Born in Santiago, Chile in 1953 but spending much of his youth in Mexico and his later adult life in Spain, Roberto Bolaño had already become a sensation in the Spanish speaking literary world before his untimely death in 2003. Sadly, it’s only really in the years following his death that he’s started to gain wider recognition …
Literature
In that vast, open sea of genre fiction, detective stories exist on an island that I’ve never really visited. Not because this island is full of traps and dark alleyways, and the murder rate is alarmingly high, but simply because we all have genres that we gravitate towards and detective stories were never mine. And …
It’s that time of year again: the time when everyone obsesses over lists and gets deeply frustrated if someone else’s list is different from their own. And in keeping with that delightful spirit, prepare to get frustrated by our list of best translated novels of 2019! In all seriousness, though, I love a good list. …
At the beginning of 2019, Red Circle launched three short stories, all of which we dearly loved. They were fresh and original Japanese short stories with enlightened themes and page-turning plots. Now, as 2019 feeds into 2020, we have two new Red Circle Minis in translation from two astonishingly talented translators. Each book is wholly …
When I was a child playing video games, I always wanted some t-shirts, collectibles, and jewelry themed around games. Now, as a voracious book lover I have a wealth of inspirational jewelry and literary jewelry at my fingertips to wear and proudly show off my adoration for books and literature. These top Etsy sellers have …
We all love to wear our loves, our hobbies, and our passions on our sleeves. We book lovers are proud of the way that reading has captured our imaginations, shaped our lives, and made us who we are today. Some of us have bookish tattoos, others wear literary t-shirts and scarves, and some wear book …
In Argentine tradition and literature, the gaucho – ranchers and horsemen – were, and still are, romanticised in much the same that the cowboys are in modern US folklore and stories. This was most flagrantly epitomised by José Hernández in his great Argentine epic poem El Gaucho Martín Fierro, which told the tale of a …
Rather than digging into the necessary and fascinating history surrounding Every Fire You Tend right off the bat, it’s perhaps more important to lead with this: Every Fire You Tend is an astonishing work of art. An experimental piece of storytelling that blends fact and fiction, history and folklore, religious parables and superstitions, to create …
It’s difficult to know where to start with talking about trans rights, gender dysphoria, and the politics behind transgender stories, other than to simply say that trans people need all the help and support that they can get. That’s where transgender books and trans authors come in. Understanding your own dysphoria and deciding on the …
Strange Weather in Tokyo, first published in English in 2014, was a frightfully clever introduction to the mind of Kawakami. Parade is a continuation of that. Strange Weather was a love story between a young Tokyo office worker and her former teacher from another lifetime which placed its own plot and characters front and centre …