Rabbit Island – Elvira Navarro
Taking little delight in the absurd, Navarro plunges into the despair, horror, and alienation of a society in steady retreat before the very irrational forces it aims to suppress.
The Regal Lemon Tree – Juan José Saer
I think of the late Argentine author Juan José Saer as a writer of light and shadow, but The Regal Lemon Tree is a book of sound.
The Town Slowly Empties – Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee
It is this exchange of revelation and recognition between the narrator and the reader that holds together the different leaps of scenes, visuals, and words in the book.
Tastes Like War – Grace M. Cho
In Tastes Like War, Cho has sent a vital current through a history towards a more considered life, a more felt conception of history as it involves us.
The Voice of Sheila Chandra – Kazim Ali
Writers negotiate their own relationship to silence — as canvas, as collaborator, as agent to frame or defy or defile.
Birthday Girl by Sheila J. Sadr
Sadr shines in her composition of concise statements on gender, with gut-punch assertions about the essential truths of being a woman, rendered in stunning fragments.
The Sacramento of Desire – Julia Bloch
[Bloch] catalogues the responses in her body, all the while trying to find a language that is corporeal, embodied, that is, literally of the body: a sign that she is fertile.
Rituals Performed in the Absence of Ganymede – Mike Corrao
The body of each billionaire is deteriorating and will become its own soup or ash.
The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here – Susanne Paola Antonetta
THE TERRIBLE UNLIKELIHOOD OF OUR BEING HERE is meant for anyone who, in Antonetta’s words, feels the need to “scratch life and make it bleed a little and know you’re here.”
Zabor, or the Psalms – Kamel Daoud
One could say that writing is a small act of rebellion against death.