Ángel Gurría-Quintana selects his best mid-year reads

Not a River by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott (Charco Press)

Shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize, Almada’s unsettling novel follows three men on a fishing trip, returning to a place on the Paraná River in South America that was the site of a tragedy years earlier. Haunted by the past, the protagonists must also grapple with the spectre of violence in a hostile environment.

**

You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Harvill Secker)

A riotous reimagining of the world-changing encounter, in 1520, between Hernán Cortés, the cocksure Spanish conquistador, and Moctezuma, melancholy emperor of the Mexica. Dripping with irreverence, the novel suggests that the conquest of Mexico was the product of mishaps piled upon misunderstandings and mistranslations, with a dose of muddling through.

**

The Book of All Loves by Agustín Fernández Mallo, translated by Thomas Bunstead (Fitzcarraldo)

In a post-apocalyptic world, two lovers, survivors of the Great Blackout, speak to each other and discover the countless forms that love can take. A melancholy feast, lacing fiction with the language of essays and poetry, and a tender meditation on how to find meaning in another when all else is lost.

**

Before the Queen Falls Asleep by Huzama Habayeb, translated by Kay Heikkinen (MacLehose Press)

As Maleka prepares to leave her home in Dubai to study abroad, her mother, Jihad (born to Palestinian parents who wanted a boy) tells her nightly tales of family, displacement, and the longing for a homeland. But hidden among the multiple layers of storytelling is a more painful recollection of violence and of love lost.

**

The Children of the Dead by Elfriede Jelinek, translated by Gitta Honegger (Yale University Press)

Described as the Austrian Nobel laureate’s greatest work, this bleak novel, originally published in German in 1995, offers an unlikely spin on zombie narratives. Against the setting of a tourist village in the Austrian alps we meet three undead, gorging on flesh and engaging in undead sex. Beneath the gory details are some searching questions about how a society decides to remember — or forget — its worst atrocities.

**

The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov, translated by Boris Dralyuk (MacLehose Press)

The first volume in a new crime series by one of Ukraine’s best-known writers sees the hero, Samson Kolechko, stumbling upon murders, riots and conspiracies in 1919 Kyiv, against the backdrop of civil war. Playful and surreal, the novel also asks how people can act morally in times of conflict and violence.

**

Verdigris by Michele Mari, translated by Brian Robert Moore (And Other Stories)

Slugs and monsters abound in the strange and compelling tale of 13-year-old Michelino, who, while summering at his grandparents’ estate near Lake Maggiore, becomes enthralled by the increasingly forgetful gardener, Felice. While devising tricks to help Felice keep his memory alive, the boy is soon forced to grapple with the skeletons of histories past.

**

My Heavenly Favourite by Lucas Rijneveld, translated by Michele Hutchison (Faber)

From the Dutch winner of the 2020 Man Booker International Prize, a dark tale of depravity narrated by a middle-aged veterinarian convicted of abusing a farmer’s teenage daughter. Disturbing, but written in prose so compelling that it’s hard to put down, this confession of criminal deeds is also a deep dive into the damage caused by grief.

**

The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, translated by Lara Vergnaud (Harvill Secker)

In this award-winning novel, a young writer sets out to uncover the fate of a once-celebrated (fictional) Senegalese author, hailed decades earlier as the “Black Rimbaud” but since “erased from literary memory” after a case of alleged plagiarism. The bookish sleuthing offers cover for sharp reflections on authorship in colonial and postcolonial Africa.

**

Butter by Asako Yuzuki, translated by Polly Barton (4th Estate)

Inspired by the real-life case of a Japanese woman who poisoned three of her lovers, Butter focuses on the relationship between Manako Kajii, an accomplished cook and convicted murderer, and Rika Machida, the sympathetic journalist determined to tell her story. A biting satire on fat-shaming culture and double standards in beauty.

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Best summer books of 2024: Fiction in translation