Lists
by Jeremy Garber, January 17, 2022 8:14 AM
Who knows what awaits in our new year, but, come what may, there’s at least one wonderful thing we can be certain of: hundreds of new works of fiction from around the world. 2022 kicks off with a solid slate of literature in translation, including an aphoristic Mauritian masterpiece, Dostoyevskian short stories from an Iranian exile, an Egyptian novel of revenge and betrayal, Brazilian satire, prize-winning Mexican political fiction, a timely new work from a Grammy-nominated Icelandic author, a pair of powerful novels from Scandinavia, the Italian novel Ian McEwan called “a brilliantly conceived mosaic of love and tragedy,” Cuban magical realism, two new books out of Catalonia, short stories from “the prose poet of Budapest,” four options for Francophiles, and much more.
Postcard From London and Other Stories
by Iván Mándy (Trans. John Batki)
Called “the prose poet of Budapest,” late Hungarian writer Iván Mándy (1918-1995) was very popular in his home country. Collecting over 30 short stories (mostly from the 1970s and ’80s), Postcard From London features some of Mándy’s earlier writing “full of picaresque characters inhabiting the seedier neighborhoods” of the Hungarian capital, as well as later work described as “bordering on the absurd.” Mándy’s fiction has been likened to Russian master Anton Chekhov and indeed this collection includes a tale called, “A Character Out of Chekhov.”
I Do Not Sleep
by Ihsan Abdel Kouddous (Trans. Jonathan Smolin)
Jailed three times for his journalism and political beliefs, Egyptian author Ihsan Abdel Kouddous was a popular writer of Arabic fiction (later knighted by Former President Nasser), composing more than five dozen novels and short story collections. I Do Not Sleep, a “classic novel of revenge and betrayal challeng[ing] patriarchal norms”, was a sensation when first released in the 1950s and was later adapted into an Egyptian cinematic classic. Alaa Al Aswany, author of The Yacoubian Building, says, “Ihsan Abdel Kouddous was a great novelist, a pioneer journalist, and a progressive activist who long fought for women’s rights and secular democratic values.”
Sens-Plastique
by Malcolm de Chazal (Trans. Irving Weiss)
Mauritian author and artist Malcom de Chazal was hailed by many of his contemporaries, including André Breton, Jean Dubuffet, and Georges Braque. His masterpiece, Sens-Plastique, collects more than 2,000 aphorisms and other surrealistic thoughts containing “a strange humor and an alchemical sensibility.” Poet W. H. Auden (who penned the book’s foreword) notes, “Sens-Plastique has now been a companion of mine for nearly 20 years, and so far as I am concerned, Malcolm de Chazal is much the most original and interesting French writer to emerge since the war.”
Phenotypes
by Paulo Scott (Trans. Daniel Hahn)
The second book in English translation from Brazilian author Paulo Scott (after Nowhere People), Phenotypes is a satire on race and “a blast of righteous (and spot-on) indignation” (Kirkus), telling the tale of two brothers — one with lighter skin, the other darker — contending with the both the present and the past. Juan Pablo Villalobos, author of Down the Rabbit Hole, calls Scott “A powerful, complex and very ambitious voice. In the contemporary Latin American literature scene, Paulo Scott is a must-read.”
A Film (3,000 Meters)
by Víctor Català (Trans. Peter Bush)
Catalan author Víctor Català (pseudonym of Caterina Albert i Paradís, 1869-1966) was a prolific story writer, though little of her work has been available in English (save for her modernist novel, Solitude). Her 1926 novel, A Film (3,000 Meters), is a cleverly constructed work, set in turn-of-the-century Barcelona: “A rebellious artistic project that was set to shock and discomfort readers and critics, Català contests the prevailing ideas on space, class, language, art, and gender.”
Call Me Cassandra
by Marcial Gala (Trans. Anna Kushner)
“A darkly magical tale of a haunted young dreamer, born in the wrong body and time, who believes himself to be a doomed prophetess from ancient Greek mythology,” Cuban author (and poet and architect) Marcial Gala’s Call Me Cassandra has been called an “imaginative, memorable, and heartbreaking tale of identity and fatalism” (Booklist) and “a singular invocation of immortality” (Publishers Weekly). The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao author Junot Díaz says, “A spellbinding novel by one of the best writers of the Americas....Call Me Cassandra is Chronicle of a Death Foretold but blacker and brilliantly better.”
Resurrection
by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (Trans. Karen C. Sherwood Sotelino)
Perhaps the most celebrated writer in Brazilian history, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908) composed novels, stories, poems, and plays. Machado’s first novel, Resurrection — set in 19th-century Rio — explores “themes the author developed exquisitely throughout his career including marriage, memory, and perspective.”
Norwegian fiction writer, poet, and essayist Gunnhild Øyehaug — called “one of the most exciting writers working today” by Weather author Jenny Offill — already has two books available in English (a story collection, Knots, and a novel, Wait, Blink). Her newest, Present Tense Machine, is “a slippery metafictional take on the peril and power of words and how identities fracture and compartmentalize across a lifetime” (Kirkus). Catherine Lacey, author of Pew, says “Present Tense Machine is a book for those who have felt themselves grieving something just beyond their comprehension, or anyone who suspects they're living in a parallel universe. Gunnhild Øyehaug is a magician of the highest rank, one who can make reality itself shimmer and splinter before coming back into focus, clearer than ever.”
The Love Parade
by Sergio Pitol (Trans. George Henson)
Winner of the prestigious Cervantes Prize (the Spanish-speaking world’s top literary award, bestowed in honor of lifetime achievement), Mexican author, translator, and diplomat Sergio Pitol was widely acclaimed before his passing in 2018. The Love Parade is a Premio Herralde-winning work of historical political fiction set in 1970s Mexico City, a multifaceted tale (and part detective story) surrounding a 1940s murder. Valeria Luiselli, author of Tell Me How It Ends, called Pitol “one of Mexico’s most culturally complex and composite writers. He is certainly the strangest, most unfathomable and eccentric….a voice that reverberates beyond the margins of his books.”
The Beloved of the Dawn
by Franz Fühmann and Sunandini Banerjee (Trans. Isabel Fargo Cole)
Dissident German author Franz Fühmann (1922-1984) wrote poems, novels, short stories, essays, children’s books, and even ballets. The Beloved of the Dawn, illustrated by Sunandini Banerjee, is a “subversive” retelling of four classical Greek myths, including one about Hera and Zeus.
The Agents
by Grégoire Courtois (Trans. Rhonda Mullins)
French novelist, playwright, and independent bookstore owner(!) Grégoire Courtois’s dystopian new work, The Agents, is billed as Nineteen Eighty-Four meets Tron, via The Office. The author of the acclaimed literary horror novel, The Laws of the Skies, returns with a Kafkaesque ordeal about bureaucracy, data feeds, cubicles, and a live-in work tower.
In His Own Image
by Jérôme Ferrari (Trans. Alison Anderson)
Prix Goncourt-winning French author Jérôme Ferrari’s new novel, In His Own Image, is “a bewitching story of passion, death, and love, and a powerful reflection on the ambiguous relationship between art and reality.” When a Corsican photojournalist is killed in an auto accident, her uncle must reckon with the legacy of her life and art. French magazine Madame Figaro calls In His Own Image “[m]etaphorical, musical, and absolutely enrapturing.”
Red Is My Heart
by Antoine Laurain and Le Sonneur (Trans. Jane Aitken)
From French writer (and screenwriter, director, journalist, and antique key collector) Antoine Laurain — author of The Red Notebook and The President’s Hat — comes Red Is My Heart, a new work about heartbreak, rejection, and love unrequited, richly illustrated by Parisian street artist Le Sonneur.
Red Milk
by Sjón (Trans. Victoria Cribb)
Icelandic novelist, poet, and Academy Award-nominated lyricist Sjón has five previous books in English (including his masterful epic, CoDex 1962, and his profoundly moving Moonstone). His timely latest, Red Milk, is the fictionalized story of a midcentury Reykjavík-based neo-Nazi and “and the enduring global allure of fascism.” The Lives of Others author Neel Mukherjee calls Red Milk “A book like a blade of light, searching out and illuminating the darkest corners of history….It’s vivid, unputdownable, alive, and written with unerring artfulness and subtlety.”
The Antarctica of Love
by Sara Stridsberg (Trans. Deborah Bragan-Turner)
Swedish writer, playwright, artist, feminist, and International Booker long-lister Sara Stridsberg has been translated into over 25 languages. Her new novel, The Antarctica of Love, is a heart-wrenching story narrated by a murdered wife and mother. Kate Reed Petty, author of True Story, says “The Antarctica of Love is a shocking and beautiful subversion of the 'dead girl' trope. With fierce dignity, the narrator in this elegiac novel refuses to be reduced to murder victim/sex worker/addict; she is a poet, philosopher, and author of her own life story in this haunting portrait of the starkest meanings of love and family. Stridsberg's literary talent left me awe-struck.”
Killing Happiness
by Friedrich Ani (Trans. Alexander Booth)
German crime writer Friedrich Ani is the prolific author of dozens of books, scripts, and screenplays — and has won the German Crime Fiction Award (Deutscher Krimi Preis) thrice (finishing in second place four other times). His latest, Killing Happiness — featuring a foreword by British crime writer Ann Cleeves — follows Inspector Jakob Franck as he investigates the murder of an 11-year-old. German newspaper Sächsische Zeitung says, “Ani's elegantly written crime novel is characterized by psychological intensity and dark melancholy.”
Strangers I Know
by Claudia Durastanti (Trans. Elizabeth Harris)
Claudia Durastanti’s Strangers I Know was a finalist for Italy’s top literary prize, the Premio Strega, and has already been celebrated by authors like Jhumpa Lahiri and Lauren Groff. The Italian writer’s new novel is billed as “a funny and profound portrait of an unconventional family that makes us look anew at how language shapes our understanding of ourselves.” Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and whom Durastanti translated into Italian, says “Brave and deeply felt….Here the novel is not only a medium of illumination, but also a buoy cast into the dark waters of memory, imagination, and boldly embodied questions. In other words, it is my favorite kind of writing, the kind that not only tells of the world — but burrows through it, alive.”
Seasons of Purgatory
by Shahriar Mandanipour (Trans. Sara Khalili)
Exiled Iranian author and journalist Shahriar Mandanipour has been called “one of Iran’s most important living fiction writers” (The Guardian). His new book — the third now available in English (after novels Censoring an Iranian Love Story and Moon Brow) — Seasons of Purgatory collects nine short stories. Booklist says, “Dostoyevskian in their density and black humor, Mandanipour’s stories capture the Iranian experience of constant upheaval in a brilliant translation that allows the English-speaking world to experience this gem of Iranian literature.”
Geography of an Adultery
by Agnès Riva (Trans. John Cullen)
A finalist for the Prix Goncourt (for first novel), French author Agnès Riva’s debut Geography of an Adultery is a tale of marital infidelity. Deborah Shapiro, author of The Sun in Your Eyes, says, “With precision and economy, Agnès Riva stirs up an uneasy and affecting novel that lives in the tension between constraint and abandon. As it depicts the quotidian, often ridiculous territory of an affair, Geography of an Adultery ingeniously maps one woman’s inner world.”
The Hummingbird
by Sandro Veronesi (Trans. Elena Pala)
Winner of Italy’s 2020 Premio Strega, Sandro Veronesi’s The Hummingbird tells the tale of the life of middle-aged Florentine ophthalmologist Marco Carrera (nicknamed “the hummingbird” since childhood) in all its love and loss. Along with Richard Ford, Michael Cunningham, Jhumpa Lahiri, Roddy Doyle, Edward Carey, Domenico Starnone, and more, The Hummingbird was also praised by Ian McEwan, who says, “The Hummingbird is a masterly novel, a brilliantly conceived mosaic of love and tragedy. Veronesi creates a thought-rich and ultimately comic meditation on human error and lost chances. It's a cabinet of curiosities and delights, packed with small wonders, strange and sudden turns, insights of great poise and unusual cultural reference points.”
Wilder Winds
by Bel Olid (Trans. Laura McGloughlin)
Catalan author, translator, professor, and feminist activist Bel Olid has written for both adults and children. Wilder Winds collects 16 of their short stories, drawing on “notions of individual freedom, abuses of power, ingrained social violence, life on the outskirts of society, and inevitable differences.” Writing for Catalan online newspaper, Núvol, Júlia Sentís says of Wilder Winds, “Charming and comforting on the one hand; like a vast abyss of violence and danger, it is stimulating and disturbing on the other.”
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