I don’t think I described friendship as a contract; our society already has.
If capital “H” history falls short and neglects the humanity of those it documents, Shibli and Nordenhök seem to reason, then it is the proper role of fiction to step in, and make those stories fuller.
Years and Years – Hwang Jungeun
Sejin and Yeongjin seem to be aware of the pitfalls of their mother’s refusal to speak of her past . . . but they ultimately do the same themselves. The three women take silence as a given, assuming that speaking would only lead to more harm.
Reservoir Bitches – Dahlia de la Cerda
In a country that has one of the world’s highest femicide rates, an irreverent tongue works as an imperfect, slapdash shield.
Nauetakuan, a Silence for a Noise – Natasha Kanapé Fontaine
In NAUETAKUAN, Indigenous characters’ laughter disrupts the serious, restrained norms of literary fiction.
Capitalist modernity renders mothers and daughters as autonomy-desiring “units”; SALT reveals the ache of this separation.
When translator Sarah Booker came to Coffee House with pitches for the translation of both novels of Ojeda’s, the press thought it best to have JAWBONE precede NEFANDO, allowing the former to serve as amuse bouche to the latter’s more toothsome topics.
[TW: sexual abuse, child abuse]
The Delivery – Margarita García Robayo
Languages are not internally coherent, fixed entities. Instead of assuming that all speakers of a language can understand each other with perfect ease, The Delivery reveals the fissures, gaps, and spaces of incomprehension that can exist between speakers of the same language.
Human Sacrifices – María Fernanda Ampuero
The characters of these stories live in fear of the moment that a villain will grab hold of them. But there is another side to this fear: desire. The terrible thing, in Ampuero’s stories, also holds a certain allure.
Tales of Tangier: The Complete Short Stories of Mohamed Choukri
Even in the stories that project a more lighthearted air . . . there is a looming sense that something is horribly wrong, that the party is over.