Reviews

Season of the Swamp – Yuri Herrera

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Herrera’s novel conjures the past from its hiding spot in plain sight. What appears absent is in fact there, somewhere—only it requires the work of a skilled author to coax it to life.

From Savagery – Alejandra Banca

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FROM SAVAGERY, the debut work of fiction by Alejandra Banca, beautifully translated by Katie Brown . . . gives a voice to a new generation of Venezuelan migrants creating life abroad.

Spatriati – Mario Desiati

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Here, [Michael F. Moore] lends his English to Francesco’s angst and Claudia’s rebellion with the compassion of a parent who wants to support you without you knowing it, hiding in the bleachers at the JV soccer game with a silent smile.

The Wilderness – Ayşegül Savaş

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Savaş’s prose . . . in its sharpness and clarity, never loses sight of the new mother as shaped by the world, by culture, by history, and most of all, by familial networks of care.

Thanks for This Riot – Janelle Bassett

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Connections, too often, mean relinquishing control, and none of the women in THANKS FOR THIS RIOT have enough to spare.

Grandma Non-Oui – Lidija Dimkovska

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Lidija Dimkovska’s new novel . . . explores how history mirrors human life itself: complex, recursive, non-linear, and defiantly inconclusive.

California Against the Sea – Rosanna Xia

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For Xia, the changing landscape is an opportunity to rectify past wrongs done to the environment and, in addition, to those who have been harmed in tandem with it.

Underground Barbie – Maša Kolanović

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For a novel set during debilitating times, UNDERGROUND BARBIE is frequently quite funny. The seriousness is masterfully cut, and paradoxically intensified, by the antics of the children and the scenarios they dream up.

My Child, the Algorithm – Hannah Silva

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Queerness . . . is both liberating and disorienting—it explodes stifling boundaries, yet doesn’t dictate exactly how to live in the aftermath. Queer parenthood complicates this further.

The Summer Without You – Petar Andonovski

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Despite its setting on the sun-soaked coast of Crete, THE SUMMER WITHOUT YOU shivers with the cold reckonings of disillusionment and adulthood