We’re living through a turbulent and unknowable time where all aspects of life are shifting. What was once clear is now murky, and nothing is certain anymore. For many of us, the first thing to go was our enjoyment of simple pleasures like reading (myself included). Where did all that happy reading go? Many of …
Literature
Translated by the Swedish by Saskia Vogel Body swap stories are a dime a dozen, from Freaky Friday to Your Name. But how about a story of three girls who discover the power to turn into boys for a short time? Girls Lost is the tale of three teenagers, exhausted and confused by the system …
That We May Live is bold, strange, and exciting. It takes risks, as most Chinese fiction does, and that risk pays off. Being a writer in China is risky business. Certain topics are off limits, writers like Ma Jian live in exile overseas, and journalists can write whatever they please about you, whether or not …
The world of Japanese manga, just like any big form of entertainment, can be a dizzying place to dive into. The same is true for anime and western comics: where to start. So, let’s talk about where to start reading manga. Browse a bookstore in the US and the UK and the sheer number of …
Translated from the Spanish by Carolina Orloff & Fionn Petch Fate is a novel populated by people who would not want our sympathy if they knew we were watching, and yet we are compelled to offer it. That is the wisdom and ferocity of Jorge Consiglio’s writing. That said, despite us being so eager to …
Spark has been such an enormous success in Japan – selling more than three million copies – that it has now been adapted into a Netflix series. But what is it? Spark is a short novel about comedy and the lives of the people who create it. Written by Naoki Matayoshi, a successful comedian in …
No genre has a more succulent, oppressive, delightfully absorbing atmosphere than gothic literature does. The off-kilter strangeness and bleak yet sublime landscapes of gothic stories seep into every nook and cranny of your soul and cling like talons. I bloody love it with a real passion. And when a collection of rare English translations comes …
Snow, Dog, Foot is an absolute delight. Let’s start there. This book is Cormac McCarthy with a sense of humour. It’s a novel that traverses the entire landscape of human emotion with a talking dog in tow. It demands a little excited imagination from you and, in return, offers a strange and endearing tale that …
There is so much mischief, corruption, deception, and aggression spilling out from Hurricane Season that the book’s bindings can hardly contain it. Hurricane Season is a courageous story, and Fernanda Melchor is undoubtedly a courageous author for committing it to paper. It’s a book about the myriad evils that stain the human spirit. It’s a …
I write about dark tourism for a living and I read a lot of books about the atrocities that happen in our world. Although I had previously read a few of the non-fiction books of this list, in 2019, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and began reading everything I could find connected to …