2 days ago
August global fiction: Six novels from around the world to add to your bookshelf
All information sourced from publishers.
Good and Evil and Other Stories, Samanta Schweblin, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell
A gripping blend of the raw, the astonishing and the tragic, every story is as perfectly unexpected as a snare: tightly, exquisitely wound, ready to snap at a touch.
Here, a young father is haunted by the consequences of a moment of distraction; tragedy is complicated by the inexplicable appearance of an injured horse; an attempted poisoning leads two writers to startling conclusions; a lonely woman's charity is rewarded with home invasion. And in the shocking opening story, a mother surfaces from the depths of the lake behind her house, where she saw something awful yet alluring.
Guilt, grief and relationships severed permeate this mesmerising collection – but so do unspeakable bonds of family, love and longing, each sinister and beautiful.
M aggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar, Katie Yee
A man and a woman walk into a restaurant. The woman expects a lovely night filled with endless plates of samosas. Instead, she finds out her husband is having an affair with a woman named Maggie.
A short while after, her chest starts to ache. She walks into an examination room, where she finds out the pain in her breast isn't just heartbreak – it's cancer. She decides to call the tumour Maggie.
Unfolding in fragments over the course of the ensuing months, Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar, follows the narrator as she embarks on a journey of grief, healing, and reclamation. She starts talking to Maggie (the tumour), getting acquainted with her body's new inhabitant. She overgenerously creates a 'Guide to My Husband: A User's Manual' for Maggie (the other woman), hoping to ease the process of discovering her ex-husband's whims and quirks. She turns her children's bedtime stories into retellings of Chinese folklore passed down by her own mother, in an attempt to make them fall in love with their shared culture – and to maybe save herself in the process.
The Mark, Fríða Ísberg, translated from the Icelandic by Larissa Kyzer
The Icelandic Psychological Association has prepared a test. They call it a sensitivity assessment: a way of measuring a person's empathy and identifying the potential for anti-social behaviour.
In a few days' time, Iceland will vote on whether to make the test compulsory for every citizen. The nation is bitterly divided. Some believe the test makes society safer; others decry it as a violation.
As the referendum draws closer, four people – Vetur, Eyja, Tristan and Ólafur – find themselves caught in the teeth of the debate. Each of them will have to reckon with uncomfortable questions: Where do the rights of society end and the rights of the individual begin? When does utopia become dystopia?
Who Will Remain?, Kasim Ali
Amir has grown up in Alum Rock, Birmingham, under the care of his sensible older brother, Bilal, and his cousin Saqib, born just a few days before Amir. Alum Rock can be a troubled place, but Amir has managed to keep his head down, worked hard and stayed out of trouble … until now.
When Saqib is killed in a gang fight and Bilal announces his engagement, Amir suddenly loses the two men who keep him grounded. Amir's university grades are collapsing, he's running out of money, and pressure mounts from every direction. As tensions flare, the friends left around him start to draw Amir into their more dangerous pursuits, and the family ties that have bound him so completely begin to unravel. Amir decides he only has himself to rely on and must take his future into his own hands.
Seesaw Monster, Kotaro Isaka, translated from the Japanese by Sam Malissa
Miyako suspects her mother-in-law is a murderer. It's not just a case of them rubbing each other up the wrong way – there is definitely something suspicious going on. But Miyako isn't exactly what she seems either. Her husband has no idea about her past life as a secret agent. When she decides to use her professional skills to investigate her mother-in-law, the delicate equilibrium of their lives is thrown wildly out of balance.
Many decades later, in a future world where electronic communication has been irrevocably compromised, confidential messages must be delivered by trusted couriers like Mito. But one delivery pulls Mito into a conspiracy beyond his wildest imaginings, and forces him into a race against time to defeat a world-changing technological threat.
Opt Out, Carolina Setterwall, translated from the Swedish by Deborah Bragan-Turner
Everything will be fine. That is what Mary and John promise when they tell their two children that they are getting a divorce. But while the end of their marriage offers them both freedom from their dissatisfaction, it brings to the fore the pain and resentments that have always percolated through their relationship and throws into stark relief their shortcomings as partners and as parents.
While John finds a second chance at love – still retaining the support of their children – Mary is forced to contend with the fact that, having always yearned for the approval of others, she is thoroughly unprepared for the waves of change that are coming to reshape her life.
Told from the alternating perspectives of Mary and John as they separately navigate life in the wake of their separation, Opt Out is an astute examination of the constrictive power of gender roles, and a reckoning with our impossibly idealised conceptions of motherhood.
