Salt Crystals
by Cristina Bendek, translated by Robin Myers, Charco Press £11.99
With its contested past, the Colombian island of San Andrés is a cauldron of mixed and often conflicting identities. So, too, is Victoria, born on the island though long an expatriate, who after a messy separation returns to her place of origin only to find that she no longer belongs.
Yell, Sam, If You Still Can
by Maylis Besserie, translated by Clíona Ní Ríordáin, Lilliput £13
This daring debut (the first instalment in a projected trilogy) imagines the last months of Samuel Beckett’s life in a nursing home in Paris, haunted by memories of his recently deceased wife, his long-dead mother and his estranged daughter. Maylis Besserie’s Beckett — like Beckett’s characters — is a faltering presence steeped in bleakness and black humour.
Solenoid
by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated by Sean Cotter, Deep Vellum £17.99
Presented as the digressive diary of a failed writer teaching at an elementary school in Bucharest, who fantasises about escaping the ugliness of life under communism, this novel by Romania’s best-known contemporary author is by turns mundane and metaphysical, surreal and viscerally political.
Eastbound
by Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Jessica Moore, Les Fugitives £10.99
Though first published in France 10 years ago, there is a contemporary resonance to this slender tale of a young Russian conscript, Aliocha, trying to escape the army on the Trans-Siberian railway and encountering Hélène, a fellow fugitive in flight from her own past.
A Book of Falsehoods
by Jaan Kross, translated by Merike Lepasaar Beecher, Quercus £16.99
The final instalment in Jaan Kross’s Between Three Plagues series. These historical novels — hailed as the Estonian answer to Wolf Hall (though originally published decades earlier) — chronicle the personal tribulations and political manoeuvrings of Balthasar Russow, a real-life 16th-century priest and scholar, against a backdrop of European wars.
Still Born
by Guadalupe Nettel, translated by Rosalind Harvey, Fitzcarraldo Editions £12.99
When they first meet, Laura and Alina bond over their shared conviction of not wanting children of their own. One undergoes sterilisation. The other will eventually have a daughter, only to discover that maternity is not as she expected. A clear-eyed and raw examination of motherhood, childlessness and friendship from an outstanding Mexican author.
Nights of Plague
by Orhan Pamuk, translated by Ekin Oklap, Faber £20
The latest offering from Turkey’s Nobel laureate is a historical murder mystery set in 1901, in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, amid an epidemic of bubonic plague. A wry meditation on nationalism and identity, on history and myth, on science and superstition, delivered with Orhan Pamuk’s trademark storytelling flair.
Identitti
by Mithu Sanyal, translated by Alta L Price, V&Q Books £12.99
Questions about race, culture and belonging abound in this entertaining debut by German journalist and academic Mithu Sanyal. Blogger and postgraduate student Nivedita finds her assumptions about identity challenged when her mentor, a popular professor of postcolonial studies, turns out not to be the “person of colour” she claims to be.
My Pen Is the Wing of a Bird: New Fiction by Afghan Women
various authors and translators, MacLehose Press £9.99
Commissioned by a UK-based non-profit organisation that seeks to develop and amplify the voices of writers marginalised by conflict, this collection of 18 short stories, written in Dari and Pashto, offers a glimpse of the daily difficulties of life in a war-torn country while revealing the resilience and deep humanity of its people.
Diary of a Void
by Emi Yagi, translated by David Boyd and Lucy North, Harvill Secker £12.99
Ms Shibata, a company employee burdened with the menial tasks her male colleagues consider to be a woman’s work, announces one day that she is pregnant — though she isn’t. Her efforts to keep up the deception are at the heart of this hilarious and angry take on sexism in Japanese corporate culture.
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