International fiction

Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri & Todd Portnowitz (trans.)

Reviewed by Melanie Basta

For the uninitiated, Roman Stories is just the kind of short story collection you’d expect from Pulitzer Prize-winning multi-lingual author Jhumpa Lahiri.

Originally written in Italian and then translated into English, Roman Stories gives us a snippet of the lives…

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Rouge: A Novel by Mona Awad

Reviewed by Jamisyn Gleeson

A modern fairytale meets cult meets critique of our obsession with looking young forever. Mona Awad’s latest novel follows skincare-obsessed Mirabelle as she returns to California for her mother’s funeral, where she must face the (literal) demons of her past…

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Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa & Eric Ozawa (trans.)

Reviewed by Jennifer Varela

Born and raised in Kyushu, a southern island of Japan, Takako relocates to Tokyo to pursue life in the big city after graduating from a local college. Life seems to be going quite well until, one Friday night in June…

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Wednesday's Child by Yiyun Li

Reviewed by Tracy Hwang

It’s hard to believe that the 11 stories that make up Wednesday’s Child were written over a span of 14 years. Yiyun Li has made them feel as if they belong together, as if they were written to exist together…

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Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

Reviewed by Ruby Grinter

‘History is a silent record of people who did not know when to leave.’

As the clouds of political change enshroud a modern Ireland, the newly powerful Nationalist Alliance Party (NAP) is enacting tighter and tighter authoritarian measures, infringing upon…

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North Woods by Daniel Mason

Reviewed by Kate McIntosh

It has been said that there are only seven original plots in literature. If this is the case, then it is entirely possible that Daniel Mason’s latest book contains every single one of them, and it is one of the…

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Watch Us Dance by Leïla Slimani & Sam Taylor (trans.)

Reviewed by Kate McIntosh

This book deserves your full attention, so don’t even bother picking it up if you don’t have a few quiet hours ahead of you, perhaps curled up in a big snuggly armchair with a cuppa or a glass of pinot…

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The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut

Reviewed by Joe Murray

The Maniac is the story of the great inscrutable intelligences of our modern era. It traces a long and sordid path from the frenzied genius of our most revolutionary mathematicians and scientists to the cold, calculating procedures of artificial intelligence…

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Normal Rules Don't Apply by Kate Atkinson

Reviewed by Chris Gordon

Kate Atkinson’s first full collection of short stories, Normal Rules Don’t Apply are absurdist in their content – and, to be honest, a little spooky. It does seem as if Atkinson has been reading the Bible and the result is…

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The Fraud by Zadie Smith

Reviewed by Chris Gordon

Zadie Smith’s first historical fiction novel is for readers who are prepared to pause, reflect, and then continue. It is not an easy read, but stay with it because Smith has done something unusual here and the result is an…

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