Translated from the Dutch by Hester Velmans (Los Angeles, CA: Doppelhouse Press, 2017) Is life a creation? Is the created life authentic? Or, like the work of art, does it two-step with commodification, a dance in which power over the … Continued
(Oakland, CA: Transit Books, 2017) It may be that Kintu, the debut novel from Ugandan novelist Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, will stand as Uganda’s national narrative, in much the same way Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart has for Nigeria. Literary history … Continued
Translated from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey (Los Angeles, CA: And Other Stories, 2016) A narrator who insists he is not writing the novel in your hands. A character who vehemently objects to being a character, at least in this … Continued
(High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire: And Other Stories, 2015) At first glance, the eleven stories in Ivan Vladislavić’s collection 101 Detectives, recently released by And Other Stories, range so widely in style and subject matter, that the book can prove a puzzle … Continued
(New York, NY: New Directions, 2015) It may come as a surprise to many readers of Fran Ross’s Oreo, recently rereleased by New Directions, that upon the book’s first appearance in 1974, the story failed to find its audience. Oreo … Continued