logo

“The Cheffe: A Cook’s Novel” by Marie NDiaye [Why This Book Should Win]

Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards.  Marcel Inhoff is completing a doctoral dissertation at the University of Bonn. He is the author of the collection Prosopopeia (Editions Mantel, 2015), and Our Church Is Here (Pen and ...

“Ladivine” by Marie NDiaye [Why This Book Should Win]

Between the announcement of the Best Translated Book Award longlists and the unveiling of the finalists, we will be covering all thirty-five titles in the Why This Book Should Win series. Enjoy learning about all the various titles selected by the fourteen fiction and poetry judges, and I hope you find a few to purchase and ...

“Thus Bad Begins” by Javier Marías

  Thus Bad Begins by Javier Marías translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa 464 pgs. | pb |9781101911914 | $16.95 Knopf Reviewed by Kristel Thornell   Following The Infatuations, Javier Marías’s latest novel seems, like those that have preceded it, an experiment to test fiction’s ...

Colorless Tsukuru and His Years of Pilgrimage

Floating around the internet amid the hoopla of a new Haruki Murakami release, you may have come across a certain Murakami Bingo courtesy of Grant Snider. It is exactly what it sounds like, and it’s funny because it’s true, to a certain extent: Murakami, for better or worse, has a particular style, and with it come the ...

Latest Review: "My Fathers' Ghost Is Climbing in the Rain" by Patricio Pron

The latest addition to our Reviews section is by P. T. Smith on My Fathers’ Ghost Is Climbing in the Rain by Patricio Pron, translated by Mara Faye Lethem, and forthcoming from Knopf. Pron was one of Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists, and has already made an impression with this, his American debut. And ...

My Fathers' Ghost is Climbing in the Rain

Though far from the most convincing reason to read literature in translation, one common side effect is learning of another culture, of its history. Within that, and a stronger motivation to read, is the discovery of stories not possible within your own culture, or that live in a certain parallel universe version of a ...

A Cautionary Tale

Here’s an open letter from Jonathan Wright about some shit that went down with Knopf and Dr. Alaa Al Aswany, the author of The Yacoubian Building. If nothing else, you MUST check out this set of corrections from Al Aswany. It is things. And something I’m using in my classes from now until forever . . . Anyway, the ...