Greetings readers! Here are Our Top 5 Books of the Month from around the world to kick off the new year, to refresh perspectives and remind us why cultural literacy isn’t a luxury, but a necessity.
Palestine Minus One: Stories from the Eve of the Nakba
Edited by Basma Ghalayini
A prequel to the publisher’s acclaimed 2019 collection Palestine +100
“Twelve Palestinian writers process the magnitude of what has been happening, offering an alternative, more distant iteration of the old Nakba, in place of the new,” Bookanista
“Through 77 years of occupation, violence, displacement, and repeated collective punishment, Palestinians have never stopped running. Not just from the soldiers on their streets, the drones and F35s in their skies, the warships in their seas, the informants in their midst, or the world’s most technologically-advanced, politically-impervious military state bearing down on all sides, but from an idea, a century-old myth, a fantasy: that you can spread a map out on a table somewhere and simply invent a country, regardless of what already exists there. It’s a European fantasy, of course. This particular one being the brainchild of Theodor Herzl, an atheist Jewish journalist from Budapest, who sought to heal ‘the wound’ of antisemitism in Europe by creating a completely new Jewish homeland.” From the Introduction
Apparitions Margo Glantz Trs. Ellen Jones
A fragmentary novel, Apparitions reflects on erotic desire and ageing; female bodies under observation (medical, erotic); memory, illness and mortality; how women’s bodies have been written about in literature.
“Glantz explores pleasure, pain and submission in this intense dual narrative of women overcome by passion, whether for a man or for Christ. The first concerns Sister Lugarda, who is ecstatically whipped and cut by fellow nun Teresa in the name of spiritual purity. As Teresa whips Lugarda, her visions of Jesus and pious contemplations become increasingly erotic. The second is that of an unnamed mother in a submissive relationship with her male lover. Her daughter watches the couple through an open door, which initially unsettles the protagonist. The man is unbothered, however, and orders her to close her eyes, after which she has a vision of her daughter’s gaze that “electrifies” her. The writing is raw and vulnerable, much like the women she writes about. This complex portrait of all-consuming desire is tough to shake,” Publishers Weekly
The Fire: Voices of a Generation in Iran, Afghanistan and Ukraine Cecilia Sala Trs. Oonagh Stransky
The Fire: Voices of a Generation in Iran, Afghanistan and Ukraine Cecilia Sala Trs. Oonagh StranskyThe Fire weaves together encounters, events and conversations from Iran, Ukraine and Afghanistan, all centred on a single generation. In Iran, twenty-somethings — dismissed by the Revolutionary Guards and the ayatollahs’ media as a “lost generation” — sparked the biggest uprising since 1979. In Afghanistan, young people born after the Taliban’s first fall saw their futures collapse with its return in 2021, paying the highest price for our abandonment, with consequences that later came back to haunt the West. In Ukraine, the same generation that drove the 2014 revolution is now fighting a full-scale war, making this a book about three global fires, and those coming of age in the blaze.
By living alongside them in their daily lives and political struggles, Sala delivers a stark, human portrait of today’s most violent conflicts. The Fire stands as a tribute to a generation brave enough to confront and attempt to and reshape a world in crisis.
Facing the Bridge Yoko Tawada Trs. Margaret Mitsutani
Amo, an African kidnapped to Europe as a boy, and Tamao, a Japanese exchange student in Germany, live in different countries but are being followed by the same shadow; Kazuko, a young professional tourist, is lured to Vietnam by a mysterious postcard; on the Canary Islands, a nameless translator is in fight mode with a series of Saint Georges. These three tales cross cultures and histories with a sensuous playfulness in a near-future Japan quietly fraying at the edges. It’s a society where systems persist after meaning has leaked out. The ‘bridge’ of the title is both literal and metaphoric: crossings between districts, generations, tongues, and states of belonging. Linguistic drift mirrors social drift; translation isn’t a bridge you cross once; it’s a condition you inhabit. Episodic, funny in a dry way and offbeat, Facing the Bridge is elegant and quietly devastating in the way it challenges conventional narratives.
Lowest Common Denominator (The Helsinki Trilogy 1) by Pirkko Saisio Trs. Mia Spangenberg
“Saisio (b. 1949) is one of Finland’s most celebrated writers, as well as an actor and theatre director – her list of credits is impressive. Lowest Common Denominator is the first part of her Helsinki trilogy; described as an ‘autofictional novel’, it was written in the wake of the death of Saisio’s father. The book is narrated by a young girl growing up in 1950s Helsinki; as the only child of Communist parents, her life is often full of confusion and uncertainty. But pivotal to the story is her understanding of her place in the world and her ability to control her life by putting it at a distance, and this is signalled at the opening pages . . . Lowest Common Denominator is a wonderful read, and its unusual structure never gets in the way of the fascination of Pirkko’s story.” shinynewbooks.co.uk
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