IN THE SHADOW OF THE BANYAN
Vaddey Ratner
Imagine that you are a five-year-old princess of the Cambodian monarchy, living a life of luxury, surrounded by love and a large family. Then imagine that one day your family is violently jettisoned into the countryside with the rest of the urban population, and everything you know is destroyed.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Lisa Sanders
|
THE ART FORGER
B. A. Shapiro
I am sometimes masochistic in my reading choices. I chain myself to complex literary tomes through which I may trudge dutifully but not always joyfully. Those books pay a great dividend, so I don't regret my efforts, but there are …
READ MORE
Reviewed by Kathleen Ambrogi
|
THE THIRD DAY
Chochana Boukhobza
Translated from the French by Alison Anderson
Distinguished cellist Elisheva and her protégée Rachel arrive in Jerusalem for a three-day visit. The culmination of their sojourn will be a concert performance featuring Rachel as the soloist. On that same day, the third day, Elisheva plans to assassinate The Butcher of Majdanek, her torturer during World War II.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Amanda Meale
|
MASTER OF THE GRASS
Nina Gabrielyan
Translated from the Russian by Kathleen Cook et al
Master of the Grass is a well-translated collection of one eponymous novella and six short stories by Nina Gabrielyan, a Russian writer of Armenian descent. Motifs of mirrors and dreams run through these stories, and the narratives themselves are more or less dream-like, the boundary between the sleeping and the waking world kept close and permeable…
READ MORE
Reviewed by Tim Jones
|
BUILDING WAVES
Taeko Tomioka
Translated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai
First published in Japan almost thirty years ago and now translated into English this year, Building Waves is a fictional and highly symbolic look at the social changes washing over Japan in the early 1980s. These changes include women moving out of their traditional roles…
READ MORE
Reviewed by Joyce Nickel
|
THE TENANTS OF THE HÔTEL BIRON
Laura Marello
Laura Marello's creative exploration of the Hôtel Biron in Paris between 1908 and 1912 is an historical novel, an art history, a collection of essays and an epistolary novel. She takes as her starting point the fact that during these years an extraordinary collection of artists resided in apartments above sculptor Auguste Rodin's studio, in what is today the Rodin Museum…
READ MORE
Reviewed by Kathleen Ambrogi
|
THE MURDER OF HALLAND
Pia Juul
Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken
With a glut of Scandinavian crime fiction entering English translation it would be easy to overlook Pia Juul's The Murder of Halland. However, Juul is one of Denmark's most celebrated literary writers, and her foray into 'Scandi Crime' is a surprising subversion of the genre, rather than an attempt to jump on a bandwagon.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Andy Barnes
|
NEW ISLANDS AND OTHER STORIES
María Luisa Bombal
Translated from the Spanish by Richard and Lucia Cunningham
There is consensus that María Luisa Bombal is amongst the Latin American literary stars. Says Jorge Luis Borges in the preface to this slim volume of short stories: "…In Santiago, Chile, Buenos Aires, in Caracas or Lima, when they name the best names, María Luisa Bombal is never missing from the list."
READ MORE
Reviewed by Akeela Gaibie-Dawood
|
DROWNED
Therese Bohman
Translated from the Swedish by Marlaine Delargy
It's high summer, and student Marina decides to take refuge from her lacklustre university studies and her dead-end relationship at her sister Stella's home in the Swedish countryside.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Rachel Hayes
|
|
|
MATESHIP WITH BIRDS
Carrie Tiffany
Harry is a dairy farmer who has lost his wife to the charms of a local bird watcher. He has no children and lives alone, with a pile of women's journals, his routines and his thoughts, which often turn to the young family living next door.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Judy Lim
|
PEDRA CANGA
Tereza Albues
Translated from the Portuguese by Clifford E. Landers
Pedra Canga, the eponymous fictional village, lies in a remote part of Brazil. It is dominated by the Mangueiral, a stone estate separated from the village by walls topped with barbed wire and broken glass on three sides, and the Saranzal River full of snakes and alligators on the fourth.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Jean Hughes Raber
|
THE FORRESTS
Emily Perkins
Frank and Lee move their family of four children from New York to Auckland. Frank is an unrecognized artist from a background of wealth and entitlement, but in New Zealand the family is barely surviving.
READ MORE
Reviewed by Judy Lim
|
THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY
Rachel Joyce
One day Harold Fry, a retiree getting on in years, sets off to post a letter of condolence to a former friend, Queenie Hennessey, who is dying of cancer. He hasn't seen her in twenty years and can manage only, "I'm sorry." At the first letter box, he decides …
READ MORE
Reviewed by Tad Deffler
|
THREE STRONG WOMEN
Marie NDiaye
Translated from the French by John Fletcher
Three Strong Women concerns the lives of three women of Senegalese descent, each of whom faces a personal crisis. The stories are set in modern day Senegal or in France, the former colonizer of that West African country…
READ MORE
Reviewed by Darryl Morris
|
THE SOMETIMES LAKE
Sandy Bonny
The stories in The Sometimes Lake reflect Sandy Bonny's passion for science. Whether the character is a teacher working with disadvantaged indigenous children in Canada's far north…
READ MORE
Reviewed by Joyce Nickel
|
FAREWELL: A MANSION IN OCCUPIED ISTANBUL
Ayse Kulin
Translated from the Turkish by Kenneth J. Dakan
Like the story of the blind men and an elephant, the answer to the question, "What type of book is this?" will depend greatly upon your perspective. Some might describe Farewell as an adventure set during the Turkish War of Independence. Kamal is a radical supporter of …
READ MORE
Reviewed by Tad Deffler
|
DAUGHTER OF SILENCE
Manuela Fingueret
Translated from the Spanish by Darrell B. Lockhart
A caste of murderers. The Nazis gassed, starved, humiliated. Here they insult, torture, rape. Caste of murderers….Am I here or there?
READ MORE
Reviewed by Andy Barnes
|
|
|
