trian & old Cormac – he rows down the river Shannon in search of an isolated spot on which to found a monastery. With only faith to guide them and drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find a steep, bare island, inhabited by tens of thousands of birds, and claim it for God. In such a place, what will survival mean? What they find is the extraordinary island now known as Skellig Michael.

Judges’ Comments

A novel of stylistic precision yet ethical complexity, Haven tells the story of three monks in seventh-century Ireland in search of a place of retreat from worldly temptation. Their journey by boat to a barren islet allows the com- plex interaction between experience and idealism to be revealed and subtly explores the importance of evolving human bonds in shaping community. Haven’s searching treatment of authority, and the tensions between rigid beliefs and openness of thought, extend beyond interpersonal dynamics to our relationship with the natural environment. The world Emma Donoghue creates in this novel is at once strange and familiar, provoking us to think deeply about the importance of human empathy in navigating our place on this earth.

‘A novel of stylistic precision yet ethical com- plexity, Haven offers a searching treatment of authority, examining the implications of fixed beliefs for our relationships with each other and with the more-than-human world.’ — Lucy Collins, 2024 Dublin Literary Award Judge 

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery (USA/Jamaica) (Short Stories)

–  In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on first through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated by what their younger son calls “the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive.”

Pulsing with vibrant lyricism and sly commentary, Escoffery’s debut unravels what it means to be in between homes and cultures in a world at the mercy of capitalism and white supremacy.

Judges’ Comments

Jonathan Escoffery’s energetic novel-in-stories, If I Survive You, follows a Jamaican family living hand-to-mouth in Florida. The different members of the family search for a foothold in this new and exhausting country, each in their own way, struggling against poverty, racism, recession and hurricanes. At the heart of the story lies a deep-rooted racial ambiguity; where does one belong and is it possible to be “a little of this and a little of that” and still find your way, find your people, find a future? The story also deals with the universal condition of fatherly rejection and sibling rivalry, with a remarkable eye for perfect de- tails. The narrative is vibrant, humorous, snappy and quietly devastating; eight interlinking stories told by various voices, often from an urgent and empathetic second-person point of view, and also in Jamaican dialect, that describe how life keeps knocking the family back in their pursuit of identity and happiness.

‘A fresh voice in fiction, Jonathan Escoffery blurs the lines between the short story and the novel in a work that brings us into the lives of Jamaican-Americans in Miami. Through linked stories, the form mirrors the lives of the characters and their struggles to connect, both with their families, and with the society around them.’ — Chris Morash, 2024 Dublin Literary Non-Voting Chair

The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr (Canada) (Historical Fiction)

– It’s 1929, and Baxter is considered lucky, as a Black man, to have a job as a porter on a train that crisscrosses the continent. He has to smile and nod for the white passengers when they call him ‘George.’ He’s obsessed with teeth, and saving up tips for dentistry school.

On this trip, the passengers are unruly, especially when the train is stranded for days – their secrets leak out, blurring with Baxter’s sleep-deprivation hallucinations. When he finds an illicit postcard of two men, Baxter’s longings are reawakened; keeping it puts his job in peril, but he can’t part with it or his memories of a certain Porter Instructor.

Judges’ Comments

An unconventional historical novel that combines meticulous research and deep imagination, The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr takes readers on a vividly depicted train ride in the 1920’s from the perspective of a Black and queer sleeping car porter as he tries to make a life that is a little less precarious and a lot more hopeful despite the odds stacked against him. As the train travels through the rural Canadian landscape, Baxter, the porter of the title, similarly traverses the vistas of memory, the reality that surrounds him, and his hopes and visions of the future on his own interior journey of discovery and self-creation. Written in a concise yet evocative style, this slim novel combines the epic scope of history with the lift and verve of ghost stories and queer narrative, creating a quietly propulsive read that at the same time takes stock of an entire life in the space of a single train voyage.

“He drinks melting glacier, plunges his hands into the water past the point of ice just to wake himself up and calm himself down. He ascends into the vestibule, his legs shaky, his hands icy numb.”

‘You can almost taste the exhaustion and despair in this quiet, yet vivid, story of a black man working as a porter on a sleeper train in Canada in 1929. Beautifully written, melancholy but never without hope.’— Ingunn Snaedel, 2024 Dublin Literary Award Judge

Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright (Australia) (Literary fiction)

–  In a small town in northern Australia dominated by a haze cloud, a crazed visionary sees donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife seeks solace from his madness in the dance of moths and butterflies. One of their sons, called Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide. The other, Tommyhawk, wishes his brother dead so that he can pursue his dream of becoming white and powerful.

Praiseworthy is a novel which pushes allegory and language to its limits, a cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage, and a fable for the end of days.

Judges’ Comments

Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy is a wonder of twenty-first century fiction. This modernist more-than-an-allegory about a pernicious haze that settles over a northern Australia town yokes a painfully contemporary tale of political, social and climatic disaster to a narrative consciousness embodying 65,000 years of aboriginal survival. Intimate while epic, the family drama at its center reads like chamber music on a symphonic scale. Wright has authored a blisteringly funny book, replete with situations and speech that elicit wild laughter – a laughter through tears we may recognize from our readings of Beckett and Kafka. She has also written a beautiful one: time and again Praiseworthy delivers unforgettable images, from ‘aerial rivers’ of dancing butterflies to hordes of stinking donkeys. Startlingly original, fiercely political, uncompromising in every respect, Praiseworthy expands the possibility of the novel form.

‘Funny and fierce, Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy is a wonder of twenty-first century fiction. This modernist more-than-an-allegory yokes a painfully contemporary tale of political, social and climatic disaster to a narrative consciousness embodying 65 000+ years of aboriginal survival.’ — Daniel Medin, 2024 Dublin Literary Award Judge

Reading From Libraries

The novels nominated and shortlisted for the Award will be available for readers to borrow from Dublin City Libraries and from public libraries around Ireland, or can be borrowed as eBooks and some as eAudiobooks on the free Borrowbox app, available to all public library users.

Have you read any of the shortlist? Are you tempted by any of these titles? Let me know in the comments below.

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Kusamakura (1906) by Natsume Sōseki tr. Meredith McKinney (2008)

Reading Challenge Self-Sabotage

If I’d had another Yūko Tsushima book on my shelf, I would have chosen that to read in January (for Tony’s #JanuaryInJapan + Meredith’s Japanese Literature Challenge17). I should know better than to pick just any book, especially a classic, in order to be part of the group. I don’t do that well in groups, or with literary challenges, so this was my punishment or delight. It took me two weeks to finish, not because it takes very long to read (it’s only 146 pages long) but because it brought out my disinclination to read, however it did inspire me to write and share a story.

Japanese literature translated fiction literary fiction

During the time I should have been reading it, I spent a weekend looking after two dogs, few distractions I thought, comfortable reading spaces. I sat down to read it and thought of the irony that it is a book about an artist who takes a meandering walk up a forested hillside.

I had just come back from a walk on a forested hillside. On his walk he encounters certain characters whom he observes and listens to while pondering art. My walk was over but the effect of was too present to be able to read more of the artist’s journey. I turned to the blank end pages and wrote out my walk in two parts, a story of intuitive insight, intrigue and fear.

You can read The Not So Great Escape here.

A New Month, A New Mood

A week later, I (re)turned to Kusamakura and found his walk took him in a more interesting direction, engaging him more with characters he met, a young woman confronting her past, her brother his uncertain future, their father, his latter years.

The book is by turns introspective as the artist attempts to create, he has his painting equipment with him, though it is to words and poetry he finds expression, and to understand something about beauty and form. The first night at an inn, he writes a series of short poems and in the morning discovers additions, not of his hand.

I tilt my head in puzzlement as I read, at a loss to know whether the additions are intended as imitations, corrections, elegant poetic exchanges, foolishness or mockery.

He often finds himself alone in places where he would expect there to be people. There is a sense of isolation and temporary abandonment he is disturbed by. Though he does not seek company, he seems to prefer his aloneness in the presence of others. He writes of mists and clouds and dew, of becoming the things he sees and wonders how to recreate that feeling to embody in a way that makes sense to others.

Eventually he accompanies the young woman, her brother and father on another journey, out of the hillside towards the train station, the train upon which he projects his thoughts of the changing civilisation, fast approaching modernity, the compact carriage carrying humanity stripped of their traditional freedoms, it will take this young brother towards war.

We are being dragged yet deeper into the real world, which I define as the world that
contains trains.

Context Can Elevate the Experience

For me, reading about this book afterwards, a little about the life of the author and of the context of the era, written just as Japan was opening itself to the rest of the world and the significant, irreversible change that would bring, brings another layer of understanding to the text, one that is not as easy to comprehend without that context.

In a brief piece entitled My Kusamakura, Sōseki stated that his aim had been to write a “haiku-style novel”. Previous novels, he said, were works in the manner of of the senryū, the earthier version of haiku that looks at everyday human life with a wryly humorous eye. “But it seems to me,” he wrote, “that we should also have a haiku-style novel that lives through beauty.”

The novel has been previously translated by Alan Turney with the title The Three-Cornered World, however Meredith McKinney has stayed with the Japanses title Kusamakura which literally translates as grass-pillow, a traditional literary term for travel, a kind of poetic journey.

Further Reading

Kusamakura reviewed by Tony Malone: A Grass Pillow For My Head

Article: Tony Malone on The Translations of Natsume Sōseki

Author, Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916)

Natsume Kinnosuke (Sōseki was his nom de plume) was born in 1867, the final year of the old regime, into a family of minor bureaucrats whose fortunes declined rapidly with the onset of the Meiji era. A late and unwanted child in a large family, he was adopted the following year by a childless couple, then returned nine years later, when the couple divorced, to his parents (whom he believed to be his grandparents). This loveless and lonely childhood marked him with a sense of estrangement and dislocation that haunted him through his adult years and that echoed the dislocations and questioning of identity that were hallmarks of the Meiji-era Japan.

Considered the foremost novelist of this era, he was one of Japan’s most influential modern writers. He wrote 14 novels, as wall as haiku, poems, academic papers on literary theory, essays, and autobiographical sketches. He is best known for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. 

Major themes in Sōseki’s works include ordinary people fighting against economic hardship, the conflict between duty and desire, loyalty and group mentality versus freedom and individuality, personal isolation and estrangement, the rapid industrialization of Japan and its social consequences, contempt of Japan’s aping of Western culture, and a pessimistic view of human nature. 

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Valentino (1957) by Natalia Ginzburg tr. Avril Bardoni (Italian), Intro by Alexander Chee

The more I read of the Italian author Natalia Ginzburg, the more I am hooked.

Valentino leads the reader along, thinking you are reading a straight forward story, until you arrive at the point of realising that your reactions are judgements and the book holds up a mirror to our own conditioning. And that is how it feels reading it in 2024. I can’t even imagine the storm it likely raised when published in 1957.

Little Sense or Sensibility

novella Italy parody fiction gender conditioning

Valentino is a short novella narrated by Caterina, who is training to become a teacher. She lives with her father, a retired schoolteacher, her mother, who used to give piano lessons and her brother, Valentino who does very little, but whose medicine studies and equipment cost a lot.

we had to help my sister who was married to a commercial traveller and had three children and a pitifully inadequate income, and we also had to support my student brother who my father believed was destined to become a man of consequence. There was little enough reason to believe this, but he believed it all the same and had done ever since Valentino was a small boy and perhaps found it difficult to break the habit.

Valentino spends his time playing with a kitten, making toys out of scraps of material, dressing up and admiring himself. A string of engagements to teenagers raise false hopes and always end the same way – broken. So when he announces he will be married within the month, naturally the family expect the pattern to continue.

What a Wife Can Be or Not to Be

So when he turned up with his new fiancée we were amazed to the point of speechlessness. She was quite unlike anything we had ever imagined.

We learn of all the family members reactions to this new fiancée, with the exception of the father.

he was about to launch into a long speech about what was the main consideration but my mother interrupted him. My mother always interrupted his speeches, leaving him choking on a half-finished sentence, puffing with frustration.

A Man of Consequence, The Weight of Expectation

Photo by W R on Pexels.com

Valentino is oblivious to the reactions and judgements of his family and continues to act and communicate as he always has, holding nothing back, expecting everyone to be happy for him.

Is he fearless? A truth teller who doesn’t hide things or worry about what others think of him? Is he a narcissist? He is a wonderful character because he is like the mystery at the centre of the story. Who don’t quite know who he is because he isn’t acting as everyone including the reader might expect him to.

His father lost for words, does not understand that what he is witnessing is the incarnation of his desire, his son is indeed becoming a man of consequence, just not in the way he had expected.

Valentino is captivated by his wife, by her look, her intelligence, her culture. She showers him in gifts, he has upended social convention, insulted the patriarchy and all who prop it up.

My father said he would go to have a talk with Valentino’s fiancée, but my mother was opposed to this, partly because my father had a weak heart and was supposed to avoid any excitement, partly because she thought his arguments would be completely ineffectual. My father never said anything sensible; perhaps what he meant to say was sensible enough, but he never managed to express what he meant, getting bogged down in empty words, digressions and childhood memories, stumbling and gesticulating. So at home he was never allowed to finish what he was saying because we were all too impatient, and he would hark back wistfully to his teaching days when he could talk as much as he wanted and nobody humiliated him.

Out of Place

Once they are married, it is his family that feels out of place, ill at ease. Valentino is easily able to be among his wife’s friends and family as well as his own. He does not feel undeserving or unworthy of their company or his newfound social status. Neither is he aware of the dilemmas facing his family.

It is best not to share too much of the storyline, but to discover it yourself, because every page is a wonderful discovery, of thought provoking insights into the human condition and the reaction of those around us when one defies convention and how they too can be displaced when set down inside an unfamiliar environment.

When Caterina finishes her diploma and gets a job, we observe how Maddalena’s offer to house and feed her, though on the surface seems attractive, acts to disempower her, denying her independence and supporting a selfish desire. Through the unconventional marriage, we see the ridiculousness of gender conditioning all the more clearly.

I thought it was absolutely brilliant, the way Ginzburg has created these two characters, upending societal norms and inverting typical behaviours.

Highly recommended.

Author, Natalia Ginzburg

Natalia Ginzburg (1916-1991) was born in Palermo, Sicily. She wrote dozens of essays, plays, short stories and novels, including Voices in the Evening, All Our Yesterdays and Family Lexicon, for which she was awarded the prestigious Strega Prize in 1963.

Her work explored family relationships, politics and philosophy during and after the Fascist years, World War II. Modest and intensely reserved, Ginzburg never shied away from the traumas of history, whether writing about the Turin of her childhood, the Abruzzi countryside or contemporary Rome—approaching those traumas indirectly, through the mundane details and catastrophes of personal life.

She was involved in political activism throughout her life and served in the Italian parliament between 1983 to 1987. Animated by a profound sense of justice, she engaged with passion in various humanitarian issues, such as the lowering of the price of bread, support for Palestinian children, legal assistance for rape victims and reform of adoption laws. 

She died in Rome in 1991 at the age of seventy-five.

Further Reading

My review of Ginzburg’s memoir, Family Lexicon (1963)

My review of Ginzburg’s debut novel The Dry Heart (1947)

Interview with Alexander Chee: On Natalia Ginzburg’s Valentino by Sander Pleij, 6 May 2023

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Dublin Literary Award Longlist Announced

The Dublin Literary Award has announced a longlist of 70 books nominated by 80 libraries from 35 countries around the world.

Celebrating excellence in world literature and now in its 29th year, this award is the world’s most valuable annual prize for a single work of fiction published in English, worth €100,000 to the winner.

The list features 16 debut novelists and 31 novels in translation representing 14 languages including Finnish, Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian and Turkish. New  Zealand author Catherine Chidgey has been nominated for two novels. 

The shortlist will be revealed on 26th March 2024 and the winner will be announced on 23rd May 2024.

The nominated novels will be available for readers to borrow from Dublin City Libraries and from public libraries around Ireland, and some can be borrowed as eBooks and eAudiobooks on the free Borrowbox app, available to all public library users.

I have read Pet, Birnam Wood, Soldier Sailor, Old God’s Time and Demon Copperhead.

Irish Book Awards 2023 motherhood literary fiction
literary fiction Irish
Demon Copperhead Barbara Kingsolver
eco thriller tech billionaire New Zealand

The Longlist

1000 coils of fear by Olivia Wenzel (Germany) tr. Priscilla Layne – A multilayered and rhythmic debut novel about her life as a Black German woman living in Berlin and New York during the chaos of the 2016 U.S. presidential election from playwright Olivia Wenzel.

A History of the Island by Eugene Vodolazkin (Russia) tr. Lisa C. Hayden – Internationally acclaimed novelist and scholar of medieval literature, Eugene Vodolazkin returns with a satirical parable about European and Russian history, the myth of progress, and the futility of war.

A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt (Canada) – An urgent first novel about breaching the prisons we live inside from one of Canada’s most daring literary talents. An unnamed narrator abandons grad school and returns to northern Alberta in search of answers to existential questions about family, love, and happiness. What ensues is a series of conversations amounting to an autobiography of his hometown. 

Ada’s Realm by Sharon Dodua Otoo (Germany) tr. Jon Cho-Polizzi – In a small village in what will become Ghana, Ada gives birth to a baby who does not live. As she grieves for her child, Portuguese traders arrive in the village, an event that will bear terrible repercussions for Ada and her kin. Centuries later, Ada will become the mathematician Ada Lovelace; Ada, a prisoner forced into prostitution in a concentration camp; and Ada, a pregnant Ghanaian woman who arrives in Berlin in 2019 for a fresh start. Ada is not one woman, but many, and she is all women. This debut from Sharon Dodua Otoo paints an astonishing picture of femininity and resilience with deep empathy and infinite imagination.

An Astronomer in Love by Antoine Laurain (France) tr. by Louise Rogers Lalaurie & Megan Jones – Part swashbuckling adventure on the high seas and part modern-day love story set in the heart of Paris, An Astronomer in Love is an enchanting tale of adventure, destiny and the power of love. 

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (New Zealand) – A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass cutting off the town of Thorndike, leaving a farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, a guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops where no one will notice. An enigmatic billionaire also has an interest in the place. Can they trust him? Can they trust each other? A propulsive literary thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Birnam Wood is a brilliantly constructed tale of intentions, actions, consequences and survival.

Breakwater by Marijke Schermer (Netherlands) tr.(Dutch) Liz Waters – A woman who seems to have it all is unable to tell her husband of her violent secret past, which threatens to tear their family apart. “A secret between a husband and a wife threatens their existence in Marijke Schermer’s novel Breakwater. Breakwater is a concise, cutting story about trauma, post-traumatic stress, and misdirected love.”

Canción by Eduardo Halfon (Guatemala) tr. (Spanish) Lisa Dillman & Daniel Hahn – In Canción, Eduardo Halfon’s eponymous wanderer is invited to a Lebanese writers’ conference in Japan, where he reflects on his Jewish grandfather’s multifaceted identity. To understand more about the day in January 1967 when his grandfather was abducted by Guatemalan guerillas, Halfon searches his childhood memories. Soon, chance encounters around the world lead to more clues about his grandfather’s captors, including a butcher nicknamed “Canción” (or song). As a brutal and complex history emerges against the backdrop of the Guatemalan Civil War, Halfon finds echoes in the stories of a woman he meets in Japan whose grandfather survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (US) – Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America’s own. In packed arenas, live-streamed by millions, prisoners compete as gladiators for the ultimate prize: their freedom. Fan favourites Loretta Thurwar & Hamara ‘Hurricane Staxxx’ Stacker are teammates and lovers. Thurwar is nearing the end of her time on the circuit, free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares for her final encounters, as protestors gather at the gates, and as the programme’s corporate owners stack the odds against her – will the price be simply too high?

Crimson Spring by Navtej Sarna (India) – On 13 April 1919, around 25,000 unarmed Indians had gathered in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. Many were listening to speakers denouncing the Rowlatt Act, while others were there to relax. In the evening, a detachment of soldiers led by Brigadier General R. E. H. Dyer entered the Bagh and open fired without warning. Several hundred perished and several hundred more were injured. Navtej Sarna brings the horror of the atrocity to life through the eyes of nine characters -Indians and Britons, ordinary people and powerful officials, the innocent and the guilty. Set against India’s epic freedom struggle, the book is a powerful, unsettling meditation on the costs of colonialism.

Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior (Brazil) tr.(Brazilian Portuguese) Johnny Lorenz – Deep in Brazil’s neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother’s bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever.

Heralded as a new masterpiece and the most important Brazilian novel of this century, this fascinating and gripping story about the lives of subsistence farmers in the Brazil’s poorest region, three generations after the abolition of slavery in that country is at once fantastic and realist, covering themes of family, spirituality, slavery and its aftermath and political struggle.

Dandelion Daughter by Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay (Canada) tr. Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch (French) – An intimate portrait of growing up having been assigned the wrong sex at birth. Set against the windswept countryside of the remote Charlevoix region north of Montreal, an autobiographical novel immortalizes her early years as an alienated boy trapped in a world of small-town values. In the midst of her parents’ dissolving marriage, Boulianne-Tremblay traverses complex adolescent years of self-discovery and first loves, to harrowing episodes that fuel the growing realization that she must transition and give birth to her new self if she is to continue living at all. One of the first novels of its kind to appear in Quebec.

Day’s End by Garry Disher (Australia) – Hirsch’s rural beat is wide. Daybreak to day’s end, dirt roads and dust. Every problem that besets small towns and isolated properties, from unlicensed driving to arson. Today he’s driving an international visitor around: Janne Van Sant, whose backpacker son went missing while the borders were closed. They’re checking out his last photo site, his last employer. A feeling that the stories don’t quite add up. A call comes in: a roadside fire. Nothing much—a suitcase soaked in diesel and set alight. Two noteworthy facts emerge. Janne knows more than Hirsch about forensic evidence. And the body in the suitcase is not her son’s.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (US) – Demon’s story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer. For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents. In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty and addiction are as natural as the grass grows. For Demon, born on the wrong side of luck, the affection and safety he craves is as remote as the ocean he dreams of seeing one day.

Falling Hour by Geoffrey Morrison (Canada) – It’s a hot summer day, and Hugh Dalgarno, a 31-year-old clerical worker, thinks his brain is broken. Over the course of several hours in an uncannily depopulated public park, he will traverse the baroque landscape of his own thoughts: the theology of nosiness, the beauty of the arbutus tree, the theory of quantum immortality, Louis Riel’s letter to an Irish newspaper, the baleful influence of Calvinism on the Scottish working class, the sea, and, ultimately, thinking itself and how it may be represented in writing. A meandering sojourn, as if the history-haunted landscapes of Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn were shrunk down to a mere 85 acres.

Feast by Emily O’Grady (Australia) – Alison is an actress who no longer acts, Patrick a musician past his prime. The eccentric couple live an isolated existence in Scotland until Patrick’s teenage daughter Neve, flees Australia to spend a year abroad with her father, and the stepmother she barely knows.

On the weekend of Neve’s eighteenth birthday, her father insists on a special feast to mark her coming of age. Despite Neve’s objections, her mother Shannon arrives in Scotland to join the celebrations. What none of them know is that Shannon has arrived with a hidden agenda that has the potential to shatter the delicate façade of the loving, if dysfunctional, family.

Hades by Aisha Zaidal (Malaysia) – In 2012, sixteen-year-old troublemaker Kei and his mother move into a decaying low-cost flat from the slums at the edge of town, right next to Maryam, a young mother, and her three-year-old son Ishak. Shunned by society, Kei and Maryam develop an unspoken bond, which starts to fray as the ghosts of their pasts circle in. Both wonder if they can free themselves of the men who made them the abominations everyone considers them to be, and of the despair creeping in around them.

Haven by Emma Donoghue (Ireland) – In 7th-century Ireland, a scholar/priest called Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking two monks – young Trian & old Cormac – he rows down the river Shannon in search of an isolated spot on which to found a monastery. With only faith to guide them and drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find a steep, bare island, inhabited by tens of thousands of birds, and claim it for God. In such a place, what will survival mean? What they find is the extraordinary island now known as Skellig Michael.

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano (US) –

The four Padavano girls bring loving chaos to their neighbourhood. William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy. When he meets Julia Padavano, it’s as if the world has lit up around him. With Julia comes her family: Sylvie, the dreamer; Cecelia, the artist; and Emeline patiently taking care of them all. But when darkness from William’s past begins to block the light of his future, a catastrophic rift leaves the family inhabiting two sides of a fault line. Can they find their way back to each other? Can love make a broken family whole?

Hollow Bamboo: A Novel by William Ping (Canada) – The hilarious and heart-breaking story of two William Pings in Newfoundland—the lost millennial and the grandfather he knows nothing about. Based on a true story, Hollow Bamboo recounts with humour and sympathy the often-brutal struggles, and occasional successes, faced by some of the first Chinese immigrants in Newfoundland. Drawing on elements of magical realism, auto fiction and satire, as well as deep historical research, Hollow Bamboo is a fresh and original portrayal of our past and our present, and the debut of an extraordinary new author.

Human Nature by Serge Joncour (France) tr. Louise Rogers Lalaurie – When his three sisters escape to the city Alexander is left to run the family farm. Though reluctant, he commits himself to honouring the traditional methods that prioritise the welfare of his cattle, and produce the highest quality meat. But the world around him is changing. The insatiable appetites of supermarkets and fast food chains demand that standards must be sacrificed for speed. As Alexandre struggles to balance his principles and his livelihood, he is drawn to the beautiful Constanze, part of a group of environmental activists keen to draw him into their cause. Farmers uses ammonium nitrate and so do eco-terrorists…

Identitti by Mithu Sanyal (Germany) tr. Alta L. Price – Nivedita (a.k.a. Identitti), a doctoral student who blogs about race with the help of Hindu goddess Kali, is in awe of Saraswati, her superstar postcolonial and race studies professor. But Nivedita’s life and sense of self are upturned when it emerges that Saraswati is actually white. Hours before she learns the truth Nivedita praises her tutor in a radio interview, which calls into question her own reputation and ignites an angry backlash among her peers and online community. A darkly comedic tour de force, Identitti showcases the outsized power of social media in the current debates around identity politics and the power of claiming your own voice.

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery (US) – In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on first through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated by what their younger son calls “the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive.” Pulsing with vibrant lyricism and sly commentary, Escoffery’s debut unravels what it means to be in between homes and cultures in a world at the mercy of capitalism and white supremacy.

Limberlost by Robbie Arnott (Australia) – In the heat of a long summer Ned hunts rabbits in a river valley, hoping the pelts will earn him enough money to buy a small boat. His two brothers are away at war, their whereabouts unknown. His father and older sister struggle to hold things together on the family orchard, Limberlost. Desperate to ignore it all—to avoid the future rushing towards him—Ned dreams of open water. As his story unfolds over the following decades, we see how Ned’s choices that summer come to shape the course of his life, the fate of his family and the future of the valley, with its seasons of death and rebirth.

Lone Women by Victor LaValle (US) – Adelaide Henry carries an enormous locked steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide disappear. It’s 1915 and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret has killed her parents, forcing her to flee California for a new life in Montana. Dragging the trunk with her, she becomes one of the “lone women,” accepting the government’s offer of free land for those who can tame it—except Adelaide isn’t alone. And the secret she’s kept locked away might be the key to her survival.

Memorial, 29 June by Tine Høeg (Denmark) tr. Misha Hoekstra – Celebrated for her signature insight and precision, Tine Høeg returns with a wry, haunting, and riotously funny novel about how loss is bound up with the urge to create. Asta is invited to a memorial. It’s been ten years since her university friend August died. The invitation disrupts everything – the novel she is working on, her friendship with Mai and her two-year-old son – reanimating longings, doubts, and the ghosts of parties past. Moving between Asta’s past and present, Memorial, 29 June is a novel about who we really are, and who we thought we would become.

Monsters Like Us by Ulrike Almut Sandig (Germany) tr. Karen Leeder – the story of old friends Ruth and Viktor in the last days of Communist East Germany. Inseparable since kindergarten, forced to go their different ways to escape their difficult childhood: Ruth into music and the life of a professional musician; Viktor into violence and a neo-Nazi gang. A story of families, a story of abuse, a story about the search for redemption and the ways it takes shape over generations. More than anything, it is about the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, and who we want to be.

My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor (Ireland) – September 1943: German forces occupy Rome. SS officer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. An Irish priest, Hugh O’Flaherty, dedicates himself to helping those escaping from the Nazis. His home is Vatican City, the world’s smallest state, a neutral country within Rome where the occupiers hold no sway. Here Hugh brings together an unlikely band of friends to hide the vulnerable under the noses of the enemy. But Hauptmann’s net begins closing in on the Escape Line and the need for a terrifyingly audacious mission grows critical. Based on an extraordinary true story, My Father’s House is a powerful literary thriller from a master of historical fiction.

My Men by Victoria Kielland (Norway) tr. Damion Searls – Based on the true story of Norwegian maid turned Midwestern farmwife Belle Gunness, the first female serial killer in American history, My Men is the radically empathetic and disquieting portrait of a woman capable of ecstatic love and gruesome cruelty. Among thousands of other Norwegian immigrants seeking freedom, Brynhild Størset emigrated to the American Upper Midwest in the late nineteenth century, changing her name and her life. As Bella, later Belle Gunness, she came in search of fortune and faith but, most of all, love. In pursuit of her American Dream, Kielland’s Belle grows increasingly alienated, ruthless, and perversely compelling.

Now I Am Here by Chidi Ibere (UK) – About to make his last stand, a soldier facing certain death at enemy hands, writes home to his love to explain how he ended up there. The Officer in the story has no name nor is his nation specified. While out walking, he stumbles upon officers enjoying a military barbecue and is persuaded to join them. He enjoys the comradeship of the event, is quickly seduced by the smart, tailored military uniform he is fitted with, by the power bestowed upon it and the respect commanded by it. From there, this gentle man is gradually transformed into a war criminal, committing acts he wouldn’t have thought himself capable.

Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry (Ireland) – Retired policeman Tom Kettle is enjoying the quiet of his new home in Dalkey, overlooking the sea. His peace is interrupted when two former colleagues turn up at his door to ask about a traumatic, decades-old case. A case that Tom never came to terms with. His peace is further disturbed by a young mother who asks for his help. And what of Tom’s wife, June, and their two children? A beautiful, haunting novel about what we live through, what we live with, and what will survive of us.

Open Heart by Elvira Lindo(Spain) tr. Adrian Nathan West – This intimate family novel that follows the rise and fall of a great love is also a moving tribute to the generation that struggled to survive in Spain after the Civil War. In Open Heart, Elvira Lindo tells the story of her parents—the story of an excessive love, passionate and unstable, forged through countless fights and reconciliations, which had a profound effect on their entire family.

Orgy by Gábor Zoltán (Hungary) tr. Thomas Sneddon – A nightmarish recounting of events from the final phase of the Holocaust in Hungary. In late 1944 and early 1945 Budapest was consigned to the rule of the fascist organization known as the Arrow Cross. They sought out individuals not only of Jewish descent but anyone they viewed as liberals, “English sympathizers” or “humanists.” One such man is the novel’s main character, the thirty-year-old factory owner, Renner. He is a successful, fearless man: the Arrow Cross have plenty of reasons to kill him. But instead of a swift execution, they torture and humiliate him even longer than usual, subsequently forcing him to assist them.

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng (US) – Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left without a trace. He doesn’t know what happened to her—only that her books have been banned. Bird receives a letter containing a cryptic drawing, and he’s entered a quest to find her. His journey will take him to the folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of heroic librarians, and finally to NYC, where he will finally learn the truth about what happened to his mother, and what the future holds for them both.

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez (Argentina) tr. Megan McDowell (Spanish) – Moving back and forth in time, from London in the swinging 1960s to the brutal years of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, Our Share of Night is a novel like no other: a family story, a ghost story, a story of the occult and the supernatural, a book about the complexities of love and longing with queer subplots and themes. This is the masterwork of one of Latin America’s most original novelists, “a mesmerizing writer,” says Dave Eggers, “who demands to be read.”

Pet by Catherine Chidgey (New Zealand) – Like every other girl in her class, twelve-year-old Justine is drawn to her glamorous, charismatic new teacher, and longs to be her pet. However, when a thief begins to target the school, Justine’s sense that something isn’t quite right grows ever stronger. With each twist of the plot, this gripping story of deception and the corrosive power of guilt takes a yet darker turn. Young as she is, Justine must decide where her loyalties lie.

Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright (Australia) – In a small town in northern Australia dominated by a haze cloud, a crazed visionary sees donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife seeks solace from his madness in the dance of moths and butterflies. One of their sons, called Aboriginal Sovereignty, is determined to commit suicide. The other, Tommyhawk, wishes his brother dead so that he can pursue his dream of becoming white and powerful. Praiseworthy is a novel which pushes allegory and language to its limits, a cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage, and a fable for the end of days.

Properties of thirst : a novel by Marianne Wiggins (US) – “Rocky” Rhodes has spent years fiercely protecting his California ranch from the LA Water Corporation. It is where he and his wife Lou raised their twins, Sunny and Stryker, and it where Rocky has mourned Lou since her death. When the government decides to build an internment camp next to the ranch, Rocky realizes that the land faces even bigger threats than the LA watermen. Complicating matters is the fact that the Department of the Interior man assigned to build the camp, who only begins to understand the horror of his task after it may be too late, becomes infatuated with Sunny and entangled with the Rhodes family.

Querelle of Roberval: A Syndical Fiction by Kevin Lambert (Canada) tr. Donald Winkler (French) – As a millworkers’ strike in the northern lumber town of Roberval drags on, tensions escalate between the workers—but when a lockout renews their solidarity, they rally around the mysterious and magnetic influence of Querelle, a dashing newcomer from Montreal. As the dispute hardens and both sides refuse to yield, the tinderbox of class struggle and entitlement ignites in a firestorm of passions carnal and violent. A tribute to Jean Genet’s antihero, and a brilliant reimagining of the ancient form of tragedy, Querelle of Roberval is a wildly imaginative story of justice, passion, and murderous revenge.

River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer (UK) – Rachel is searching for her children. For Mary Grace, Micah, Thomas Augustus, Cherry Jane and Mercy. These are the five who were sold to other plantations; the faces she cannot forget. It is 1834, and the law says her people are now free. But for Rachel freedom means finding her children. With fear snapping at her heels, Rachel keeps moving. From sunrise to sunset, through the cane fields of Barbados to the forests of British Guiana, then on to Trinidad, up the dangerous river and to the open sea. Only once she knows their stories can she rest. Only then can she finally find home…

Rombo by Esther Kinsky (Germany) tr. Caroline Schmidt – In May and September 1976, two earthquakes ripped through north-eastern Italy, causing severe damage to the landscape and its population. About a thousand people died under the rubble, tens of thousands were left without shelter, and many ended up leaving their homes in Friuli forever. In Rombo, Esther Kinsky’s sublime new novel, seven inhabitants of a remote mountain village talk about their lives, which have been deeply impacted by the earthquake that has left marks they are slowly learning to name. From the shared experience of fear and loss, the threads of individual memory soon unravel and become haunting and moving narratives of a deep trauma.

Schmutz by Felicia Berliner (US) – In this witty, provocative, and “compulsively readable coming-of-age story” (Cosmopolitan), a young Hasidic woman on a quest to get married fears she will never find a groom because of her secret addiction to porn. Like the other women in her ultra-Orthodox community, Raizl expects to find a husband through arranged marriage. But Raizl has a secret. With a hidden computer to help her complete her college degree, she falls down the slippery slope of online pornography. As Raizl dives deeper into the world of porn at night, her daytime life begins to unravel. Raizl must balance her growing understanding of her sexuality with the expectations of the family she loves.

Small Mercies by Denis Lehane (US) – In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessey is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. One night Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn’t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances. The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched – asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don’t take kindly to any threat to their business.

Solider Sailor by Claire Kilroy (Ireland) – In her wildly acclaimed novel, her first in over a decade, Claire Kilroy creates an unforgettable heroine whose fierce love for her young son clashes with the seismic change to her own identity. As her marriage strains, and she struggles with questions of autonomy, creativity and the passing of time, an old friend makes a welcome return ­– but can he really offer a lifeline to the woman she used to be?

Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu (Romania) tr. Sean Cotter – Based on Cărtărescu’s own role as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist’s life and spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. On a broad scale, the novel’s investigations of other universes, dimensions, and timelines reconcile the realms of life and art. Grounded in the reality of late 1970s/early 1980s Communist Romania, including long lines for groceries, the absurdities of the education system, and the misery of family life. Combining fiction, autobiography and history, Solenoid ruminates on the exchanges possible between the alternate dimensions of life and art within the Communist present.

Stolen by Ann-Helén Laestadius (Sweden) tr. Rachel Willson-Broyles – Nine-year-old Elsa lives just north of the Arctic Circle. She and her family are Sámi, Scandinavia’s indigenous people, and make their living herding reindeer. One morning, Elsa witnesses a man brutally killing her reindeer calf. She recognises the man but refuses to tell anyone – least of all the Swedish police force – about what she saw. A decade later, Elsa finds herself the target of the man she first encountered all those years ago, and something inside of her finally breaks. The guilt, fear and anger she’s been carrying since childhood come crashing over her like an avalanche, and will lead Elsa to a final catastrophic confrontation.

Stone and Shadow by Burhan Sönmez (Turkey) tr. Alexander Dawe – In the city of Mardin, the orphaned Avdo finds purpose when an old mason takes him on as an apprentice. From Master Josef, he learns the importance of their art, which looks after the dead and bears witness to their lives. Avdo travels the country and meets a woman he loves wholeheartedly, only to lose her through a tragic crime. Resigned to a lonely existence, he retreats from the world into his cemetery workshop, but even there, life, with all its sorrows, joys, injustices, and gifts, draws him in unexpected directions.

Take What You Need by Idra Novey (US) – Take What You Need traces the parallel lives of Jean and her beloved but estranged stepdaughter, Leah, who’s sought a clean break from her rural childhood. In Leah’s urban life with her young family, she’s revealed little about Jean, how much she misses her stepmother’s hard-won insights and joyful lack of inhibition. But with Jean’s death, Leah must return to sort through what’s been left behind. Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia, the novel explores the continuing mystery of the people we love most, zeroing in on the joys and difficulties of family with great verve.

The Ascent by Stefan Hertmans (Netherlands) tr. David McKay (Dutch) – In 1979, Stefan Hertmans fell in love with a beautiful old house in Ghent in Belgium, which he lovingly rescued from decay. Now, years later, he learns that a bust of Hitler once sat on the mantelpiece, and a war criminal relaxed in its rooms with his family. This shocking discovery sends Hertmans off to the archives and to interview next of kin, to uncover the secrets of the house and expose the atrocities this man committed. A story of war, family, and fate, Hertmans masterfully brings history to life, as he appears in the novel as a trusted guide, and imagines individual lives to tell the greater European story.

The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey (New Zealand) – Everywhere, the birds: sparrows and skylarks and thrushes, starlings and bellbirds, fantails and pipits – but above them all and louder, the magpies. We are here and this is our tree and we’re staying and it is ours and you need to leave and now.

The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier (France) tr. Daniel Levin Becker – 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. While Patrice plans a surprise for his wife’s 40th birthday, inexplicable events start to disrupt the hamlet’s quiet existence. Told in rhythmic, propulsive prose that weaves seamlessly from one consciousness to the next, a deft unravelling of the stories we hide from others and from ourselves, a gripping tale of the violent irruptions of the past into the present, written by a major contemporary French writer.

The Chinese Groove by Kathryn Ma (US) – Eighteen-year-old Shelley, born into a much-despised branch of the Zheng family in Yunnan Province, heads to San Francisco to claim his destiny, confident that any hurdles will be easily overcome. Shelley is dismayed to find that his “rich uncle” is his unemployed second cousin and that the guest room he’d envisioned is but a scratchy sofa. Even worse, the loving family he hoped would embrace him is in shambles, shattered by a senseless tragedy that has cleaved the family in two. Ever the optimist, Shelley concocts a plan to resuscitate his American dream by insinuating himself into the family.

The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill (US) – In this stunning contemporary retelling of “The Crane Wife” by the Newbery Medal-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon, one fiercely pragmatic teen forced to grow up faster than was fair will do whatever it takes to protect her family—and change the story.

The Drinker of Horizons by Mia Couto (Mozambique) tr. David Brookshaw (Portuguese) – the epic love story between a young Mozambican woman named Imani and the Portuguese sergeant Germano de Melo to its moving close. We resume where The Sword and the Spear concluded: While Germano is left behind in Africa, serving with the Portuguese military, Imani has been enlisted to act as the interpreter to the imprisoned emperor of Gaza, Ngungunyane, on the long voyage to Lisbon. For the emperor and his seven wives, it will be a journey of no return. Imani’s own return will come only after a decade-long odyssey through the Portuguese empire at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Exhibition by Miodrag Kajtez (Serbia) tr. Nikola M. Kajtez – Izlozba (original title of The Exhibition published in 2015 and awarded the National Award Laza Kostić for the book of the year) is an explicit story about the morphology of death. The characters seem to be as if from the other side of life. On the other hand, the very text of the novel is addictively fun, especially for literary connoisseurs, the humor, although unobtrusive, is often hilarious.

The Eye of the Beholder by Margie Orford (South Africa) – Cora carries secrets her daughter can’t know. Freya is frightened by what her mother leaves unsaid. Angel will only bury the past if it means putting her abusers into the ground.
One act of violence sets the three women on a collision course, each desperate to find the truth. In a nail-biting thriller set between the scorched red soil of South Africa, the pitiless snowfields of Canada and the chilly lochsides of western Scotland, each woman must contend with the spectres of male violence, sexual abuse and the choices we each make to keep our souls.

The Fire by Daniela Krien (Germany) tr. Jamie Bulloch – With plans adrift after a fire burns down their rented holiday cabin, Rahel and Peter find themselves on an isolated farm where Rahel spent many a happy childhood summer. Suddenly, after years of navigating careers, demanding children and the monotony of the daily routine, they find themselves unable to escape each other’s company. With three weeks stretching ahead, they must come to an understanding on whether they have a future together. What happens when love grows older and passion has faded? When what divides us is greater than what brought us together? And how easy is it to ask the fundamental questions about our relationships?

The Ghetto Within by Santiago H. Amigorena (Argentina/France) tr. Frank Wynne – The Ghetto Within re-imagines the life of its author’s Jewish grandfather whose guilt provokes an enduring silence to span generations. 1928. Vicente Rosenberg is a European émigré starting a new life in Buenos Aires. Despite success, Vicente still misses his mother, who stayed behind in Poland. For years, she writes him. Yet, as unnerving rumors mount from abroad, her letters become increasingly sporadic, and Vicente begins to construct the reality of a tragedy that already occurred. Then, one day, the letters cease. Racked with guilt, Vicente lapses into a longstanding silence. With his new novel, Amigorena finds the language to retrieve his voice from the oblivion of familial trauma.

The Great Reclamation by Rachel Heng (Singapore) – On a quiet moonlit night, Ah Boon, young and terrified, takes his first trip out to sea in his father’s fishing boat – a rite of passage for the boys of the kampong. As the air hums and the wind howls, a mysterious, impossible island materialises in the darkness; an island that Ah Boon soon learns only he has the ability to find. But this is only the beginning of the story, and as Ah Boon grows up, alongside Siok Mei, the spirited girl he has fallen in love with, he finds himself caught in the tragic sweep of Singapore’s history.

The House of Fortune by Jessie Burton (UK) – In the golden city of Amsterdam, in 1705, Thea Brandt is turning eighteen, and she is ready to welcome adulthood with open arms. At the city’s theatre, Walter, the love of her life, awaits her, but at home in the house on the Herengracht, all is not well – her father Otto and Aunt Nella argue endlessly, and the Brandt family are selling their furniture in order to eat. On Thea’s birthday, also the day that her mother Marin died, the secrets from the past begin to overwhelm the present.

The Moonday Letters by Emmi Itäranta (Finland) tr.Emmi Itäranta – Sol has disappeared. Their Earth-born wife Lumi sets out to find them but it is no simple feat: each clue uncovers another enigma. Their disappearance leads back to underground environmental groups and a web of mystery that spans the space between the planets themselves. Told through letters and extracts, the course of Lumi’s journey takes her not only from the affluent colonies of Mars to the devastated remnants of Earth, but into the hidden depths of Sol’s past and the long-forgotten secrets of her own. Part space-age epistolary, part eco-thriller, and a love story between two individuals from very different worlds.

The Orphans of Amsterdam by Elle Van Rijn (Netherlands) tr. Jai van Essen – Amsterdam, 1941. My hands are so shaky I’m fumbling. Where to hide? I pull open the dresser, throw aside the blankets, put the baby in and push the drawer shut, just as the nursery door swings open. The German officer marches into the room, yelling over the crying downstairs: ‘You! Grab all the children – now!’ Based on the heart-wrenching true story of an ordinary young woman who risked everything to save countless children from the Nazis, this gripping read is perfect for fans of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, We Were the Lucky Ones and The Nightingale.

The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr (Canada) – It’s 1929, and Baxter is considered lucky, as a Black man, to have a job as a porter on a train that crisscrosses the continent. He has to smile and nod for the white passengers when they call him ‘George.’ He’s obsessed with teeth, and saving up tips for dentistry school.

On this trip, the passengers are unruly, especially when the train is stranded for days – their secrets leak out, blurring with Baxter’s sleep-deprivation hallucinations. When he finds an illicit postcard of two men, Baxter’s longings are reawakened; keeping it puts his job in peril, but he can’t part with it or his memories of a certain Porter Instructor.

The Words that Remain by Stênio Gardel (Brazil) tr. Bruna Dantas Lobata (Portuguese) – A letter has beckoned to Raimundo since he received it over 50 years ago from his youthful passion, handsome Cícero. But having grown up in an impoverished area of Brazil where demands of manual labor thwarted his becoming literate, Raimundo has been unable to read. Exploring Brazil’s little-known hinterland as well its urban haunts, this is a sweeping novel of repression, violence, and shame, along with survival, endurance, and the ultimate triumph of an unforgettable figure on society’s margins. The Words That Remain explores the universal power of the written word and language, and how they affect all our relationships.

The World and All That It Holds by Aleksandar Hemon (Bosnia/US) – “The World and All That It Holds would be an audacious title for a book by anybody except God–or Aleksandar Hemon. . . From start to finish, no matter what else he’s up to, Hemon is telling a tale about the resilience of true love.” —RON CHARLES, The Washington Post. The World and All That It Holds—in all its hilarious, heartbreaking, erotic, philosophical glory—showcases Aleksandar Hemon’s celebrated talent at its pinnacle. It is a grand, tender, sweeping story that spans decades and continents. It cements Hemon as one of the boldest voices in fiction.

This Other Eden by Paul Harding (US) – inspired by the true story of Malaga Island, an isolated island off the coast of Maine that became one of the first racially integrated towns in the Northeast. In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys’ descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor but nevertheless protected from the hostility on the mainland. During the summer of 1912, Matthew Diamond, a retired, idealistic but prejudiced schoolteacher-turned-missionary, disrupts the community’s fragile balance. (Bibliotheca Alexandrina) This Other Eden is an exceptional novel. It is lyrically expressed historical fiction which is “a tribute to community and human dignity.” (Rachel Seiffert, The Guardian)

Thistlefoot by Genna Rose Nethercott (US) – The Yaga siblings have been estranged since childhood. Then they learn that they are to receive an inheritance: a sentient house on chicken legs. Thistlefoot, as the house is called, has arrived from the Yagas’ ancestral home outside Kyiv—but the sinister Longshadow Man has tracked it to American shores, bearing with him violent secrets from the past. As the Yagas embark with Thistlefoot on a final cross-country tour of their family’s traveling theater show, the Longshadow Man follows, seeding destruction in his wake. Ultimately, time, magic, and legacy must collide—erupting in a powerful conflagration to determine who gets to remember the past and craft a new future.

Ti Amo by Hanne Ørstavik (Norway) tr. Martin Aitken – A woman is in a deep and real, but relatively new relationship with a man from Milan. She has moved there, they have married, and they are close in every way. Then he is diagnosed with cancer. It’s serious, but they try to go about their lives as best they can. But when the doctor tells the woman that her husband has less than a year to live – without telling the husband – death comes between them. She knows it’s coming, but he doesn’t – and he doesn’t seem to want to know. An incredibly beautiful and harrowing novel, filled with tenderness and grief, love and loneliness.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (US) – This is the story of Sam and Sadie. It’s not a romance, but it is about love. When Sam catches sight of Sadie at a crowded train station one morning he is catapulted straight back to childhood, and the hours they spent immersed in video games. Their spark reignited, together they get to work: making their own games to delight and challenge players. It’s the 90s, and anything is possible. Their collaborations make them superstars.What comes next is a tale of friendship and rivalry, fame and creativity, betrayal and tragedy, perfect worlds and imperfect ones. And, above all, of our need to connect: to be loved and to love.

When We Were Fireflies by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (Nigeria) – When brooding artist, Yarima Lalo, encounters a moving train for the first time, two serendipitous events occur. First, it triggers memories of past lives in which he was twice murdered—once on a train. He also meets Aziza, a woman with a complicated past of her own, who becomes key to helping him understand what he is experiencing. With a third death in his current life imminent, together they go hunting for remnants of his past lives. Will they find evidence that he is losing his mind or the people who once loved or loathed him?

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Greek Lessons by Han Kang (Korea) tr. Deborah Smith + Emily Yae Won

The first book I read by Han Kang was Human Acts and it remains my favourite, a deeply affecting novel. Her novel The Vegetarian won the Booker International Prize 2016 and she has written another book translated into English, that I have not read The White Book (a lyrical, disquieting exploration of personal grief, written through the prism of the color white).

Of Language and Loss

Korean literature women in translation

In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, as day by day he is losing his sight.

The novel goes back in time, slowly uncovering their stories, occasionally revisiting the present, when they are in class, until finally near the end, there is a scene where they properly interact.

Greek Lessons was enjoyable, but it took me a while to figure out which characters (unnamed) were controlling the narrative at any one time, and that didn’t really become clear until quite a way into the book, when the Korean man who teaches Greek and who had lived in Germany for some time, began to interact with the mature woman student in his class, due to a minor accident and his need for help.

Yearning for the Unattainable

Both these characters are dealing with issues, the woman has just lost custody of her 6 year old child, due to an imbalance in power and wealth between the two parents. She was mute as a child and had a special relationship with language, which has lead to her unique desire to learn to read and write in Greek. She dwells in silence, sits and stares, or pounds the streets at night, walking off the frustration she is unable to express with words.

The Greek teacher is slowly losing his sight, a condition inherited from his father. He is aware that he needs to prepare himself for a future without sight.

He recalls a lost, unrequited love and the mistakes he made. His narrative is addressed to this woman who he knew from a young age. There are letters that recount his memories, as well as the discomfort of living in another culture and his desire to return to Korea without his parents. It took me a while to realise this was a different woman.

Ultimately I was a little disappointed, because it lacked the emotive drive that I had encountered before from Han Kang. There were flashes of it, but about halfway, I lost interest and stopped reading for a while. I am glad I persevered as I enjoyed the last 30% when the characters finally have a more intimate encounter and are brought out of themselves, but I was hoping for more, much earlier on.

Reading Print Improves Comprehension

Photo: Perfecto Capucine @ Pexels.com

I did wonder too if it might have been better for me to read the printed version, when the narrator is unclear, I can flick back and forth and take notes in a way that isn’t as easily done reading an ebook.

This perspective is supported by a recent study from the University of Valencia that found print reading could boost skills by six to eight times more than digital reading. I tend to agree that digital reading habits do not pay off nearly as much as print reading.

I picked it up now after reading that it was one of Tony’s Top 10 Reads of 2023 at Tony’s Reading List. He reads a ton of Japanese and Korean fiction, so this is a highly regarded accolade from him. I would recommend reading his review here for a more succinct account of the book. I see he read a library print version.

He finds echoes of The Vegetarian ‘with a protagonist turning her back on the world, unable to conform’ and ‘the poetic nature of The White Book, often slowing the reader down so they can reflect on what’s being said’ describing the reading experience as:

a slow-burning tale of wounded souls.  Poignant and evocative, Greek Lessons has the writer making us feel her creations’ sadness, their every ache. 

In a review for The Guardian, 11 Apr 2023, Em Strang acknowledged that the book wasn’t about characters or plot, so asked what was driving the craft, identifying a courageous risk the writer took.

One answer is that it’s language itself, and the dissolution of language, which is why in parts the narrative seems to almost dissolve.

If you’re interested in reading Greek Lessons, I do recommend reading the print version.

Author, Han Kang

Han Kang was born in 1970 in South Korea. A recipient of the Yi Sang Literary Award, the Today’s Young Artist Award, and the Manhae Prize for Literature, she is the author of The Vegetarian, winner of the International Booker Prize; Human Acts; and The White Book.

Further Reading

The Guardian Article: Greek Lessons by Han Kang review – loss forges an intimate connection by Em Strang, 11 Apr, 2023

The Guardian Article: Reading print improves comprehension far more than looking at digital text, say researchers by Ella Creamer, 15 Dec 2023

N.B. This book was an ARC (Advance Reader Copy) kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

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Top Reads of 2023 – Part 1, Fiction + One Outstanding Read

In this post I share my Top 7 Fiction titles = One Outstanding Read of 2023, click here for Part 2, my Top 5 Nonfiction of 2023.

I have waited until this last day of December to share my Top Reads of 2023, thinking that there may be something to add in the last two weeks, sadly there wasn’t, instead there was a single book I struggled with that put me off reading, not wanting to pick it back up until yesterday.

It’s been a great reading year, 68 books read despite a hiatus over the summer months when multiple humans encroached on my usual evening reading time, but it was worth it to see so many of my family and friends, visiting for the first time since 2019 thanks to wedding celebrations and a rugby world cup, here in France (with my son at the All Blacks vs Argentina semi-final, below right).

Non-Fiction Titles Continue to Ascend

Of the 68 books read, almost a third (19) were nonfiction, a recurring trend over the past few years.

I read so many excellent works of nonfiction this year, it was hard to whittle down my Top 5, as seven of the titles I read were 5 star reads.

For fiction, I’ve gone with a Top 7 but I’ll also share the other 5 star reads at the end.

Reading Around the World, A Small Island Nation Dominates

As you will know, I love to read around the world, works by authors from different countries, including in translation. And this year was no different, albeit with a lot more of the European reading from non-English language countries and Latin American featuring more prominently.

In 2023, I visited 23 countries through works of literature, with the lead country Ireland (18), with France (7), Argentina (4) and Italy (3) all in my top six destinations. I can predict that I’ll be spending more time in those literary destinations in 2024, thanks to a love of Irish literature which is indeed flourishing, a desire to read more French and Italian works and a 2024 Charco Press subscription for Latin America!

Opening Minds and Hearts Through Storytelling From Elsewhere

One of the great joys of recent years for me has been reading works originally written in other languages, translated into English and in particular, those often least favoured or likely to be published, women in translation.

What was a small niche aspect of publishing has become more popular, particularly with young adult readers, which is a life affirming trend, in an age where nationalism is so often promulgated.

In 2023 I read 22 books in translation, with seven of them 5 star reads and of my six outstanding fiction reads of the year, 3 of them were in translation.

It might take a little work to find these titles, but I’ve come to rely on my favourite independent presses, Europa Editions, Charco Press, One World Publications and more recently Daunt Books Publishing, who are reaching back to bring literary gems that deserve new light, to readers.

In this Part 1, I will share my Top Fiction Reads and Part 2 Top Non-Fiction Reads.

One Super Outstanding Read

14 novels were 5 star reads for me in 2023, so to whittle it down, I looked for those whose reading experience still stands out for me now in December. I always have one outstanding read, but this year there were seven I would describe as that, however there was that one that truly stood above them all, my Super Outstanding Read of 2023, that I read early in the year yet still feel the profound effect of reading it.

My One Super Outstanding Read of 2023 is:

Things They Lost by Okwiri Oduour (Kenya)

Kenyan literary fiction Dylan Thomas Award 2023

This book is an absolute gem, a post-colonial, coming of age novel of a young girl Ayosa, living in a neglected house, full of aspects of the past, whose mother is often absent; she is kept company by her notebook, the radio, a couple of kind neighbours and a new friend, all of whom compensate in some way for this loss. Ayosa is omniscient, and remembers things from before she was born.

The story is told in vibrant, mesmerising prose that depicts her coming of age, the effect of abandonment and the nurturing to be found in her community, while allowing the reader to see from another perspective. In letting go of our own version of reality, we are invited to see differently, to understand anew. A story of mothers, daughters and of girls who are abandoned and alone, of girls who create family with other lonesome girls and of how death continuously permeates our lives and how poetry can redeem it.

This is a wonderful example of the richness that comes from reading stories told through the lens of a culture and mythologies other than one’s own. What Oduor accesses and how she tells this story is unique, enlightening and unforgettable. It was one of the most exhilarating reading experiences I have ever had, so new and otherworldy and insightful. A favourite author immediately. Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2023.

A total trip, I read this in February and nothing came close to knocking it off top spot.

Top 7 Fiction

In no particular order, here are my top fiction reads of 2023, click on the title to read my review:

Japanese literature literary fiction

Child of Fortune by Yuko Tsushima (Japan) (1978), translated by Geraldine Harcourt (1986)

– I have not read much Japanese literature, but I was intrigued to read Yuko Tsushima based on reviews I had read on JacquiWine’s Blog. This novella is an immersive account of a young mother of an 11-year-old daughter, raising her alone without support and under the judgmental eye of a sister, whom the daughter increasingly prefers to be around. It is an unravelling, a period of giving in to what others think, before a quiet reassertion of her own unconventional beliefs, an honest reckoning and struggle for freedom.

Introspective, often uncomfortable, an immensely powerful read.

Nobel Prize Literature 2021 fiction

Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah (Zanzibar/Tanzania/UK) (1996)

Gurnah won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021 and I chose this book to acquaint myself with his readability and discovered an insightful, erudite and humorous author from an island off the west of Africa, now based in the UK, who depicts the complexities of cross cultural relationships and the push/pull effect of having allegiances to two countries and cultures.

In this novel a young fatherless man from Zanzibar furthers his studies in England and begins to make a life there, without being totally upfront with his family about his circumstances. He observes his new life and relationships, avoiding his past, until it can no longer be ignored. 20 years after leaving, he returns.

Insightful, uncompromising yet compassionate, a chronicler of the outsider.

Italian feminist writing classic 1940s 1950s

Forbidden Notebook, Alba de Céspedes (Italy/Cuba)(1952) translated by Ann Goldstein (Italian) (2023)

– this lost classic was a joy to discover and compelling to read as a middle aged working woman with two older children, begins to discover aspects of herself she has never dared to allow flourish, discovering through the act of writing in a notebook. The purchase of the notebook is her first transgressive act and the revelations within it will lead her to consider more. At first, a stranger to herself, it is revealing to witness how her thoughts and actions are often in conflict, so ingrained are society’s expectations, her will is unknown to her until she discovers it on the pages of her notebook.

A riveting, feminist awakening follows a restless rebellion from this unique Italian voice, with Her Side Of The Story (1949) coming in translation from Daunt Books Publishing in 2024.

La hija unica Mexican literary fiction Women in Translation

Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel (Mexico) (2020), translated by Rosalind Harvey (Spanish) (2023)

– shortlisted for the International Booker 2023, this was a standout read for me, another whose method of storytelling was so compelling, it felt like I was reading a true story; I was sure the author must have had first hand experience to have portrayed much of what I read, as it concerned a family with a child that was often hospitalised and the way their treatment by the institution made them feel.

The story is about two independent and career-driven women, friends who initially declared they did not wish to have children and how their lives change as motherhood touches in different ways.

Like Claudia Pineiros’s A Little Luck, there is a thematic subplot, this time involving a pair of pigeons with two eggs in their nest, that appear to have been subject to a brood parasite.

A riveting read, a visceral encounter of all that surrounds the decision or be 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.

women in translation argentinian literature crime fiction literary fiction

A Little Luck by Claudia Piñeiro (Argentina)(2015) translated by Frances Riddle (Spanish) (2023)

– having enjoyed Elena Knows I was keen to read more and this was absolutely stunning, intense, moving and one I could not put down. A woman returns to her home town after 20 years, in fear of what she is likely to confront. As her backstory is slowly revealed her visit provides the opportunity to reflect on the past and heal from tragic events.

A tour de force!

literary fiction Irish

Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry (Ireland) (2023)

– clearly a writer at the height of his literary powers, this was a riveting, yet slow burning, introspective read. It observes a retired policeman’s new routine in his first year of retirement, disrupted by the investigation of a cold case, which awakens old memories of events he has no wish to revive.

The way Barry writes, we enter the declining mind of his protagonist, equally unsure of what is real and what is memory trying to re-impose itself. As the story progresses, the past comes back with a force, revealing the effect of rage and the counter effect of genuine familial love. Utterly brilliant.

Irish Book Awards 2023 motherhood literary fiction

Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy (Ireland) (Literary Fiction) (2023)

– a new author for me, Soldier, Sailor made quite an impression on those who read it including me. It confirms that I love to read books that make you feel the experience of the protagonist, this is a clear theme in many of my top fiction reads for 2023.

Soldier Sailor is the story of a mother (Soldier) and her son (Sailor) and the wild ride that entering motherhood takes her on, one she is little prepared for and ravaged by. Never sentimental, it takes the reader to the edge of a woman’s sanity, to coping and not coping with the onslaught of caring for an unformed, small human, a text written in the second person, addressed to that son, a sharing and a warning to him, to beware and be aware.

Motherhood as a thriller, a test of one’s sanity, the necessity of solidarity with a genuine friend.

The Special Mentions, The Other Seven

I couldn’t leave without sharing the close runners up, all of which were five star reads, that I highly recommend, I will leave you to discover them through my reviews (click on the title) below, should you be interested to learn more about their merits.

I loved the short story collection, Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies (2021) by Heba Hayek (Gaza, Palestine) short vignettes of childhood, auto-biographical fiction; I was riveted by the debut novel The Dry Heart (1947) by Natalia Ginzburg (Italy) translated by Frances Fenaye (2021); in deep admiration of the classic debut novel Go Tell it On The Mountain (1953) by James Baldwin (US); best summer light read Lessons in Chemistry (2022) by Bonnie Gamus (US); most informative and memorable, historical fiction, The Art of Losing (2017) by Alice Zeniter (French) translated by Frank Wynne (2021); the unforgettable reflections of two men observing a fallen man in Two Sherpas (2018) by Sebastian Martinez Daniell (Argentina) translated by Jennifer Croft (Spanish) (2023); and another excellent novel in Baumish prose, from one of my all-time favourite authors Seven Steeples (2023) by Sara Baume (Ireland).

* * * * * * * *

Did any of these make your year end favourites? I hope you fins something here that might tempt your reading taste buds in 2024. Happy Reading and Happy New Year All.

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Literature Award Season Wrap Up Week

Remembering the past Spring Literature Awards Season

Back in March/April the Spring Literature Award Season saw the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023 won by Barbara Kingsolver for Demon Copperhead, a book I did eventually read but didn’t review; the Dublin Literary Award, a celebrated worldwide librarian nominated award, won by Katja Oskamp, translated from German by Jo Heinrich, for the excellent, life-affirming novella Marzhan, Mon Amour, a book I absolutely loved – how could I not, a writer turned well-being practitioner protagonist (much like Oskamp herself), who soothes aches and pains of the body, mind and soul of her small, often misunderstood community.

Then there was the International Booker Prize (fiction in translation) shortlist, from which I read three novels, the outstanding read for me being Mexican author Guadalupe Nettel’s Still Born, the top prize going to Bulgarian author Georgi Gospodinov for his novel Time Shelter, translated by Angela Rodel.

I shared the results of the New Zealand Book Awards and though these titles are not easy to get hold of, I did manage to read Grand: Becoming My Mother’s Daughter by Noelle McCarthy which won the Best First Book in the General Nonfiction category, with Catherine Chidgey’s The Axeman’s Carnival winning the fiction award, one I hope to read in 2024.

Autumn Literature Award Winner Week

This week will see the unveiling of three more literature awards that I’m curious about.

Irish Book Awards 2023

On Wed 22 November, the winners of the Irish Book Awards 2023 will be announced. I’ve been reading a lot of Irish literature this year, including almost half of the 8 fiction titles shortlisted for Novel of the Year and one title Poor by Katriona O’Sullivan that is shortlisted for both Biography of the Year and the Listener’s Choice Awards.

So far, I’ve read and reviewed Sebastian Barry’s Old Gold’s Time which I thought was excellent and would certainly be a worthy winner, Elaine Feeney’s How To Build a Boat, a character lead scenario that I very much enjoyed, I’m almost finished reading Claire Kilroy’s intense, visceral portrayal of a young mother on the edge of parental overwhelm Soldier Sailor and I’ll soon be reading the very short contender by Claire Keegan (so short it might not even be a novella) So Late In the Day.

The Booker Prize 2023

It’s a strong fiction lineup for the Irish Awards, with four of their shortlisted titles already featured on the Booker Prize longlist, two of which made it to the shortlist (none of which I have read); the winner will be announced on Sunday 26 November. This group of six books below was said by the judges to “showcase the breadth of what world literature can do, while gesturing at the unease of our moment.” In this case, I found more of interest in the longlist than the shortlist.

The Warwick Prize for Women In Translation 2023

And last but not least, the winner of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation will be announced on Thursday 23 November.

I have read one title from this shortlist, though it has only just appeared in English thanks to Charco Press, The Remains by Mexican author Margo Glantz was originally published in 2002. I describe this literary masterpiece as a lyrical elegy of tempo rubato, z divorced woman feels out of place and yet connected at her ex-husbands wake, a riveting, mind blowing (or perhaps expanding), rhythmic reading experience, just WOW!

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

So watch this space this week for the winners of these three sets of awards.

Have you read any works from these shortlists? Any favourites? Predictions?