I just found out last week that the Harvard Book Store selected The Conqueror by Jan Kjaerstad as part of its Select Seventy program. As implied by the name, this program consists of seventy books selected by booksellers and buyers—all of which are sold at a 20% discount for the month.

Seeing any of our books on a “staff recommends” table gets me really excited, but this particular program gave me an idea . . . Since Three Percent is very much in favor of the continued survival of independent bookstores, each month we’re going to pick one and link to its online ordering system for all of the titles we feature/review on the site. And as the instigator of the idea, this month we’re going to focus on the Harvard Book Store.

And continuing with Open Letter titles for a second, we’ve gotten a lot of great coverage for our books recently, including a very positive reviews of Vilnius Poker by Ricardas Gavelis in both the Harvard Crimson and Literary License.

From the Harvard Crimson:

This ambitious endeavor is admirably achieved. Gavelis’ writing is a paragon of surrealist creativity and an intensely interesting read, filled with effortlessly intelligent prose and a wryly macabre voice.

And from Literary License:

Vilnius Poker is dense with ideas, literary allusions, historic events, mythological references, symbolism, and linguistic and philosophical theories. It invites and rewards careful study. Elizabeth Novickas’s nimble translation delivers the stylistic diversity that must have been intended by Gavelis. Just as beautiful and brutal elements coexist in the narrative, the prose is alternately poetic and crude.

Also, one of the best reviews of Fonseca’s The Taker and Other Stories recently came out in the London Review of Books. Daniel Soar’s review is incredibly thoughtful and complete, dealing with the violence in Fonseca’s stories in a very intelligent fashion. Here’s a short quote:

In Brazil, which since the 1970s has seen more urban violence than any other country in the world, no writer has dealt with the subject more plainly than Rubem Fonseca. In 1976 his bestselling short story collection Feliz Ano Novo (“Happy New Year”) was censored by a court acting for the military government. Five of the stories were banned, and the ban on the title story wasn’t revoked until 1989. [. . .]

The judges in the censorship case argued that the story might lead the average Brazilian astray. That would be a wholly ludicrous statement if applied to a piece of fiction written, say, in France, but “Feliz Ano novo” is precisely about what it claims is the average Brazilian; and it’s this claim that’s subversive, not the violence.

And just so it’s clear, all three of these books are currently in stock at the Harvard Book Store, and can be ordered online . . .

Rubem Fonseca’s The Taker and Other Stories continues to get some really good coverage, including two recent reviews at The Front Table and The National.

The Front Table is Seminary Co-op’s online newsletter/review magazine. It’s been around in one form or another for almost two decades, and the current variation is really impressive, with great reviews of interesting books and a Editors Speak section that’s really interesting. Oh, and a great review by Stan Izen of The Taker:

I am a good Hyde Park liberal: I argue vigorously on the side of equality for all and I donate monthly to Doctors Without Borders. Still, I really have no idea of the depth of despair suffered by the abandoned lonely, the poorly cared for elderly, and those bereft of hope and opportunity. Reading Rubem Fonseca’s new collection, The Taker and Other Stories, is a short walk through these foreign neighborhoods. Fonseca’s writing is rough; many of his characters are angry and disaffected, and they assuage their rage, not by brooding in their rooms and writing poetry, but by brutally murdering those they see as having everything they don’t. The reading is often upsetting but it is also revelatory, and that is the thrill of reading these stories. [. . .]

I used to read to find myself, now I read to get out of myself. Fonseca’s shocking, funny, thoughtful, fanciful stories electrify the emotions and disturb the reader. Kafka is correct, as usual, when he says: A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul. Fonseca’s writing does exactly that, in spades.

I want to give it a bit more time before getting too excited, but I have hopes that the Arts Section of Abu Dhabi’s The National could be the new New York Sun. I mean hell, they have Ben Lytal writing for them:

The Brazilian author Rubem Fonseca writes with a violence that his peers – writers of postmodern crime fiction – eschew. Think of Haruki Murakami, who has used noir plot devices to give structure and grit to adolescent dream narratives. Or Michael Chabon, who has reimagined Jewish-American history through the lens of detective fiction. Or Fonseca’s co-linguist, Jose Saramago, who in some of his recent novels has been writing like Paul Auster, making the mystery novel a vehicle for philosophical thought experiments.

None of these other authors goes to crime fiction for blood. Though some maintain an interest in evil, the consistent trend in highbrow crime fiction has been away from the dark alley and into the cerebral stratosphere. Fonseca couldn’t differ more. Vital to his stories is the troubling moment when the slashing crimes of his characters become too palpable and, to the engrossed reader, almost participatory.

It’s a very detailed, very enthusiastic review . . . But beyond the nice attention for one of our books, I’m just thrilled that Ben Lytal is back reviewing!

This month there are two Open Letter books available through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program: The Pets by Bragi Olafsson and The Taker and Other Stories by Rubem Fonseca. So any and all LibraryThing users should request a copy.