Rodrigo Blanco Calderón4.0 Rodrigo Blanco Calderón has established himself as one of the great voices of Latin American literature with his debut novel The Night , and his short story collection Sacrifices .
Simpatía is a suspenseful novel with unexpected twists and turns about the agony of Venezuela and the collapse of Chavismo.
Simpatía is 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. Two other events end up disrupting his life even the return of Nadine, an unrequited love from the past, and the death of his father-in-law, General Martín Ayala. Thanks to Ayala’s will, 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.
This novel centers on themes of family and orphanhood in order to address the abuse of power by a patrilineage of political figures in Latin America, from Simón Bolívar to Hugo Chávez. The untranslatable title, Simpatía, which means both sympathy and charm, ironically references the qualities these political figures share. In a morally bankrupt society, where all human ties seem to have dissolved, Ulises is like a stray dog picking up scraps of sympathy. Can you really know who you love? What is, in essence, a family? Are abandoned dogs proof of the existence or non-existence of God? Ulises unknowingly embodies these questions, as a pilgrim of affection in a post-love era.
Selva Almada5.0 The novel tells the story of two friends, Enero and El Negro, who take Tilo, the teenage son of Eusebio – their recently deceased friend – fishing to the Paraná River. While they drink and cook and talk and dance, they try to overcome the ghosts of their past and those of the present: their mood altered by wine and torpor. This intimate, peculiar moment connecting the lives of these three men also links them to the lives of the local inhabitants of this watery universe that runs by its own laws. There are losses, premature deaths… But there is also the stubborn vitality of nature: a bush covered with ancient trees, animals, birds; the river bearing life in its entrails, the people born and raised in this landscape which they protect tooth and nail against intruders. This story, which flows like water, talks about the love between friends, the love of a mother for her daughters, and the love of the islanders for their river and everything that lives in it. This masterful novel reveals once again Selva Almada's unique voice and extraordinary sensitivity, allowing its characters to shine and express in action what the depths of their souls harbour.
One of the Best Books of 2020 in **Clarín **and La Nación. Shortlisted for the Mario Vargas Llosa Novel Prize
Gabriela Wiener0.0 A provocative autobiographical novel that reckons with the legacy of colonialism through one woman's family ties to both colonised and coloniser
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'Wiener has rescued an intimate story from the family archive, a story that is also the infamous history of our continent, with her trademark intelligence and irreverent humor. Her prose, sober and forward, is fresh air; her view allows us to be testimonies of Latin America's cycles of plundering and looting' Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive
'Reading Undiscovered, I wondered what so captivated me about this novel. Was it Gabriela's innate ability to plunder all sorts of convention? Her persistent exploration of our deepest despairs-the weight and falsehoods of the stories and imperatives we inherit? All this, but Undiscovered is also spurred on by a yet more profound and radical the spirit of fury. Powerful and searing, this novel snaps, bucks, heals, and snaps again' Samanta Schweblin, author of Fever Dream
'Undiscovered's beautiful blend of fiction and personal feeling on everything from sex, to death, to Peru's traumatic history to France's heritage-colonial industry could not be more contemporary, vital and important, or expressed in more dynamic and immersive prose' Preti Taneja, author of the Desmond Elliott Prize-winning We That Are Young
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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.
Blending personal, historical and fictional modes, Undiscovered tells of a search for identity beyond the old stories of patriarchs and plunder. Incisive and fiercely irreverent, it builds to a powerful call for decolonisation.
Андрей Курков0.0 From the Ukrainian Stieg Larsson, a perplexing mystery from a world-renowned literary master that introduces a rookie detective, Samson Kolechko, in Kiev tackling his first case, set against real life details of the tumultuous early twentieth century. Kyiv, 1919. World War I has ended in Western Europe, but to the East, six factions vie for control of Ukraine. Amidst the instability, young Samson Kolechko places his engineering career on hold. But in the city of Kyiv where competing patrols, black-market enterprise, and mayhem prevail everything remains up for grabs and new opportunity lurks just around the corner . . . When two Red Army soldiers commandeer his home, Samson plays the reluctant host. As Samson juggles his personal life a budding romance with the ingenious Nadezhda, a statistician helping run the city’s census with the soldiers’ imposition, he winds up overhearing their secret plans. Deciding to report them, Samson instead finds himself unwittingly recruited as an investigator for the city’s new police force. His first case is a perplexing mystery involving two murders, a long bone made of pure silver, and a decidedly unusual suit tailored from fine English cloth. With the odds stacked against him, Samson turns to Nadezhda, who proves to be more than a match. Inflected with Kurkov’s signature humor and magical realism, The Silver Bone takes inspiration from the real life archives of crime enforcement agencies in Kyiv, crafting a propulsive narrative that bursts to life with rich historical detail. Translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk
Urszula Honek0.0 Z pozoru nic się nie dzieje: mała podgórska miejscowość, kilka osób, nieuchwytny czas. A jednak światło się ściemnia, atmosfera gęstnieje, ktoś umiera w upalny dzień we własnym łóżku, ktoś spada ze skarpy, ktoś bezustannie krąży w ciemnościach. W debiutanckim zbiorze opowiadań Urszuli Honek, który spleciony jest delikatnymi nićmi powiązań niczym powieść, codzienność staje się niepokojąca i mroczna, choć źródła zagrożenia nie sposób odnaleźć. Ludzie rodzą się i umierają, tęsknią i marzą, smucą się i boją, aż w końcu niepostrzeżenie tracą zmysły. Mieszają się tu perspektywy czasowe, zmieniają narratorzy, coś się dzieje na jawie, coś w głowie szaleńca, a w górskich dolinach kładzie się ciemność.
Итамар Виейра Жуниор4.5 Heralded as the most important Brazilian novel of the century so far, this bestseller's unique blend of magic and social realism won it three literary awards and global acclaim
'I heard our grandmother asking what we were doing.'"Say something!" she demanded, threatening to tear out our tongues. Little did she know that one of us was holding her tongue in her hand.'
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, this fascinating and gripping story about the lives of subsistence farmers in Brazil's poorest region, three generations after the abolition of slavery, is at once fantastic and realist, covering themes of family, spirituality, slavery and its aftermath, and political struggle.
Хван Согён4.0 International Booker–nominated virtuoso Hwang Sok-yong is back with another powerful story — 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. It is at once a powerful account that captures a nation’s longing for a rail line to reconnect North and South, a magical-realist novel that depicts reflect the lives of modern industrial workers, and a culmination of Hwang’s career — a masterpiece thirty years in the making. A true voice of a generation, Hwang shows again why he is unmatched when it comes to depicting the grief of a divided nation and bringing to life the cultural identity and trials and tribulations of the Korean
Jente Posthuma4.0 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.
In brief, precise vignettes, full of gentle melancholy and surprising humour, Posthuma tells the story of a depressive brother, viewed from the perspective of the sister who both loves and resents her twin, struggles to understand him, and misses him terribly.
Доменико Старноне0.0 È la storia di un uomo che se non avesse avuto una famiglia sarebbe diventato un grande pittore. Federì è un artista, ma deve fare il ferroviere, e al mondo non potrà mai perdonare il destino scelto per lui. E se la prende con la moglie e i figli. È uno di loro, a raccontarne la storia.
Вероника Раймо5.0 Prendete lo spirito dissacrante che trasforma nevrosi, sesso e disastri famigliari in commedia, da Fleabag al Lamento di Portnoy, aggiungete l’uso spietato che Annie Ernaux fa dei ricordi: avrete la voce di una scrittrice che in Italia ancora non c’era. Veronica Raimo sabota dall’interno il romanzo di formazione. Il suo racconto procede in modo libero, seminando sassolini indimenticabili sulla strada. All’origine ci sono una madre onnipresente che riconosce come unico principio morale la propria ansia; un padre pieno di ossessioni igieniche e architettoniche che condanna i figli a fare presto i conti con la noia; un fratello genio precoce, centro di tutte le attenzioni. Circondata da questa congrega di famigliari difettosi, Veronica scopre l’impostura per inventare se stessa. Se la memoria è una sabotatrice sopraffina e la scrittura, come il ricordo, rischia di falsare allegramente la tua identità, allora il comico è una precisa scelta letteraria, il grimaldello per aprire all’indicibile. In questa storia all’apparenza intima, c’è il racconto precisissimo di certi cortocircuiti emotivi, di quell’energia paralizzante che può essere la famiglia, dell’impresa sempre incerta che è il diventare donna. Con una prosa nervosa, pungente, dall’intelligenza sempre inquieta, Veronica Raimo ci regala un monologo ustionante.
Исмаиль Кадаре3.0 'Comrade Stalin wishes to speak with you. '
A fascinating exploration of the relationship between writers and tyranny, from the winner of the first Man Booker International Prize.
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 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 telling brings to light uncanny parallels with Kadare's experience writing under dictatorship, when he received an unexpected phone call of his own.
Translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson
'Kadare is one of Europe's most consistently interesting and powerful contemporary novelists, a writer whose stark, memorable prose imprints itself on the reader's consciousness. ' Los Angeles Times
Jenny Erpenbeck4.5 Jenny Erpenbeck’s much anticipated new novel Kairos is a complicated love story set amidst swirling, cataclysmic events as the GDR collapses and an old world evaporates Jenny Erpenbeck (the author of Go, Went, Gone and Visitation ) is an epic storyteller and arguably the most powerful voice in contemporary German literature. Erpenbeck’s new novel Kairos―an unforgettably compelling masterpiece―tells the story of the romance begun in East Berlin at the end of the 1980s when nineteen-year-old Katharina meets by chance a married writer in his fifties named Hans. Their passionate yet difficult long-running affair takes place against the background of the declining GDR, through the upheavals wrought by its dissolution in 1989 and then what comes after. In her unmistakable style and with enormous sweep, Erpenbeck describes the path of two lovers, as Katharina grows up and tries to come to terms with a not always ideal romance, even as a whole world with its own ideology disappears. As the Times Literary Supplement writes: “The weight of history, the particular experiences of East and West, and the ways in which cultural and subjective memory shape individual identity has always been present in Erpenbeck’s work. She knows that no one is all bad, no state all rotten, and she masterfully captures the existential bewilderment of this period between states and ideologies.” In the opinion of her superbly gifted translator Michael Hofmann, Kairos is the great post-Unification novel. And, as The New Republic has commented on his work as a translator: “Hofmann’s translation is invaluable―it achieves what translations are supposedly unable to do: it is at once ‘loyal’ and ‘beautiful.’”
Ia Genberg4.5 Vi lever så många liv inuti våra liv, mindre liv med människor som kommer och går, vänner som försvinner, barn som växer upp, och jag förstår aldrig vilket av mina liv som är själva ramen.
En kvinna ligger nedbäddad i feber när en handfull människor ur det förflutna står framför henne: en blivande kändis som skrev ett brev, en vän som försvann bortom kartan, en kärlek utan framtid.
Detaljerna är en roman med fyra porträtt och tusen detaljer, om tummade pocketböcker, psykedelisk dans och kippande oro. Vilken är den perfekta millennieklänningen? Kan en älskad människa verkligen försvinna? Och vem är det egentligen som porträtteras, personen på bilden eller den som håller i penseln?
