Coming Soon...

Dogs and Others
by Biljana Jovanović
Translated from Serbian by John K. Cox

Past Not Forgotten

Resistance is a different reading experience—a quasi-fiction, and largely autobiographical. Narrator is searching, creating, eluding, hunting the pasts of his family, and trying to understand or give a meaning to his relationship with the adoptive brother. Narrator has managed to create duplicity and duality of reality. Sebastián, the storyteller, has used fragments of images from the household talking and his own experience of growing up, to create a past, which sometimes seems ambiguous, imbued with conflict of the versions of truth, memory that can and cannot be trusted.

Dictatorships can come

back, I know, and I also know that the arbitrariness, the

oppressions, the suffering, exist in all kinds of ways, in all

kinds of regimes, even when hordes of citizens march

biennially to the ballot box

                                                    

The pure literary expressions and impressions have connected the characters, often trying to portray their inner beings, posed in front of universal themes of love and relation. There is not a sequence of events to follow in the story. Memories draw the past, and again the past projects memories. The story is about a family—victim of political exile—who moves from Argentina to Brazil with an adopted son, and later has have two other children in Brazil. The story is told by the youngest of the children, who digs into the family history and secrets, and problems of adoption. He visits the land from where his parents had fled, and feels that he's inherited the sense of exile.

I know that I am writing my failure. I don’t really know

what I’m writing. I waver between an incomprehensible

attachment to reality – or to the paltry spoils of the world

we usually call reality – and an inexorable pull towards

telling tales, an alternative gimmick, a desire to forge

the meanings life refuses to give us.

                                        

The sentences are packed with meanings and it asks readers to stay with the text—often short and lyrical, and meant to be absorbed and felt than understood. Story tends to capture the forgotten time, and shifts between the strata of exile and family tension. Discovering and accepting the new identities is also a theme of the novel—Identities, which couldn't become sharp, and wavering in family affairs. The author has said in an interview that history is always filled with stories of resistance, and his interest in the modes of resistance is clearly an echo heard here all over. Narrator tries to understand the past, identifying himself in the being of his brother and parents, and discovers his own hidden characters. The episodes reconstructed from the memories of the past outlines narrator's struggle to get attached and loved by his brother. He's also troubled by his own instinct, on why is he so interested in the past, especially about his parent's political involvement and their retreat. It may also seem he is juggling with the memory, sometimes projecting it pitch-perfect and at other times rendering it like a suspension of clouds—the spaces we create around ourselves, may or may not be the outcome of our choices.

Hard to appreciate the full weight an insignificant

thing can assume when various interpretations are

projected onto it, when so many meanings crystallise

within it. To move from the most banal circumstances to

a feeling of tragedy, sometimes all it takes is a subtle slip,

a minor error.

It is hard for narrator's brother to accept his weight, his being and his identity. His reclusiveness has sparked the narrator to visit buried memories, and see himself in those mirrors of the time. Themes of silence, terror of the past and struggle with selves are fixated in the story. This is not a plot driven story. It feels like essayistic narration, psychological drama and definition of impressions as well. At times, the self-declaration of the narrator, defining the character of the story he is telling, removes us from all the confusion we may get trying to make the meaning of the text. Metafictional use of narration has served the purpose well: "Quite without subtlety, I find myself afraid: maybe this book is the error, created for a non-existent addressee." Resistance is a pure literary charm.

Author: Julián Fuks

Translator: Daniel Hahn

Publisher: Charco Press

Page Count: 150

Price: $14.46

Coming Soon...

The Last Timawa
by Servando de los Angeles
Translated from the Filipino by Soledad S. Reyes

Publishers of Translated Works

·          Academic Studies Press

·          Amazon Crossing

·          Aleph Books

·          Alma Books

·          Angel Classics

·          Aiora Press

·          Archipelago Books

·          Armida Books

·          Biblioasis                                                       

·          Balestier

·          Bengal Lights

·          Columbia University Press                         

·          Coffee House

·          Charco 

·          Corvina                                                     

·          Deep Vellum

·          Denise Harvey

·          Dalkey Archive                                             

·          Dedalus

·          Europa Editions

·          Faber & Faber

·          Fitzcarraldo

·          Francis Boutle                                               

·          Feminist Press

·          FSG

·          Graywolf                                                        

·          Glagoslav

·          Granta

·          Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press

·          HarperVia 

·          Haus Publishing                                                           

·          Hoopoe

·          Hong Kong University Press

·          Istros

·          Indiana University Press 

·          Johns Hopkins University Press

·          Kedros

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·          Karolinum Press

·          Language Lanterns

·          Margellos World

·          Maclehose                                                       

·          MHP

·          Milkweed

·          Modern Language Association

·          MIT Press

·          MSU Press

·          Noir Press

·          NYRB Classics

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·          New Vessel

·          NYU Press                                                      

·          Open Letter

·          Other Press                                                     

·          OneWorld

·          Oxford University Press

·          Oberon Books

·          Orenda

·          Overlook Press

·          Peirene                                                             

·          Pushkin Press  

·          Pegasus                                                             

·          Peter Owen

·          Red Circle

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·          Seagull                                                              

·          Syracuse 

·          Small Stations

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·          Softskull

·          Sophene Armeniaca

·          Slovene Writers' Association

·          Seven Stories                                                    

·          Serpent's Tail

·          Two Lines                                                         

·          Tuttle

·          Tilted Axis                                                        

·          Twisted Spoon

·          The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press

·          The University of Michigan Press

·          UH Press

·          University of Pittsburgh Press

·          University of Minnesota Press

·          University of Oklahoma Press

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·          Verba Mundi

·          Wakefield Press

·          Women Unlimited

·          WW Norton

·          World Editions

Coming Soon...

Sleet: Selected Stories
by Stig Dagerman
Preface by Alice Mcdermott
Translated from the Swedish by Steven Hartman

Coming Soon...

The Blind Owl
by Sadegh Hedayat
Translated from the Persian/Farsi by D.P. Costello

We Drew Heaven

Kampol Changsamran (Bright), a five-year-old boy has been left at the mercy of his neighbors. His parents have separated, and now living with his members of tenement complex, hopping from one to the next, he discovers the adult world around him, tries to understand and absorb it, and also ventures on all the childhood adventures. Kampol's world is set around Mrs. Tongjan’s Community. It is world of mostly working class tenants, who have ups and downs in their family, but still have adapted to the way of the world. In the midst of his friends and adults Kampol has found a way to live by. He's brave at heart but also tender by nature, and while longing for his parents he's grown emotional intelligence of an adult. 

“You can’t… You’re better off here—there are compas

sionate people who’ll help you. You’ll find a place to eat and

sleep. It’s just two more days. Do you understand?”

In this urban tale, we observe elements of child psychology, problems of working class, joys of childhood, and all are imbued with humor. Each chapter is like a full-fledged story on its own, and is backed by social realism. Sometimes we read it as a social drama, and at other times it crosses the boundary and we appreciate it for pure story telling. Kampol's adventurous fate often ends with a saddening unfold, but new chapters brings forth lively story and keep things going. Characters are unique, but we quickly feel attached to them because Kampol's new world cannot do without them. He does small chores and runs for them, but manages time for his friends Jua and Oan. 

He combed the whole area again: neither of his parents were

anywhere to be found.

The street was empty. Everybody else had gone home.

Neighbors have developed compassion for little Kampol who tries to lift the burden of being left alone by his parents. There is lot of introspection taken care of, and details are never off the track. Lives of Kampol's neighbor also look like they are interconnected. We find things extremely funny, but they also have subtle undertone of sadness, which we feel for Kampol who wishes things to go back and become normal. Very early in his life he has understood the meaning of Hunger. We are surprised by how adult world is taken by the children. It is a coming-of-age novel that has a unique way of telling stories.

I got really fed up and found myself a toy I could play with alone.”

“What was your toy? What did you play?”

“My toy…my toy was books. Books can be fun and you

don’t need anybody to play.”

We follow Kampol and his friends around, because they keep moving, for they always have something in their mind. Lives of children and adults have profusely mixed together, and we see their world in turns. They devise ways to be happy, and also have learned to adapt to their fate. Childhood excursion and fantasies, the innocence of ordinary lives and societal ways of dealings with everyday problems of contemporary life holds the story together. The story is about KAMPOL, and KAMPOL is living it.

Author: Duanwad Pimwana
Translator: Mui Poopoksakul
Publisher: Two Lines Press
Page Count: 184
Price: $16.34 (Paperback) 

Devil Surrounds the Glory

Written with two folds of narrative, or in fact three, this short gripping novel has many things to offer, especially a witty view on literature, vanity and glory surrounding it all imbued in gothic and thriller like story.

In a village of Dichtersruhe, where Goethe had supposedly made a sojourn, rabid foxes lurk wild until a publisher, devil in the form of blood-and-flesh comes to hunt the aspirant writer and those who deem literary glory. Father Cornelius, though an unwelcome vicar at first, has now a motive to free the village of writers from this devil. He is also hunted by his past, but cannot surrender the spirits of his parishioners to a man who has come to rescue the letters, but is not.

“Literature is the greatest of the arts,” the priest

continued, “but it is also a dangerous endeavor.”

Rich in imagination, A Devil Comes to Town, is a story of struggle, of haunting superstition and a meditation on the literature and art itself. Short form, provocative fable and a literary parable at its best!

Author: Paolo Maurensig

Translator: Anne Milano Appel

Publisher: World Editions

Page Count: 120

Price: $14.99

Weather Among Men

Tomás González's novel The Storm set off at early 4:00 am when the twin sons Mario and Javier and their father ('the old bastard', as called by his sons) start making preparation for their journey far off into the sea for catching fish for their tourists. From the very beginning we feel the resentment the sons, especially Mario holds for his father. They have a 'nut case' mother Nora, probably a schizophrenic, who talks to her imaginary followers, and mostly stays all day indoors, driven to conclusions, sensing a scheme of her murder or else making incoherent comments about her sons or her husband, whom she has grown to resent.

Novel progresses, treating each passing hour like a chapter, and unfurls the psychological relation between the father and sons, meanwhile making them lively with intense descriptions largely about their inner world. While at the sea, we could feel how each of them consider themselves superior to the other, and the narrative voices—which  are experimental, shifting, inclusive—perfectly tailored to characterize them doesn't let the tension wane. We sense the storm gathering strength and momentum at the far sky and the tension dramatized in the boat, or developing in their fishing line will at some time all conflate to extreme limits and story engrosses us completely what happens in this account.

Where a captain rules, a sailor has no sway, she thought. Hopefully the

 twin would stab the sailor’s captain. And hopefully not. He could

 also drown him – they say it’s a sweet death. A sweet death

 in saltwater, what do you say to that.

The author has spared no character to go away without saying something, and which serves as portrayals done by others of the father, the twins and their delusional mother. Kids speak, adult tourists speak, neighbors speak, even Nora's 'throng' speak, and we gather all these elements to create the atmosphere surrounding the life of the family. The father considers his sons losers, and himself a king. And, Mario wants him dead for good, or to get rid of his taunting remarks forever any way. The translation is almost poetic, and mostly thoughts of the characters have spoken for themselves. What we find is a finely braided storytelling, where not a sentence can be overlooked—nothing overly done, hanging resentment keeping things apart and together at a time.

Despite Nora’s madness and his complicated relationship with his sons, the

 father thinks, when looked at the right way, and especially given the prosperity the

 hotel has brought them, things have turned out pretty well.

Everybody’s got problems.

He knows that no individual, not even him, understands everything

 about the world, and so he recognizes that human beings

will be forever doomed to humility

Despite the growing loathing and want to inflict pain, something holds the family together, and whatever we see happening, there is a glow that everything will in fact come back to normal, or it has always been like this, even before the story started. Their personal moods and vanity, their delusion and bare truths, their reclusive sense of life has given each of the characters their height in the story.

So that we're not confused with the voices, characters introduce themselves, and the accounts are funny, sad in the part of Nora, and all shed light to the Bungalow holder family, and also the coastal life. We're reminded of The Old Man and the Sea, and Moby Dick, but here the force that drives the story is human flaws and complex. And like a magician, González has turned an ordinary family chemistry to something extraordinary. We are driven to understand the sons and the father, weigh their values, realize their personal truth and observation, judge their little actions, and hear their thoughts. The Storm approaching them soon adds up and down emotional graph to their fishing expedition, and to their lives, and we are astonished how everything concludes.

Author: Tomás González

Translator: Andrea Rosenberg

Publisher: Archipelago

Page Count: 120

Price: $11 (Paperback)