World Editions

"State of Emergency is a compelling, important piece of work from one of Singapore’s finest living authors.” —The Straits Times

Siew Li leaves her husband and young children to fight for freedom in the jungles of Malaya. Decades later, a Malaysian journalist returns to her homeland to uncover the truth of a massacre committed during the Emergency, while Siew Li’s son uncovers the truth of his family’s past. Informed by years of painstaking research, Jeremy Tiang’s debut novel dives into the tumultuous days of leftist movements and political detentions in Singapore and Malaysia. It follows an extended family from the 1940s to the present day as they navigate the choppy political currents of the region. State of Emergency questions whether we can grasp the truth after the fact. And yet, in the very telling of its interlocking stories, it reaffirms the importance of trying.

An unflinching story about Arab masculinity and homoeroticism

Furat, a Syrian in his early 20s, visits Sibki Park in Damascus, one of the city’s most popular cruising areas. There he learns about the hammams, secret meeting places for gay men located throughout the old city. Inside these public baths, the air is thick with the scent of bay laurel soap, and naked men hide in the steam. Furat faces sometimes violent disapproval from all levels of society—regime, religion, the man in the street—and yet he manages to find the love he’s been seeking just before his world collapses and he’s forced to flee. Selamlik is the story of Furat’s journey, along with that of other refugees. It’s a journey in which they face physical and economic hardship, draconian migration laws, and the unwelcome grief, shame, and hatred they’ve carried with them from their ever more distant pasts. Despite everything, Furat remains steadfast in his pursuit of passion, pleasure, and love.

The narrator’s long-term girlfriend has just broken things off, forcing her to move back in with her father, a Pink Floyd–loving priest. While she desperately tries to convince her girlfriend to reconsider, the rest of the world bombards her with advice: from her childhood friend Mulle to her kindly therapist to her overbearing mother and card-playing father. Bumbling through the fog of disillusionment, the narrator gives herself permission to grieve, philosophize, and be generally outrageous until at last she sees a light at the end of the tunnel. My Mother Says is a compendium of conversations between people who talk past one another in a universe of misplaced good intentions. In this whirlwind of memories, confessions, temper tantrums, and declarations of love Pilgaard’s sheer affection for her characters turns the pain of a broken heart into a heartwarming comedy of errors.

WINNER OF THE 2024 SINGAPORE LITERATURE PRIZE - TRANSLATION

"Cocoon is a stupendous novel, a beautiful and formidable achievement on the grandest scale. Its ruthless psychological realism is wondrously amplified by Zhang Yueran’s magical powers of description. Zhang Yueran’s scenes and images have an unworldly gleam of both hard-won insight and timeless truth. The novel is a triumph.” —IAN McEWAN, author of the international bestseller Atonement

 “In a novel by the young writer Zhang Yueran, two old friends confront the legacy of China’s tumultuous past. Ms. Zhang’s focus and finesse—plus the rhythmic subtlety of Mr. Tiang’s English prose—make this novel a luminous gateway into current Chinese fiction for readers seeking an entry-point.”—Boyd Tonkin, Wall Street Journal

 “Zhang dazzles with an intricately crafted web of secrets centered on two childhood friends in China. In lyrical prose, Zhang deeply humanizes her leads as they look to the past in an effort to understand themselves. It adds up to a remarkable and tragic story of family and community.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Cheng Gong and Li Jiaqi go way back. Both hailing from dysfunctional families, they grew up together in a Chinese provincial capital in the 1980s. Now, many years later, the childhood friends reunite and discover how much they still have in common. Both have always been determined to follow the tracks of their grandparents’ generation to the heart of a mystery that perhaps should have stayed buried. What exactly happened during that rainy night in 1967, in the abandoned water tower? Zhang Yueran’s layered and hypnotic prose reveals much about the unshakable power of friendship and the existence of hope. Hers is a unique fresh voice representing a new generation of important young writers from China, shedding a different light on the country’s recent past.

A young mother follows her partner to a rural community in West Jutland, Denmark, where he teaches at the local school for adult education. Isolated, she is forced to find her way in a bewildering community and in the inscrutable conversational forms of the local population.

From 2013 to 2017, Linda Boström Knausgård was periodically confined to a psychiatric ward and subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, resulting in the loss of memories. This is the story of her struggle against mental illness and isolation

"(Boström Knausgård's) first openly autobiographical book becomes an act of self-examination powerful enough to match if not surpass those of her ex-husband’s."—The Guardian

From 2013 to 2017, Linda Boström Knausgård was periodically interned in a psychiatric ward where she was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy. As the treatments at this “factory” progressed, the writer’s memories began to disappear. What good is a writer without her memory? This book, based on the author’s experiences, is an eloquent and profound attempt to hold on to the past, to create a story, to make sense, and to keep alive ties to family, friends, and even oneself. Moments from childhood, youth, marriage, parenting, and divorce flicker across the pages of October Child. This is the story of one woman’s struggle against mental illness and isolation. It is a raw testimony of how writing can preserve and heal.

"Saskia de Coster’s We and Me is a great dark beauty, and simultaneously, a true original and a reminder of why that endangered species, the novel, remains essential: no other narrative form is so expansive, so complex, so human, and so true." —Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours

“We and Me is a novel that will haunt me for a long time. Excellent and unforgettable.” —Herman Koch, author of The Dinner

In this spellbinding novel, which has been compared to the work of Jonathan Franzen, Dave Eggers, and Jeffrey Eugenides, Saskia de Coster provides a uniquely European take on the tradition of "The Great American Novel." With the family unit and some of life’s most pressing questions at its center, the award-winning We and Me paints a captivatingly haunting picture of bourgeois family life.

Written from several different perspectives, We and Me covers the time period between 1980 and 2013 and focuses on the aristocratic Vandersanden family. Set in their opulent private estate located atop a mountain, neuroses, claustrophobia, scandal and rebellion run rife. At the heart of the family and the novel is Sarah, whose coming of age is both daringly and sensitively explored in de Coster’s skillful prose.

With her characteristically incisive approach, de Coster excavates the nuanced underbelly of human emotions with humor, understanding, and a lightness of touch. We and Me is a remarkable and compelling tale by one of the greatest Belgian writers of our time.

Amber Fan, a young Oxford-educated chef, opens the first Chinese fusion joint in London’s Chinatown following the failure of her father’s traditional restaurant. When her parents decide to return to Hong Kong, taking with them their young son Bobby as well as the haunting secret surrounding his birth, Amber is left alone in London. That is, until a woman called Celeste hires out the restaurant, coughing up three grand for a dinner for one. Who is this extravagant stranger, and how did she get so wealthy? Set in the aftermath of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule, Goodbye Chinatown shows a family torn between two countries. Amber throws herself into her career to escape the painful cycle of family separations and reunions. The tastes and smells spark off every page in Kit Fan’s latest novel, making for a truly multisensorial reading experience. Offering a behind-the-scenes of this suburb of London’s hospitality economy, and using food to reflect on identity, Goodbye Chinatown paints a portrait of an enterprising émigré who, faced with divided loyalties, invents her own language for home through the culinary arts.

In the round house on Via Saterna, its Palladian square exterior nothing but a trompe-l’oeil, the sun pierces through the central skylight. Its rays pass three floors unobstructed, before reaching the circle below at the heart of the house: four fingers of water filling a little silver basin. It is here that young Lidia dies, setting an end to her clandestine love affair with the ambitious architect. It is this house that real-estate agent Irene is asked to sell, decades later, as the climate catastrophe escalates, cloaking the divided city in a permanent orange haze. Returning to her native Milan for the sale, Irene feels the brunt of her father’s judgement. He is a proud Italian and prouder architect—how could his own daughter make a living selling cultural patrimony to the highest foreign bidder? As she faces this new Milan and the old family tensions she had avoided while living in Rome, Irene throws herself into the impossible sale, getting to know Via Saterna intimately—this space that is as unsettling as it is hostile, with the slowly emerging traces of Lidia’s interrupted life. In every room of the house, the burden of a mysterious, unresolved past can be felt, remnants of a selfish and manipulative love. The Perfect Circle tackles themes like time, death, and repetition with depth and originality, while carrying its philosophy lightly. Through it all, the novel is a subtly disturbing page-turner, every new page adding a new layer and twist.

Instead of joy, she feels fear, and then anger at her own late mother for her absence. The Cracks We Bear opens as a story about new motherhood. Soon, however, it reveals itself to be an exploration of memory and trauma as Laura starts to recall her childhood in Chile. Born in exile to staunchly communist parents, she returns to Chile with her mother after the collapse of the Pinochet dictatorship. In the fledgling democracy she grows up in, topics of capitalism and communism are ever present. Laura’s reflections, born from personal experience, are interwoven with raw and honest memories of her family life. Borrowing elements from the Bildungsroman, and pulling from the Latin American short story tradition, Catalina Infante recounts Laura’s past in vignettes. Piece by piece, the short chapters come together like a reconstructed vase, bearing its cracks.

The residents of a desolate town nestled in the Ecuadorian Andes are forced to reckon with the legend of Mildred, a girl wronged by the town years ago

Set in a stark landscape of cliffs and precipices high above the Argentine pampas, Mariana Travacio’s All That Dies in April follows the members of one small family as each makes a solitary journey out of their treacherous mountain home in search of a better life.

"Hypnotic, almost ancestral voices echo through this novel like whispers in the wilderness, like orphan cries and wounds of light accompanying us on a powerful journey from which none of us will emerge unscathed." —Agustina Bazterrica, bestselling author of Tender is the Flesh

Lina has dreamt for years of leaving her tiny village in the drought-stricken region. Her son left long ago to find work and a better fortune. Relicario, her husband, is content to stay put in the land of his ancestors, tending to their graves. Ignoring Relicario’s pleas, a desperate Lina decides to abandon their home in search of her son, work, and water. She starts her journey on foot, and Relicario eventually follows behind, bringing a donkey and a sack with his ancestors’ bones. Both witness unspeakable violence, cruelty, and folly, but the hope of reuniting their family keeps them alive. Poetically charged, restrained, and delicately condensed, this is a suspenseful ancestral tale rooted in a long Latin American history of rural displacement and perpetual inequality.

"Not an easy read, but an important one.” —Historical Novel Society

The end of the 1920s, the author’s first memory: a knock on the door and the arrest of her uncle, guilty of “anti-Soviet activities.” He is to be executed. Born in 1923, a dozen or so kilometers from the pre-war Polish-Soviet border, Franceska Michalska is a citizen of occupied Ukraine. Her family, finding a nest of eggs to eat, miraculously survive the great famine of 1931–32 before falling victim to growing Stalinist terror and the mass deportation of Poles from the region to Kazakhstan. All the while, Franceska dreams of studying medicine. 8,000 km and infinite difficulties later, she enters Poland and becomes a doctor, finally obtaining the Polish nationality she never had. Writing in a heartfelt yet matter-of-fact style, Michalska brilliantly evokes daily life under Russian occupation. Now more than ever, this memoir reads like a warning against history repeating, while at the same time offering a testament to human strength and to hope.

Winner of the 2017 European Union Prize for Literature for readers of Min Jin Lee and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

When young Minnie is orphaned, the Campanis family decides to take her in. Ex-hippie Susan and her husband Basil, a second-generation Greek American, along with their daughter Leto react to Minnie’s arrival in ways that make old family scars flare up again. Set in crisis-ridden 1980s Camden, New Jersey, among a community of immigrants trying and failing to realize the American dream, Dendrites is a poetical elegy to dignity and courage. In this sensitively told story about the quest for a meaningful life amid the ruins of lost second chances, Kallia Papadaki, one of Greek literature’s most brilliant voices, delivers an unforgettable novel about the power of hope and compassion in the face of adversity.

On the outskirts of Belén del Chamí, a town that has yet to appear on any map of Colombia, the mute Salomón Palacios is murdered a few steps away from his home. His widow, the courageous and foul-mouthed Hipólita Arenas, completely loses her sanity and confronts the paramilitaries and local politicians, challenging them to also kill her and her two fatherless sons. Yet as Hipólita faces her husband’s murderers on her desperate journey, she finds an unexpected calling to stay alive. This poetic and hypnotizing novel, told from the perspective of Salomón’s ghost, denounces the brutal killings of innocent citizens and at the same time celebrates the invisible: imagination, memories, hope, and the connection to afterlife.

In this novel about poverty, social inequality, and class contempt in Norway, nineteen-year-old supermarket worker Emily is single, pregnant, and struggling to make ends meet.

Em’s nineteen years old and pregnant. Her boyfriend Pablo has gone out “to take care of something” and hasn’t returned. Her mother, who raised Emily alone, moves into the little apartment to help. Meanwhile, Em’s neighbour, who may or may not be a clergyman, wonders if it’s normal to be so infatuated with someone you’ve never spoken to. Em’s boss at the supermarket might have feelings for her too, if only she’d notice. Emily Forever is a poignant, achingly hard-hitting book about class and about digging deep to find what it takes to get by. At the same time, it’s a deeply original exploration of how a girl like Emily is seen from the outside, by those who think they know who she is and how her life is supposed to pan out. Empathetic and quizzical, and scathingly humorous, Emily Forever is a novel of unyielding solidarity and smoldering social dissent, by a new star of Scandinavian literature.

"With its tight sentences and a fast pace, Afterlight moves like detective fiction. It’s a poignant novel in which a single, pregnant woman is mistreated in her conservative society; she remains resilient and determined to honor her baby’s memory." —Foreword Reviews

The young free-spirited florist Frieda grew up in a strictly Catholic environment in the 1960s. When she steps onto a frozen river on a late winter afternoon, little does she know that everything is about to change for her. On the ice she meets the married Otto. They experience a love that begins stormy and ends fatefully: Frieda becomes pregnant - a scandal in the world in which she moves. And so she must never be the mother of her secret child. For decades she kept her memories of this episode in her life to herself. But the grief for the lost child remains, despite the later marriage, despite the son she still has. At the age of eighty-one, Frieda is suddenly alone again. The silent sorrow returns with force. Only then does she dare to face her story – and to share it. With Afterlight, inspired by true events, Robben not only pulls back the veil on Frieda’s story, but also shines a light on the experiences of countless women between the 1950s and 1980s. The result is an impressive story about buried female trauma, caused by society, organized religion and the dominant social mores.

"Lebanese-born French author Maalouf delivers an elegant portrait of a dying world. A beguiling, lyrical work of speculative fiction by a writer of international importance." —Kirkus Reviews, *Starred Review*

Alec, a press artist with an impressive track record, settles on a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean. He has little contact with his neighbor, a solitary woman who wrote a cult book years ago, before withdrawing from public life. That is, until a gigantic power failure cuts them off from the rest of the world, and all of a sudden they find themselves dependent on each other. The world appears to be on the brink of nuclear war and the collapse of civilization seems imminent. Just who are the mysterious friends of Empedocles, the gang of otherworldly protectors who came swooping in to interfere with the US presidency and cure all illness? Should we trust them? On the Isle of Antioch is a suspenseful novel with mythological roots, written in the dreamy language of the classics, by internationally renowned scholar Amin Maalouf.

2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

“The potent latest from Yazbek (Planet of Clay) weighs the consequences of the Syrian civil war after a 19-year-old soldier, Ali, survives his patrol station’s 2013 bombing in the Lattakia mountains. This slim novel packs a punch.”—Publishers Weekly

Ali, a nineteen-year-old soldier in the Syrian army, lies on the ground beneath a tree. He sees a body being lowered into a hole—is this his funeral? There was that sudden explosion, wasn’t there ... While trying to understand the extend of the damage, Ali works his way closer to the tree. His ultimate desire is to fly up to one of its branches, to safety. Through rich vignettes of Ali’s memories, we uncover the hardships of his traditional Syrian Alawite village, but also the richness and beauty of its cultural and religious heritage. Yazbek here explores the secrets of the Alawite faith and its relationship to nature and the elements in a tight poetic novel dense with life and hope and love.

Written by Germany's #1 bestselling author Juli Zeh, About People takes place in the middle of lockdown in spring 2020 and subtly describes the social and very private consequences of the pandemic.

Fleeing stay-at-home orders in the big city, Dora and her dog move to the countryside to sit out the pandemic. She knows that Bracken, a village in the middle of nowhere, isn’t the idyll most city dwellers dream of, but she’s desperate for space and a change of scene. The quaint old house she’s saved up for needs work, weeds have taken over the yard, and her skinhead neighbor fits all the stereotypes. Just what is Dora really looking for? Distance from her boyfriend Robert, whose climate activism has crossed into obsession? Refuge from her inner turmoil? Clarity on how the whole world got so messed up? As Dora tries to keep her demons in check, unexpected things start happening all around her. Juli Zeh’s epic new novel explores our present predicaments, biases, weaknesses, and fears, but—above all—it reveals the strengths that come to light when we dare to be human.

Winner of the 2021 European Union Literature Prize

"A riveting experimental novel about a commune where the members’ belief that they can live on light and love alone proves fatal for one of them." ―Publishers Weekly, starred review

One apartment, three women, one man. One of the women is dead. When the emergency personnel arrive, they realize: Elisabeth starved to death, encouraged by her roommates.

In the middle of a summer night, Elisabeth, the oldest resident of the Sound & Love Commune, dies. Her sister Melodie and their two other housemates are arrested: the group’s attempts to stop eating and start living on light and love alone appears to have been fatal to Elisabeth. From unworldly idealists on the fringes of society, the three suddenly become suspects in a criminal case. Through the eyes of the night, the neighbors, doubt, the scent of an orange, and many other characters and entities, we see how each of those involved gives a different answer to the question of how Elisabeth came to die. Who is to blame? And does the commune still have a future? We Are Light is a highly original and entertaining novel about manipulation, vulnerability, and trying to be better.

Fowl Eulogies is an absurd fairy tale for the ethical carnivore, fiction of perfect madness, of brutal and unprecedented humor. From the meadow to the supermarket, this dazzling first novel of mischief and feathers, brings to life the singular poetry of the industrial chicken.

Upon her mother’s death, Paule Rojas, a vegetarian city-dweller, returns to the chicken farm where she grew up. Pressured to fulfil her mother’s last request, Paule rediscovers pleasure and meaning in running the old family business. Yet, eager to bring something of herself to a family tradition, Paule embarks on increasingly intricate ways of helping the chickens to self-actualize before their deaths. She records the chickens’ life stories, adding them to the labels that decorate the vacuum-packed meat sent off to market—an individual biography for every chicken. But not all runs smooth in her childhood village; Paule finds she has few friends and many enemies. She is forced to spread her wings, relocate her livestock, and oversee the construction of an urban farm of never-before-seen practices and proportions.

"Excellent novel. Packed with emotional truth and elegantly turned narrative. A fine translation too."―Ian McEwan, author of international bestseller Atonement 

Emilia has it all: a rewarding career as a statistician, a wonderful husband, two healthy young sons, and a house in the countryside. But when a brief moment of panic triggers the memory of a traumatic experience from twelve years before, Emilia finds herself floating away from her average existence. The secret she’s kept for so long refuses to stay hidden, and as Emilia’s grip on reality loosens, heavy rains begin to fall and the river threatens to overflow the house. In this critically acclaimed novel, Schermer explores the impact of sexual violence, and whether or not it’s possible to truly know another person. Breakwater is a haunting examination of memory and trauma, written in prose stunning in its frankness and precision.

By the author of the international bestseller Evening Is The Whole Day, this novel set in Malaysia will appeal to readers of Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai

In what was once a Scottish tea planter’s mansion in the highlands of Peninsular Malaysia, all religions are one and race is unheard of. That is, until the occupants of what is now known as the Muhibbah Centre for World Peace are joined by Salmah, a Malay Muslim woman. “All are welcome here,” they are reminded by their spiritual leader, Cyril Dragon, who is ignoring news of the changing political climate with its increasing religious intolerance. He is still trying to forget May 13, 1969, when ethnic tensions boiled over into bloodshed. Tale of the Dreamer’s Son guides us from that fateful incident in Malaysian history to the present day. Throughout, Samarasan’s polyphonic, rambunctious prose brilliantly navigates the tug-of-war between ideals and reality.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2023

“The great voice of the Caribbean.” —Jury, International Booker 2023

“French novelist Condé (Waiting for the Waters to Rise) delivers an ingenious bildungsroman of a messianic figure in contemporary Martinique. Readers will be transfixed.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

A miracle baby is born on Easter Sunday, rumored to be the child of God. Award-winning Caribbean author Maryse Condé follows his journey in search of his origins and mission.

One Easter Sunday, Madame Ballandra puts her hands together and exclaims: “A miracle!” Baby Pascal is strikingly beautiful, brown in complexion, with gray-green eyes like the sea. But where does he come from? Is he really the child of God? So goes the rumor, and many signs throughout his life will cause this theory to gain ground. From journey to journey and from one community to another, Pascal sets off in search of his origins, trying to understand the meaning of his mission. Will he be able to change the fate of humanity? And what will the New World Gospel reveal? For all its beauty, vivacity, humor, and power, Maryse Condé’s latest novel is above all a work of combat. Lucid and full of conviction, Condé attests that solidarity and love remain our most extraordinary and lifesaving forces.

A 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATED LITERATURE FINALIST

By the Colombian author of The Bitch, a 2020 National Book Award Finalist and PEN Awards Winner

“An eight-year-old girl takes in a series of troubling events in this luminous and transfixing account of fractured family life from Colombian writer Quintana (The Bitch). Readers will be dazzled.” —Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

Claudia is an impressionable eight-year-old girl, trying to understand the world through the eyes of the adults around her. But her hardworking father hardly speaks a word, while her unhappy mother spends her days reading celebrity lifestyle magazines, tending to her enormous collection of plants, and filling Claudia’s head with stories about women who end their lives in tragic ways. Then an interloper arrives, disturbing the delicate balance of family life, and Claudia’s world starts falling apart. In this strikingly vivid portrait of Cali, Colombia, Claudia’s acute observations remind us that children are capable of discerning extremely complex realities even if they cannot fully understand them. In Abyss, Quintana leads us brilliantly into the lonely heart of the child we have all once been, driven by fear of abandonment.

A powerful novel about the LGBTQ rights movement and gay love in Japan and Taiwan, from the most important queer voice of East Asia's millennial generation.

Cho Norie, twenty-seven and originally from Taiwan, is working an office job in Tokyo. While her colleagues worry about the economy, life-insurance policies, marriage, and children, she is forced to keep her unconventional life hidden—including her sexuality and the violent attack that prompted her move to Japan. There is also her unusual fascination with death: she knows from personal experience how devastating death can be, but for her it is also creative fuel. Solo Dance depicts the painful coming of age of a gay person in Taiwan and corporate Japan. This striking debut is an intimate and powerful account of a search for hope after trauma.

After nine years in a Dutch asylum center, an Iraqi refugee tries to start a new life as a European citizen and discovers that to make friends in the western world, you need a dog.

After nine years in a Dutch asylum center, Samir finally has the chance to start his new life as a European citizen. But it’s a full-time occupation for him to discover what integration really means. Happily, this distracts him from what is happening in his native land, Iraq, and from Leda, who stole his heart in the first village he stayed in after being granted refugee status. In this hilarious adventure story, we follow the lovable and gritty Samir as he talks his way into every type of accommodation to be found in this new country full of incomprehensible rules and habits. His perspective provides profound, sometimes painful insights about the West, in this timely exploration of the meaning of home, and making oneself at home against all odds.

The story of a love triangle played out through mutual manipulation

Giorgia was a talented actress before she abandoned her stage career and fell in love with Filippo. She settles into a life of quiet compromise—until one day she bumps into her old theater director, Mauro, who fans the acting flame back to life. But setting a restless soul on fire can be dangerous if she loses sight of the boundary between reality and fiction—and Giorgia collapses, ending up in a clinic. Filippo and Mauro find themselves both accomplices and adversaries, seduced by a dangerous game to heal and win back Giorgia: by writing the script for her perfect life. In this dazzling debut, Petrucci explores the ambiguous borders between love, possession, and control in clear, magnetic prose.

“One of the debut novels that most stood out this year in Latin America.” —New York Times

Lucas was just a child when his father sold him to another farmer as a laborer. Years later, Lucas returns, full of resentment and burning for revenge.

After years away, Lucas returns uninvited to the home he was expelled from as a child. The garden has been conquered by weeds, which blanket his mother’s beloved flowerbeds and his father’s grave alike. A lot has changed since Eloy and Felisberto were invited into the family home to work for Lucas’s father, long ago. The two hulking strangers have brought the land and everyone on it under their control—and removed nuisances like Lucas. Now everything rots. Lucas, a hardened young man, turns to a world that thrives in dirt and darkness: the world of insects. In raw, lyrical prose, García Freire portrays a world brought low by human greed, while hinting at glimmers of hope in the unlikeliest places.

24 MUST-READ 2022 BOOKS IN TRANSLATION as selected by BOOK RIOT

"Lebanese German author Jarawan (The Storyteller) movingly evokes life in Lebanon in his affecting and complex latest. This is a gripping, human look at a tragedy that still haunts an entire nation."—Publishers Weekly

It’s 2011 and the Arab Spring is in full bloom when the discovery of two bodies in Beirut sows the first seeds of unrest in Lebanon. With houses already burning, Amin sets out to write down his memories of the country: Of the year 1994, when he returned as a teenager with his grandmother, twelve years after his parents’ deaths. Of his friendship with Jafar, the boy who explored the desolate postwar landscape with him. And of the painful discovery that there will never be certainty—neither about his friend’s past nor his family’s history. In this novel full of mystery and suspense, friendship and loss, searches and secrets, Jarawan skillfully interweaves a deeply personal story with the tumultuous history of the Middle East.

2022 PEN Translation Award FINALIST

In this masterful novel, author Juli Zeh skillfully shifts away from the conventional tale of a middle-aged, middle-class father out for a New Year’s Day bike ride to an unexpectedly dark, psychological family drama.

Lanzarote on New Year’s Day: Henning is cycling up the steep path to Femés. As he struggles against the wind and the gradient he takes stock of his life. He has a job, a wife, two children—yet hardly recognizes himself anymore. Panic attacks have been pouncing on him like demons. When he finally reaches the pass in utter exhaustion, a mysterious coincidence unveils a repressed yet vivid memory, plunging him back into childhood and the traumatic event that almost cost him and his sister their lives. In this masterful novel, bestselling author Juli Zeh skillfully turns a New Year’s Day bike ride into an unexpectedly dark, psychological family drama.

For fans of Marriage Story and Elena Ferrante's Days of Abandonment

Terri runs off with a lover, abandoning her children and her marriage of twenty-five years. Her husband, David, is left to take care of their two daughters, one of whom is falling in love for the first time. These four people start to question their identity outside the nuclear family. What remains of a disintegrated home, and what changes? Marijke Schermer’s Love, If That’s What It Is gives a kaleidoscopic view of a divorce, permitting the reader to enter the heads of not only the spouses, but also of the two daughters and the divorcees’ new lovers. Through several characters, the reader is presented with just as many views on relationships, while Schermer remains impartial and thus confronts readers with their own—perhaps shaky—romantic principles. What is love? With fresh flair and provocative perspectives, Schermer manages to provide an original and versatile answer.

FINALIST FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE

The new novel Planet Of Clay gives a haunting and unflinching look at the horrors of war - the bombing, the starvation, the fear - all seen through the eyes of Rima, a young girl with a vibrant imagination."—NPR

“Planet of Clay is a devastating novel about human resilience and fragility in a time of war.”—Foreword Reviews, starred review

Rima, a young girl from Damascus, longs to walk, to be free to follow the will of her feet, but instead is perpetually constrained. Rima finds refuge in a fantasy world full of colored crayons, secret planets, and The Little Prince, reciting passages of the Qur’an like a mantra as everything and everyone around her is blown to bits. Since Rima hardly ever speaks, people think she’s crazy, but she is no fool—the madness is in the battered city around her. One day while taking a bus through Damascus, a soldier opens fire and her mother is killed. Rima, wounded, is taken to a military hospital before her brother leads her to the besieged area of Ghouta—where, between bombings, she writes her story. In Planet of Clay, Samar Yazbek offers a surreal depiction of the horrors taking place in Syria, in vivid and poetic language and with a sharp eye for detail and beauty.

In this utopia, the feminist Movement has been successful and women rule the world. Men are trained at reeducation facilities to accept the new normal in this futuristic satire challenging our sexual norms.

The Movement’s founding ideology emphasizes that women should be valued for their inner qualities, and not for their physical attributes. Men have been forbidden to be attracted to women on the basis of their bodies. While some continue unreformed, many submit—or are sent by wives and daughters—to the Institute for internment and reeducation. Our narrator, an unapologetic guard at one of these reeducation facilities, describes how the Movement started, her own personal journey, and what happens when a program fails. She is convinced the Movement is nearing its final victory—a time when everybody will fall in line with its ideals. Outspoken, ambiguous, and terrifying, this socio-critical satire of our sexual norms sets the reader firmly outside of their comfort zone.

Lost in the wilderness: subjugation, survival, and the meaning of family

Up on the highway, the only evidence that the Chamberlains had ever been there was two smeared tire tracks in the mud leading into an almost undamaged screen of bushes and trees. No other cars passed that way until after dawn. By that time the tracks had been washed away by the heavy rain. After being in New Zealand for only five days, the English Chamberlain family had vanished into thin air. The date was 4 April 1978. In 2010 the remains of the eldest child are discovered in a remote part of the West Coast, showing he lived for four years after the family disappeared. Found alongside him are his father’s watch and what turns out to be a tally stick, a piece of scored wood marking items of debt. How had he survived and then died in such a way? Where is the rest of the family? And what is the meaning of the tally stick?

World's Best Mother adds a uniquely European perspective to the literary canon on motherhood. Perfect for readers of Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother, Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation, and Sheila Heti’s Motherhood.

“A slyly funny and strikingly astute meditation on love in all its guises by a self-proclaimed ‘amateur mother.’” —JENNY OFFILL, bestselling author of Weather and Dept. of Speculation

A thirty-five-year-old writer decides she wants to have children. Rounds of IVF treatments and several years later, she has two daughters and sits down to write this book. World’s Best Mother is a sublime journey—through pregnancy, the mothering of small children, marriage, an affair—which unfolds in a heady mix of anecdote, imagination, and social commentary. Clever and insightful, the narrator examines the myth, but also the scam, of motherhood, openly dialoguing with voices of the past that in one way or another have fueled her condition as a woman: from the legendary hominid Lucy—“the mother of humanity”—to Cinderella, passing through Plato, Mother Teresa, Darwin, Maupassant, and Simone de Beauvoir along the way. Humor, love, and horror converge in this lively auto-fictional battle between the intensity of child rearing and the writer trying to fight her way out.

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE

FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOKS of 2021

By the winner of the 2018 Alternative Nobel Prize in Literature

“At once touching and devastating, the book explores the effects of loss and grief on a personal, communal, and national level, but does so with a personal voice that feels more like a having a conversation than reading a book…it is a novel that cements Condé as a literary giant who beautifully chronicles the humanity found in some of the most violent places in the world.” —GABINO IGLESIAS, NPR

Babakar is a doctor living alone, with only the memories of his childhood in Mali. In his dreams, he receives visits from his blue-eyed mother and his ex-lover Azelia, both now gone, as are the hopes and aspirations he’s carried with him since his arrival in Guadeloupe. Until, one day, the child Anaïs comes into his life, forcing him to abandon his solitude. Anaïs’s Haitian mother died in childbirth, leaving her daughter destitute—now Babakar is all she has, and he wants to offer this little girl a future. Together they fly to Haiti, a beautiful, mysterious island plagued by violence, government corruption, and rebellion. Once there, Babakar and his two friends, the Haitian Movar and the Palestinian Fouad, three different identities looking for a more compassionate world, begin a desperate search for Anaïs’s family.

For readers of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Circle, and Brave New World comes a chilling and distressingly plausible dystopia which creates a world in which performance is everything and one woman’s failure to achieve becomes another’s downfall.

“I enjoyed Diamond Hill very much. It’s fantastically evocative of a time and place, full of vivid images but never at the expense of story. A hugely impressive first novel.”—DAVID NICHOLLS, bestselling author of One Day

It is 1987 and three years since Britain signed the Joint Declaration agreeing to hand over its last colony, Hong Kong, to China in 1997. With that declaration comes the promise that the city will remain unchanged for fifty years. But upheaval is already happening in Diamond Hill. Once the ‘Hollywood of the Orient,’ it is now a shanty town and an eyesore right in the middle of a glitzy financial hub. Buddha, a recovering heroin addict, returns home to find the shabby neighborhood being bulldozed to make room for gleaming towers. Buddhist nuns, drug gangs, property developers, the government and foreign powers each have itchy palms, and all want a piece of Diamond Hill. Kit Fan’s hard-hitting and exhilarating debut is a requiem for a disappearing city, as well as a meditation on powerlessness, religion, memory, and displacement.

LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2021

Summer Brother is an honest, tender account of brotherly love between a disabled boy and his abled brother, which will resonate with readers of Rain Man.

“Dutch author Jaap Robben’s second novel shows us the shedding of innocence. Summer Brother, translated by David Doherty, shakes out over a hot summer, during that potent lull when characters so splendidly boil, burst and bloom…Summer Brother grapples with the consequences of carelessness and the abuse of power and trust, even if the violation is unintentional…Robben is wonderful at drawing characters with just a few deliberate strokes…Like a photographer shooting a portrait, Robben captures his subjects in Summer Brother in a focused close-up.” —New York Times

Thirteen-year-old Brian lives in a trailer on a forgotten patch of land with his divorced and uncaring father. His older brother Lucien, physically and mentally disabled, has been institutionalized for years. While Lucien’s home is undergoing renovations, he is sent to live with his father and younger brother for the summer. Their detached father leaves Brian to care for Lucien’s special needs. But how do you look after someone when you don’t know what they need? How do you make the right choices when you still have so much to discover? Summer Brother is an honest, tender account of brotherly love, which will resonate with readers of Rain Man.

“Italian novelist Maurensig spins an intriguing historical narrative of Indian chess master Malik Mir Sultan Khan (1903–1966)...Maurensig’s tragic tale of genius and destiny duly salvages a forgotten hero.” ―Publishers Weekly

In 1930s British India, a humble servant learns the art of chaturanga, the ancient Eastern ancestor of chess. His natural talent soon catches the attention of the maharaja, who introduces him to the Western version of the game. Brought to England as the prince’s pawn, Malik becomes a chess legend, winning the world championship and humiliating the British colonialists. His skills as a refined strategist eventually drag him into a strange game of warfare with far-reaching consequences. Inspired by the unlikely true story of chess master Malik Mir Sultan Khan, Game of the Gods is a fascinating tale of karma and destiny, by the author of the multimillion-copy bestseller The Lüneburg Variation

The bestselling author of The Crusades Through Arab Eyes traces how civilizations have drifted apart throughout the 20th century and now lack the solidarity to address global threats to humankind.

“Maalouf is a thoughtful, humane and passionate interlocutor.” — The New York Times Book Review

Winner of the European Union Prize for Literature

“Josse powerfully evokes the spirit of the ‘huddled masses’ who landed on America’s shores while creating a memorable portrait of a man torn between his commitment to his difficult job and the longings of his heart. Duty and desire clash in the melancholy reminiscences of a former Ellis Island immigration officer.” —Kirkus, *Starred Review*

“French novelist Josse’s melancholy English-language debut looks at the last few days in 1954 before Ellis Island was officially shuttered as a port of entry into the U.S. (…) Josse’s powerful work finds the human heart within a career bureaucrat.” —Publishers Weekly

“Gripping…The Last Days of Ellis Island is an absorbing novel in which beloved dreams are fast to shatter.” —Foreword Reviews

2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS TRANSLATED LITERATURE FINALIST

In Colombia’s brutal jungle, childless Damaris develops an intense and ultimately doomed relationship with an orphaned puppy.

“The magic of this sparse novel is its ability to talk about many things, all of them important, while seemingly talking about something else entirely. What are those things? Violence, loneliness, resilience, cruelty. Quintana works wonders with her disillusioned, no-nonsense, powerful prose.” Juan Gabriel Vásquez, author of The Sound of Things Falling

Colombia’s Pacific coast, where everyday life entails warding off the brutal forces of nature. In this constant struggle, nothing is taken for granted. Damaris lives with her fisherman husband in a shack on a bluff overlooking the sea. Childless and at that age “when women dry up,” as her uncle puts it, she is eager to adopt an orphaned puppy. But this act may bring more than just affection into her home. The Bitch is written in a prose as terse as the villagers, with storms―both meteorological and emotional―lurking around each corner. Beauty and dread live side by side in this poignant exploration of the many meanings of motherhood and love.

“Scenes from the war live on as trauma in the memory of the next generation. A Little Annihilation by Anna Janko is an extraordinarily personal and powerful account of how the worst wartime atrocities affect ordinary people and are seldom recorded in the official histories.”—OLGA TOKARCZUK, winner of the Man Booker International Prize for Flights

June 1, 1943, Eastern Poland. Within just a few hours, the village of Sochy had ceased to exist. Buildings were burned. Residents shot. Among the survivors was nine-year-old Teresa Ferenc, who saw her family murdered by German soldiers, and would never forget what she witnessed the day she became an orphan. The horror of that event was etched into her very being and passed on to her daughter, author Anna Janko. A Little Annihilation bears witness to both the crime and its aftershocks—the trauma visited on the next generation—as revealed in a beautifully scripted and deeply personal mother-daughter dialogue. As she fathoms the full dimension of the tragedy, Janko reflects on memory and loss, the ethics of helplessness, and the lingering effects of war.

In this brilliant Swedish thriller and sensitive coming-of-age story, a traumatic event shatters the summer of two boys in love with their young teacher.

“Nesser sensitively probes the agonies and ecstasies of adolescence, making this an exquisite example of Nordic noir’s ability to reveal the darkest emotional depths beneath a cloudless summer sky.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“Nesser’s novel gains in power as it raises difficult questions about memory and morality.” —Kirkus Reviews

“A thoughtful, philosophically rich story that probes a still-open wound.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Maalouf is a thoughtful, humane and passionate interlocutor.” —The New York Times Book Review One night, a phone rings in Paris. Adam learns that Mourad, once his closest friend, is dying. He quickly throws some clothes in a suitcase and takes the first flight out, to the homeland he fled twenty-five years ago. Exiled in France, Adam has been leading a peaceful life as a respected historian, but back among the milk-white mountains of the East his past soon catches up with him. His childhood friends have all taken different paths in life—and some now have blood on their hands. Loyalty, identity, and the clash of cultures and beliefs are at the core of this long-awaited novel by the French-Lebanese literary giant Amin Maalouf.

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATED LITERATURE

"Knausgård is an impressive writer" —Publishers Weekly

"Knausgård’s writing is crystalline and careful" —Kirkus Reviews

"Boström Knausgård’s careful exploration of mental illness is restrained and entirely unsentimental. (...) Her prose is unobtrusive in its simplicity and minimalism. The result is both powerful and lyrical." —Words Without Borders

This modern spin on the myth of Athena plunges us deep inside the mind of an unlikely twelve-year-old goddess confined to a small Swedish town. Separated from her father just moments after bursting from his skull in full armor, Anna is packed off into foster care where she learns to ski, speaks in tongues, and negotiates the needs of a quirky cast of relatives. Unable to overcome her father’s absence, however, she finally succumbs to depression and is institutionalized. Anna’s rallying war cry rings out across the pages of this concise and piercing novel as a passionate appeal for belonging taken to its emotional extreme.

"While it may have been the promise of misery that first attracted me to the book, though, it is largely the wit and humour that make this such a powerful read." —Bookmunch

Roxy’s life is turned upside down when her husband is killed in a car crash, his naked body found entangled with his lover’s. 

Twenty-seven-year-old Roxy is left behind with their daughter, her husband’s personal assistant, and their babysitter to come to terms with this shameful end to her marriage. Looking to break free from her grief, Roxy takes the three of them on an impromptu road trip filled with darkly humorous observations about loss, parental responsibility, and the expiration date of love. 

Through masterful dialogues and in her trademark lucid style, Gerritsen introduces the reader to a woman whose response to grief both shocks and endears.

Two Blankets, Three Sheets does for the beleaguered political asylum seeker stuck in legal limbo what Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 did for the hapless soldier trapped in a military at war…Translated from the Dutch into nimble and conversational English by Jonathan Reeder…it is a tale for and of our time."—Rayyan Al-Shawaf, Los Angeles Review of Books

Based on the author’s true story, this is the account of Iraqi refugee Samir, who spends nine years in an asylum center in the Netherlands.

Amsterdam Airport, 1998. Samir Karim steps off a plane from Vietnam, flushes his fake passport down the toilet, and requests asylum. Fleeing Iraq to avoid conscription into Saddam Hussein’s army, he has spent seven years anonymously wandering through Asia. Now, safely in the heart of Europe, he is sent to an asylum center and assigned a bed in a shared dorm—where he will spend the next nine years. As he navigates his way around the absurdities of Dutch bureaucracy, Samir tries his best to get along with his 500 new housemates. Told with compassion and a unique sense of humor, this is an inspiring tale of survival, a close-up view of the hidden world of refugees and human smugglers, and a sobering reflection of our times.

In Zagreb, a couple discovers a museum that displays mementos of broken relationships. A whirlwind summer of reconnecting with lost pasts follows.

Tyler is in therapy. 

Katia and Goran are in love. 

On a summer trip to Zagreb, the couple discover an unusual museum that displays mementos of broken relationships. Inside, Goran stumbles upon an exhibit that seems to be addressed to him, from a girl he met in a Sarajevo refugee camp at age fourteen. What follows is a whirlwind summer of reconnecting with lost pasts: Goran confronts the youth he lost during the Yugoslav Wars, Katia heads to Brazil to find her roots, and Afghanistan veteran Tyler pours out his soul. Set against alternating backdrops of violent circumstances, this novel is a soulful testament to the resilience of the human heart.

When the innocence of fairy tales meets the terror of a Stephen King thriller...

This international bestseller by French author Adeline Dieudonné is one girl’s bitingly funny coming-of-age tale within a violent, savage family.

At home there are four bedrooms: one for her, one for her little brother Sam, one for her parents, and one for the carcasses. Her father is a big-game hunter, a powerful predator, and her mother is submissive to her violent husband’s demands. The young narrator spends the days with Sam, playing in the shells of cars dumped for scrap and listening out for the melody of the ice-cream truck, until a brutal accident shatters their world.

The uncompromising pen of Adeline Dieudonné wields flashes of brilliance as she brings her characters to life in a world that is both dark and sensual. This breathtaking debut is a sharp and funny coming-of-age tale in which reality and fantasy collide.

“Wagendorp’s book manages to be funny, shrewd, and moving, with a complex structure that never feels cumbersome, and a finale so intense that you want to read it very slowly, almost one word at a time.” —The Guardian

“A wonderful blend of humor, suspense, and poignancy, which will appeal to non-cyclists as well as those of us who understand what it takes to scale a mountain as evocative, daunting, and symbolic as Mont Ventoux.” —Felix Lowe, author of Climbs & Punishment

During the summer of 1982, a group of friends—five boys and one girl—travel to French Provence, three of whom climb the legendary Mont Ventoux on their bicycles. A tragic accident claims the life of one of them, the promising young poet, Peter. Thirty years later, the old friends return to conquer the mountain and the demons of their past. Ventoux is both a hilarious and insightful portrait of a generation and a stunningly accurate depiction of male friendship. It’s a glorious tragicomedy for everyone who loves to read a well-crafted feel-good novel and especially recommended for cycling aficionados who will recognize Mont Ventoux as the scene of many classic races.

Winner of the European Union Prize in Literature

"Addictive (...) Janna’s plight is that of Jane Eyre and the narrator of du Maurier’s “Rebecca.” She is a young woman who falls in love with an older man so damaged he cannot possibly be good for her. Fencing and love. Battle and desire. The combination transforms Janna’s attempts at love into a match of skill, a game that leaves one bloody and scarred, giving the novel a cruel beauty. (...) One of the most delicious novels I've read in ages" Danielle Trussoni for the New York Times Book Review

"There is something Edgar Allan Poe-like in the inexplicable way the wind turbines tax some of Blaashoek's inhabitants...Sleepless Summer is determined to leave you with a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach, and its Coen Brothers-meets-Stephen King nightmare of an ending is sure to do the trick." —Hank Stephenson, Shelf Awareness

Seasons come and go in provincial Blaashoek, where the town’s superficial harmony is upended by the arrival of a wind farm. The irritating hum of the turbines keeps butcher Herman Bracke awake at night. He falls prey to a deadly fatigue and gradually loses control over his work, setting off a series of blood-curdling events with fatal consequences for the townspeople.

Bram Dehouck (Belgium) was the first author ever to win both the Golden Noose and the Shadow Award, the two most prestigious prizes for Dutch crime writing. Compared to the work of Stephen King, Dehouck’s characteristic black humor and concise, punchy prose make for a refreshing take on the modern thriller.

Mr. Miller is watching you

Michael Bellicher is working for a successful consultancy agency and has everything going for him. During a night spent at work, he witnesses something he should never have seen. Attempting to flee the tightening stranglehold of the conspirators, Michael finds himself tailed by the mysterious Mr. Miller. In a world of espionage-like computer techniques, full of managers, mergers, and opaque negotiations, Mr. Miller seems to know almost everything about Michael.

Charles den Tex is the Netherlands’ leading thriller writer. His work is often compared to that of John Grisham, Michael Crichton, and Michael Ridpath. He is a three-time winner of the Dutch annual prize for the best thriller. Mr. Miller was made into a ten-part mini-series for television and has been sold to Netflix.

"A Devil Comes to Town is a brilliant form of torture...a huge amount of fun." —Lisa Grgas for The Literary Review

A small Swiss village full of aspiring writers + The devil in the form of a hot-shot publisher = An international bestseller by the author of the Italian literary sensation The Luneburg Variation

Wild rabies runs rampant through the woods. The foxes are gaining ground, boldly making their way into the village. In Dichtersruhe, an insular yet charming haven stifled by the Swiss mountains, these omens go unnoticed by all but the new parish priest. The residents have other things on their mind: Literature. Everyone’s a writer—the nights are alive with reworked manuscripts. So when the devil turns up in a black car claiming to be a hot-shot publisher, unsatisfied authorial desires are unleashed and the village’s former harmony is shattered. Taut with foreboding and Gothic suspense, Paolo Maurensig gives us a refined and engaging literary parable on narcissism, vainglory, and our inextinguishable thirst for stories.

“Just a remarkable book. Haunting characters, amazing voice, propulsive plot. I hope we see a lot more from Dorrestein. Count me among her fans.”—Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club

“Dorrestein knows how to chill her readers with tragedy and then melt their hearts with forgiveness.” —Susan Vreeland on A Heart of Stone

Lucy is the most popular girl in the local elementary school of an idyllic Dutch housing estate. When a bizarre crime rocks her world and sends her mother to prison, Lucy is turned into an outcast and her childhood becomes an ordeal of constant, vicious bullying. After her mother’s release, Lucy’s family decides to escape and make a clean start on a rugged Scottish island. But even here, in this remote corner of the world, Lucy’s past holds a firm grip on her. Told in the alternating voices of the bullies and Lucy, this darkly atmospheric and emotionally gripping story is part family drama and part mystery.

Renate Dorrestein (1954–2018) was an internationally bestselling author who occupies a unique position within Dutch literature. An extraordinary storyteller, known for her unsentimental depiction of children and their flawed families, Dorrestein’s wicked humor offsets the darkness of her subjects. Her novels have been made into films and translated into fifteen languages.

For readers of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner comes a ”pacy Lebanese mystery. A man is haunted by his father’s disappearance in this acclaimed debut novel set against the backdrop of Middle Eastern politics" —The Guardian

Samir leaves the safety and comfort of his family’s adopted home, Germany, for volatile Beirut in an attempt to find his missing father. The only clues Samir has are an old photo and the bedtime stories his father used to tell him. In this moving and engaging novel about family secrets, love, and friendship, Pierre Jarawan does for Lebanon what Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner did for Afghanistan. He pulls away the curtain of grim facts and figures portrayed in the media and shows an intimate truth of what it means to come from a country torn apart by civil war. With this beautiful and suspenseful story, full of images, Jarawan proves to be a masterful storyteller himself.

Pierre Jarawan is the son of a Lebanese father and a German mother and moved to Germany with his family at the age of three. Inspired by his father’s love of telling imaginative bedtime stories, he started writing at the age of thirteen. He has won international prizes as a slam poet, received the City of Munich literary scholarship (the Bayerische Kunstförderpreis) for The Storyteller, and was chosen as Literature Star of the Year by the daily newspaper AZ. His debut novel The Storyteller was a Spiegel bestseller in Germany, proclaimed Book of the Month by the leading Dutch television talk show DWDD, and received unanimous rave reviews from the European press.

"A leading French feminist and writer, Groult drew wide attention with this sexually daring novel"—The NY Times

Salt on my Skin is widely regarded as Benoîte Groult’s most pioneering, best-loved book.

This highly-charged novel follows the passionate relationship between mismatched lovers: a Parisian intellectual and a Breton fisherman, brought together by lust. Through love-letters and exotic encounters around the world, their life-long affair evolves—liberating them from the restrictions and disappointments dealt by real life.

Set in France in the 1960s, it explores the touching dynamics of the couple’s relationship, and whether their raw desire for each other can overcome the wide social divide that separates them. The narrative examines the difficulties of writing frankly about sex and explores the protagonist's conflict between fulfilling her intellectual and sexual needs.

“A lively, exciting and funny novel, which is told with great energy and momentum. A completely convincing picture of the bizarre fantasy world of a lonely adolescent.” ―Dutch Foundation for Literature

Inventive, dreamy Gieles lives with his father and a flock of geese on a plane-spotters’ campsite next to an airstrip. The surrounding landscape reclaimed from the sea, is as isolated as Gieles himself. The fourteen-year-old boy is longing for the mysterious dreadlocked girl he’s met online, and for the affection of his absent mother, off on hapless missions to save the world.

The boy conceives a desperate, dangerous plan to attract his mother’s attention. He’ll be a hero. Just like Captain Sully, who bravely landed on the Hudson after geese flew into his engines. Goemans’s charmingly upbeat novel describes the fantasy-driven world of a teenage boy. At the same time, it tells the incredible story about how the Dutch turned water into land.

“With unnerving conviction, this novel inhabits the mind, heart and voice of Belgium's 'most hated woman', the ex-wife of murderer Marc Dutroux – the authenticity makes for a compelling narrative.” —Blake Morrison

The most hated woman in Belgium sits in her prison cell preparing for imminent release. Between brief interludes of counsel from Sister Virginie and Anouk, the prison psychiatrist, Odette is left alone to labor through the memories of her former life. Obsessive and reflective, yet crucially lacking in remorse, Odette's testimony is a tricky script to untangle. Based on the real-life events of Michelle Martin, ex-wife of the notorious child abductor, murderer and serial rapist, Marc Dutroux, this is a fictionalized account of the inner workings of Martin's mind before, during, and after the crimes that shook a nation in the 1990s.

The excuses and abuses of this killer's accomplice make for a brave exploration of psychological trauma, and the slide towards its most extreme of consequences. In The Woman Who Fed the Dogs, Hemmerechts has produced a daring novel that positions the reader uncomfortably close to the human behind these unforgivable acts.

‘Verbeke has written a bold, busy, textured novel. Read it once and you may well read it twice.’—The Irish Times

With a sharp and observational eye, Annelies Verbeke takes a funny, imaginative, and perceptive look at the realities and absurdities of human interactions, relationships, and everyday life.

Verbeke matches poetic prose with a cast of intriguing characters and unexpected plot twists. Our protagonist is Alphonse, a Senegalese immigrant who uproots his life in Brussels to become a handyman in a rural district in Flanders. Likable and charismatic, people cannot help but reveal their secrets, desires, and unexpected dreams to him.

In her typically astute style, Verbeke weaves a vivid and thought-provoking tale of contemporary life, subtly touching upon timely themes such as refugees and racism. Thirty Days is a deeply moving story about love, outsiders, and the human need to connect, compellingly translated from the Dutch by Liz Waters.

"You Have Me to Love is an intense and dramatic novel filled with meticulous use of detail and a forensic psychological accuracy. Its power comes from the fierce energy of the narrative structure, the way of handling silence and pain, and the ability to confront the darkest areas of experience with clear-eyed sympathy and care. Jaap Robben handles delicate, dangerous material with subtlety and sympathy, but also with a visionary sense of truth that is masterly and unforgettable." —Colm Tóibín

Mikael lives with his parents on an island somewhere between Scotland and Norway. One day Mikael’s father saves him from drowning in the ocean, but is himself thrown against the rocks by a wave and disappears under water. In shock and unable to speak, Mikael blocks out the memory of what took place, silently joining his mother in the search for his missing father. As Mikael’s mother realizes her husband has drowned, the relationship between her and Mikael transforms: she slowly starts to unravel, forcing the son to replace his father in every possible way.

Even readers unfamiliar with the Last Poets’ historic significance as building blocks of the hip-hop and rap movement, will instantly find this novel a compelling read.

The Last Poets were self-proclaimed prophets of "hope and change." The band was formed in 1968 against an incendiary backdrop of the black power movement and murders of Martin Luther King, Kennedy and Malcolm X. Today their socio-political lyrics have a renewed sense of urgency, rallying loud and clear against the fear-based politics of the Trump era.

Christine Otten spent three months travelling across the United States interviewing members of the Last Poets, their families, friends, and musicians. She describes their impoverished childhoods, their love lives, successes and failures in this beautifully written, sensuously swinging, biopic-style novel.

A New York Times Staff Favorite and one of The Globe's 100 Favourite Books

“Brutally and uncompromisingly honest, Sisonke’s beautifully crafted storytelling enriches the already extraordinary pool of young African women writers of our time.” —Graça Machel, widow of former South African president Nelson Mandela

Born in exile, in Zambia, to a guerrilla father and a working mother, Sisonke Msimang is constantly on the move. Her parents, talented and highly educated, travel from Zambia to Kenya and Canada and beyond with their young family.

Always the outsider, and against a backdrop of racism and xenophobia, Sisonke develops her keenly perceptive view of the world. In this sparkling account of a young girl’s path to womanhood, Sisonke interweaves her personal story with her political awakening in America and Africa, her euphoria at returning to the new South Africa, and her disillusionment with the new elites. Confidential and reflective, Always Another Country is a search for belonging and identity: a warm and intimate story that will move many readers.

"Cool, sparse, and delicious, Esther Gerritsen’s Craving hits all the right notes. This is an author who is unafraid of both complex characters and complex emotion (Thank God!)." —Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones

"Funny, angry, feminist...Droll and horrific and incredibly moving"—The New York Times Book Review

Elisabeth is dying. Coco jumps at this chance to prove her love, and promptly moves in with her deteriorating mother. A venture that quickly sends both parties spiraling out of control. Alongside a supporting cast of ex-bosses, ex-husbands, and (soon to be ex) boyfriends, the two women attempt to work through the annals of their dark yet often wildly humorous relationship.

Psychologically astute and eye-poppingly candid, this is a tale about both excess and denial in which some things perhaps would have been better left unspoken. Sometimes the only person who understands you in this world is your hairdresser… Gerritsen’s sparse and lucid prose chimes with the absurdist logic and melancholy wit of characters as true as they are ridiculous.