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The new issue of A Public Space arrived a couple days ago and, as always, is filled with interesting pieces.
I think it’s pretty cool that “All Foreigners Beep” from Dubravka Ugresic’s new collection Nobody’s Home leads off the issue, especially since this is one of the funniest pieces in the book.
And I really like the “Letter Home” in which Colleen Kinder “Defines Iceland” and includes one of my favorite things to tell people about Iceland:
Phone book: Listed by first names.
Why: The surname here is only a father’s tag. For example, Molly Kinder = Molly Drewsdottir (Drew’s daughter.) Bush = Georg Georgsson.
Recommended Reading: The phone book. Particularly if you are looking, say, for Americans living in Iceland. Amid the long columns of Injibjorgs and Gudmundurs, a Frank leaps right out.
Frank: A ninety-six-year-old American living in Iceland. Though when he boarded his military ship in 1941, Frank was told only the code name of his destination: “Blue Indigo.”
Also very cool is this issue’s focus on Italy that includes pieces by Antonio Tabucchi, Salvatore Niffoi, Dacia Maraini, and Erri de Luca, and interviews with Marcello Fois and Antonio Scurati. And the whole section begins with an intriguing intro by translator Will Schutt :
One of the most prominent genres of current Italian fiction, both popular and literary, is the giallo or mystery story. In the hands of literary writers, the giallo turns quirkily metaphysical and, at times, metafictional—keen on investigating essential mysteries of language and its bearing on identity. [. . .]
In the short fictions that follow, formal combinations of the straight-up mystery, the historical narrative, and the fantastic tale serve to magnify divisiveness, paradox and impenetrability, qualities emblematic of the culture’s spirit. Although none of the stories’ protagonists is a detective per se, each is engaged in some kind of detective work.
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
This slender, uncanny volume—the second, best-selling collection of stories by Russian author Ludmilla Petrushevskaya to appear in the U.S.—has already received considerable, well-deserved praise from many critics and high profile publications. Its seventeen short tales, averaging ten pages each, are. . .
Reviewed by Rachael Daum
The Urdu word basti refers to any space, intimate to worldly, and is often translated as “common place” or “a gathering place.” This book by Intizar Husain, who is widely regarded as one of the most important living Pakistani writers,. . .
Reviewed by Vincent Francone
The Whispering Muse, one of three books by Icelandic writer Sjón just published in North America, is nothing if not inventive. Stories within stories, shifting narration, leaps in time, and characters who transform from men to birds and back again—you’ve. . .
Reviewed by Camila Santos
Luis Negrón’s debut collection Mundo Cruel is a journey through Puerto Rico’s gay world. Published in 2010, the book is already in its fifth Spanish edition. Here in the U.S., the collection has been published by Seven Stories Press and. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
“South”
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bank of shadow to have watched
the scattered lights
my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the ring of. . .
Reviewed by Larissa Kyzer
When Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason first published LoveStar, his darkly comic parable of corporate power and media influence run amok, the world was in a very different place. (This was back before both Facebook and Twitter, if you can. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
When starting Hi, This Is Conchita and Other Stories, Santiago Roncagliolo’s second work to be translated into English, I was expecting Roncagliolo to explore the line between evil and religion that was front and center in Red April. Admittedly, I. . .
Reviewed by Josh Billings
Christa Wolf’s newly-translated City of Angels is a novel of atonement, and in this way the work of art that it resembles most to me is not another book, but the 2003 Sophia Coppola film Lost in Translation. Like that. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
French author—philosopher, poet, novelist—de Roblès writes something approaching the Great (Latin) American Novel, about Brazilian characters, one of whom is steeped in the life of the seventeenth century polymath (but almost always erroneous) Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. Eleazard von Wogau, a. . .
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
A rich, beautifully written, consistently surprising satire, Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses boasts an elaborate, engrossing plot with disarming twists and compelling characters both challenged and challenging. It leads the reader on a strange pilgrimage—often melancholy but certainly rewarding—through a China. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
