K Chess’s debut novel, Famous Men Who Never Lived, is not only a worthy successor but a much-needed innovator in the tradition of allegorical science fiction.
Read MoreReview: FAMOUS MEN WHO NEVER LIVED by K Chess
Review: THE MAGIC MY BODY BECOMES: Poems by Jess Rizkallah
Poet Jess Rizkallah pulls us in to witness the becoming, participating in an alchemy of language, stories, memory, and family history crafted from her perspective as an Arab-American woman.
Read MoreReview: ALL WE SHALL KNOW by Donal Ryan
Irish writers have had a disproportionately large impact on anglophone literature for centuries, and Donal Ryan continues that tradition with All We Shall Know, a deeply-rooted yet unmistakably modern narrative.
Read MoreReview: THE LITTLE BUDDHIST MONK & THE PROOF by César Aira
This new book by New Directions places side-by-side two separate and very different little novels by acclaimed (but still relatively obscure) Argentine surrealist author César Aira. This packaging decision was artistic as much as logistical, I think: there are, as the blurb points out, definite thematic continuities between The Little Buddhist Monk and The Proof, including corporate influence on culture, misogyny in various forms, and the interplay between the two.
Read MoreThoughts on IRON MOON, an anthology of Chinese migrant worker poetry
Iron Moon should be required reading for anyone interested in poetry written from beyond safe or elite literary spaces, from places “closed off because the owners of these mines and factories have every incentive to conceal the conditions their workers deal with day and night,” as Goodman writes in her afterword.
Read MoreReview: TEMPORARY PEOPLE by Deepak Unnikrishnan
This book shines a blinding, unapologetic spotlight on the UAE’s foreign national workforce, illuminating the realities and unrealities of an existence in flux.
Read MoreReview: Can Xue's FRONTIER
To crack open Can Xue’s Frontier is to enter a world governed by dream logic.
Read MoreReview: Dimitris Lyacos's Z213:EXIT, a world gone mad
"Two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, two arms, two legs. The symmetry of the machine that pursues you.”
Read More'He was not made of skin': An interview with Caitlin Scarano
"I just aimed for ambiguity and viscerality, which made room for darkness, as it often does."
Read More'Schools aren't quite as innocent as they appear': An interview with Claire Hopple
"Kids can be harsh to each other."
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