#WITMONTH REVIEW: SPHINX, BY ANNE GARRÉTA, TRANSLATED BY EMMA RAMADAN (2015)

August is Women in Translation Month (#WITMonth), so I'm only reviewing books by women in translation. What does Anna Karenina look like? When you read Moby Dick's opening line, "Call me Ishmael", what face do you picture? How does your mind's eye interpret Joyce's description of Ulysses' Buck Mulligan as "plump, stately"? One of my …

3 BOOKS BY WOMEN IN TRANSLATION YOU CAN READ IN 1 OR 2 SITTINGS

August is Women in Translation Month (#WITMonth), and, so far, I've only reviewed books by women in translation (here, here and here). Today, I'm doing something different: recommending three books by women in translation that, being well under 200 pages, could be easily read in one or two sittings. I thought about picking only books …

#WITMONTH REVIEW: JAGANNATH, BY KARIN TIDBECK, TRANSLATED BY KARIN TIDBECK (2012)

August is Women in Translation Month (#WITMonth), so I'm only reviewing books by women in translation. In Jagannath's title story, Karin Tidbeck imagines a postapocalyptic future where humans have forged a symbiotic alliance with gigantic caterpillars. The caterpillars constantly roam the earth in search of sustenance, and the humans live inside them: men--who have become …

#WITMONTH REVIEW: THE IMPOSSIBLE FAIRYTALE, BY HAN YUJOO, TRANSLATED BY JANET HONG (2017)

August is Women in Translation Month (#WITmonth), so I'll only review books by women in translation.  On the night of the day I started The Impossible Fairytale, I dreamed I was one of first three people in the city to read it. We met to discuss it every Wednesday. We were like Macbeth's witches. When …

#WITMONTH REVIEW: PANTY, BY SANGEEVA BANDOPADHYAY, TRANSLATED BY ARUNAVA SINHA (2016)

August is Women in Translation Month (#WITmonth), so I'll only review books by women in translation. A woman steps into an apartment in Kolkata. It's nighttime, and none of the light switches work. She finds a mirror, but when she touches her hair her reflection does not replicate the gesture. She showers, and as she's …

REVIEW: HEATHER, THE TOTALITY, BY MATTHEW WEINER (2017)

Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way: at first, I kind of wished Matthew Weiner had used a pen name. Mad Men, which Weiner created and helmed for its entire run, is one of my favourite tv shows of all time. So it was hard not to compare Heather, The Totality, with its …

REVIEW: THE ACCUSATION, BY BANDI (2014/TRANSL. BY DEBORAH SMITH, 2017)

How do you review a book like Bandi's The Accusation? People literally risked their lives to smuggle it out of North Korea, concealing it between works by King Sung-Il, the current dictator's grandfather, who was himself the country's dictator between 1948 and his death in 1994. The author (whose true name remains unknown--"bandi" means firefly) …

REVIEW: NULL STATES, BY MALKA ANN OLDER (2017)

It's the late twenty-first century, and nation states like Japan, Peru and the US are a thing of the past. Instead, most now live in centenals, contiguous communities of 100,000 people. In rural areas, centenals can stretch out quite a bit, while in cities, there can be several in a single block. Every ten years, …

REVIEW: VENGEANCE IS MINE, ALL OTHERS PAY CASH, BY EKA KURNIAWAN (2017)

TW: rape. Who can resist a title like Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash? What lover of silly B-movies, strange literature, and comics could pass what the book's own jacket cover describes as a "gloriously pulpy tale of bloody fists, broken hearts and duelling Javanese truckers"? How can a 200-page novel about "one of …

REVIEW: THE HISTORY OF BEES, BY MAJA LUNDE (2015)

Sichuan, 2098. Hundreds of silent workers, clad in beige, balance on the fragile branches of pear trees. They hold a plastic container in one hand, a brush in the other. The plastic container contains pollen, carefully weighed out. The brush is made out of the feathers of hens bred specifically for this purpose. Each worker …