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While the winter months don’t tend to see as many new books show up on our shelves (as compared to the bountiful spring and fall seasons), February still offers an impressive array of new fiction from around the world to help while away the snow and rain and gloom of day. Whether posthumous novellas from a Chilean master, short stories from Denmark, Spain, and Mozambique, a feminist classic from Romania, or the new work from a popular Korean cult writer, this month’s crop of new literature in translation is totally crushworthy. Read the list and find your valentine.

Hailed as a “modern classic of global feminist literature,” Fem is Romanian poet Magda Carneci’s only novel and a retelling of the Scheherazade tale. Fem has been praised by author Deborah Levy as “Profound, mysterious, emotional and gripping… a luminous and inspiring work of literature by one of the world’s most valuable authors.”

Editor's note: This title's publication date was moved to March after we published the February list.

Cécile Coulon published her first novel when she was 16 and her most recent one, A Beast in Paradise, marks her English debut. Winner of the Le Monde Literary Prize (Le prix littéraire du Monde) and a French bestseller, A Beast in Paradise was described by Le Parisien as “A harsh and combative novel which pays homage to the courage and persistence of women to stay alive and standing. Readers will emerge shattered and nourished with an undeniable and mysterious energy.”.

The fourth novel from Russian writer Sergei Lebedev published by New Vessel Press, Untraceable is a ripped-from-the-headlines thriller about the poisoning of a Russian critic. Lebedev is a writer not to be missed, but Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich makes it unmistakable: "Turn off your television sets and get reading. Sergei Lebedev writes not of the past, but of today."

From Man Booker International Prize finalist Dorthe Nors comes a new collection of 14 short stories. In Wild Swims, her fourth book translated into English, the Danish writer delves ever deeper into the nuances of individuality, mingling darkness, light, and resignation.

An epic collection of over 60 short stories from Mozambican author Mia Couto, Sea Loves Me features short fiction from throughout Couto’s career. Winner of the prestigious Neustadt Prize for Literature (and finalist for the International Man Booker Prize and International Dublin Literary Award), Couto is deserving of a much broader stateside audience.

Manuela Draeger is one of French writer Antoine Volodine’s many heteronyms (Volodine being a pseudonym itself). Eleven Sooty Dreams is part of Volodine’s ongoing post-exoticism project and also Draeger’s first book for adults. There’s really no succinct way to sum up Volodine’s ambitious literary creations, but in a starred review for Draeger’s new novel, Publishers Weekly says, “Stylistically inventive, heartfelt, and vivid, this shows a beguiling, talented author running on all cylinders.”

With Poetics of Work, two of French author Noémi Lefebvre’s four novels are now available in English translation (the other being Blue Self-Portrait). In her new one, Lefebvre’s unnamed, ungendered, and unemployed poet protagonist muses, philosophizes, and tries to make sense of a seemingly senseless world.

Editor's note: This title's publication date was moved to March after we published the February list.

A collection of 11 unforgettable short stories, Elvira Navarro’s Rabbit Island offers a haunting surrealism of sorts. The Spanish writer (and author of the excellent A Working Woman) is not to be missed and her unique fiction has already drawn the praise of a wide variety of authors from around the world, including Lina Meruane, Andrés Neuman, Sandra Newman, Matt Bell, Kimberly King Parsons, Maryse Meijer, and more.

Barcelona-born author and journalist Jordi Nopca’s English debut, Come on Up, is witty and altogether wonderful. The 11 short stories in Nopca’s collection contain a caustic, sly humor and sardonic social malaise, but there’s a liveliness to all the listlessness — and Come on Up is hopefully but the first of his fiction to appear in English translation.

Dutch poet, playwright, and picture book author Jaap Robben found acclaim with his last novel for adults, You Have Me to Love, and his new one, Summer Brother, was a bestseller in the Netherlands. A tale of boyhood and a brotherly bond, Robben’s new one is both tender and honest.

Giacomo Sartori’s last book, I Am God, was a favorite of readers and critics alike. The Italian author, poet, playwright — and soil specialist — returns with Bug, a hysterically absurd story about a family who lives in a chicken coop. Thoughtful and funny, what’s not to love?!

Maria Stepanova’s English-language debut, In Memory of Memory, is a literary work (think Sebald) about the narrator’s ancestral history — billed as a mix of “essay, fiction, memoir, travelogue, and history.” Author Esther Kinsky has said of In Memory of Memory, "Dazzling erudition and deep empathy come together in Maria Stepanova’s profound engagement with the power and potential of memory, the mother of all muses.” A collection of Stepanova’s poems and essays (The Voice Over) is also due out in May.

A trio of novellas from the author of The Savage Detectives and 2666, Roberto Bolaño’s Cowboy Graves apparently contains the late Chilean writer’s final pieces finished before his 2003 death. A must-read for longtime Bolaño fans, one of the stories stars his literary alter-ego, Arturo Belano.

A coming-of-age father-daughter story set during the repressive Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, How to Order the Universe is the adult debut from acclaimed children’s author María José Ferrada. How to Order the Universe is already garnering comparisons to Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog and Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents.

Winner of a pair of Italian literary prizes, Lia Levi’s Tonight Is Already Tomorrow is the story of a Jewish family living under Italian fascism and the nation’s discriminatory racial laws. Recommended for fans of Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See and Heather Morris’s The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

Based on the true story of Pied-Noir communist revolutionary Fernand Iveton, Joseph Andras’s Tomorrow They Won’t Dare to Murder Us is a moving, dramatic work of historical fiction. All the more remarkable for being a debut, Andras’s novel is as cogent as it is compelling. Awarded the 2016 Prix Goncourt for a debut novel, Andras summarily refused the prestigious prize — noting that competition and rivalry were foreign to acts of writing and creation.

The award-winning author of more than a dozen books (and the translator of over 50 other books!), Jung Young Moon is a popular cult writer in his native South Korea. Following his recent works, Vaseline Buddha and Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River, Jung’s new one, Arriving in a Thick Fog, collects four interlinked, labyrinthine novellas.

Author, poet, translator, and ska-band frontman(!) Serhiy Zhadan has been called "one of the most important creators of European culture at work today" by historian/author Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny). Zhadan’s new novel, The Orphanage, is a potent reckoning with the Russian-backed separatist violence in eastern Ukraine.

Named to the prestigious Bogotá39 list of best fiction writers under 40 from across Latin America at the 2017 Hay Festival, Giuseppe Caputo has been called “a blazing new talent in world literature” by author Garth Greenwell (Cleanness). Caputo’s debut novel, An Orphan World, contends with father-son issues, poverty, sexuality — and a shocking crime of homophobic violence.