6 New Books in Translation to Read in April 2020
6 New Books in Translation to Read in April 2020
By Words Without Borders
Each month, WWB contributor Tobias Carroll shares a handful of recently released or forthcoming titles in translation that he’s especially excited about. This month's selection includes books translated from Croatian, Korean, Spanish, French, Chinese, and Swedish.
No-Signal Area
Robert Perisic
$22.95 $21.34Over the course of his novel No-Signal Area, Robert Perišić covers a lot of ground, from the historical traumas lurking in the recent past of Eastern Europe to the ways certain elements of society can be commodified in a myriad number of ways. The resulting novel is sometimes digressive but never uninteresting, and it memorably conveys a sense of a handful of characters converging on the same space, each with their own agenda.
Made in Saturn
Rita Indiana
$15.95 $14.83In Made in Saturn, Rita Indiana grapples with big questions—the legacies of revolutions and the nature of creativity and privilege among them. In telling the story of a haunted artist struggling with addiction and the question of whether or not he’ll ever be inspired to create new work, Indiana shapes a narrative that’s both specific to its setting and applicable in a host of contexts. Readers of Indiana’s Tentacle will also find some interesting areas of overlap between the two.
Our Riches
Kaouther Adimi
$15.95 $14.83What happens when history and literature converge? In telling the story of a famed Algerian bookstore, Kaouther Adimi explores Algeria’s colonial history and its ever-shifting relationship with France. In juxtaposing the story of the bookstore’s founding with a contemporary narrative, Adimi offers two distinct time periods, each with their own appeal and their own flaws.
Lake Like a Mirror
Sok Fong Ho
$16.95 $15.76Some short fiction exists in a space where the past exists only as a memory; other stories occupy a place where the ghosts of the past take literal form. The characters and scenarios in Ho Sok Fong’s Lake Like a Mirror occupy a liminal space between the two; along the way, the book offers a stunning sense of place and a powerful consideration of identity.
The Helios Disaster
Linda Bostrom Knausgaard
$15.99 $14.87Blending psychological realism with a hallucinatory dose of the mythological, Linda Boström Knausgård’s The Helios Disaster eludes easy classification. It’s a slim novel that moves from trauma to revelation and back again; it’s also a disconcerting reworking of some memorable myths and legends. Running throughout the novel is a measured consideration of belief and humanity’s relationship to the divine—both metaphorically and literally.