The Moravian Night by Peter Handke
★★☆☆☆ One evening in the Balkan village of Porodin, a group of locals join a former writer on his boat “The Moravian Night” for an evening of storytelling as they float down the Morava...
Category: Literature
The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso
★★★★☆ Hortensia James and Marion Agostino are neighbors, but they are definitely not neighborly. There is much to separate them. Hortensia is the only black owner in a South African estate just outside Cape...
Universal Harvester by John Darnielle
★★☆☆☆ John Darnielle’s new novel Universal Harvester is an urban legend — a convoluted and ultimately disappointing one, but enough of a creepy modern folktale to appeal to those readers sensitive to nostalgic storytelling....
Normal by Warren Ellis
★★★☆☆ To borrow a quote from one of the side characters in his new book Normal, Warren Ellis “kind of invented the modern end of the world.” His stories often journey into the dark corners...
The Return of Munchausen by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
★★★★☆ He’s back: after two and a half centuries of being trapped in Rudolph Erich Raspe’s 1786 novel Baron Munchausen’s Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, the Baron himself has slipped...
Iza’s Ballad by Magda Szabo
★★★★☆ Although not the shimmering, layered masterpiece that is Magda Szabo’s 1987 novel The Door (translated last year to critical acclaim), Iza’s Ballad is an accomplished work of similar emotional weight. Before The Door’s...
Ema, The Captive by César Aira
★★☆☆☆ The prolific César Aira is a writer of momentum and continuum. He often discusses his work ethic in essays and interviews, explaining how he’s a daily writer and resists editing yesterday’s material. He...
The Invisibility Cloak by Ge Fei
★★★☆☆ This short novella about music, family, and business in contemporary China is an alluring introduction to Ge Fei, a novelist of subtle peculiarity and intrigue. The narrator of The Invisibilty Cloak is an...
The Boat Rocker by Ha Jin
★★☆☆☆ Ha Jin’s The Boat Rocker is a scathing satire about Chinese-American patriotism and intellectual integrity. When young Chinese immigrant Yan Haili’s 9/11-exploiting novel Love and Death in September gets a publicity bump from...
