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The New York Times profiles the Brazilian authors Márcio Souza and Milton Hatoum and provides an oh-so-brief overview of the Brazilian scene:
Just ask Márcio Souza or Milton Hatoum, two leading Brazilian novelists of Amazon themes. Both were born and grew up in this bustling, ethnically diverse port city in the heart of the planet’s largest rain forest, but both had to leave here and struggle to get recognition.
“We don’t fit any of the established models or niches,” Mr. Souza, 61, said in an interview at his studio here. “We’re not magical realists” like Gabriel García Márquez and other celebrated Latin American writers, he said, “and we haven’t lived through the interesting times that the East Europeans have.”
“Maybe we need more deforestation here to get some attention,” Mr. Souza, the author of picaresque, satirical novels like “The Emperor of the Amazon” and “Mad Maria,” added mordantly. “That’s how the book world seems to work.”
Reviewed by P. T. Smith
The last five days of the eleventh-century Icelandic politician, writer of sagas, and famous murder victim Snorri Sturleleson (the Norwegian spelling, Snorre, is preserved in the book) make up Thorvald Steen’s most recently translated historical fiction, The Little Horse. Murdered. . .
Reviewed by Peter Biello
We all know Paris, or at least we think we know it. The Eiffel Tower. The Latin Quarter. The Champs-Élysées. The touristy stuff. In Dominique Fabre’s novel, Guys Like Me, we’re shown a different side of Paris: a gray, decaying. . .
Reviewed by Christopher Iacono
One hundred pages into Birth of a Bridge, the prize-winning novel from French writer Maylis de Kerangal, the narrator describes how starting in November, birds come to nest in the wetlands of the fictional city of Coca, California, for three. . .
Reviewed by Valerie Miles
At 30, the Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli is already gathering her rosebuds. Faces in the Crowd, her poised debut novel, was published by Coffee House Press, along with her Brodsky-infused essay collection, Sidewalks. The essays stand as a theoretical map. . .
Reviewed by Cameron Rowe
Fantomas Versus the Multinational Vampires: An Attainable Utopia (narrated by Julio Cortázar) is, not disappointingly, as wild a book as its title suggests. It is a half-novella half-graphic novel story about . . . what, exactly? A European tribunal, Latin. . .
Reviewed by Lori Feathers
Marie NDiaye has created a tiny, psychological masterpiece with her Self-Portrait in Green. In it she explores how our private fears and insecurities can distort what we believe to be real and can cause us to sabotage our intimate relationships.. . .
Reviewed by P. T. Smith
Reading a genre book—whether fantasy, science fiction, crime, thriller, etc.—which begins to seem excessively, stereotypically bad, I have to make sure to ask myself: is this parodying the flaws of the genre? Usually, this questioning takes its time coming. In. . .
Reviewed by Patience Haggin
The Sicilian Mafia has always been a rich subject for sensational crime fiction. The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos worked the mob’s bloody corpses and family feuds to both entertainment and artistic value. Giuseppe di Piazza’s debut novel attempts this,. . .
Reviewed by P. T. Smith
Antoine Volodine’s vast project (40 plus novels) of what he calls the post-exotic remains mostly untranslated, so for many of us, understanding it remains touched with mystery, whispers from those “who know,” and guesswork. That’s not to say that, were. . .
Reviewed by Acacia O'Connor
It hasn’t quite neared the pitch of the waiting-in-line-at-midnight Harry Potter days, but in small bookstores and reading circles of New York City, an aura has attended the novelist Elena Ferrante and her works. One part curiosity (Who is she?),. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
