Saint-Clément-de-Rivière, France. Fata Morgana. 2017. 207 pages.
In the early pages of this book, the author claims that the French word hasard (“chance”) derives from the Arabic word az-zahr…
MISCELLANEOUS
Athens, Ohio. Ohio University Press / Swallow Press in conjunction with Sky Blue Press. 2017. 349 pages. Anaïs Nin, queen of online inspirational quotes, legend of erotic literature still taboo in 201…
New York. Nation Books. 2017. 272 pages. In 2015, with the death of Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, Latin America lost one of its finest literary voices and one of the staunchest critics of the expl…
Minneapolis. Graywolf Press. 2017. 256 pages. The publication of Into English will soon be considered a watershed moment in the study of literary translation; indeed, the fact that such a boo…
London. Nick Hern Books. 2016. 210 pages. British actress Harriet Walter (who won a Tony Award nomination for Mary Stuart on Broadway in 2009) offers feminist essays on major Shakespearean ro…
Paris. Gallimard. 2017. 177 pages. “God doesn’t exist. Phew! I said it.” This profession of lack of faith is found early in Salim Bachi’s latest work, which combines autobiographical narrative with re…
New York. Random House. 2016. 243 pages. So few books manage to convey the emotional anguish of searching for an answer as well as Hisham Matar’s recent Pulitzer Prize–winning memoir, The Return…
Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2017. 526 pages. The first comprehensive biography of the Nobel Prize–winning Polish poet Czesław Miłosz was published in Krakó…
New York. New Directions. 2017. 303 pages. When one thinks of Argentine literature, two names immediately come to mind: Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar, usually in that order. I read them both as…
Minneapolis. Graywolf Press. 2017. 400 pages. In the late 2000s, Kapka Kassabova undertook a trek along the southern border of her birthplace, Bulgaria. Through her journey, the author sought to exami…
Montreal. Drawn & Quarterly. 2017. 432 pages. Christophe Andre was working as a Médecins Sans Frontières administrator in Ingushetia, just west of Chechnya, when he was kidnapped and held for 111…
New York. Columbia Global Reports. 2016. 112 pages. WLT readers are attuned to the complexities of what makes a novel global and of the limitations of strictly academic ripostes on the topic.…
London. Seagull Books. 2017. 200 pages. Elfriede Jelinek adopts the narrative structure, setting, and themes of Aeschylus’s Suppliant Women for Charges, a drama that delivers a power…
Montreal. Drawn & Quarterly. 2017. 296 pages. The outline of William Seabrook’s life casts him as a juicy subject for a biography. A published writer, sexually kinky player, adventurous traveler,…
New Haven, Connecticut. Yale University Press. 2016. 1,014 pages. Jean Cocteau was bewitched, bothered, and bewildered in his lifetime: bewitched by exceedingly young males (Radiguet, Maurice Sachs, E…
Massachusetts. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2016. 419 pages. Anthologies bearing the distinct taste of the anthologists are preferable, in my view, to compilations whose editors pret…
Norman. University of Oklahoma Press. 2016. 317 pages. Finally, a gathering of essays on Rudolfo Anaya’s now vast archive of writing that considerably widens the circuitry of engagement with global li…
New Delhi. Aleph. 2017. 244 pages. As with acts of observing the complex structures of trees, it takes a few rounds of intense readerly attention to detect the subtle patterns in Sumana Roy’s exquisit…
San Francisco. Outpost19. 2016. 156 pages. To many, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are known for knocking on doors and leaving the religious tract The Watchtower in waiting rooms and laundromats. Th…
Norman. University of Oklahoma Press. 2017. 336 pages. Mestizos Come Home! is a comprehensive and valuable study of Mexican American history and culture from pre-Columbian and colonial Mexico…
Lincoln. University of Nebraska Press. 2016. 327 pages. In the introduction to this collection, editor Marcia Haag displays intimate awareness while skillfully articulating the complexities of Native…
University of Oklahoma Press. 2017. 185 pages. In 1904 Frédéric Mistral was awarded the Nobel Prize for his efforts to revitalize the langue d’oc through his epic poem Mirèio. Now t…
Norman, Oklahoma. Mongrel Empire Press. 2017. 180 pages. Maurice Kenny’s final collection, a lyric jaunt through history and memoir, serves as an important bookend to his creative legacy. Kenny’s sign…
Lincoln. University of Nebraska Press. 2017. 177 pages. Peek into the kaleidoscope spin of one family’s sense of identity. Denise Low’s The Turtle’s Beating Heart invites you to watch as she…
Paris. Gallimard. 2016. 288 pages. When Sophie Chauveau’s cousin Béatrice Meyer gets in touch with her after many years, it should be a cause for celebration. Instead, that meeting results in a very d…