A Girl in Exhile

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A Girl in Exile, Albania, Albanian Literature, Book review, Fiction, Foreign Literature, Ismail Kadare, John Hodgson, Novels, Orpheus legend, Reading Suggestions, Translated Literature

“A Girl in Exile” is a retelling of the Orpheus Eurydice legend in the context of Albanian totalitarianism. Recasting classical myths and totalitarianism are apparently themes in other works by the renown Albanian author Ismail Kadare.

Here the prisoner of death is Linda B., a woman infatuated with the principle character Rudian Stefa, a known Albanian playwright who borders on dissidence and is paranoid about incarceration by the State. Linda B. has never met Stefa and engages her girlfriend Magena to get her an autographed copy of one of Stefa’s books. Magena has a relationship with Stefa and Linda B ultimately commits suicide. In a dream sequence Stefa tries to marry the dead Linda B., who plays the Eurydice role.

Linda B.’s family tries to retrieve her interned body from the State cemetery. The point of the novel is captured in this sequence: you are a prisoner of the State in life and in death.

“The Albanian regime was tottering but its laws remained in place, especially the regulations governing prisons and internment. One of these laws was extremely strange, and many people believed it must be unique to Albania. This law concerned political prisoners and internees who died before completing their sentences. Their bodies, even though vacated by their souls, had to continue serving their sentences in the grave, wherever they happened to be, until the end. Only after the expiry of the term of their sentence did their families have the right to exhume them from the cemeteries designated by the state, and take them where they wished.”

The plot and characters in this novel are both thin and contrived. Mr. Kadare’s other works may be better than this novel. If it wasn’t 184 pages I would have given up on it.

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Abahn Sabana David

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Abahn Sabana David, Foreign Literature, French literature, Kazim Ali, Marguerite Duras, Novels, Samuel Beckett, Translated Literature

There is existential foreboding in Marguerite Duras’ “Abahan Sabina David.” Written in the 1970s, it was first translated into English in 2016 and published by Open Letter at the University of Rochester. Samuel Beckett’s style in “Waiting for Godot” comes to mind while reading this. It could easily be a play, and might be better as one.

Jewish persecution is facially at the heart of this ambiguous work which imagines a period after one state’s concentration camps followed by similar, but more individual, extermination by a communist state or organization. A Jew, Abahn, is being held by Sabana and David, a fallen communist, on orders of a presumed communist leader, Gringo, who intends to kill the Jew. The Jew is indifferent. His crime, if any, is questioning, although resentment of or competition to merchants might be a reason. David’s desire for Abahn’s dogs, who inhabit the surrounding forest, might be another. Persecution does not require a reason, only an excuse. They are joined by another Abahn, also a Jew, who questions the reasons for their involvement.  The Jews are likely used as a symbol of the universally persecuted.

The prose is sparse and cryptic. An example:

” Her gaze returns to the Jew.

‘This is the house of the Jew?’

‘Yes’

In the park, dogs bark and howl.

David turns his head, looks toward the park.

The howling dies down.

Its quiet again. David turns away from the park, back to the others.

‘You were sent by Gringo?'”

The New Yorker review says “Duras language and writing shine like crystals”

Translation by Kazim Ali must have been extremely difficult. This aside, I have no idea what this novel is about. For me it is not thought-provoking, just opaque. I read other reviews to see if I was being ignorant, but I found none that would explain what this work is about. This could be explained by existentialism, or the “new novel”, but in the end it left me empty. The good news- it was only 108 pages.

 

 

 

 

A Whole Life

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A Whole Life, book reviews, Charlotte Collins, Foreign Literature, Jim Crace, Literary Fiction, Novels, Reading Suggestions, Robert Seethaler, Translated Literature

I was attracted to this short novel by the testimonial of Jim Crace, an author who I hold in high regard. It is an unusual novel. A fictional biography of a simple mountain man who leads an understated life in Germany, before and after World War II. The prose is unembellished, but observant of the natural surroundings encroached by progress.

Andreas Egger’s life was not easy, but the traumatic events are viewed retrospectively with little emotion. An adopted cripple who was not treated kindly lives through the Eastern front and post-war Soviet imprisonment, but these are but time markers. This existence is unremarked only because he chooses not to. He is insular, but for one relationship, and unskilled in that. The meek might not inherit the earth, but they do populate it.

He lives his life on his own terms, but he is not rebellious. He takes life as it comes and survives. His life is complete in the end. He is no different from most of us, which is what makes this novel compelling. Its progression is viewed in a rear-view mirror. A near death capstone.

This was an unexpected captivating read.

Maps for Lost Lovers

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Book review, english literature, Foreign Literature, Honor Killing, Islam, Maps for Lost Lovers, Murder-Mystery, Nadeem Aslam, Pakistani Fiction, Reading Suggestion, Women's Literature, World Literature

In May, 2015 I very favorably reviewed Nadeem Aslam’s “The Biind Man’s Garden. Nadeem Aslam is to Pakistan, what Jhumpa Lahiri is to India. At some point in his career I would not be surprised if he is awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature.

“Maps for Lost Lovers” is one of Mr. Aslam’s earlier novels. The venues are England and Pakistan. The heart of the story is an “honor killing”. Mr Aslam adroitly tackles Muslim  fundamentalism in this novel. Unlike in “The Blind Man’s Garden” this is not radical Islam. It is the societal and cultural restraints that orthodoxy imposes on families particularly when juxtaposed with alternatives in a secular country. Such honest and fervent belief is not unique to Islam. It is not without consequences.

Through characters Mr. Aslam presents alternative viewpoints. On the whole his writing does not invite a fatwa because criticism is balanced by praise. Shamas and Kaukab are the product of an arranged marriage. Shamas has a Hindu family lineage, but is Muslim. He masks his secularism in deference to Kaukab who is a very devout Muslim. Shamas is book educated. Kaukab has a limited education outside of the Koran. They live in a lower middle class immigrant Pakistani neighborhood in England. England is satanic to her. Kaukab’s orthodoxy has a disintegrative effect on her three children who migrate toward English white women and men in their relationships. The “honor killing” however, is to avenge cohabitation before marriage between two Muslims, one her son. Marriage is bondage to Muslim women. Husbands and their families dictate terms, and a wife’s failure brings disgrace on her family that impacts the future of younger daughters.

“It’s as though Allah forgot there were women in the world when he made some of his laws, thinking only of men – but she has banished these thoughts as all good Muslims must.”

“.. she remember her mother stopping in her tracks and sharply telling her father not to play too enthusiastically with his little daughter lest he cause ‘irreparable physical damage to her private areas,’ having warned him many times before that ‘If a flower loses a petal it does not grow back!'”

“… the word sala – “brother-in-law- was a term of abuse all over the Subcontinent: to call someone sala was to say, ‘I fuck your sister and you can’t do anything about it,’ ‘You can’t stop me from trying my manhood on one of your women!’ What would be more humiliating to men who been brought up to defend their women’s honour above all else? A man’s brother-in-law was a swear word made flesh, and frustratingly , he had to accept it.”

The plot of this novel is like a murder mystery. The prose however is highly crafted and denser as Mr. Aslam imparts knowledge across a wide range of subjects. The author writes like a naturalist, with keen attention to flora, butterflies and moths, and birds. The writing is both metaphorical and relational, and is imbued with religion, culture, culinary arts, and history.

“The harsinghar tree in the courtyard, which dropped its funereal white flowers at dawn, had more flowers than usual under it during those mornings, as though the branches had been disturbed during the night. Shamas was no believer, but imagination insists that all aspects of life be at its disposal, the language of thought richer for its appropriation of concepts such as the afterlife. And so as he looked at the carpet of blossoms he couldn’t help entertaining the thought that during the night Izraeel, the Muslim angel of death, had wrestled in the branches above with the Hindu god of death for our father’s soul. Shamas looked up and imagined the branches twisting around the two supernatural beings, the flowers detaching from twigs and forming a thick layer on the ground.”

“He edges away from a small Japanese knotwood tree of whose pale cream flowers-looking as though dusted with custard powder- he had tried to discover the smell of a few years ago, and found himself taking in a lungful of decay, suppuration, the shock throwing him back on his heels where he had reached up with his neck stretched like that of a hanged man’s. Perfumes come from plants; its animals who produce disagreeable odours, humans included. Musk, honey, milk- these are as much an exception in the animal world as those tropical plants said to produce blossoms smelling of festering flesh or this Japanese knotwood around whose shimmering flowers he had capped both hands that day, the way a young man kisses his first girl. He’ll never now kiss her mouth again while his penis is engorged and sticky at the tip like a bull’s muzzle, or lie with her head on his chest while from somewhere nearby comes the summer noise of a bee that’s got stuck inside a snapdragon flower, a panicked wing-thrash, as it tries to back out. According to her, what she did with him was a “sin,” and she, according to her, will have to bear the “stigma” of that sin “till Judgment Day and after.” She’ll view the pregnancy as the beginning of her punishment.”

” ‘Do you know why paisley is so linked with Kashmir? No? Imagine two lovers quarreling in that region. Her footsteps formed paisleys when she hurried away from him in distress. He searched for her forlornly in the forest glades where luminous orchids arose from the ‘- it is too late for him to stop- ‘spilled semen of mating animals and birds, where the urge for existence forced creepers and vines towards faraway chinks of sunlight, where branches quivered with living songs and at sunset the sky turned red as though the departing sun had heaped rubies on the day’s shroud. And it was the paisleys imprinted amid the low flowers that eventually led him to her. He was the god Shiva, she the goddess Parvati, and when he found her he commemorated their union by carving the Jehlum river as it flowed- and still flows- through the valley of Kashimir in the shape of a paisley.'”

“.. only Allah is perfect and that we should acknowledge that fact when performing a task, that we should introduce a tiny hidden flaw into every object we make. ‘The Emperor Shah Jahan had made sure that there was a built-in imperfection in the Taj Mahal- the minarets lean out by three degrees,’ he said.”

These are but a few examples of the breadth of the writing intertwined with the plot. The overarching theme is how religious and cultural mores impede relationships and evaporate happiness. Shamas likes the paraket, because like Hiraman the paraket, it tells us what we should aim for, what is truly worth living and dying for. Prejudices abound. The Pakastani’s hope those in Bangladash will drown in the monsoon, because of the secret pact they made with the English that marked the beginning of the British Raj in India and the decline in Islam, and their breaking away from Pakistan. So much ignorance and lack of communication festers individual, societal and political hatreds by race, class, gender and belief.

Nadeem Aslam is not for everyone. For me, it is a marvel how he composes sentences and paragraphs that at times are lyric, learned and fluid. His characters are well-drawn and the plot, here languid at times, is engaging. He is someone whose writing you should experience at least once.

 

 

The Good Doctor

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Book review, Damon Galgut, Fiction, Foreign Literature, Man Booker Prize Finalist, novel, Reading Suggestions, South American literature, The Good Doctor, World Literature

Damon Galgut’s The Good Doctor was shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize. I have not read other works on the Shortlist for that year, although Margaret Atwood’s highly regarded Oryx and Crake was also on that list. The very popular The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was Longlisted.

The venue is South Africa soon after the end of apartheid. The scene is a rural hospital that virtually has no patients or useful equipment. Some of the latter is stolen by one of the employees, Tehogo who along with the local military express some of the racial tension associated with change in power and outlook.

The principal characters are two doctors at the hospital. Frank, the long-time employee who has been promised leadership of the hospital after Dr. Ngema is promoted, is cynical or realistic depending on your point-of-view. Dr. Ngema is a bureaucrat and Frank is one in-waiting. He is the product of a very successful father and a broken marriage, and the hospital is a refuge. In contrast, Laurence is the young idealistic doctor, devoid of social experience, who in search of a challenge chooses this hospital, perhaps believing it had a patient base. Laurence energizes the hospital by trying to start a clinic in the villages in the bush. Unfortunately, it has no capability to service any medical condition that is more than minor. The interesting aspect of Laurence’s character is whether he is truly “good” or more passive-aggressive.

It is an entertaining read, but I doubt I would have Short or Longlisted it. Sometimes prizes are the product of the times.

 

 

 

 

The Bamboo Stalk

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Arabic Literature, book reviews, Fiction, Foreign Literature, International Prize for Arabic Fiction, Jonathan Wright, Kuwati Literature, Novels, Philippine LIterature, Reading Suggestions, Saud Alsanousi, The Bamboo Stalk, Translated Literature, World Literature

“My name is José. In the Philippines it’s pronounced the English way, with an h sound at the start. In Arabic, rather like in Spanish, it begins with a kh sound. In Portuguese, through it’s written the same way, it opens with a j, as in Joseph. All these versions are completely different from my name here in Kuwait, where I’m known as Isa.”

This novel by Saud Alsanousi started off a little slow for me, but after about sixty pages it caught hold and became compelling. It is an émigré novel:  about cultural displacement and the failure of socio-economic acceptance. José or Isa, is a mulatto. The son of a wealthy Kuwaiti father and his Philippine maid mother, who while in the employ of this leading Kuwati family, unusually, but temporarily, becomes a wife. As the marriage would create a scandal, there is a quick divorce, forced by his father’s mother. His father vows to support Isa and to have him return to Kuwait when he is older. Like the author, Isa’s father was a journalist and activist. He is killed during Iraq’s invasion and temporary conquest of Kuwait.

” I was more like a bamboo plant, which doesn’t belong anywhere in particular. You can cut off a piece of that stalk and plant it without roots in any piece of ground. Before long the stalk sprouts new roots and starts to grow again in the new ground, with no past, no memory. It doesn’t notice that people have different names for it – kawayan in the Philippines,  khaizuran in Kuwait, and bamboo in many places.”

At first Isa believes he can find comfort and acceptance through religion. He explores Christianity, Buddhism and Islam. He found that he did not need icons or miracles to find faith.

“Religions are bigger than these adherents. That’s what I’ve concluded. Devotion to tangible things no longer matters as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want to be like my mother, who only pray to a cross, as if God lived in it. I don’t want to be like one of the Ifugao and never take a step unless it is sanctioned by anito statues, which help my work prosper, protect my crops and save me from evil spirits at night. I don’t want to be like Inang Choleng, tying my relationship to God to a favourite statue of Buddha. I don’t want to seek baraka from a statue of a white horse with wings and the head of a woman, as some Muslims do in the Philippines.”

The novel is not flattering to Kuwait, particularly its upper social strata. They are trapped more by their maintenance of their social status than by their religion. The author does not paint them with one brush. There are differences, but in the end, the country remains insular. It suffers from passively created wealth. There is a secular shallowness from drilling, in spite of, or compounded by, strong religious beliefs. José ultimately finds his humanity in himself, despite Isa’s disillusionment with his Kuwaiti dream.

This novel was the recipient of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. It was translated by Jonathan Wright. It is worth your time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A God in Every Stone

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A God in Every Stone, Archaeological Fiction, Baileys Womens Prize, Burnt Shadows, Colonialism, Foreign Literature, historical fiction, Indian LIterature, Kamila Shamsie, Novels, Pakistani Literature, Women's Literature, World Literature

Kamila Shamsie’s A God in Every Stone is a beautifully crafted work of literature that captures the history of conquest, exploration, and colonialism from Darius to Gandhi. The venue is Peshawar, prior to and after the First World War, when it was part of India and under British colonial rule. For Vivian Rose Spencer, an intrepid English young woman who has been taught archaeology by her much older Turkish/Armenian mentor and subsequent surreptitious husband, the holy grail becomes the search for a circlet of figs given by Darius to the ancient Greek explorer Scylax and lost to history since 334 B.C. According to Herodotus, Darius I had Scylax explore the Indus river to determine where it reached the sea. Scylax set out from Caspatyrus, which is now near Peshawar, but then Pactyike. Upon reaching the sea he sailed across the Indian Ocean, up the Red Sea and then returned to Darius. Southwestern Turkey, called Caria at the time of Scylax, was captured by the Hecatomnids. They treated the Circlet as a prized possession and stamped its image on their coins. In 334 B.C. Alexander the Great conquered Caria.

Separated during the First World War, Tahsin Bey, Ms. Spencer’s husband, writes her that the  Circlet might be in Peshawar. She travels there and develops a life-long relationship with a young boy, Najeeb, who becomes her local guide and secret archaeology student. His education by Ms. Spencer becomes problematic for Najeeb’s mother, as a Pathan would not be alone with a woman and Najeeb was ignoring his Islamic teachings. Najeeb’s brother Qayyum, a loyal soldier to the Crown as a member of the 40th Pathans, returns home from England where he learned the prejudice of colonial Britain toward its Pashtun, Dogras and Punjabis soldiers while recovering in an English hospital after a war injury. The drama of the novel is captured by the disintegration of colonial India through the peaceful revolution of the Congress Party under Gandhi, as played out in Peshawar by Ms. Spencer, Najeeb and Qayyum.

The author imparts the cultures, prejudices, and landscape of Peshawar throughout the novel. On his initial guide through Peshawar Najeeb takes Ms. Spencer down all the lanes of the city: the famed Street of Storytellers, the Street of Dentists, The Street of Potters, The Street of Money-Changers, the Street of Partridge Lovers.

“The Street of Englishwomen?’

“They buy and sell Englishwomen there. We will try to avoid it”

“Take a detour through the Street of Inventive Guides if you must”

“He looked delighted to be caught out, and she found she was delighted to have been teased.”

She learns that he speaks Pashto, but at home they speak Hindko.

“We are more Peshawari than Pathan, but we’re also Pathan. Buy everyone here speaks both Hindko and Pashto and many people Urdu and also English and every language of the world someone here can speak. This is Peshawar.”

Ms Shamsie’s novel is a tapestry upon which a page-turning story rests. It was shortlisted for Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2015, because it has a bevy of strong English and Peshawari  women breaking free from the mores of their time and religion.

I was originally searching for Ms. Shamsie’s previous novel Burnt Shadows which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for fiction. I will look for that novel even more now. This exquisite novel is a very worthwhile read.

 

 

 

 

 

The Story of My Teeth

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5 under 35, book reviews, Christina MacSweeney, Fiction, Foreign fiction, Foreign Literature, Latin American literature, Mexican Literature, National Book Foundation, novella, Reading Suggestions, The Story of My Teeth, Translated Literature, Valeria Luiselli, World Literature

“As with any story, this one begins with the Beginning; and then comes the Middle, and then the End. The rest, as a friend of mine always says, is literature: hyperbolics, parabolics, circulars, allegorics, and elliptics. I don’t know what comes after that. Possibly ignominy, death, and finally, postmortem fame.”

Valeria Luiselli’s creative novella “The Story of My Teeth” is the imagined biography of the self-described world’s best auctioneer, the memorable Gustavo Sánchez Sánchez, otherwise known as Highway.

“I explained that what I meant was that I could tell stories whose degree of deviation from the value of the conic section of their related objects was greater than zero. In other words, as the great Quintilian had once said, by means of my hyberbolics, I could restore an objects value through ‘an elegant surpassing of the truth.’ This meant that the stories I would tell about the lots would all be based on facts that were, occasionally, exaggerated or, to put it another way, better illuminated.

It is unclear why Ms. Luiselli had this novella translated into English by Christina MacSweeney. I saw her read from this novella at the Brooklyn Book Fair this past Fall and she seems to be fluent in English. Ms. MacSweeney adds a timeline at the conclusion of the English version of the novella. It is as tongue-and-cheek as the novella. It places Highway within a historic chronology of obscure events. It may add some insight into the creation of the story because it references the auction of Marilyn Monroe’s and Winston Churchill’s teeth.

The novella is the biography of Highway as reflected through the history of his teeth. The Afterward conveys the back-story about the author’s development of the novella- a collaboration between the author and workers at a juice factory in Mexico. In part, the novella is an homage to tobacco readers that existed in Cuban cigar factories in mid- 19th Century. The chronology, like the book, is having some fun with the reader, as it publicizes the works of fellow Latin American writers/poets (and friends) such as Guadalupe Nettel, Paula Abramo, Alejandro Zambra, and many others. The book also has a small photographic gallery of venues in the novella, with accompanying quotations of various writers.

Ms. Luiselli, unlike many authors, understood that at a book reading it is essential to entertain. Greater prose can fall flat when read. She selected from this novella’s Parabolics chapter the description of the “tent effect”: the pyramid that aroused men create with a blanket or sheet when awaking in the morning.

Johnny Cash’s “Highwayman” was a survivor and so is Highway. He is not a con man, he is a story-teller, creating value from nothing. A priest asks him to raise money for the church from its senile congregation. Highway auctions each tooth in his mouth, ascribing the tooth to notables in history, philosophy, literature and art. He ascribes life lessons to teachings of his relatives such as Juan Pablo Sánchez Sartre. He is a good person and is taken advantage of by his son Siddhartha. A friend El Perro (also the name of a literary magazine) remains loyal to him. “Since then, I’ve always thought that hell is the people you one day become.” Highway does not change; finding beauty in everything. He gives value through his stories.

The book is funny and at times absurd. The weakest chapter is Allegorics. It seems to be the chapter that the workers collaborated on.

I was looking forward to reading this novella and was not disappointed. It is a different form of a novel- almost performance art. Her earlier novel, Faces in the Crowd was well received. She is an author worth paying attention to.

2015 Books and Authors Reviewed- with my favorites and disappointments

Tags

American Fiction, Austrailian fiction, Book Reviews 2015, Canadian Literature, Colm Tóibín, Colum McCann, David Mitchell, Edgard Telles Ribeiro, Edith Pearlman, Fantasy, Fatima Bhutto, Fiction, Foreign fiction, Foreign Literature, French literature, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Guadalupe Nettel, historical fiction, Indian fiction, Irish literature, Israeli Fiction, Jean Lartéguy, Jhumpa Lahiri, John Banville, Jonathan Carroll, Karen Joy Fowler, Khader Abdolah, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Laila Lalami, Literature, Malaysian literature, Man Booker Prize, Margaret Atwood, Marilynne Robinson, Mark Kurlansky, Martha Baillie, Martin O Cadhain, Maud Casey, Mavis Gallant, Mexican Literature, Michael Garriga, National Book Award, Nobel Prize for Literature, Novels, Pakistani Fiction, Paul Harding, Pen/Faulkner Award, Persian Literature, Peter Carey, Peter Matthiessen, Peter Pouncey, Phil Klay, Pulitzer Prize, Reading Suggestions, Religious Literature, Richard Bausch, Richard Powers, S. Yizhar, Short Stories, South American literature, Sylvia Plath, Tan Twan Eng, Tania James, Tariq Ali, World Literature

I was very pleased with the books I read this year. I failed to read a science fiction novel as I intended, but I read fantasy (“Bathing the Lion”) and a dystopian novel (“The “Bone Clocks”). I read a fair number of foreign authors and novels based in foreign countries. The description of the book below will tell you its locale.

MY FAVORITE BOOK FOR 2015: “Lila” by Marilynne Robinson. I was surprised that it was not Short-Listed for the Man Booker Prize. It juxtaposes spirituality and religious beliefs.

MY FAVORITE SHORT STORY COLLECTION: “Night at the Fiestas” by Kirstin Valdes Quade. A great new voice. Edith Pearlman’s “Honeydew” was also excellent, but it is expected of her. Same with Colum McCann’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking”.

MOST ORIGINAL BOOK: “The Book of Duels” by Michael Garriga. A collection of micro stories. What “Hamilton” is to theatre, this might be to short story writing. Very creative. Honorable Mention: “Orfeo” by Richard Powers.

MY FAVORITE FIRST PARAGRAPH:  I love first paragraphs. The great Margaret Atwood wrote a beautiful one in her title story “Stone Mattress”.

DISAPPOINTMENTS:

“Amnesia” by Peter Carey. This seems to have been an experiment by an otherwise gifted writer.

“Memories of Melancholy Whores” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Maybe a long night drinking or just getting old. Rather disturbing.

“The Body Where I Was Born” by Guadalupe Nettel. It was favorably received but it did not resonate with me.

JANUARY

Tinkers by Paul Harding. Locale: U.S. Published by Bellevue Literary Press.

The Search for Heinrich Schlögel by Martha Baillie. Locale: Germany and Arctic Canada. Published by Tin House in the U.S.

The King  by Khader Abdolah. Locale: Persia. Published by New Directions. Translated from Dutch by Nancy Forest-Flier.

FEBRUARY

The Man Who Walked Away by Maud Casey. Locale: France. Published by Bloomsbury. Historical Fiction.

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng. Locale: Malaysia. Published by Weinstein Books. Long-Listed for the Man Booker Prize. Historical Fiction.

The Book of Duels  by Michael Garriga (micro-short stories). Locale: U.S. Published by Milkweed Editions. Historical Fiction. Inventive.

MARCH

In Paradise  by Peter Matthiessen. Locale:Poland (Auschwitz-Birkenau). Published by Riverhead Books. Historical Fiction. His last book.

Orfeo by Richard Powers. Locale: U.S.. Published by W.W. Norton & Company. Genetics and modern music historical fiction. Inventive.

Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri. Indian-American author.  Locale: India. Published by Alfred A. Knopf. Historical fiction. Short-Listed for Man Booker Prize.

Nora Webster by Colm Tóibin. Irish author. Locale: Ireland. Published by Simon & Schuster.

Rules for Old Men Waiting by Peter Pouncey. Locale: U.S.. Published by Random House. Historical fiction.

APRIL

Cré na Cille by Máirtin Ó Cadhain. Irish author. Locale: Ireland. Translated by Alan Titley. Published by Yale University Press.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. U.S. author. Locale: U.S. Published by Harper Perennial Modern Classics.

Redeployment by Phil Klay. U.S. author. Locale: Iraq and Afghanistan. Published by Penguin Press. National Book Award.

MAY

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. British author. Locale: Dystopian fantasy based in England and Switzerland. Published by Random House. Long-Listed for the Man Booker Prize and short-listed for the World Fantasy Award.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. U.S. author. Locale: U.S. Published by Marian Wood Books/Putnam. Winner of Pen/Faulkner Award and short-listed for Man Booker Prize.

JUNE

Memories of Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez. Columbian author: Locale: Columbia. Translated by Edith Grossman. Published by Knopf.

The Shadows of the Crescent Moon by Fatima Bhutto. Pakistani author. Locale: Pakistan and Afghanistan. Published by Penguin.

The Tusk that Did the Damage by Tania James. Indian American author. Locale: India. Published by Knopf.

JULY

Amnesia by Peter Carey. Australian author. Locale: Australia. Published by Knopf. Historical Fiction, in part.

Bathing the Lion by Jonathan Carroll. U.S. author. Locale: U.S. (fantasy). Published by St. Martin’s Press.

Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood (short stories’tales- novella). Canadian author. Locale: Varied. Published by McClelland & Stewart.

Paris Stories by Mavis Gallant (short stories). Canadian-Francophile author. Locale: France. Published by NYRB Classics.

AUGUST

The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami. Moroccan-American author. Locale: Pre-colonial America. Historical Fiction. Long-Listed for the Man Booker Prize. Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Published by Vintage.

The Body Where I Was Born by Guadalupe Nettel. Mexican author. Locale: Mexico and France. Published by Seven Stories Press.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson. U.S. author. Locale: U.S. Published by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. National Book Award Finalist. Short-Listed Man Booker Prize.

Night at the Fiestas by Kirstin Valdee (short stories). U.S. author. Locale: U.S. Published by Norton. This collection was included in the New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of 2015”.

SEPTEMBER

His Own Man by Edgard Telles Ribeiro. Brazilian author. Locale: Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. Published by Other Press. Historical Fiction. Translated by Kim Hastings. Winner of the Brazilian Pen Prize.

Honeydew by Edith Pearlman (short stories). U.S. author. Locale: U.S. Published by Little Brown & Co. This collection was included in the New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of 2015”.

Peace by Richard Bausch. U.S. author. Locale: Italy (WWII). Published by Knopf.

OCTOBER

Khirbet Khizeh by S. Yizhar- Israeli author. Locale: Israel (war of independence). Published by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Nicholas de Lange and Yacoob Dweck translators.

Lazarus is Dead by Richard Beard.  English author. Locale: Palestine. Published by Europa Editions

NOVEMBER

The Centurions by Jean Lartéguy- French author. Locale Indo-China, France and Algeria. Published by Penguin Classics. A military cult classic.

The Infinities by John Banville- Irish author. Locale: Ostensibly Ireland. Published by Alfred A. Knopf.

DECEMBER

Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann (short stories). This collection was included in the New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of 2015”.

City Beasts by Mark Kurlansky (short stories). Locales: U.S.; Basque Spain; Mexico; Cuba; Dominican Republic; Haiti. Published by Riverhead Books.

The Stone Woman by Tariq Ali. British Pakistani author. Locale: Ottoman Empire. Published by Verso.

AUTHORS

Khader Abdolah- Persian-Dutch author. This is his pen-name. His legal name is Hossein Sadjadi Ghaemmaghami Farahani. His pen name is a composition of the names of two of his friends who were executed.

Tariq Ali- British Pakistani author, journalist and filmmaker.

Margaret Atwood-Canadian author. The incomparable writer of dark tales of fantasy and horror and a treasure of the Northland. Short-listed for the Man Booker, winner of Arthur C. Clarke Award. Also a poet and literary critic.

Martha Baillie-Canadian author.

John Banville- Irish author and playwright. Man Booker  and Kafka Prize recipient. Numerous Irish Book Awards. Writes under pen name Benjamin Black on occasion.

Richard Bausch- U.S. author. Recipient of PEN/Malamud Award and Rea Award for Short Story.

Richard Beard- English author.

Fatima Bhutto- Pakistani author. Member of the powerful Bhutto family in Pakistan. She grew up in Damascus but now resides in Pakistan.

Mártin Ó Cadhain- Irish author.

Peter Carey- Australian author. Twice the recipient of the Man Booker Prize.

Jonathan Carroll- U.S. author. Fantasy in the style of Neil Gaimen.

Maud Casey- U.S. author.

Tan Twan Eng- Malaysian author. His second novel “The Garden of Evening Mists” was Short-Listed for the Man Booker Prize.

Karen Joy Fowler- U.S. author. Pen/Faulkner Award recipient and short-listed for Man Booker Prize.

Mavis Gallant- Canadian-Francophile author. Reknown writer of short stories, considered by other authors to be a writer’s writer.

Michael Garriga- U.S. author.

Paul Harding- U.S. author. 2010 Pulitizer Prize winner for fiction.

Tania James- Indian American novelist.

Phil Klay- U.S. author. Recipient of National Book Award. Recipient of National Book Foundation “5 under 35” award.

Mark Kurlansky- U.S. author of non-fiction and fiction, particularly about food, culture and history.

Jhumpa Lahiri- U.S.- Indian author. Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction.

Laila Lalami- Moroccan-American author.

Jean Lartéguy- French author and journalist. His legal name is Jean Pierre Lucien Osty. Writes from experience as he was a war hero.

Gabriel García Márquez- Columbian author. Recipient of Nobel Prize in Literature.

Peter Matthiessen-U.S. author. Co-founder of The Paris Review and 3 time National Book Award recipient for fiction and non-fiction.

Colum McCann- Irish author.

David Mitchell- British author.  Twice short-listed for Man Booker Prize.

Guadalupe Nettel- Mexican author.

Edith Pearlman- U.S. author of short stories. Winner of National Book Circle Critics Award, PEN/Malamud Award, finalist for the National Book Award and the Story Prize.

Sylvia Plath- U.S. poet and novelist.

Peter Pouncey- U.S. author.

Richard Powers- U.S. author. National Book Award recipient that writes creative fiction about science and  technology.

Kirstin Valdez Quade- U.S. author. Recipient of National Book Foundation “5 under 35” award.

Edgard Telles Ribeiro-Brazilian author and diplomat.

Marilynne Robinson- U.S. author. Pulitzer Prize, Orange Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award recipient and nominee for National Book Award and Man Booker Prize. Lila is part of an awarded trilogy with Gilead and Home.

Colm Tóibin- Irish author. Short-Listed for Man Booker Prize a couple of times.

S. Yizhar- pen name for Yizhar Smilansky.