Beijing. Beijing United Publishing. 2022. 249 pages.
AS YANG BENFEN’S third novel published in three years, Wo Ben Fen Fang (I am rich in fragrance) garners no less attention…
FICTION
New York. Other Press. 2022. 368 pages. LUCIA IS AN elderly nun who has co-created—“birthed,” perhaps, is a better word—Carnality, a bizarre talk show on the Dark Web. It is…
New York. Bellevue Literary Press. 2022. 320 pages. SCHOLARLY RESEARCH INTO the work of Henry James is the literary linchpin that drives the characterization and plot of Benefit…
New York. Alfred A. Knopf. 2022. 261 pages. THE PAGES is an inventive and gripping novel that is full of love, loss, intrigue, history, and the enigmatic relationship between…
Toronto. Coach House Books. 2022. 152 pages. POISED ON THE “chasm’s edge,” Anne Lardeux’s The Second Substance demands that readers query their environment—its possibilities…
New York. New Directions. 2022. 112 pages. LUCKY BREAKS, by Yevgenia Belorusets, is an experimental approach to the novel that neither follows a traditional story arc nor adh…
Paris. P.O.L. 2022. 204 pages. READERS FAMILIAR WITH his work know Gérard Gavarry as a master of French prose style as well as a writer who comes to each project with a fresh perspect…
Paris. Gallimard. 2022. 368 pages. THIS NOVEL IS the second part of a trilogy, Le Pays des autres (see WLT, Autumn 2020, 95), partly based on the author’s family his…
New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2022. 419 pages. PATRICE NGANANG’S NEWLY translated novel, A Trail of Crab Tracks, follows the relationship between Tanou, a Cameroonian…
New York. Other Press. 2022. 320 pages. ABOUT A QUARTER of the way through The Last Island, Zülfü Livaneli’s latest novel to be translated into English, a figure known as “th…
Montreal. Drawn & Quarterly. 2022. 226 pages. WALK ME TO THE CORNER is the tenth comic book by the award-winning Swedish painter, illustrator, and graphic artist Anneli F…
San Francisco. City Lights Books. 2022. 120 pages. THE EIGHT SHORT stories in Family Album live up to the book’s title, their names underscoring the concept: Baptism, Summer…
New York. Cambria Press. 2021. 248 pages. PUBLISHED SHORTLY AFTER Taiwan became the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, Queer Taiwanese Literature i…
Trans. Claire Wadie. New York. New Vessel Press. 2022. 187 pages. BORN IN 1980 in Sama de Grado, Asturias, Spain, Manuel Astur is a teacher, poet, fiction writer, essayist, and journa…
Norman. University of Oklahoma Press. 2022. 369 pages. IS MARTYRDOM FATED, a choice, both? Thus the parameters of Rilla Askew’s new novel, whose title and prologue leave no doubt of t…
New York. New Directions. 2022. 64 pages. IN “MAJAKOWSKIRING,” the second story in Yoko Tawada’s Three Streets, an unnamed narrator encounters an undead writer. Vladimir Maya…
New York. Penguin. 2022. 320 pages. OTTESSA MOSHFEGH’S Lapvona is a study in power. It is an autopsy of the gaping gulf between abundance and misery, orchestrated by Villiam,…
New York. HarperVia. 2022. 224 pages. SOME NOVELS SHOUT their politics; others whisper them. Anuradha Roy’s compelling fifth novel, The Earthspinner, belongs to the…
Seattle. Amazon Crossing. 2022. 128 pages. EMMELIE PROPHÈTE’S Blue is a study in liminality and alienation. Blue is set in a Miami airport, a liminal space where the…
San Francisco. Two Lines Press. 2022. 168 pages. FOLLOWING PUBLICATION OF Masatsugu Ono’s Echo on the Bay and Lion Cross Point (translated by Angus Turvill; see …
New York. MCD. 2022. 272 pages. JONATHAN ESCOFFERY, recipient of the 2020 Plimpton Prize and the ASME Award for Fiction, builds a vibrant family saga from a series of interconnected s…
Brooklyn. Archipelago Books. 2022. 152 pages. SCHOLASTIQUE MUKASONGA’S family was massacred in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Mukasonga was elsewhere and missed the carnage; forcing her…
New York. Viking. 2022. 288 pages. A DREAM: I am helping a boy fly a kite. We are in Afghanistan, where, it seems, all boys fly kites, especially in spring. Spring: t…
Berkeley. Stone Bridge Press. 2022. 264 pages. EMMITT HAS A PLAN for the next year: move out of his in-laws’ house and into his dream home with his wife, Mirai, quit his unfulfilling…
New York. Other Press. 2022. 160 pages. MIGUEL BONNEFOY FREEFALLS into his strangely alluring new novel, Heritage, which makes a desperate attempt to understand the internal…