Displays

Afghanistan

A young woman sits at her husband's bedside, twisting her worry beads, reciting prayers. Shot in the neck by a fellow soldier, he is in a coma. The passage of time is measured by the sound of his breathing, the slow drip that keeps him alive and the calls to prayer in the streets outside.

Consumed by her vigil and his medical care, the woman is alone and desperate for any sign of life from her comatose husband. As her mind appears to unravel, so it becomes intensely clear-sighted. Now is her chance -- her first ever -- to speak without being censored. Empowered by her husband's silence, she steps out of the shadows and begins her confessional....

Albania

It is the fifteenth century and war looms. The people of Albania have refused to negotiate with the Ottoman Empire and they know their fate is sealed. As they take refuge in a fortress in the mountains, the army arrives and prepares to lay siege to the Christian citadel.

Algeria

In 1936, a young dreamer named Edmond Charlot opened a modest bookshop in Algiers. Once the heart of Algerian cultural life, where Camus launched his first book and the Free French printed propaganda during the war, Charlot's beloved bookshop has been closed for decades, living on as a government lending library. Now it is to be shuttered forever. But as a young man named Ryad empties it of its books, he begins to understand that a bookshop can be much more than just a shop that sells books.

Andorra

As the 18th century ends and the 19th century begins, changes abound all over Europe. Absolute monarchy is coming to an end, England and Spain struggle for supremacy in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and France is in conflict with all its neighbours. Meanwhile, on the other side of the ocean, a new power is starting to emerge: the United States of America .In the midst of all these changes, Alfred Gordon, a civil servant employed by the British secret service, makes a discovery that will totally revolutionise global espionage. He realises that the nobility, the traditional spies, are in decline.

Angola

On the eve of Angolan independence, Ludo bricks herself into her apartment, where she will remain for the next thirty years. She lives off vegetables and pigeons, burns her furniture and books to stay alive and keeps herself busy by writing her story on the walls of her home.

The outside world slowly seeps into Ludo’s life through snippets on the radio, voices from next door, glimpses of a man fleeing his pursuers and a note attached to a bird’s foot. Until one day she meets Sabalu, a young boy from the street who climbs up to her terrace.

Antigua and Barbuda

'If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see...' So begins Jamaica Kincaid s powerful portrait of the damaged paradise that was her childhood home. The island of Antigua is a magical place of breathtaking beauty, with cloudless skies, dazzling blue waters, and majestic sunsets. But it is also a place of dramatic contrasts. What one doesn't see while visiting this ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies is the sweeping corruption, the dilapidated schools and hospitals and homes, and the shameful legacy of its colonial past.

Argentina

Welcome to Buenos Aires, a place of nightmares and twisted imaginings, where missing children come back from the dead and unearthed bones carry terrible curses.

Thrumming with murderous intentions, family betrayals and morbid desires, these stories shine a light on a violent city gripped by urban madness; giving voice to the lost, the oppressed and the forgotten. Lucid and darkly poetic, unsettling and otherworldly, these tales of revenge, witchcraft and fetishes are a masterpiece of contemporary Gothic and a bewitching exploration of the dark inclinations that threaten to lead us over the edge.

Armenia

In the tiny village of Maran nestled high in the Armenian mountains, a place where dreams, curses and miracles are taken very seriously, a close-knit community bickers, gossips and laughs, untouched by the passage of time. A lifelong resident, Anatolia is happily set in her ways. Until, that is, she wakes up one day utterly convinced that she is dying. She lies down on her bed and prepares to meet her maker, but just when she thinks everything is ready, she is interrupted by a surprise visit from a neighbour with an unexpected proposal. So begins a tale of unforeseen twists and unlikely romance that will turn Maran on its head and breathe a new lease of life into a forgotten village.

Australia

Knowing that he will soon die, Albert “Poppy” Gondiwindi has one final task he must fulfill. A member of the indigenous Wiradjuri tribe, he has spent his adult life in Prosperous House and the town of Massacre Plains, a small enclave on the banks of the Murrumby River. Before he takes his last breath, Poppy is determined to pass on the language of his people, the traditions of his ancestors, and everything that was ever remembered by those who came before him. The land itself aids him; he finds the words on the wind.

Austria

Who would have thought that the great military hero Captain Hofmiller - that living monument to his own courage - would have anything burdening his soul? But when he reveals his story, it is not one of bravery but tragedy: a simple blunder at a dance from which disaster grows, ruining lives with his weak, foolish pity...

Azerbaijan

Ali Khan and Nino Kipiani live in the cosmopolitan, oil-rich capital of Azerbaijan which, at the beginning of the twentieth century, is a melting-pot of different cultures. Ali is a Muslim, with his ancestors' passion for the desert, and Nino is a Christian Georgian girl with sophisticated European ways. Despite their differences, the two have loved each other since childhood and Ali is determined that he will marry Nino as soon as she leaves school. But there is not only the obstacle of their different religions and parental consent to overcome. The First World War breaks out. As the Russians withdraw, the Turks advance, and Ali and Nino find themselves swept up in Azerbaijan's fight for independence.

Bahamas

This coming-of-age novel, by the Bahamanian writer, traces the lives of Tree Bodies and his three brothers as they grow up in the streets of Pompey Village, an area of extreme poverty hidden from the tourists who populate the luxury hotels. Creole conversation lends a distinct flavour.

Bahrain

Guy Kelton is a young man with a troubled mind. His shattered dream and the relentless mundane life he's been living, alone and broken away from his family, takes an unexpected toll on him, driving him to violent, reckless extremes. He falls deeper and deeper into a bloody abyss; through extremes that would eventually lead him to the most devastating discovery about his existence. Going through his mid-twenties, Patrick Roymint, lost and confused, still struggles to come to terms with the loss of his whole family many years ago. But soon as he decides to change all that and try to rebuild the future he's not had, he is dragged into the unseen, disturbing and filthy underworld of the little, diminishing Okay County. As both men go through a series of mysterious and bizarre events, their lives take dramatic turns that lead them to new revelations about their past, present and future. They somehow find their fates connected by some mystic, unfathomable power. QuixotiQ is a story about hate, love, dark secrets and self-realization, one in which hope and despair are found in the remains of shattered dreams.

Bangladesh

The animosity and bloodletting between Muslim and Hindu extremists on the Indian subcontinent is centuries old. When the Barbri Mosque at Ayodhya, India, was destroyed by Hindu fundamentalists on December 6, 1992, fierce mob reprisals took place against the Hindu minority in Muslim Bangladesh. These incidents form the backdrop for Dr. Taslima Nasrin's explosive and courageous book, Shame, describing the nightmarish fate of one family within her country's small Hindu community.

Barbados

Paama's husband is a fool and a glutton. Bad enough that he followed her to her parents' home in the village of Makendha, but now he's disgraced himself by murdering livestock and stealing corn. When Paama leaves him for good, she attracts the attention of the undying ones - the djombi - who present her with a gift: the Chaos Stick, which allows her to manipulate the subtle forces of the world. Unfortunately, not all the djombi are happy about this gift. The Indigo Lord believes this power should be his and his alone, and he will do anything to get it back. Chaos is about to reign supreme . . .

Belarus

The masterful English debut of Alhierd Bacharevic, a new voice from BelarusAlicia and her brother Avi are imprisoned in a camp on the edge of a forest where children are trained to forget their language through therapy, coercion, drugs, and larynx surgery. The Leid (or Belarusian language) is considered a sickness to be cured and replaced by the only pure form of language, the Lingo (Russian). A contemporary Hansel and Gretel adventure, the children escape into the forest and end up in even greater danger.

Belgium

En 1990, au Japon, Amélie est engagée comme interprète chez Yumimoto, une entreprise d'import-export. Elle pense que son rêve de vivre comme une Japonaise va pouvoir se réaliser. Mais, très vite, elle sent bien que la réalité du système Yumimoto obéit à d'autres lois que celles de son désir. Stupeur et Tremblements est le récit rétrospectif d'une expérience d'aliénation vécue par Amélie Nothomb au sein d'une entreprise japonaise.

Belize

Seven short stories vividly depicting different facets of Belize s reality. From the country s rural areas to New York City, we accompany Belizean women and men as they go through the joys and hardships of life. Zoila Ellis demonstrates a refined ability to perceive and reproduce situations and characters, heightening the emotional impact of everyday events and rendering them into fine literature.

Benin

Kingdom of Benin Short Stories use delightful characters to explore aspects of life in the kingdom of Benin in its hay days.

Bhutan

The first English-language novel ever written by a woman from the Himalayan nation of Bhutan, The Circle of Karma has engaged and absorbed readers from around the world since its 2005 publication. Written originally in English, it tells the story of Tsomo, a fifteen-year-old girl caught up in the everyday realities of household life and work. But when her mother dies, Tsomo suddenly feels called to travel and sets off toward a faraway village to light ritual butter lamps in her mother's memory. Her travels take her to distant places, across Bhutan and into India, evolving into a major life journey. As she faces the world alone, Tsomo slowly begins to find herself, growing as a person and as a woman.

Bolivia

This bilingual anthology, accompanied by wonderful pictures by Kathy Leonard in black and white contains poetry that captures the magic moment of the story, features the short stories and classical texts of Giovanna. This book contains a lot of blood , but the mastery of Giovanna does not give us much notice of it. "The tone is so stark and elegant in the hands of Giovanna , blood is indeed sweet". Edmundo Paz Soldán

Death and the Dervish is an acclaimed novel by Bosnian writer Mesa Selimovic. It recounts the story of Sheikh Nuruddin, a dervish residing in an Islamic monastery in Sarajevo in the eighteenth century during the Ottoman Turk hegemony over the Balkans. When his brother is arrested, he must descend into the Kafkaesque world of the Turkish authorities in his search to discover what happened to him. He narrates his story in the form of an elaborate suicide note, regularly misquoting the Koran. In time, he begins to question his relations with society as a whole and, eventually, his life choices in general. Hugely successful when published in the 1960s, Death and the Dervish is an enduring classic from twentieth-century Yugoslavia.

Botswana

Emily (16), Travers (10), Angus (9), Maisie (7) and Oakley (1) lived in an idyllic 300-year-old cottage in the Cotswolds. They attended the local school, watched TV and did all the things English middle-class children do. Then, in 1995, their biologist mother seized the opportunity to study lions in Botswana and, in the space of 3 months, changed the family's lives forever. Within 24 hours of landing in Gaborone they were travelling to their new home at Maun in the Okavango Delta, one of the most beautiful wildernesses on earth. Weeks after arriving, the children had made home in an old mission house full of stray dogs and were learning to fetch fresh water, dig a toilet and which creepy crawlies could kill you and which couldn't. Their classroom was an open hut and free days were spent in a Land Rover tracking prides of lions across hundreds of miles of bush. The Lion Children is an extraordinary life-enhancing story about the joy of childhood and living in an environment as different as it can be. But above all it is about the lions, who we get to know through the eyes of the children themselves. This story will capture the public's heart and imagination. It is illustrated with the children's own drawings and photographs taken over the 5 years.

Brazil

Set in 1940s and ’50s provincial Brazil, House of the Fortunate Buddhas is perhaps most startling for it fiery, uninhibited, and highly compelling narrator. By force of her intelligence, courage, and strength of will, she achieves an unlikely liberation of both mind and body, and her sardonic, frank—some have called it pornographic—monologue is an unforgettable work of literary ventriloquism, telling the story of one woman’s journey toward fulfillment.

Brunei

A darkly humorous coming-of-age novel set in Brunei on the island of Borneo, Written in Black offers a snapshot of a few days in the life of ten-year-old Jonathan Lee, attending the funeral of his Ah Kong, or grandfather, and still reeling from the drama of his mother leaving for Australia and his brother getting kicked out of the house and joining a rock band. Annoyed at being the brunt of his father's pent-up anger, Jonathan escapes his grandfather's wake in an empty coffin and embarks on a journey through the backwaters of Brunei to bring his disowned brother back for the funeral and to learn the truth about his absent mother. On a quest that takes him across the little-known Sultanate, past gangs of glue-sniffing poklans (Brunei's teenage delinquents), cursed houses and weird shopkeepers, Jonathan discovers adventure, courage, friendship and, finally, himself.

Bulgaria

The poignant story of an elderly, impoverished violin maker, a master craftsman who refuses to trim his values for the modern age, as seen through the eyes of his young protege. A best-seller in Bulgaria, this is one of Paskow's major works.

Burkina Faso

Norbert Zongo was Burkina Faso's most respected journalist before his politically motivated murder in 1998. This novel is an eerily prophetic narrative, foretelling many of the events that preceded his death. His novel portrays a fictional West African nation named Watinbow led by President Gouama, a man of demonic energy and greed. Toppled in a coup d'etat, he must now confront the people of Watinbow, whom he has betrayed. This rare insight into the psychology of a corrupt African leader will help readers understand the nightmare of contemporary Africa.

Burundi

When Nyamuragi, an adolescent mute, attempts to ask a young woman in rural Burundi for directions to an appropriate place to relieve himself, his gestures are mistaken as premeditation for rape. To the young woman's community, his fleeing confirms his guilt, setting off a chain reaction of pursuit, mob justice, and Nyamuragi's attempts at explanation. Young Burundian novelist Roland Rugero's second novel Baho!, the first Burundian novel to ever be translated into English, explores the concepts of miscommunication and justice against the backdrop of war-torn Burundi's beautiful green hillsides.

Cabo Verde/Cape Verde

Serrano is an isolated village where a madwoman roams. But is she really mad or is she marginalized because she is wise and a woman? Could her babbling be prophecy? One day a girl falls from the sky and is found in the forest by Jeronimo. The villagers are suspicious of the newcomer, but Jeronimo falls in love with her. When she gives birth and disappears, Jeronimo takes care of the child, naming her Filipa. Years later, estranged from Jeronimo after being taken from the village in mysterious circumstances, Filipa is a successful businesswoman in the city. Her memories of growing up in Serrano and her friendship with the madwoman become increasingly vivid. When the madwoman's warnings come true and Serrano's sheltered existence is threatened by plans to build a dam, Jeronimo heads for the city himself. Will he and Filipa finally be reunited?

Cambodia

This story does not begin on a boat. Nor does it contain any wild swans or falling leaves. In a wonderland called Footscray, a girl named Alice and her Chinese-Cambodian family pursue the Australian Dream - Asian style. Armed with an ocker accent, Alice dives head-first into schooling, romance and the getting of wisdom. Her mother becomes an Aussie battler - an outworker, that is. Her father embraces the miracle of franchising and opens an electrical-appliance store. And every day her grandmother blesses Father Government for giving old people money. Unpolished Gem is a book rich in comedy, a loving and irreverent portrait of a family, its everyday struggles and bittersweet triumphs.

Cameroon

La présence du Christ en Afrique noire, l'ambiguïté de l'action missionnaire, le problème de l'universalité du message chrétien, ce sont là les questions graves auxquelles Mongo Béti s'affronte dans ce roman où la puissance de la vision et la création de figures romanesques inoubliables (tel le R.P. Drumont) sont à la mesure de l'exigence réaliste et de la verve critique. Le pauvre Christ de Bomba, ou la passion sans rédemption d'un témoin d'un dieu qui n'était pas noir.

Canada

First published in 1987, Nicole Brossard's classic novel returns to Coach House in a new edition. A seminal text in Canadian and feminist literature, Mauve Desert is a must-read for readers and writers alike. This is both a single novel and three separate novels in one. In the first, Mauve Desert, fifteen-year-old Melanie drives across the Arizona desert in a white Meteor chasing fear and desire, cutting loose from her mother and her mother's lover, Lorna, in their roadside Mauve Motel.

Central African Republic

Co-Wives, Co-Widows is the first adult work of fiction from the Central African Republic to be translated into English. This is the story of Ndongo Passy and Grekpoubou, the two widows of Lidou. Following their husband's sudden and unexplained death, they find themselves fighting tooth and nail for all that is important to them. A playful, bittersweet, story full of dry wit and local colour, set against a backdrop of political instability, corruption and the friction between the old and the new in Bangui in the Central African Republic.

Chad

Romanticised scenes from Seid's boyhood as well as stories from the golden age of empires and other timeless tales in this collection evoke positive images of Chad and Africa more generally. African readers, young and old, regardless of locality, will hear echoes of the folktales, fables and legends narrated by their grandmothers of an evening by the fire under the stars.

Chile

New Years Eve, 1975: Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, poets and leaders of a movement they call visceral realism, leave Mexico City in a borrowed white Impala. Their mission: to track down the poet Cesarea Tinajero, who disappeared into the Sonora desert, and obscurity, decades before.

China

Evening, I made my one hundred and seventy-eighth scratch on the cave wall. Despite her humble rural beginnings, Butterfly regards herself as a sophisticated young woman. So, when offered a lucrative job in the city, she jumps at the chance. But instead of being given work, she is trafficked and sold to Bright Black, a desperate man from a poor mountain village. Trapped in Bright's cave home, Butterfly struggles to repel his lustful advances, and she plans her escape... not so easily done in this isolated and remote village where she is watched day and night. Will her tenacity and free spirit survive, or will she be broken?

Colombia

Story about a group of women in a Colombian village who find their lives changed while their husbands and sons are away fighting a deadly civil war. The women of Mariquita - made widows when their men are swept away by the army or rebel forces - learn hard lessons about love and survival. Forced to grow in extraordinary ways, they challenge the tenets of male-dominated society, discover power with all its pitfalls and strive to create an entirely new social order, an all-female utopia. Their narrative is punctuated by short vignettes of the individual travails of the men and boys - left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, national army officers and civilians - caught amidst these hellish forces. For the first 18 years of his life, the author, James Canon, lived in his native Colombia and this pitch-perfect book - darkly comedic, its characters brilliantly etched - is a mighty achievement, an entirely fresh, startling perspective to Colombia's catastrophe where the longest and bloodiest civil war in this hemisphere has raged for 40 years.

Comoros

Eel is a 17-year-old girl who leaves her rock on the archipelago of Comoros to lose herself at sea. She drifts between two states of mind and between two islands 'in a hollow maze', evoking her memories so as to forget nothing and so as to delay the inevitable outcome. Confronted with the pressing immediacy of imminent death, Eel recounts the story of her whole life in one long, sustained breath, in a series of brief couplets. A story told in a single sentence, A Girl Called Eel is a memorial, a reckoning, and a powerful narrative imbued with a prevailing sense of urgency.

Congo, Democratic Republic of the

'"C'est l'arrivee," someone said. These were the first words the boy heard when the lorry on which he and the others had been travelling at last turned into the parking lodge at Bulungu, their final destination after a two-day journey from Kinshasa. The boy was impatient to find out more about this place, which might soon become his permanent home. With his little brain he had imagined that people everywhere lived like the people at his birthplace.' The idea of clashes or differences between cultures didn't make sense to the young boy who is sent by his international parents to a country village for his social education. For him, everybody, everywhere, had the same family structures, the same moral values, the same needs-the vision of different cultures was elusive if not beyond his grasp. But the impact of this new cultural environment, this formative excursion into the heart of the African darkness, will change his life-and destiny.

Congo, Republic of the

Written on the twentieth anniversary of James Baldwin's death, Letter to Jimmy is African writer Alain Mabanckou's ode to his literary hero and an effort to place Baldwin's life in context within the greater African diaspora. Beginning with a chance encounter with a beggar wandering along a Santa Monica beach--a man whose ragged clothes and unsteady gait remind the author of a character out of one of James Baldwin's novels-- Mabanckou uses his own experiences as an African living in the US as a launching pad to take readers on a fascinating tour of James Baldwin's life. As Mabanckou reads Baldwin's work, looks at pictures of him through the years, and explores Baldwin's checkered publishing history, he is always probing for answers about what it must have been like for the young Baldwin to live abroad as an African-American, to write obliquely about his own homosexuality, and to seek out mentors like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison only to publicly reject them later. As Mabanckou travels to Paris, reads about French history and engages with contemporary readers, his letters to Baldwin grow more intimate and personal. He speaks to Baldwin as a peer--a writer who paved the way for his own work, and Mabanckou seems to believe, someone who might understand his experiences as an African expatriate.

Costa Rica

Tejida con el cautivante hilo de una historia de amor - poetica y tragica a la vez - esta obra tiene por marco las luchas por preservar la riqueza ecologia del Refugio de Vida Silvestre Gandoca - Manzanillo en el litoral Atlantico de la provincia de Limon, Costa Rica. De gran acogida en el publico (sus succsivas ediciones sobrepasan ya los cuarenta mil ejemplares), aborda temas de gran vigencia como la corrupcion, la inversion extranjera, la soberania nacional y la depredacion del medio ambiente.la de realidad y ficcion, cuando fue publicada La loca de Gandoca genero un debate que llevo a la corte Suprema de Justica a pronuciarse sobre los hechos denunciados. Hoy en dia, esa area, supuestamente protegida, lucha contra los peligros de la exploracion petrolera y la amenaza de un desarrollo turistico sin regulacion suficiente.

Cote d'Ivoire

Initially a little intrigued, all babies eventually return the security guard's smile.
The security guard adores babies. Perhaps because babies do not shoplift.
Babies adore the security guard. Perhaps because he does not drag babies to the sales.

Croatia

"Baba Yaga is an old hag who lives in a house built on chicken legs and kidnaps small children. She is one of the most pervasive and powerful creatures in all mythology."

"But what does she have to do with a writer's journey to Bulgaria in 2007 on behalf of her mother?"

"Or with a trio of women who decide in their old age to spend a week together at a hotel spa?"

By the end of Dubravka Ugresic's novel, the answers are revealed. Her story is shot through with spellbinding, magic, involving a gambling triumph, sudden death on the golf course, a long-lost grandchild, an invasion of starlings, and wartime flight, the consequences of which are revealed only decades later.

Cuba

A gripping novel about the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940 In The Man Who Loved Dogs, Leonardo Padura brings a noir sensibility to one of the most fascinating and complex political narratives of the past hundred years: the assassination of Leon Trotsky by Ramón Mercader. The story revolves around Iván Cárdenas Maturell, who in his youth was the great hope of modern Cuban literature--until he dared to write a story that was deemed counterrevolutionary. When we meet him years later in Havana, Iván is a loser: a humbled and defeated man with a quiet, unremarkable life who earns his modest living as a proofreader at a veterinary magazine. One afternoon, he meets a mysterious foreigner in the company of two Russian wolfhounds. This is "the man who loved dogs," and as the pair grow closer, Iván begins to understand that his new friend is hiding a terrible secret. Moving seamlessly between Iván's life in Cuba, Ramón's early years in Spain and France, and Trotsky's long years of exile, The Man Who Loved Dogs is Padura's most ambitious and brilliantly executed novel yet. This is a story about political ideals tested and characters broken, a multilayered epic that effortlessly weaves together three different plot threads-- Trotsky in exile, Ramón in pursuit, Iván in frustrated stasis--to bring emotional truth to historical fact. A novel whose reach is matched only by its astonishing successes on the page, The Man Who Loved Dogs lays bare the human cost of abstract ideals and the insidious, corrosive effects of life under a repressive political regime.

Cyprus

A first collection of short stories by award-winning Cypriot poet and writer Nora Nadjarian. For the title story 'Ledra Street', Nadjarian created a fictional fatal accident whose absurdity mirrors the tragic lack of logic with which a street in Nicosia has been cut in half by the partition of the capital city. The story was Runner-Up in the Commonwealth Short Story Competition in 2001. The stories in Ledra Street range from evocative single lines to sardonic yet compassionate accounts of life in the world's last divided capital.

Czechia

A surreal, comic and disturbing novel about the horrors of history, the commodification of the past, and dark edges of the present.

Denmark

A psychopath is terrorizing Copenhagen. His calling card is a “chestnut man”—a handmade doll made of matchsticks and two chestnuts—which he leaves at each bloody crime scene. Examining the dolls, forensics makes a shocking discovery—a fingerprint belonging to a young girl, a government minister’s daughter who had been kidnapped and murdered a year ago. A tragic coincidence—or something more twisted? To save innocent lives, a pair of detectives must put aside their differences to piece together the Chestnut Man’s gruesome clues.

Djibouti

Djibouti, a hot, impoverished little country on the Horn of Africa, is a place of great strategic importance, for off its coast lies a crucial passage for the world's oil. In this novel by Abdourahman A. Waberi, Djibril, a young Djiboutian voluntarily exiled in Montreal, returns to his native land to prepare a report for an American economic intelligence firm. Meanwhile, a shadowy, threatening figure imprisoned in an island cell seems to know Djibril's every move. He takes dictation from his preaching cellmate known as his "Venerable Master," but as the words are put on the page, a completely different text appears--the life of Walter Benjamin, Djibril's favorite author.   Passage of Tears cleverly mixes many genres and forms of writing--spy novel, political thriller, diary (replete with childhood memories), travel notebook, legends, parables, incantations, and prayers. Djibril's reminiscences provide a sense of Djibouti's past and its people, while a satire of Muslim fundamentalism is unwittingly delivered through the other Djiboutian voice. Waberi's inventive parody is a lesson in tolerance, while his poetic observations reveal his love and concern for his homeland.

Dominica

Pharcel stayed in the hut long after Coree Greg had left it. His mind was in turmoil as it swung around the rationality of Coree Greg's caution, the boldness of Bala's call for present action and Paulinaire's ideas about programmed unity among all colored people and an organized campaign against the white government. He trusted the wisdom of Coree Greg and he wanted to follow him; but he found the stirring challenge put forward by Bala irresistible. Pharcel, a runaway slave, is heavily sought by all the political forces on the small island of Dominica-the white English colonists, the revolutionary French, and the rebellious mulattos-for his role in the slave uprisings. Torn between loyalty to his race and a strong personal desire for freedom and acceptance by the colonial powers and the rising mulatto influence, he walks a razor's edge of duplicity and ambivalence until his natural rebelliousness is pitted against the full force of colonial power. In the end, he succumbs to an irresistible and nearly fatal attraction for the wife of a French planter. But in a fit of ruthless rage, Pharcel sets the colony ablaze. Can he rescue her from the hands of his archenemy?

Dominican Republic

Plucked from her life on the streets of post-apocalyptic Santo Domingo, young maid Acilde Figueroa finds herself at the heart of a Santería prophecy: only she can travel back in time and save the ocean – and humanity – from disaster. But first she must become the man she always was – with the help of a sacred anemone. Tentacle is an electric novel with a big appetite and a brave vision, plunging headfirst into questions of climate change, technology, Yoruba ritual, queer politics, poverty, sex, colonialism and contemporary art. Bursting with punk energy and lyricism, it’s a restless, addictive trip: The Tempest meets the telenovela.

Ecuador

In an unnamed town in the Ecuadorian Andes, a small wooden icon--La Virgen Pipona (the Potbellied Virgin)--conceals the documents that define the town's social history. That history recently has been dominated by the women of the Benavides family, a conservative clan and, not coincidentally, the caretakers of the Virgin. Their rivals are the Pandos, a family led by four old men who spend their days smoking in the park across from the Virgin's cathedral and offering revisionist versions of local and national events. When a military skirmish threatens the Virgin (and the secret in her famous belly), the Benavides women must scramble to preserve their place as local matriarchs--without alerting the old Pandos to the opportunity that might enable them to finally supplant their rivals.

Egypt

Set against the backdrop of a failed political uprising in Egypt, this chilling debut evokes Orwellian dystopia, Kafkaesque surrealism, and a very real vision of life after the Arab Spring. In a surreal, but familiar, vision of modern day Egypt, a centralized authority known as 'the Gate' has risen to power in the aftermath of the 'Disgraceful Events,' a failed popular uprising. Citizens are required to obtain permission from the Gate in order to take care of even the most basic of their daily affairs, yet the Gate never opens, and the queue in front of it grows longer.

El Salvador

A boozing, sex-obsessed writer finds himself employed by the Catholic Church (an institution he loathes) to proofread a 1,100 page report on the army's massacre and torture of thousands of indigenous villagers a decade earlier, including the testimonies of the survivors. The writer's job is to tidy it up: he rants, "that was what my work was all about, cleaning up and giving a manicure to the Catholic hands that were piously getting ready to squeeze the balls of the military tiger." Mesmerized by the strange Vallejo-like poetry of the Indians' phrases ("the houses they were sad because no people were inside them"), the increasingly agitated and frightened writer is endangered twice over: by the spell the strangely beautiful heart-rending voices exert over his tenuous sanity, and by real danger--after all, the murderers are the very generals who still run this unnamed Latin American country.

Equatorial Guinea

The first novel by an Equatorial Guinean woman to be translated into English, La Bastarda is the story of the orphaned teen Okomo, who lives under the watchful eye of her grandmother and dreams of finding her father. Forbidden from seeking him out, she enlists the help of other village outcasts: her gay uncle and a gang of “mysterious” girls reveling in their so-called indecency. Drawn into their illicit trysts, Okomo finds herself falling in love with their leader and rebelling against the rigid norms of Fang culture.

Eritrea

The Nurenebi File (የኑረነቢ ማህደር) is a true story on politics and espionage directly connect with the history of Ethiopia and Eritrea. The 400 page book contains the untold story of the Horn of Africa in general. The 1st edition is published in Amharic but it is also planned to be released in English, Tigrinia and Arabic.

Estonia

The first part in an epic historical trilogy - The Estonian answer to Wolf Hall - by the nation's greatest modern writer Jaan Kross's trilogy dramatises the life of the renowned Livonian Chronicler Balthasar Russow, whose greatest work described the effects of the Livonian War on the peasantry of what is now Estonia. Like Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell, Russow is a diamond in the rough, a thoroughly modern man in an Early Modern world, rising from humble origins to greatness through wit and learning alone.

Eswatini

Weeding the Flowerbeds is a memoir of boarding school at Manzini Nazarene High School in Swaziland, a country in Southern Africa. In this book Sarah explores life in the boarding school at Manzini Nazarene High School, a school that produced many graduates. She explores life in an educational institution where growing up is takes place under strict hostel rules in the seventies. As young Swazi girls Bulelo, Sisile and Makhosi grow up learning about life and Christianity. They learn to love school and also to appreciate writing and literature. All the time they feel as if they are being pushed in a certain direction and it is one of the teachers Mr. Fields and others who come to the school and make them understand the importance of choosing to be free in ones spirit. With all that education they leave the school and go and live their lives.

Ethiopia

The unforgettable story of twin brothers born in Ethiopia of the secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a British doctor, and the choices each of them must face as they grow to manhood.

Fiji

Entwined through the author's reportage of the 1987 coups is an evocative picture of life in the islands. Thus, Kava in the Blood is also an intriguing story of hurricanes, haunted houses and copious kava consumption, set within the dramatic landscapes and vibrant cultures of the Fiji Islands.

Finland

A shocking murder in an affluent Helsinki suburb has ties to witchcraft and the occult in this thrilling U.S. debut from Finnish author Max Seeck. A bestselling author's wife has been found dead in a gorgeous black evening gown, sitting at the head of an empty dining table. Her most chilling feature--her face is frozen in a ghastly smile. At first it seems as though a deranged psychopath is reenacting the gruesome murders from the Witch Hunt trilogy, bestsellers written by the victim's husband. But investigator Jessica Niemi soon realizes she's not looking for a single killer but rather for dozens of believers in a sinister form of witchcraft who know her every move and are always one step ahead.

France

Alfa and Mademba are two of the many Senegalese soldiers fighting in the Great War. Together they climb dutifully out of their trenches to attack France's German enemies whenever the whistle blows, until Mademba is wounded, and dies in a shell hole with his belly torn open. Without his more-than-brother, Alfa is alone and lost amidst the savagery of the conflict. He devotes himself to the war, to violence and death, but soon begins to frighten even his own comrades in arms. How far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend? At Night All Blood is Black is a hypnotic, heartbreaking rendering of a mind hurtling towards madness.

Gabon

Gabon's first female novelist, Angèle Rawiri probed deeper into the issues that writers a generation before her Mariama Bâ and Aminata Sow Falle had begun to address. Translated by Sara Hanaburgh, this third novel of the three Rawiri published is considered the richest of her fictional prose. It offers a gripping account of a modern woman, Emilienne, who questions traditional values and seeks emancipation from them. Emilienne's active search for feminism on her own terms is tangled up with cultural expectations and taboos of motherhood, marriage, polygamy, divorce, and passion. She completes her university studies in Paris; marries a man from another ethnic group; becomes a leader in women?s liberation; enjoys professional success, even earning more than her husband; and eventually takes a female lover. Yet still she remains unsatisfied.

Gambia

Ayodele has just turned eighteen and has decided, having now reached womanhood, that the time is right to lose her virginity. She's drawn up a shortlist: Reuben, the fail safe; a long-admired school friend; abd Frederick Adams, the 42-year-old, soon-to-be-pot-bellied father of her best friend. What she doesn't know is that her choice of suitor will have a drastic effect on the rest of her life.

Georgia

At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian Empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste ... Stasia learns it from her Georgian father and takes it north, following her new husband, Simon, to his posting at the centre of the Russian Revolution in St Petersburg. Stasia's is only the first in a symphony of grand but all too often doomed romances that swirl from sweet to sour in this epic tale of the red century.

Germany

Twelve-year-old Meggie learns that her father, who repairs and binds books for a living, can "read" fictional characters to life when one of those characters abducts them and tries to force him into service.

Ghana

The central story in this book tells of an upright man resisting the temptations of easy bribes and easy satisfactions and winning for his honesty nothing but scorn.

Greece

Bombs fall over a Greek village during World War II, and a teacher takes her students to a cave for shelter. There she tells them about another war when the Greeks besieged Troy. Day after day, she recounts how the Greeks suffer from thirst, heat, and homesickness, and how the opponents meet army against army, man against man. Helmets are cleaved, heads fly, blood flows. And everything had begun when Prince Paris of Troy fell in love with king of Sparta Menelaus's wife, the beautiful Helen, and escaped with her to his homeland. Now Helen stands atop the city walls to witness the horrors set in motion by her flight. When her current and former loves face each other in battle, she knows that, whatever happens, she will be losing. Theodor Kallifatides provides remarkable psychological insight in his version of The Iliad, downplaying the role of the gods and delving into the mindsets of its mortal heroes. Homer's epic comes to life with a renewed urgency that allows us to experience events as though firsthand, and reveals timeless truths about the senselessness of war and what it means to be human.

Grenada

From the 1930s through the dawning of a new century, these tender and moving stories underscore living life with style and hidden steel despite one’s circumstances and warn against disregarding the past struggles of others. Doux Thibaut negotiates a hard life on the Caribbean island of Paz, confronting the shame of poverty and illegitimacy, the hazards of sectarianism on an island segregated into Catholics and Protestants, and the injustices of racism and classism. As an old lady moving between the homes of her children in Boston and New York, Doux wonders whether they and her grandchildren really appreciate what her engagement with life has taught her. In The Ladies Are Upstairs, Merle Collins has created a mosaic novel from these stories of a Caribbean woman’s life, demanding that such lives not be forgotten.

Guatemala

The nomadic odyssey of Eduardo Halfon begins as he searches for information about his Polish grandfather's imprisonment at Auschwitz New York Times Editors' Choice * International Latino Book Award Finalist The Polish Boxer covers a vast landscape of human experience while enfolding a search for origins: a grandson tries to make sense of his Polish grandfather's past and the story behind his numbered tattoo; a Serbian classical pianist longs for his forbidden heritage; a Mayan poet is torn between his studies and filial obligations; a striking young Israeli woman seeks answers in Central America; a university professor yearns for knowledge that he can't find in books and discovers something unexpected at a Mark Twain conference. Drawn to what lies beyond the range of reason, they all reach for the beautiful and fleeting, whether through humor, music, poetry, or unspoken words. Across his encounters with each of them, the narrator--a Guatemalan literature professor and writer named Eduardo Halfon--pursues his most enigmatic subject: himself. Mapping the geography of identity in a world scarred by a legacy of violence and exile, The Polish Boxer marks the debut of a major new Latin American voice in English.

Guinea

"The Guardian of the Word" by Camara Laye is a novel that explores the legendary life of Sundiata, a thirteenth-century leader in Africa. The narrative is based on oral traditions conveyed by Babu Conde, a griot, who serves as the story's voice and custodian of history.

Guinea Bissau

The Ultimate Tragedy is a tale of love and emerging political awareness in an Africa beginning to challenge Portuguese colonial rule.ee¨Ndani leaves her village to seek a better life in the capital, finding work as a maid for a Portuguese family. The mistress of the house, Dona Deolinda, embarks on a mission to save Ndani's soul through religious teaching, but the master of the house has less righteous intentions. Ndani is expelled from the house and drifts towards home, where she becomes the wife of a village chief. He has built a mansion and a school to flaunt his power to the local Portuguese administrator, but he abandons Ndani when he finds she's not a virgin. She eventually finds love with the school's teacher, but in tumultuous times, making a future with an educated black man involves a series of hurdles.ee¨By turns humorous, heartrending and wise,

Guyana

Told in the voice of a girl as she moves from childhood into adolescence, Buxton Spice is the story the town of Tamarind its eccentric families, its sweeping joys, and its sudden tragedies. The novel brings to life 1970s Guyana-a world at a cultural and political crossroads-and perfectly captures a child's keen observations, sense of wonder, and the growing complexity of consciousness that marks the passage from innocence to experience.

Haiti

The Farming of Bones begins in 1937 in a village on the Dominican side of the river that separates the country from Haiti. Amabelle Desir, Haitian-born and a faithful maidservant to the Dominican family that took her in when she was orphaned, and her lover Sebastien, an itinerant sugarcane cutter, decide they will marry and return to Haiti at the end of the cane season. However, hostilities toward Haitian laborers find a vitriolic spokesman in the ultra-nationalist Generalissimo Trujillo who calls for an ethnic cleansing of his Spanish-speaking country. As rumors of Haitian persecution become fact, as anxiety turns to terror, Amabelle and Sebastien's dreams are leveled to the most basic human desire: to endure. Based on a little-known historical event, this extraordinarily moving novel memorializes the forgotten victims of nationalist madness and the deeply felt passion and grief of its survivors.

Honduras

An anthology of short stories set around Honduras when he first came here in 1972-73. There’s a lucidness about the stories, with tales of tragedy and sadness when Honduras was in a lot saner state, but are littered with characters with incurable illnesses.

Hungary

Tóth's collection is an excellent and accessible new addition to the growing number of Hungarian texts translated into English. - LA Review of Books Krisztina Tóth's first substantial work in prose after four volumes of remarkable verse, consists of fifteen beautifully written and highly sensual short stories. Most are narrated with poetic intensity and intimacy from a young, unnamed female narrator's point of view. Whether about childhood acquaintances, school camps and trips, or love and deceit in love, they are all are set against the backdrop of Hungary's socialist era in its declining years. The stories are carefully strung, like jewels in a necklace, along metaphorical 'lines', as in the title of the collection and the subtitle of the pieces. The losses, disappointments, and tragedies great and small recounted here offer nuanced 'mirrorings' of the female soul and linger long in the memory.

Iceland

In the not-too-distant future, a young spy named Elísabet Eva is about to discover something that will upend her life.Elísabet likes to take long solitary walks near the lake. One day, she sees two creatures emerging from the water, half-human, half-swan. She follows them through tangles of thickets into a strange new reality.Pulled into the monomaniacal, and often violent, quest of the swanfolk, Elísabet finds her own mind increasingly untrustworthy. Soon, she is forced to reckon with the consequences of her involvement with these unusual beings, and a past life she has been trying to evade.

India

All of Kali and Ponna’s efforts to conceive a child—from prayers to penance, potions to pilgrimages—have been in vain. Despite being in a loving and sexually satisfying relationship, they are relentlessly hounded by the taunts and insinuations of the people around them. Ultimately, all their hopes and apprehensions come to converge on the chariot festival in the temple of the half-female god Ardhanareeswara and the revelry surrounding it. Everything hinges on the one night when rules are relaxed and consensual union between any man and woman is sanctioned. This night could end the couple’s suffering and humiliation. But it will also put their marriage to the ultimate test. Acutely observed, One Part Woman lays bare with unsparing clarity a relationship caught between the dictates of social convention and the tug of personal anxieties, vividly conjuring an intimate and unsettling portrait of marriage, love and sex.

Indonesia

An eerie, alienating, yet comic and profoundly sympathetic short story collection about Americans in America by one of Indonesia's most prominent writers, now in an English translation for its fortieth anniversary, with a foreword by Intan Paramaditha

Iran

She was known as "Bait 455," the most famous prisoner in a ruthless theological republic. He was one of the colonels closest to the supreme commander. When they meet, years later, far from their country of birth, a strange, equivocal relationship develops between them. Both their shared past of suffering and old romantic passions come rushing back--accompanied by recollections of the perverse logic of violence that dominated the dictatorship under which they lived. French Iranian author Fariba Hachtroudi's prize-winning, "tightly plotted" novel "packs complex emotions in a small space, tackling difficult and essential questions about power and our responsibilities to one another"

Iraq

First (authorized) publication (in any language) of awildly popular, anonymously written serial novel that started life as a blogduring the US invasion of Iraq Populated by acast of imagined con artists, holy fools, drag queens, and partisans--as well assome very factual politicians, priests, and generals--this novel started life asa pseudonymous blog written "live" by "Shalash" during and after the SecondIraq War. Never written to be published, all but lost save for disintegratingprintouts treasured by its devotees, Shalashthe Iraqi is here presented in its first authorized translation, with theblessing and commentary of "Shalash" himself. The second U.S. invasion of Iraq began in the spring of 2003. By theautumn of 2005, though the Saddam Hussein regime had reached its bloody end,ordinary Iraqis were seeing little improvement in their daily lives. Theircountry was "free," but to many it seemed free mainly to become a mire ofsectarian violence, corruption, confusion, and fear. In the midst of thisturmoil, a hero arose--or, rather, a jester. In a country where electricity wasonly intermittently available, a series of blog posts began to appear at asoon-to-be-defunct website and took Baghdad by storm. Individual entries wereprinted out and passed around for months, until the pages were nearly shredded.Where neither computers nor printers were available, the posts were retold aloud, then passed along at second- and third-hand. What could inspire suchdevotion? Signed "Shalash the Iraqi," the posts proved to be nothing less than portions of a madcap serial novel thumbing its nose at Iraq's new normal.

Ireland

A wonderfully written fantasy set in the west of Ireland, which tells of the coming of the Great Queen who is bent on bringing destruction to the world. Only Pidge and Brigit can stop her, and their task seems impossible as they're constantly trailed by the queen's hounds. But they're aided in their quest by a host of willing helpers - a glorious array of unforgettable characters.

Israel

Ten years after she was seriously injured in a terrorist attack, the pain comes back to torment Iris. But that is not all: Eitan, the love of her youth, also comes back into her life. Though their relationship ended many years ago, she was more deeply wounded when he left her than by the suicide bomber who blew himself up next to her.

Italy

One after the other, half a dozen monks are found murdered in the most bizarre of ways. A learned Franciscan who is sent to solve the mysteries finds himself involved in the frightening events.

Jamaica

From the author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf and the WINNER of the 2015 Man Booker Prize for A Brief History of Seven Killings "An undeniable success." -- The New York Times Book Review The Book of Night Women is a sweeping, startling novel, a true tour de force of both voice and storytelling. It is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they--and she--will come to both revere and fear. The Night Women, as they call themselves, have long been plotting a slave revolt, and as Lilith comes of age and reveals the extent of her power, they see her as the key to their plans. But when she begins to understand her own feelings and desires and identity, Lilith starts to push at the edges of what is imaginable for the life of a slave woman in Jamaica, and risks becoming the conspiracy's weak link. Lilith's story overflows with high drama and heartbreak, and life on the plantation is rife with dangerous secrets, unspoken jealousies, inhuman violence, and very human emotion--between slave and master, between slave and overseer, and among the slaves themselves. Lilith finds herself at the heart of it all. And all of it told in one of the boldest literary voices to grace the page recently--and the secret of that voice is one of the book's most intriguing mysteries.

Japan

Challenging every preconception about storytelling and prose style, mixing wry humor and riveting emotional depth, Kawakami is today one of Japan's most important and best-selling writers. She exploded onto the cultural scene first as a musician, then as a poet and popular blogger, and is now an award-winning novelist. Breasts and Eggs paints a portrait of contemporary womanhood in Japan and recounts the intimate journeys of three women as they confront oppressive mores and their own uncertainties on the road to finding peace and futures they can truly call their own.

Jordan

Set in an unnamed Persian Gulf kingdom in the 1930s, this remarkable novel tells the story of the disruption and diaspora of a poor oasis community following the discovery of oil there. The meeting of the Arabs and the Americans who, in essence, colonize the remote region is a cultural confrontation in which religion, history, superstition, and mutual incomprehension all play a part.

Kazakhstan

Winner of an English PEN Translates Award. 'Baqytgul Sarmekova offers wry, darkly humorous portraits of ordinary Kazakh people held in the snare of patriarchy, cultural tradition, and postsocialist upheaval... Mirgul Kali deftly recreates the atmosphere of these everyday tensions as they quietly seethe just below the surface.' --PEN/Heim judges' citation. Vivid, hilarious and unsettling, the tragicomic characters of To Hell With Poets reflect the inner discord of the modern Kazakh. The stories move between the city and the aul, postsocialist and capitalist worlds, tradition and modernity. Incisive and unapologetic, Sarmekova refuses to hold back, offering a sharp and honest rendering of daily life in Kazakhstan.

Kenya

What does it feel like to move through a world designed to limit and exclude you? What are the joys and pains of holidays for people of colour, when guidebooks are never written with them in mind? How are black lives today impacted by the othering legacy of colonial cultures and policies? What can travel tell us about our sense of self, of home, of belonging and identity? Why has the world order become hostile to human mobility, as old as humanity itself, when more people are on the move than ever?Nanjala Nyabola is constantly exploring the world, working with migrants and confronting complex realities challenging common assumptions - both hers and others'. From Nepal to Botswana, Sicily to Haiti, New York to Nairobi, her sharp, humane essays ask tough questions and offer surprising, deeply shocking and sometimes funny answers. It is time we saw the world through her eyes.

Kiribati

A collection of the author's poetry, prose, drawings and paintings, containing reflections on a dark period in his personal life, and on crime and politics in his homeland of Kiribati

Kosovo

It is April 1995. Kosovo is a country on the cusp of a dreadful war. Arsim in twenty-two, newly married, cautious - an Albanian trying to keep his head down and finish his studies in an atmosphere of creeping threat. Until he encounters Milos, a Serb, and begins a life in secret.

Kurdistan

The style of my book must be in small pieces, as my life has been in pieces. (Jalal Barzanji) From 1986 to 1988 poet and journalist Jalal Barzanji endured imprisonment and torture under Saddam Hussein's regime because of his literary and journalistic achievements-writing that openly explores themes of peace, democracy, and freedom. It was not until 1998, when he and his family took refuge in Canada, that he was able to consider speaking out fully on these topics. Still, due to economic necessity, Barzanji's dream of writing had to wait until he was named Edmonton's first Writer-in-Exile in 2007. This literary memoir is the project Barzanji worked on while Writer-in-Exile, and it is the first translation of his work from Kurdish into English. Foreword by John Ralston Saul.

Kuwait

From the author of The Bamboo Stalk and winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction comes an apocalyptic and caustically funny novel about the power of friendship in a war-torn world.

Growing up together in the Surra section of central Kuwait, Katkout, Fahd, and Sadiq share neither ethnic origin nor religious denomination—only friendship and a rage against the unconscionable sectarian divide turning their lives into war-zone rubble. To lay bare the ugly truths, they form the protest group Fuada’s Kids. Their righteous transgressions have made them targets of both Sunni and Shi’a extremists. They’ve also elicited the concern of Fahd’s grandmother, Mama Hissa, a story-spinning font of piety, wisdom, superstition, and dire warnings, who cautions them that should they anger God, the sky will surely fall.

Kyrgyzstan

The Second World War is raging, and Jamilia's husband is off fighting at the front. Accompanied by Daniyar, a sullen newcomer who was wounded on the battlefield, Jamilia spends her days hauling sacks of grain from the threshing floor to the train station in their village in the Caucasus. Spurning men's advances and wincing at the dispassionate letters she receives from her husband, Jamilia falls helplessly in love with the mysterious Daniyar in this heartbreakingly beautiful tale. A classic from the award-winning Kyrgyz novelist Chingiz Aitmatov.

Laos

Outhine Bounyavong is one of the most prominent contemporary writers in Laos. His stories are animated with Laotian virtues of simplicity, compassion, respect for age, and other village mores; they breathe with a gentleness that is fresh and distinctive. Outhine is interested in his own memories, in how to behave with compassion, and in the chain of life among men and women that reaches into the earth. Rather than writing through an ideological lens, Outhine focuses on the passions and foibles of ordinary people. Their good luck, disappointments, and plain but poignant conversations reveal the subtle textures of Lao culture. The tragedy of war and the threat of environmental degradation are themes woven into his stories. This book presents fourteen of Outhine Bounyavong?s short stories in English translation alongside the Lao originals, marking his formal debut for an American audience. It is also the first collection of Lao short stories to be published in the English language. Peter Koret?s Introduction explores the history of modern Lao literature and considers Outhine?s writing within this broader context.

Latvia

God is said to have given humans freedom. Yet in the story of Genesis God is a punishing father-figure. Why have humans portrayed him like this? Here, a contemporary writer called Adam imagines God behaving as a good father should, seeing it is time for his children to leave home. Adam writes an account of this, and the story of his own child Sophie and his relationship with her. The scene moves from London to New York to Israel to Iran to Iraq. And might not God as well as Adam have a wife to take up the cause if things go wrong?

Lebanon

Najwa Barakat’s Oh, Salaam! tells the story of three friends—an explosives expert, a sniper, and a torturer—whose lives are transformed by their involvement in a civil war in an unnamed Arab country, and by their relationship with the novel’s anti-heroine, Salaam. Two of the friends live to see the end of the war but struggle to survive the arrival of peace and to make a life for themselves in a society that has no use for ex-paramilitaries. As the characters seek to find love, make it rich, or get out of the country alive, they use and torment each other, revealing the ultimate consequences of war and gender violence in a “city that no longer resembles itself.”

Lesotho

How we buried Puso is a novel which deals with themes characteristic of post-colonial African literature - identity, spirituality, community, and Africanness. It examines the impact of exile on the individual and the community, as well as the related problem of alienation. The themes of colonialism and dispossession are presented through Molefe's, often rather wry, observations. The manner in which the recent history of Lesotho is narrated is a graphic take on the neglect of Empire, and the understated cynicism of the narrator's tone is extremely eloquent.

Liberia

Konkai Stevens was a quiet ten-year-old when he was molested at school by an older male student. The pain of the experience devastated him emotionally and was the beginning of his confusion about his sexuality. Konkai ultimately embraced a homosexual lifestyle, and, because he took no precautions, eventually contracted HIV and died of AIDS in Boston, USA, at the age of 32. This memoir, written by his sister, is a narrative of the dynamics between Konkai and his family as they dealt with his sexual orientation and his illness while their country, Liberia, was being destroyed by a brutal civil war. Told with intimate detail, Konkai is a tragic story of searching for one s place in life, of longing for love and acceptance, and of preparing to let go."

Libya

Isan, the novel's protagonist, is either Seth himself or a latter-day avatar. A desert-wandering seer and proponent of desert life, he settles for an extended stay in a fertile oasis. If Jack Frost, the personification of the arrival of winter, were to visit a tropical rain forest, the results might be similarly disastrous. Not surprisingly, since this is a novel by Ibrahim al-Koni, infanticide, uxoricide, serial adultery, betrayal, metamorphosis, murder by a proxy animal, ordinary murder, and a life-threatening chase through the desert all figure in the plot, although the novel is also an existential reflection on the purpose of human life. Ibrahim al-Koni typically layers allusions in his works as if he were an artist adding a suggestion of depth to a painting by applying extra washes. Tuareg folklore, Egyptian mythology, Russian literature, and medieval European thought elbow each other for room on the page. One might expect a novel called The Seven Veils of Seth to be a heavy-handed allegory. Instead, the reader is left wondering. The truth is elusive, a mirage pulsing at the horizon.

Liechtenstein

Poetry. Translated from the German by Andrew Joron and Nick Hoff. A thicket, a manure pile, a marigold, gravel, a tomato, a cypress--award-winning Austrian poet Michael Donhauser engages in a "close reading" of natural things. His emphasis is not so much on observation and depiction as on tracing the movement from object to language. His approach is multilayered, bringing a dazzling variety of perspectives--scientific, philosophical, historical--to his deeply felt encounters with nonhuman phenomena.

Lithuania

The Second World War is drawing to a close, but the world is far from safe. Left to fend for themselves, women and children are forced out of their homes in East Prussia to make way for the advancing victors. As the Russian soldiers arrive, the women know that they are still very much in danger, and that for them, the fight for survival is only just beginning.

Luxembourg

Short stories and flash fiction.

Madagascar

The first novel from Madagascar ever to be translated into English, Naivo's magisterial Beyond the Rice Fields delves into the upheavals of the nation's past as it confronted Christianity and modernity, through the twin narratives of a slave and his master's daughter. Fara and her father's slave, Tsito, have been close since her father bought the boy after his forest village was destroyed. Now in Sahasoa, amongst the cattle and rice fields, everything is new for Tsito, and Fara at last has a companion. But as Tsito looks forward to the bright promise of freedom and Fara, backward to a dark, long-denied family history, a rift opens between them just as British Christian missionaries and French industrialists arrive and violence erupts across the country. Love and innocence fall away, and Tsito and Fara's world becomes enveloped by tyranny, superstition, and fear. With captivating lyricism, propulsive urgency, and two unforgettable characters at the story's core, Naivo unflinchingly delves into the brutal history of nineteenth-century Madagascar. Beyond the Rice Fields is a tour de force that has much to teach us about human bondage and the stories we tell to face--and hide from--ourselves, each other, our pasts, and our destinies.

Malawi

A book about a young journalist who ends up involved in the political events that led his country to independence from Great Britain.

Malaysia

King of The Sea (a collection of short stories) took Dina Zaman (the author of I Am Muslim) about 13 years to complete. The stories began as part of her project she was a masters student at Lancaster University in 1993, inspired by her homesickness, and her longing for the 'Terengganu air'. She explores themes of love, grief, loss and longing, and the magic in our lives. A young boy, grieving for his late father, meets a ghost who tells him that he is the king of the sea. Alia, a missing child, comes back as a chicken to bewildered parents. A daughter witnesses an affair by her unfaithful mother, but she is not sure if she was hallucinating. A young man arrives on an island, and marries a jungle spirit, a bunian. Hell breaks lose in a small village when a brash modern city woman decides to live there. A teacher who longs for a more glamorous life, literally, disappears into a movie screen.

Maldives

Translation of centuries-old Maldive tale of love, birth, death and magic. Originally written and translated
Translated from Dhivehi to English by Fareesha Abdullah and Michael O'Shea.

Mali

The African empire of Nakem is exploited by Arabs and colonialism and spiced with black magic, cannibalism and murder.

Malta

A mix of autobiographical and historical retellings, this series is one that captures the lives and times of the Maltese – both the rich and the poor – from the late Victorian era (1990) all through to 1969.

Marshall Islands

On Good Friday, 1981, Rujen Keju and his two sons come face to face with their complicated inheritance--one that includes years of atomic testing and the continued military presence of the U.S. in the Pacific. In this highly original work of history and adventure, novelist Robert Barclay weaves together characters and stories from mythological times with those of the present-day to give readers a rare and unsparing look at life in the contemporary Pacific.

Mauritania

The Desert and the Drum is the first novel ever to be translated into English from Mauritania. It won the Ahmadou-Kourouma Prize in 2016.Everything changes for Rayhana when foreigners with strange machines arrive to mine for metal near her Bedouin camp. One of them is the enigmatic Yahya. Rayhana's association with him leads to her abandoning all she knows and fleeing alone to the city. When her tribe discover she's stolen their sacred drum they pursue her to exact their revenge. Though Rayhana has her own missing person to seek.The Desert and the Drum tells of Rayhana's rift with her family, the disturbing characters she encounters in the metropolis, her attempts to separate friend from foe and to find a place for herself amidst the contradictions of contemporary Mauritania.

Mauritius

In The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah, 1944 is coming to a close and nine-year-old Raj is unaware of the war devastating the rest of the world. He lives in Mauritius, a remote island in the Indian Ocean, where survival is a daily struggle for his family. When a brutal beating lands Raj in the hospital of the prison camp where his father is a guard, he meets a mysterious boy his own age. David is a refugee, one of a group of Jewish exiles whose harrowing journey took them from Nazi occupied Europe to Palestine, where they were refused entry and sent on to indefinite detainment in Mauritius. A massive storm on the island leads to a breach of security at the camp, and David escapes, with Raj's help. After a few days spent hiding from Raj's cruel father, the two young boys flee into the forest. Danger, hunger, and malaria turn what at first seems like an adventure to Raj into an increasingly desperate mission. This unforgettable and deeply moving novel sheds light on a fascinating and unexplored corner of World War II history, and establishes Nathacha Appanah as a significant international voice.

Mexico

Simultaneously a work of collaboration between mother and child and a diary of worry and joy, Linea Nigra is an intimate exploration of childbearing from the celebrated author of On Lighthouses. Drawing from a wide range of inspirations and traditions, from Louise Bourgeois to Ursula K. Le Guin to the influential indigenous Nahua model Luz Jiménez, Barrera’s treatise is as philosophical as it is candid. It is a book that clarifies motherhood, but also celebrates the mysteries of the body—like the linea nigra, the black line, itself.

Micronesia

Luelen Bernart, who died about the end of World War II, was a member of a prominent Ponapean family in the southeastern part of the island As a youth, he attended the Protestant mission school at Ohwa (oa) and the style of the Bible permeates his own writing. Locally he was renowned for the wealth of his traditional knowledge, which he recorded, apparently for his family, including some of his grandchildren and perhaps some collateral relatives; "The Book of Luelen" appears to have been by far the fullest such manuscript completed by any Ponapean up to the time of Luelen's the author himself seems to have seen it as a comprehensive account of Ponape from its creation to the time of first European contact. Myths and legends side by side with history and botanical lore thus create a rich source of information on Ponape and how it was seen by Ponapeans. This book is one of the very rare instances of a Pacific Islander recording his own version of this island's history. It offers a unique inside view of Ponapean history that will intrigue all those interested in the Pacific and its people.

Moldova

Vladimir Lorchenkov tells the story of a group of villagers and their tragicomic efforts, against all odds and at any cost, to emigrate from Moldova, Europe's most impoverished nation, to Italy for work. In this uproarious tale, an Orthodox priest is deserted by his wife for an art-dealing atheist; a mechanic redesigns his tractor for travel by air and sea; thousands of villagers take to the road on a modern-day religious crusade to make it to the promised land of Italy; meanwhile, politicians remain politicians.

Monaco

Drawing on his unprecedented access to Grace Kelly, bestselling biographer Donald Spoto at last offers an intimate, honest, and authoritative portrait of one of Hollywood’s legendary actresses. In just seven years–from 1950 through 1956–Grace Kelly embarked on a whirlwind career that included roles in eleven movies. From the principled Amy Fowler Kane inHigh Noonto the thrill-seeking Frances Stevens ofTo Catch a Thief, Grace established herself as one of Hollywood’s most talented actresses and iconic beauties. Her astonishing career lasted until her retirement at age twenty-six, when she withdrew from stage and screen to marry a European monarch and became a modern, working princess and mother. Based on never-before-published or quoted interviews with Grace and those conducted over many years with her friends and colleagues–from costars James Stewart and Cary Grant to director Alfred Hitchcock–as well as many documents disclosed by her children for the first time, acclaimed biographer Donald Spoto explores the transformation of a convent schoolgirl to New York model, successful television actress, Oscar-winning movie star, and beloved royal. As the princess requested, Spoto waited twenty-five years after her death to write this biography. Now, with honesty and insight,High Societyreveals the truth of Grace Kelly’s personal life, the men she loved, the men she didn’t, and what lay behind the façade of her fairy-tale life.

Mongolia

A boy's nomadic life in Mongolia is under threat in a novel that "captures the mountains, valleys and steppes in all their surpassing beauty and brutality" (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). In the high Altai Mountains of northern Mongolia, a young shepherd boy comes of age, tending his family's flocks on the mountain steppes and knowing little of the world beyond the surrounding peaks. But his nomadic way of life is increasingly disrupted by modernity. This confrontation comes in stages. First, his older siblings leave the family yurt to attend a distant boarding school. Then the boy's grandmother dies, and with her his connection to the old ways. But perhaps the greatest tragedy strikes when his dog, Arsylang--"all that was left to me"--ingests poison set out by the boy's father to protect his herd from wolves. "Why is it so?" Dshurukawaa cries out in despair to the Heavenly Blue Sky, to be answered only by the wind. Rooted in the oral traditions of the Tuvan people, The Blue Sky weaves the timeless story of a boy poised on the cusp of manhood with the story of a people on the threshold. "Thrilling. . . . Tschinag makes it easy for his readers to fall into the beautiful rhythms of the Tuvans' daily life." --Los Angeles Times Book Review "In this pristine and concentrated tale of miraculous survival and anguished loss, Tschinag evokes the nurturing warmth of a family within the circular embrace of a yurt as an ancient way of life lived in harmony with nature becomes endangered." --Booklist

Montenegro

From an award-winning novelist and playwright from the Balkans comes A Lullaby for No One's Vuk--at once an intimate tale of survival and a fierce indictment of institutional neglect. A girl without a name. A boy everyone wants to claim. A system that swallows them whole. Klara and Vuk have grown up in an orphanage where the rules are clear: don't get too close, don't expect kindness, never let anyone see you break. She escapes through music. He sees the world through a camera lens. Their love is fragile and urgent, and together, they dream of something more. But dreams don't last long here. When Vuk is taken in by a wealthy artist, it seems like a way out. What follows will shatter everything Klara thought she knew--about him, about herself, about what it means to survive. A Lullaby for No One's Vuk is a dark story about the brutality of institutions, the ache of first love, betrayal, and what it means to survive in a world that would rather forget you.

Morocco

On the surface of this novel, various members of a Moroccan family recount their versions of the family' experiences under the French Protectorate and since Independence. On a deeper level, the book deals with human memory and how it forms one' experience of the world. Some critics have found the Arabic original to be similar to Proust' Remembrance of Things Past.Outstanding Moroccan novelist and critic Mohamed Berrada first published Lu'bat al-Nisyan in 1987, and it has since been translated into French and Spanish. Called the first postmodern novel in Arabic, the story is written in such a captivating style that it has become a bestseller in the Arab world.Apart from its postmodern modes of narration and metafictional structure, the novel has elements of an autobiographical nature. Hadi, his mother, brother and other characters subtly portray the lives experienced by people from various classes and different backgrounds. The narrator and the narrator' narrator take these nuances and struggle with how a story, any story, should be told. Change in Moroccan culture and in the psyche of the main protagonist is painted artfully by the encircling wealth of detail.

Mozambique

In this, a ground-breaking publication in the canon of non-Western women's literary history, Paulina Chiziani - the first woman from Mozambique ever to publish a novel - lifts the lid on her country's values and its hypocracies. After 20 years of marriage, Rami discovers that her husband has been living a double - or rather, a quintuple - life. After Tony is forced to marry the four other women - as well as an additional lover - according to polygamist custom, the rival lovers join together to declare their voices and demand their rights.

Myanmbar/Burma

Several of Nu Nu Yi's characters attend the annual Taungbyon Festival in honour of the spirits known as nats', which are central to traditional Burmese religious practice. There is Daisy Bond, a gay transvestite medium in his 50s, his young assistant named Min Min with whom he has fallen in love and a beautiful beggar girl who threatens to steal Min Min's heart. As they make their way through a week of ritual celebrations and spirit-channeling, each must face difficult choices and make difficult decisions.'

Namibia

This is the story of a woman who refuses to mourn her husband's death. The village knew she was an unhappy wife, but she is still expected to weep and speak the praises of her husband. Her story reveals the value of friendship between women, based on liking rather than traditional beliefs.

Nauru

Mary Anne Radmacher wrote, "I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world." Have you ever looked at the moon from a different angle? I don't mean looking at it upside down as you might have done as a child, through your legs or hanging from the monkey bars.I mean, have you ever looked at the moon and it looked upside down? I know the moon is round and that there really is no up or down side to a circle, but I'm talking about a quarter moon or a crescent moon. Have you ever seen a crescent moon where the crescent just doesn't seem to be in the right place? That's how it seemed to me when I lived and worked on Nauru.

Nepal

A disfigured servant girl plans to flee Nepal; a Kalimpong shopkeeper faces an impossible dilemma; a Hindu religious festival in Darjeeling brings with it a sacrifice; a Nepali-Bhutanese refugee pins her hopes on the West; a Gurkha's daughter tries to comprehend her father's complaints; two young Nepali-speaking immigrants meet in Manhattan.

Netherlands

From Simone Van Der Vlugt comes her European bestselling novel of a young woman's rise as a painter in Holland's Golden Age--perfect for readers of The Miniaturist, Tulip Fever, and Girl with a Pearl Earring. Amsterdam 1654: against the backdrop of Holland's Golden Age, a dangerous secret threatens to destroy a young widow's new life. Following the sudden death of her husband, twenty-five-year old Catrin leaves her small village and takes a job as a housekeeper to the successful Van Nulandt merchant family. Amsterdam is a city at the peak of its powers: science and art are flourishing in the Golden Age and Dutch ships bring back exotic riches from the Far East. Madam Van Nulandt passes her time taking expensive painting lessons from a local master, Rembrandt van Rigin, and when Catrin takes up a brush to finish some of her mistress's work, Rembrandt realizes the maid has genuine talent, and encourages her to continue. When a figure from her past threatens her new life, Catrin flees to the smaller city of Delft. There, her gift as a painter earns her a chance to earn a living painting pottery at a local workshop. Slowly, the workshop begins to develop a new type of pottery to rival fancy blue-on-white imported Chinese porcelain--and the graceful and coveted Delft Blue designs she creates help revolutionize the industry. But when tragedy strikes, Catrin must decide whether to defend her newfound independence, or return to the village that she'd fled.      

New Zealand

This compelling novel will resonate for people everywhere who find their livelihood threatened by "Dollarmen" -- property speculators advocating golf courses, high rises, shopping malls, and tourist attractions. In Potiki, one community's response to attacks on their ancestral values and symbols provides moving affirmation of the relationship between land and the people who live on it.

Nicaragua

"Ingenious." --Vogue   "Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand takes on nothing less than the creation myth of Western culture."  --Salman Rushdie   The winner of the prestigious 2008 Biblioteca Breve Prize--joining such renowned Latin American luminaries as Mario Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentes--acclaimed poet and novelist Gioconda Belli's Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand is a wholly creative and original re-imagining of the story of Adam and Eve and original sin. In a brilliant translation by Margaret Sayers Peyden, this remarkable new look at the Book of Genesis will appeal to readers of the novels of Isabel Allende, Anne Rice's Jesus Chronicles, and to all lovers of great imaginative literature.

Niger

Askia Mohammed is the most famous leader in the history of the Songhay Empire, which reached its apogee during his reign in 1493-1528. Songhay, approximately halfway between the present-day cities of Timbuktu in Mali and Niamey in Niger, became a political force beginning in 1463, under the leadership of Sonni Ali Ber. By the time of his death in 1492, the foundation had been laid for the development under Askia Mohammed of a complex system of administration, a well-equipped army and navy, and a network of large government-owned farms. The present rendition of the epic was narrated by the griot (or jeseré) Nouhou Malio over two evenings in Saga, a small town on the Niger River, two miles downstream from Niamey. The text is a word-for-word translation from Nouhou Malio's oral performance.

Nigeria

In this personal, eloquently-argued essay -- adapted from her much-admired TEDx talk of the same name -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, award-winning author of Americanah, offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author's exploration of what it means to be a woman now -- and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.

North Korea

Autobiography of Ri In Mo, one of the world’s longest-serving political prisoners, who was imprisoned for 34 years in South Korea in defence of his beliefs.
Ri In Mo (1917-2007) was an unconverted long-term prisoner who spent 40 years in prison and under restriction of freedom in South Korea.
During the Japanese occupation of Korea, he was arrested by South Korea while fighting as a guerilla in Jirisan in January 1952, while serving as a war correspondent of the Korean Peoples Army during the Korean War. Ri served 34 years in prison in South Korea. During his incarceration, Ri was offered his freedom in exchange for signing a form renouncing his political beliefs but repeatedly refused.

Ri was released in 1988 but South Korean authorities continued to restrict his activities. He was repatriated to North Korea in March 1993 and was reunited with his wife and daughter.

North Macedonia

Zlata and Srebra are 12-year-old twins conjoined at the head. It is 1984 and they live in Skopje, which will one day be the capital of Macedonia but is currently a part of Yugoslavia. A Spare Life tells the story of their childhood, from their only friend Roze to their neighbor Bogdan, so poor that he one day must eat his pet rabbit. Treated as freaks and outcasts--even by their own family--the twins just want to be normal girls. But after an incident that almost destroys their bond as sisters, they fly to London, determined to be surgically separated. Will this be their liberation, or only more tightly ensnare them? At once extraordinary and quotidian, A Spare Life is a chronicle of two girls who are among the first generation to come of age under democracy in Eastern Europe. Written in touching prose by an author who is also a master poet, it is a saga about families, sisterhood, immigration, and the occult influences that shape a life. Funny, poignant, dark, and sharply observed, Zlata and Srebra reveal an existence where even the simplest of actions is unlike any we've ever experienced.

Norway

A family holiday creates unexpected drama when Liv, Ellen and Håkon's elderly parents announce their decision to divorce. The Norwegian Anne Tyler makes her English debut in a beautiful, insightful and perceptive novel.

Oman

Earth Weeps, Saturn Laughs opens with the return of Khalid Bakhit, a government employee, to his hometown in Oman after a time away in the big city, and concludes with his return to the city with a new maturity born of a series of wrenching encounters with reality. Khalid's return home, sparked by his flight from a painful love affair, coincides with events that reveal the force of long-established traditions that have a stranglehold on the town: from racial prejudice, to religious bigotry, to ossified patterns of leadership. Khalid's awakening and transformation are catalyzed by his encounters with a certain "Saturnine poet" who, in the course of chasing after an elusive ode, has stumbled upon this unnamed village. For a period of time "the Saturnine" becomes Khalid's closest companion: listening to his woes, helping him see himself with new eyes, and imparting to him a wisdom from a world beyond untainted by human smallness. "As the full moon listened in, Walad Sulaymi said, 'Thirty years ago I heard my grandfather say to my father (God have mercy on them both), "If God allows a country to be chastised, He causes everyone who has left it to come back." So here you are again, and with your return, that completes the number of those who left the village and have come back. Mark my words: the chastisement will descend soon.'"

Pakistan

The U.S. literary debut of an up-and-coming Pakistani novelist and journalist. The last three months of Benazir Bhutto's life -- from her arrival back in Pakistan on October 18, 2007, to her untimely death in a shooting-cum-suicide bombing on December 27th- is told through the eyes of a young television journalist in Bina Shah's intense confessional novel A Season for Martyrs. The estranged son of a wealthy landowner from the interior region of Sindh, Ali Sikandar, is assigned by his producer to cover the arrival of Benazir Bhutto, the opposition leader who has returned home to Karachi after eight years of exile to take part in the presidential race. But Ali finds himself swept up in events larger than his individual struggle for identity and love when he joins the People's Resistance Movement, a civil group that opposes the current government of President Musharraf, the benevolent dictator turned strongman. Amidst deadly terrorist attacks, protest marches and rallies in favor of and against Bhutto, this contemporary narrative thread weaves in flashbacks that chronicle the history of Ali's own feudal family and its connection to the Bhutto family. As Shah illustrates with extraordinary depth the many contradictions of a country that still struggles to fully embrace modernity, Ali's life opens in a new direction and the young man rediscovers love, the desire to fight and the power to forgive his father.

Palau

Discover the rich history and culture of Palau in this comprehensive book that takes readers on a journey through the island nation's fascinating past and present. From the prehistoric era to the modern day, this book explores the key events and cultural practices that have shaped Palauan society over time. Learn about the early settlement and archaeological evidence of Palau's prehistoric era, the oral traditions and cultural practices of ancient Palau, and the governance and society of the pre-colonial era. Explore Palau's encounters with European powers, including Spanish colonization and German administration, and the impact of World War I and II on the islands. Learn about Palau's path to independence and its contemporary society, including its traditional culture, religion, art, and music. This book also explores the critical issues facing Palau today, including climate change, economic development, and environmental protection. Discover Palau's efforts to build resilience and sustainability in the face of these challenges, and the lessons that can be drawn from Palau's history for the world. Whether you're a history buff, a culture enthusiast, or simply interested in learning more about this fascinating island nation, this book is the perfect choice for you. It's a must-read for anyone interested in the history and culture of Palau. Order your copy today and start your journey through Palau's rich and complex history.

Palestine

In a tent at the foot of a mountain in Palestine, hundreds of years ago, our storyteller and her twin sister are born. Her newlywed parents name her Qamar (Moon), and her sister Shams (Sun). Their small caravan is journeying from the mother's city back to the father's remote ancestral village atop the mountain. This village suffers from isolation - and a curse, which her young family tries to undo. But when both parents' lives are cut short, Qamar and her sister are left orphans. And so, Qamar decides to pursue her mother's and father's dreams of discovering the world - its people, places and stories. With the red book in hand that brought her parents together, she sets out on a daring journey, on caravans and ships, across empires. Telling tales to survive, Qamar crosses deserts and seas: to Jerusalem and Gaza; Egypt, Tangier, Andalusia and Genoa; Abyssinia, India, the Maldives and Yemen. Kidnapped by bandits, sold as a slave to the House of a mad King, studying with a polymath, disguising as a man and falling in love for the first time - with a pirate: Qamar searches irrepressibly for life, in endless stories within stories. Sonia Nimr's richly imagined historical fable recalls the famous travel narratives of the 14th century Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta. But the captivating adventures of our heroine are the wondrous journeys we take when we discover we can do more than we ever dreamed possible, even in strange lands that decree we cannot.

Panama

Many people know the story of the Panama Canal, but few know that of the Panama Railroad: the first transcontinental railroad of the Americas that was built during the California Gold Rush. From 1851-55, a handful of adventurers and inventive engineers drove the enterprise to tame the unexplored jungle wilderness that would soon become the first inter-oceanic railroad, link the U.S. to Central America and change Panama forever.

Papua New Guinea

The book is a profound historical document that covers Somare's life, the journey to self-governance from Australian colonial rule, the political maneuvering involved, and the challenges of unifying over 800 different languages and ethnic groups into one nation. It provides a first-hand perspective on the transition from traditional life to a modern, independent society.

Paraguay

Latin America has seen, time and again, the rise of dictators, Supreme Leaders possessed of the dream of absolute power, who sought to impose their mad visions of Perfect Order on their own peoples. Latin American writers, in turn, have responded with fictional portraits of such figures, and no novel of this genre is as universally esteemed as Augusto Roa Bastos's I the Supreme, a book that draws on and reimagines the career of the man who was "elected" Supreme Dictator for Life in Paraguay in 1814.By turns grotesque, comic, and strangely moving, I the Supreme is a profound meditation on the uses and abuses of power--over men, over events, over language itself.

Peru

At a small gallery in Florence, a Peruvian writer happens upon a photograph of a tribal storyteller deep in the jungles of the Amazon. He is overcome with the eerie sense that he knows this man...that the storyteller is not an Indian at all but an old school friend, Saul Zuratas. As recollections of Zuratas flow through his mind, the writer begins to imagine Zuratas's transformation from a modern to a central member of the unacculturated Machiguenga tribe. Weaving the mysteries of identity, storytelling, and truth, Vargas Llosa has created a spellbinding tale of one man's journey from the modern world to our origins, abandoning one in order to find meaning in both.

Philippines

Two women, two cultures, and the fight to find a new life in America, despite the secrets of the past... Banished by her wealthy Filipino family in Manila, Amparo Guerrero travels to Oakland, California, to forge a new life.  Although her mother labels her life in exile a diminished one, Amparo believes her struggles are a small price to pay for freedom. Like Amparo, Beverly Obejas--an impoverished Filipina waitress--forsakes Manila and comes to Oakland as a mail-order bride in search of a better life. Yet even in the land of plenty, Beverly fails to find the happiness and prosperity she envisioned. As Amparo works to build the immigrant's dream, she becomes entangled in the chaos of Beverly's immigrant nightmare. Their unexpected collision forces them both to make terrible choices and confront a life-changing secret, but through it all they hold fast to family, in all its enduring and surprising transformations.

Poland

In this volume, the distinguished East German writer Christa Wolf retells the story of the fall of Troy, but from the point of view of the woman whose visionary powers earned her contempt and scorn. Written as a result of the author's Greek travels and studies, Cassandra speaks to us in a pressing monologue whose inner focal points are patriarchy and war. In the four accompanying pieces, which take the form of travel reports, journal entries, and a letter, Wolf describes the novel's genesis. Incisive and intelligent, the entire volume represents an urgent call to examine the past in order to insure a future.

Portugal

What if, one day, Europe was to crack along the length of the Pyrenees, separating the Iberian peninsula? In Saramago's lovely fable, the new island is sent spinning, like a great stone raft, towards the Azores. While the authorities panic and tourists and investors flee, three men, two women and a dog are drawn together by portents that burden them with a bemusing sense of responsibility. Travelling at first packed into a car, then into a wagon, they take to the road to explore the limits of their now finite land, adrift in a world made new by this radical shift in perspective.

Qatar

It's the early part of the nineteenth century and the Arabian Peninsula and the waters surrounding it are ablaze. Piracy in the Gulf threatens global maritime trade routes while the Wahabbi strain of Islam is conquering followers town by town across the region. Britain, eager to reinforce its presence in the Middle East and protect the East India Company's ships, has a plan: send a man-of-war from England to quash the pirates while persuading Egypt to join an international alliance with Oman and Persia to fight the Wahabbis. At the center of it all lies a priceless Indian sword, a gift from the British monarch to the Egyptian Pasha. But Erhama bin Jaber, a historical figure and one of the most notorious pirates in the Gulf, has his own agenda and his own vendettas. When the Arabian corsair and his gang attack a ship carrying the sword, Britain's complex strategy goes terribly awry. As the pirates and British officials shuttle between ports throughout the region, plans and alliances are made and unmade as quickly as a rainstorm in the desert. In a grueling trudge across Arabia, an unlikely friendship is forged between Erhama's rebellious son and a British army major. This story of high-seas piracy and political intrigue, of unexpected kinship and personal betrayal, portrays the conflicting interests and human drama of these historic events in the Arabian Peninsula.

Romania

Paints an unrivalled portrait of the vanished world of pre-1914 Hungary, as seen through the eyes of two young aristocratic Transylvanian cousins.

Russia

The year is 1930. In a small Tartar village, a woman named Zuleikha watches as her husband is murdered by communists. Zuleikha herself is sent into exile, enduring a horrendous train journey to a remote spot on the Angara River in Siberia. Conditions in the camp are tough, and many of her group do not survive the first difficult winter.

Rwanda

A prize-winning bestseller in its native France, a vivid and evocative coming-of-age tale, set against the backdrop of the Rwandan genocide and the civil war in Burundi, of a young boy's childhood innocence shattered by the brutal tides of history. In 1992, Gabriel, ten years old, lives in Burundi in a comfortable expatriate neighborhood with his French father, his Rwandan mother and his little sister, Ana. In this joyful idyll, Gabriel spends the better part of his time with his mischievous band of friends, in a tiny cul-de-sac they have turned into their kingdom. But their peaceful existence will suddenly shatter when this small African country is brutally battered by history.

Saint Kitts and Nevis

Adrian is the son of a black Caribbean woman and an Irish immigrant father, and is blessed with the pale skin and European features to allow him social mobility in the rigidly hierarchical society of twentieth-century Caribbean life. He falls in love, but is offered the opportunity to improve his social standing, and thus the rest of his life, if he can suppress his heart's desire and decide with his head. Will he choose Julia, the only woman he has ever really loved, and settle for being an overseer, or will he opt for the plantation- owner's daughter, Alice Mills, who could provide him with the social standing he has always dreamed of? The consequences of his eventual decision are weighty and far-reaching, affecting not only Adrian, but all those around him, showing the harsh realities of life in this earthly paradise. Set on the idyllic islands of St Kitts and Nevis, this gripping saga is the true story of a family of mixed race and mixed fortunes.

Saint Lucia

Neg Freedom Fighter speaks to the themes of warfare and slavery in the Caribbean during the eighteenth century and the resulting sexism. Have such experiences by the author's ancestors bequeathed a legacy of problems that current men and women have to struggle to surmount? There are echoes in the experience of African Americans and others in the diaspora who have experienced oppression. The gender-war continues. There is an urgent need to revisit the probable causes.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Set in the Caribbean between 1900 and 1960, this book of stories is an exciting, engaging, suspense-filled and revealing biography of its characters. The reader empathizes with their pains, sorrows, ignorance and suffering, but ultimately joins them in the sunshine of triumph. The Dead Man Living with Us: -Tony is almost strangled to death in his sleep and wakes to the sound of invisible footsteps leaving his room. He is worried that there is something sinister about his home. His fears multiply when his mother makes a startling revelation. When Japheth met Lucifer: -Japheth terrorised his village to the point where he is recognised as champion bully. He shows no mercy for anyone, as he thought he would never need it from anyone. But that was until the night he met Lucifer. Sattou's pain and Mr. Penniston's burden: -Sattou spent thirty years searching the world for a family truth. He never suspected that it was in that man living on the opposite bank of the river, whose life he saved when aged seventeen. Charles, his cousin, finds that truth, but is it too dangerous to be revealed to Sattou? Lord Orator and the Calypso Tent: -Lord Orator is hurt by love and seeks revenge on the culprit, a La Bassy woman. He must however get past the anger and missiles from the La Bassy patrons in the Calypso Tent. Who will win this contest of wills? Were Mama's Tears in Vain?: -As the shadows lengthened in the cemetery, 12-year-old Boysie sees no prospect other than returning to the estate to a life of ignorance, subservience and poverty. He is tormented that all his hopes and dreams will be locked forever in that grave. Or will fate be kinder to him and offer the redemption that Mama so pleaded for?

Samoa

Sia Figiel's powerful, poetic skills weave together the voices of three generations of women from two Samoan families. Their dream worlds and realities intermingle, just as the histories of each generation run through the next. At the center of the novel is the Samoan woman's tattoo, the malu , believed to be brought from Fiji by Siamese twins. The ghosts of the twins watch over the women whose lives are stained by an unfinished tattoo. The shame and grief of not completing the tattoo ceremony go hand in hand with the shame and grief of illicit love and broken promises.

San Marino

Questo libro trova un degno posto all'interno del panorama della letteratura e dell'insegnamento grazie alle parole e alle espressioni che gli donano un carattere distintivo.

Sao Tome and Principe

Seventeen stories. Nine translators. The Shepherd’s House is the result of a unique transatlantic collaboration, uniting talents from across Europe and the United States. First published in Portugal as A Casa do Pastor, this slender collection of stories by Olinda Beja draws on oral histories, ancestral memory, and the author’s pastoral childhood in Portugal’s Beira Alta region. Skillfully edited by acclaimed translator Margaret Jull Costa, these stories appear in English in book form for the first time.

Saudi Arabia

Poignant and thought-provoking, this anthology offers a representative selection of works by the best-known women writers in Saudi Arabia. The authors' stories of their patriarchal society afford rare insight into the traditional and changing roles, relationships, and expectations of modern Saudi women. The editors provide an introductory essay on Saudi culture, as well as background on each of the major themes addressed in the stories. Students, scholars, and general readers of Middle Eastern literature will find this collection both entertaining and enriching.

Senegal

Salie lives in Paris. Back home on the Senegalese island of Niodior, her football-crazy brother, Madick, counts on her to get him to France, the promised land where foreign footballers become world famous. Given his illusions, how can Salie explain to him the grim reality of life as an immigrant? The story of Salie and Madick highlights the painful situation of those who emigrate. Others who feel this pain include Nd´tare, the Marxist schoolteacher and football coach, exiled to Niodior by the government but never accepted by those born there. Then there´s Sankle, his former lover, the legendary beauty, whose only way out of an arranged marriage ends in tragedy. And poor Moussa, whose dreams look set to come true when he's scouted by a big French football club, but which fall apart when he doesn't make the team.

Serbia

In a Balkan country mending from years of conflict, Natalia, a young doctor, arrives on a mission of mercy at an orphanage by the sea. By the time she and her lifelong friend Zóra begin to inoculate the children there, she feels age-old superstitions and secrets gathering everywhere around her. Secrets her outwardly cheerful hosts have chosen not to tell her. Secrets involving the strange family digging for something in the surrounding vineyards. Secrets hidden in the landscape itself.

Seychelles

Far out in the Indian Ocean lie the lonely islands of the Seychelles and around them are scattered the sunwarmed shallows that are the breeding grounds for giant sharks of many species. To these fabulous banks came William Travis, drawn thither by the lure of adventure as offered by the life of a shark-fisherman...

Sierra Leone

This is the story of Ishmael Beah's childhood - how aged just 12, he fled from rebels attacking his village to wander a violent land, before being conscripted into the army - where he learnt that he too was capable of terrible acts. Once he emerged he decided to tell his story, a story of the loss of innocence and the power of redemption. This is the first first-hand account of how wars are now fought: by children, on drugs, with AK-47s. In more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, there are an estimated 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah was one of them.

Singapore

Fistful of Colours is a elegant, multi-layered reflection on Singapore as experienced through one day in the life of Ong Suwen, a young teacher in search of her identity as a woman and an artist. Peering into the rich history of her stepfather's family, Suwen uncovers and reveals the hopes and struggles of Singapore's first generation of immigrants and residents - from Chinese collies, Indian doctors and Malay waiters, each is given a unique and vibrant voice. Woven into this narrative are stories of Suwen's fellow artists that touch upon themes of art, identity and the pursuit of personal and artistic freedom. It is their search for answers that give this lyrical, beautifully considered and well-loved book its restive spirit. Fistful of Colours is a seminal novel in Singapore's literary canon and was the first book to receive the Singapore Literature Prize in 1992. This brand-new edition from Straits Times Press incorporates the final text revisions from the writer and features a new cover and improved layout for easier reading. This novel has been adopted as a core text by some of the top schools in Singapore. It should be read in Singapore schools because it integrates literature with history and brings Singapore History to a personal level.

Slovakia

Sometimes running away is the bravest option. Or, so believes Rosa, who ditches her husband and home and takes off on the road. Along the way, she encounters the owner of a puppet theater who’s on a mission to conquer the world with his performance of The Snow Queen. Which character from this old fairy tale will Rosa identify with? With Gerda, searching fruitlessly for her lost love? With Kai, who flees home and his beloved one day without a word? Or with the Snow Queen, who seems to stand aloof above it all? With magnetic, sparkling prose, Beňová delivers a lively mosaic that ruminates on human relationships, our greatest fears and desires.

Slovenia

Alamut is the first-ever English publication of Bartols near-forgotten masterpiece based on the life and legend of the original assassin, 11th century Ismaili leader Hasan ibn Sabbah. Revered by millions for his brilliance, and disdained by countless others for his suicide missions, Sabbah has inspired scores of writers throughout the centuries, including Rimbaud, Nerval, Borges and William Burroughs.

Solomon Islands

The stories in the collection are drawn from Maka'a's diverse personal and professional experiences as a journalist, public servant, and writer in the Pacific region. Key themes include: Social Issues, Culture and Modernity, Everyday Life

Somalia

The first novel in Farah's universally acclaimed Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship trilogy, Sweet and Sour Milk chronicles one man's search for the reasons behind his twin brother's violent death during the 1970s. The atmosphere of political tyranny and repression reduces our hero's quest to a passive and fatalistic level; his search for reasons and answers ultimately becomes a search for meaning. The often detective-story-like narrative of this novel thus moves on a primarily interior plane as "Farah takes us deep into territory he has charted and mapped and made uniquely his own" (Chinua Achebe).

South Africa

A tale about an elegant and smooth-talking city trickster who invites himself to a village in the rural hinterland of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, as some kind of modern-day Moses sent to save the downtrodden from poverty. It celebrates rural black life for its integrated communal spirit, indomitable stoicism and naive innocence.

South Korea

Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home.

South Sudan

"To Forgive is Divine Not Human" is a short, non-fiction story or essay by Julia Duany, a former South Sudanese refugee, politician, and activist. It was published online as part of the "A Year of Reading the World" project in 2012, to represent the newly independent nation of South Sudan.

Spain

An unforgettable fresco of a golden age in fourteenth-century Barcelona, Cathedral of the Sea is a thrilling historical novel of friendship and revenge, plague and hope, love and war.

Sri Lanka

On 24 Jan 1816, the captured king of Kandy was escorted on board the Cornwallis together with his queens, relatives, and servants. Almost a month later, King Sri Vikrama Rajasinha arrives at the Vellore Fort in India, to spend his remaining days in exile. Thus ends the tragic tale of the Doomed King of Lanka.

Sudan

After a coup in Sudan forces Najwa and her family into political exile in London, she soon realises that she has come down in the world. But she finds solace in her visits to the Regents Park Mosque. Then she meets Tamer, the lonely younger brother of her employer and slowly they fall in love.

Suriname

Elisabeth Samson, a free black Surinamese woman who lived in 18th-century Dutch Guyana, is the central character in this compelling novel. Challenging the prevailing racial stereotypes by demonstrating her intelligence and business acumen, she is determined to marry a white man in defiance of all established norms and conventions. Set amidst the rich backdrop of the Golden Age of Suriname, this biographical account depicts the complex social and racial stratifications which were features of slave colonies of the era as well as this remarkable woman who overcame institutionalized discrimination and prejudice to become one of the wealthiest individuals in the slave colony of Dutch Guyana.

Sweden

Until the day she is asked to give a lecture on famous artist Hugo Rask. The man himself sits in the audience, spellbound, and, when the two meet afterwards, he has the same effect on her. From now on Ester's existence is intrinsically linked to this conversation, and the chain of events that unravels will change Ester's life. Wilful Disregard is a kind of dark love story, it is a story of total and desperate devotion and about how willingly we betray ourselves in our longing to be loved.

Switzerland

Through the door of a Swiss inn the reader steps into a painting. Two men talk to each other and before long the writer -someone like them, one of them- begins to address us. Thus commences the fugue that is Beauty on Earth, in which the coming of a beautiful orphan to her uncle's inn brings a gradual chaos upon his town. Swiss novelist Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz published La Beaut in 1927. This translation by Michelle Bailat-Jones is a gift for which English language readers have waited decades.

Syria

In 1980s Syria, a young Muslim girl lives a secluded life behind the veil in the vast and perfumed house of her grandparents. Her three aunts-the pious Maryam, the liberal Safaa, and the free-spirited Marwa-raise her with the aid of their ever-devoted blind servant. Soon the high walls of the family home are no longer able to protect the girl from the social and political chaos outside. Witnessing the ruling dictatorship's bloody campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood, she is filled with hatred for the regime and becomes increasingly radical. In the footsteps of her beloved uncle, Bakr, she launches herself into a battle for her religion, her country, and ultimately, for her own future. With this layered novel, Khaled Khalifa has crafted a thrilling yet heartful coming-of-age tale of a girl who must examine her loyalties and fight to prove them both to others and to herself. In Praise of Hatred is a stirring story narrated against the backdrop of real-life events that feel less like history and more like the present, echoing the violence plaguing the Middle East today.

Taiwan

Set in a near-future China the One Child Policy has resulted in 40 million men unable to find wives. This book is one such leftover man’s quest for love and family under a State that seeks to glorify its past mistakes and impose order through authoritarian measures, reinvigorated Communist ideals, and social engineering.

Tajikistan

The first volume of Aini's unfinished Reminiscences is a first-person account both of a traditional Iranian-Islamic society on the eve of a fateful transition, and of a precocious boy's rites of passage to literary preeminence. The two autobiographical novellas included here, "The Village School" and "Ahmad the Exorcist," detail Sadriddin's chaotic schooldays and his brushes with homemade fireworks, superstition and irrational fear. In his panorama of rural life in Bukhara of a century ago, his parents and neighbours dig themselves out of a choking sandstorm, plan and excavate a new canal, and are decimated by a cholera epidemic.

Tanzania

On a late November afternoon Saleh Omar arrives at Gatwick Airport from Zanzibar, a far away island in the Indian Ocean. With him he has a small bag in which there lies his most precious possession - a mahogany box containing incense. He used to own a furniture shop, have a house and be a husband and father, but now he is an asylum seeker from paradise; silence his only protection.

Thailand

An autobiographical coming-of-age novel by the acclaimed Thai author Saneh Sangsuk (who writes under the pen name Dan-arun Saengthong). The novel has been hailed as a world-class masterpiece in critical circles outside of Thailand, where it was initially met with a lukewarm reception. The novel is a highly personal and introspective work, reflecting on the narrator's youth, filled with excesses, cruelties, and poor choices. The narrator, much like the author at the time, has retreated to a remote, ramshackle house in rural northern Thailand to write, looking back on his past.

Timor Leste

East Timor hit the world's newspaper headlines in August 1999 after its bloody, brave vote for independence from Indonesia - one of the great expressions of a people's democratic spirit, and its oppression. Before that - as a Portuguese colony and for 24 years of murderous Indonesian rule - it had been ignored.

Togo

Tété-Michel Kpomassie was a teenager in Togo when he discovered a book about Greenland--and knew that he must go there. Working his way north over nearly a decade, Kpomassie finally arrived in the country of his dreams. This brilliantly observed and superbly entertaining record of his adventures among the Inuit is a testament both to the wonderful strangeness of the human species and to the surprising sympathies that bind us all.

Tonga

In this lively satire of contemporary South Pacific life, we meet a familiar cast of characters: multinational experts, religious fanatics, con men, "simple" villagers, corrupt politicians. In writing about this tiny world of flawed personalities, Hau'ofa displays his wit and range of comic resource, amply exercising what one reviewer called his "gift of seeing absurdity clearly."

Trinidad and Tobago

For the teeming populace of Old Mack's cacophonous yard in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, it's a cheek by jowl existence lived out on a sweltering public stage. Snatches of calypso compete with hymn tunes, drums and street cries as neighbours drink, brawl, pass judgment, make love, look out for each other and crave a better life. But Ephraim is no dreamer and nothing, not even the seductive Rosa, is going to stop him escaping his dead-end job for a fresh start in England.

Tunisia

"Talismano" is a novelistic exploration of writing seen as a hallucinatory journey through half-remembered, half-imagined cities--in particular, the city of Tunis, both as it is now, and as it once was. Walking and writing, journey and journal, mirror one another to produce a calligraphic, magical work: a palimpsest of various languages and cultures, highlighting Abdelwahab Meddeb's beguiling mastery of both the Western and Islamic traditions. Meddeb's journey is first and foremost a sensual one, almost decadent, where the narrator luxuriates in the Tunis of his memories and intercuts these impressions with recollections of other cities at other times, reviving the mythical figures of Arab-Islamic legend that have faded from memory in a rapidly westernizing North Africa. A fever dream situated on the knife-edge between competing cultures, "Talismano" is a testament to the power of language to evoke, and subdue, experience.

Türkiye

A tale of high adventure and lyrical celebration, tenderness and violence, generosity and ruthlessness, Memed, My Hawk is the defining achievement of one of the greatest and most beloved of living writers, Yashar Kemal. It is reissued here with a new introduction by the author on the fiftieth anniversary of its first publication. Memed, a high-spirited, kindhearted boy, grows up in a desperately poor mountain village whose inhabitants are kept in virtual slavery by the local landlord. Determined to escape from the life of toil and humiliation to which he has been born, he flees but is caught, tortured, and nearly killed. When at last he does get away, it is to set up as a roving brigand, celebrated in song, who could be a liberator to his people—unless, like the thistles that cover the mountain slopes of his native region, his character has taken an irremediably harsh and unforgiving form.

Turkmenistan

The Tale of Aypi follows the fate of a group of Turkmen fishermen dwelling on the coast of the Caspian Sea. The fear of losing their ancestral home looms over the entire village. This injustice is being made to look like a voluntary initiative on the part of the fishermen themselves, whilst the ruling powers cynically attempt to confiscate their land. One brave fisherman from the village rises up to confront them and fights for his native shore, as a response to an act of cruelty inflicted on a defenceless young woman centuries ago. This unjustly executed soul returns as a ghost during this troubled time to exact a terrible revenge on the men of the village. The relationships among the characters mirror the eternal opposition between the forces of nature, with the intervention of mystical forces ratcheting up the tension.

Tuvalu

This book is a history of Tuvalu written by Tuvaluans. It is intended both as a contribution to the knowledge of Pacific history and as an expression of Tuvalu's cultural identity, complementing the political identity officially born in 1978 when Tuvalu became an independent nation. It is fitting that people who rule their own country should produce a history of their own for they, more than any others, should know--and need to know--who they are.

Uganda

Winner of the Senior section of the Children's Literature Award. Nanfuka is angry. She must take responsibility for her family devastated by AIDS and threatened by the manipulative Aunt Naka, while her own life seems to be on hold. At the same time she is grappling with her complex feelings for Sendi...so how can she achieve her dream

Ukraine

The stories in Ukrainian film director, writer, and dissident Oleg Sentsov’s debut collection are as much acts of dissent as they are acts of creative expression. These autobiographical stories display a Tarkovsky-esque mix of nostalgia and philosophical insight, written in a simple yet profound style looking back on a life's path that led Sentsov to become an internationally renowned dissident artist.

United Arab Emirates

In the United Arab Emirates, foreign nationals constitute over 80 percent of the population. Brought in to construct and serve the towering monuments to wealth that punctuate the skylines of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, this labor force is not given the option of citizenship. Some ride their luck to good fortune. Others suffer different fates. Until now, the humanitarian crisis of the so-called “guest workers” of the Gulf has barely been addressed in fiction. With his stunning, mind-altering debut novel Temporary People, Deepak Unnikrishnan delves into their histories, myths, struggles, and triumphs.

United Kingdom

An English translation of a novel by one of Wales's outstanding twentieth-century writers covering almost 40 years in the life of a north Wales slate-quarrying family. New edition; first published in 1996.

United States of America

Surrealism that would make Dali clutch his mustache in envy ... Midgets, sideshow freaks, and government officials ... Elvis memorabilia, adventure, and of course, true love.... It could only be Sean Murphy. Join us for the rip-roaring, satiric, warm-hearted tale of Buddy, son of the illustrious hero of Murphy's acclaimed The Hope Valley Hubcap King. Buddy was born with a special gift: the ability to perform tiny miracles. Nothing big, like raising the dead or curing the sick--more like an uncanny knack for finding spare change. In this exhilarating adventure of rollicking revolution of romance as you've never quite seen it before, in an American where Gravity ain't what it used to be, Time is on the fritz, and corporations have gobbled up everything including the U.S. government (renamed The America Corporation), where a jolly bunch of ragtag revolutionaries, circus folk, and a particularly gorgeous journalist are all searching for the remedy ... the fate of the country may very well lie in Buddy's not-so-capable hands.

Uruguay

Lands of Memory presents a half-dozen wonderful works by one of the greatest yet least-known South American writers of the twentieth century. Felisberto Hernandez's extraordinary stories have been always greatly prized by other writers, and the two novellas and four stories collected in Lands of Memory show why. Lands of Memory" and "In the Times of Clemente Colling" are two dreamlike novellas, which are carried along like pieces of otherworldly music by odd rhapsodic memories. Curiously haunting, the four stories also included in Lands of Memory turn upon small improbable events - small unpredictable, off-the-wall events which turn upside-down a first recital or a salesman's calling. These works have been long overdue for translation into English, and New Directions is pleased to have them in Esther Allen's stunning versions. "

Uzbekistan

Set mainly in Uzbekistan between 1900 and 1980, The Railway introduces to us the inhabitants of the small town of Gilas on the ancient Silk Route. Among those whose stories we hear are Mefody-Jurisprudence, the town's alcoholic intellectual; Father Ioann, a Russian priest; Kara-Musayev the Younger, the chief of police; and Umarali-Moneybags, the old moneylender. Their colourful lives offer a unique and comic picture of a little-known land populated by outgoing Mullahs, incoming Bolsheviks, and a plethora of Uzbeks, Russians, Persians, Jews, Koreans, Tatars and Gypsies. At the heart of both the town and the novel stands the railway station - a source of income and influence, and a connection to the greater world beyond the town. Rich and picaresque, The Railway chronicles the dramatic changes felt throughout Central Asia in the early twentieth century.

Vanuatu

In any country's history, there are special times that lay foundations or mark directions for the future. For Vanuatu, the period from 1970 to the end of the century was one such period, when the people of Vanuatu freed themselves from the colonial stranglehold of the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides and established the independent Republic of Vanuatu. One of the men who took a leading role in that struggle was Sethy John Regenvanu, a man Malakula from the small island of Uripiv, who was born in the 1940s, grew up under Condominium rule, studied to be a pastor in the Presbyterian Church and worked in that role during the difficult 1970s as the country made the agonizing transition to independence. He represented the New Hebrides Christian Council (later Vanuatu Christian Council) in the Constitutional Conference that wrote the new constitution, was elected to parliament from Malakula in the key 1979 election and held several ministerial portfolios in various governments over the following 25 years.

Vatican City

Written by a small group of Vatican prelates who chose to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions, this book offers an insider's account of intrigue, sex and corruption within the Vatican. All of the authors' charges are supported by extensive anecdotal evidence.

Venezuala

Este libro cuenta la historia de un grupo de venezolanos, con m s coraz n que estrategia, que se embarcaron (nunca mejor dicho) en el Falke con el prop sito de venir de Europa, donde algunos de ellos estudiaban (y no segu an ninguna pr ctica militar, ni siquiera un poco de educaci n f sica al amanecer), a invadir Venezuela y derrocar la tiran a de G mez. El resultado de esta aventura es conocido, est en la historia contempor nea de Venezuela; lo que la novela aporta es el desplazamiento f sico y mental de aquellos hombres, sobre todo de los muchachos involucrados, a partir del momento en que deciden, en una operaci n quijotesca, convertirse ellos mismos en personajes de la literatura que les tiene la cabeza en ebullici n y en redentores de la patria oprimida. El desastre est cantado desde el primer p rrafo, pero es tal la vitalidad de los personajes, el precioso detalle con que sus psicolog as quedan expuestas, que puede afirmarse que Vegas los ha amarrado a la vida por siempre. Milagros Socorro

Vietnam

Paradise of the Blind is an exquisite portrait of three Vietnamese women struggling to survive in a society where subservience to men is expected and Communist corruption crushes every dream. Through the eyes of Hang, a young woman in her twenties who has grown up amidst the slums and intermittent beauty of Hanoi, we come to know the tragedy of her family as land reform rips apart their village. When her uncle Chinh's political loyalties replace family devotion, Hang is torn between her mother's appalling self-sacrifice and the bitterness of her aunt who can avenge but not forgive. Only by freeing herself from the past will Hang be able to find dignity -- and a future.

Yemen

Set in the pre-revolution Yemen of the Imams, this novel depicts the experiences of a young boy who, having been taken hostage, in line with the Imam's general practice, as a pledge for his father's political obedience, is sent to serve as a young male attendant in the palace of the city governor. The growth of the boy's awareness, political, social and personal, is movingly portrayed against a background of bygone times whose decadence and injustice are presented with vivid satiric force.

Zambia

A Zambian debut novel that follows three generations of three families, telling the story of a nation, and of the grand sweep of time On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there was once a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. Here begins the story of a small African nation, told by a swarm-like chorus that calls itself man’s greatest nemesis.

Zimbabwe

Unsentimental and unselfpitying, this short but powerful novel by Chris Mlalazi vivifies an account by Rudo, a fourteen-year-old school girl who observes the terrifying events that take place in her village. Running with Mother provides us with a gripping story of how Rudo, her mother, her aunt and her little cousin survive the onslaught. Shocking as the story that unfolds may be, it is balanced by the resilience, self-respect, unselfishness and stoicism of the protagonists. Mlalazi's novel is written with insight, humour and provides a salutory reminder that even in the worst of times, we can find humanity.