Satantango – László Krasznahorkai
It’s a bestiary of pathetic individuals worthy of Chaucer, Dickens, or some of the more involved Bob Dylan songs.
Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman – Friedrich Christian Delius
A single piece of punctuation has, it seems, never held such power.
From the Mouth of the Whale – Sjon
Sjon’s Jonas is God’s champion, and his novel shapes its narrative antecedent into an experience that is utterly and beautifully different.
Trouble is, when you start observing, you start seeing all the mistakes. CHILD WONDER is the story of a person teetering on the brink, trying to figure out “how to lose one’s innocence without losing one’s soul.”
The Map and the Territory – Michel Houellbecq
Readers should be grateful, not disquieted, for these provocations.
Proud Beggars – Albert Cossery
Cossery’s universe is governed by a system so stacked against humanity that the only way to find peace is to exist in the margins, outside of social norms and worldly obligations. Proud Beggars is not a glorification of poverty, but a condemnation of society as it exists.
House of the Fortunate Buddhas – João Ubaldo Ribeiro
Over the course of her oral (and anal, and vaginal) narrative, the novel’s narrator reminisces on these and many other encounters in her list of lifelong sexual exploits. She is witty as a whip (and probably good with one too).
Apricot Jam – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
While Solzhenitsyn’s early work was engaged in uncovering the hidden reality of a still-existing system, this later work, a fascinating dive into the tragedy and absurdity of the most recent century, is engaged in the act of processing the past.
My Two Worlds – Sergio Chejfec
But what if this annoying character is a demonstration of how—deep down—freedom, truth, and everything modernity promised us from transcendental experience is what’s annoying?
Animalinside – Laszlo Krasznahorkai and Max Neumann
At times, I felt menaced by the narrator’s belligerence; at other times, I struggled to take his delusions of aggression seriously.