I treated myself for five books that were on various end of year lists that I read up and I hadn’t come across.
A new translation of an old book from a Nobel great is always worth reading this is a saga style tale of two brothers that use the past to look at the cold war which was effecting Iceland at the time. as the two brother crazy ways leaves them with nothing a metaphor for the modern world.
Another from archipelago books , Cockroaches is a memoir of a family growing up Tutsi in an increasingly Tutsi run Rwanda we see through the piece her the tensions that lead up to the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda this is also the first book from Rwanada I have read.
Another novel from the mexican writer Yuri Herrera this is the story of two families at war during a plague and the man trying to help them return their dead to one another , a man called The redeemer is trying to help them out.
We follow a poet that has been accused of rape and has been sent away and his task when he is sent away is to write poetry in this darkly lynchian type tale.another of those short novels from Latin America that is much more than its meager 110 pages.
this is the story of a man researching his family discovering he is related to a great anarchist ,which leads him to going to New york. as the occupy Wall street movement is in full swing this leads him to Pittsburgh and the ghosts of the 1920’s
What books have you treated yourself too ?
Quiet Creature is a very surreal read. I have an ARC of the next Noll release and will be reviewing it again for Numero Cinq in May. I’ve also had the The Attempt on my list for a while but i have another of her novels to read before I allow myself to buy it.
I recently ordered a couple of titles I’ve long wanted: Country of my Skull by South African poet Antjie Krog, a nonfiction book about the truth and reconciliation process and Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, which I see you’ve read—my first book from Zimbabwe. And I just went crazy on kindle sales with a few well known literary releases that I’ve heard good things about but don’t know if I want to read such as Zero K by Don Delillo and the book Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist. For 2 or 3 dollars a piece I thought I’d try them, but truth is, I’ll probably forget I have them at all!
I treated myself to Two Lines 25, world writing in translation, hoping to find some new voices that appeal to me and then I’ll brave it and reach for their novels! It’s such a beautiful collection and unique with the scripts of the original languages on opposite pages.
The Laxness is very tempting but the other titles look good too.