Brickmakers
by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott, Charco Press £9.99/Graywolf Press $16.99
In a deserted amusement park in Argentina, two men lie dying in the aftermath of a knife-fight. Through masterfully managed flashbacks, Almada explores the decades-old vendetta and the broken friendship leading up to that fatal moment, examining deeply rooted yet fragile notions of loyalty and masculinity.
Waiting for the Waters to Rise
by Maryse Condé, translated by Richard Philcox, World Editions £12.99/$16.99
When the Nobel Prize was suspended in 2018, Swedish cultural figures named Condé winner of The New Academy Prize — an alternative to the Nobel. Her latest novel to be published in English is a powerful tale about immigration and the search for home, connecting Mali, Haiti and the author’s native Guadeloupe.
Occupation
by Julián Fuks, translated by Daniel Hahn, Charco Press £9.99/$15.95
In an obliquely autobiographical follow-up to his breakthrough novel, Resistance, Brazilian author Fuks zooms in on the stories of refugees squatting in a luxury hotel in downtown São Paulo. A powerful dramatisation of the issues of displacement and homelessness, and a poignant meditation on the impact of loss and parenthood.
More Than I Love My Life
by David Grossman, translated by Jessica Cohen, Jonathan Cape £18.99/Knopf Doubleday $27
“That’s my thing in the world: loving one person who is not easy to love,” says Rafael, father of the novel’s protagonist, in this story spanning three generations and moving from the former Yugoslavia to Lapland and Israel. A meditation on love, on memory, and on the power of storytelling.
The Bureau of Past Management
by Iris Hanika, translated by Abigail Wender, V&Q Books £12.99
Hans Frambach works at the Berlin bureau that gives the novel its title, whose mission is to help the country come to terms with its history. Toiling “day-in and day-out in the vineyards of memory”, he discovers that reconciling with the past — national and personal — is more easily said than done.
The Luminous Novel
by Mario Levrero, translated by Annie McDermott, And Other Stories £14.99/$19.95
Uruguay’s Levrero was awarded a Guggenheim grant to write a novel that he failed to finish. This is the triumphant record of that failure, presented as the auto-fictional diary of the author grappling with distraction and procrastination. An affecting and hilariously digressive account of the anxieties of the creative process.
The Country of Others
by Leïla Slimani, translated by Sam Taylor, Faber £14.99/Penguin Publishing Group $26
The French-Moroccan author and winner of the Prix Goncourt tells the story of Alsace-born Mathilde and Morocco-born Amine as they start a life together after the second world war. Billed as the first volume in a trilogy, this is a story about desire and violence set against a backdrop of social, racial and national divides.
The Antarctica of Love
by Sara Stridsberg, translated by Deborah Bragan-Turner, MacLehose Books £14.99/Farrar, Straus and Giroux $27
Kristina, the book’s central character, is the victim of a brutal murder. This is not a crime novel, however, nor does it focus on her killer. Instead, Stridsberg offers a compassionate and complex portrait of a woman damaged by her past, and of those left behind to mourn her death.
The Books of Jacob
by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft, Fitzcarraldo Editions £20
The committee that awarded Olga Tokarczuk the 2018 Nobel Prize declared The Books of Jacob to be her “magnum opus”. Epic in scope (and length), it tells the fascinating story of a charismatic 18th-century religious leader who, shunned by both the Jewish and Catholic communities, declares himself the Messiah.
Hard Like Water
by Yan Lianke, translated by Carlos Rojas, Chatto & Windus £16.99/Grove Atlantic $27
At the height of China’s Cultural Revolution, Gao Aijun, a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army, returns to his family’s village and finds himself caught up in a relationship with a married woman that takes him on a journey both erotic and political. A piercing satire of Communism and the language of revolutions.