RaveThe Washington PostBrainy and beautiful ... He uncovers fragments of Elimane’s story, which is rendered in a dizzying range of voices, forms and styles, including diary entries, press clippings, book reviews, interviews, letters and oral stories. These threads skillfully connect into a spider’s web that entrap Diégane; the more he finds out, the more he wants to know ... Fashioned out of stellar material ... At its best, The Most Secret Memory of Men reminds us that we ought to read for pleasure, not affirmation; for argument, not answer; and for investigation, not presumption. This is a novel by a lover of books, for lovers of books, and like any true love it demands nothing short of surrender.
Matthew Salesses
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewIn this new book, he dismantles a number of assumptions that underpin the teaching of craft in workshops. For example, students are often advised to choose striking details—what John Gardner called \'the lifeblood of fiction\'—and leave out others that are too familiar. The trouble is that what stands out to, say, a disabled white character will be different from what stands out to a Black trans character, which will in turn be different from what stands out to an undocumented character. Minority students may be told to scrap what is striking to them in favor of what is striking to the dominant perspectives of their workshops, which Salesses points out are overwhelmingly white and cisgender. As a result, the students’ artistic choices may be stifled rather than nurtured ... In the first half of the book, Salesses redefines craft terms like plot, conflict, tone, character and setting, arguing that each needs to be understood in its sociocultural context ... Salesses is clearly a generous instructor, willing to share ideas for syllabus design, grading techniques and writing exercises. He brings to this work many years of experience as a writer and professor, along with palpable frustration at what he has witnessed or endured in these roles. The book is rife with anecdotes of insensitive or racist comments he heard during his training, experiences that will no doubt feel familiar to many writers of color ... a significant contribution to discussions of the art of fiction and a necessary challenge to received views about whose stories are told, how they are told and for whom they are intended.
Kamel Daoud, trans. by John Cullen
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewBut to be successful, a literary retelling must not simply dress up an old story in new clothes. It must also be so convincing and so satisfying that we no longer think of the original story as the truth, but rather come to question it ... In The Meursault Investigation, Daoud has done exactly this. Not only does he use an indigenous voice to retell the story of The Stranger, he offers a different account of the murder and makes Algeria more than just a setting for existential questions posed by a French novelist. For Daoud, Algeria is the existential question ... It is in this simple, direct language, ably translated from the French by John Cullen, that Daoud writes his letter of love, rebellion and despair for Algeria. It is a letter filled with doubles — a speaker and a listener, a narrator and a narrated, a murderer and a victim, an author and an icon, fanatics of the gun and fanatics of God.
John Lanchester
MixedThe NationThe conceit of The Wall is simple, and the rules are straightforward. Yet Lanchester spends a lot of time discussing the daily minutiae of life there...By contrast, the main characters’ inner lives receive less attention, leaving readers with little insight into their pasts, their hopes, or their impulses. For this reason, The Wall is best read as an exploration of the immediate consequences and logical implications of a punitive border machine ... Lanchester is at his best when he examines this dystopia through the lens of class and privilege ... While The Wall is a work of dystopian fiction, it contains all the ingredients of his intensively researched nonfiction ... Lanchester deserves praise for telling a story of climate change and migration in the speculative mode at a time when reality itself can seem like a dystopia.
Perumal Murugan, Trans. by Aniruddhan Vasudevan
PositiveThe New York Times Book Review...intimate and affecting ... The plot of One Part Woman doesn’t move forward so much as circle around ... Murugan’s descriptions of village life are evocative, but the true pleasure of this book lies in his adept explorations of male and female relationships.
Daniel Alarcón
PositiveThe New York Times Book Review\"This is, in short, a writer with range, one who is willing to take risks with form and is deeply curious about the world. Several of the stories in The King Is Always Above the People are stylistically daring...These stories are intriguing, but I found myself gravitating more to the longer, fuller stories that come later in the book ... Alarcón is at his finest when he couples narrative experimentation with deliberate pacing and imaginative empathy. In \'The Bridge,\' a young man faces two daunting tasks: settle the estate of his uncle and break the news of the death to his father, who is currently held in a mental hospital. Reading this story is like walking down a hallway filled with mirrors — the young man and his father are both lawyers, the uncle and his wife are both interpreters, their house has just one pair of each utensil — so that I half-expected a turn to magical realism ... A recurring theme in The King Is Always Above the People is the need to explore how leaving home, and returning to it, changes you irremediably. Alarcón manages to offer a fresh look at migration, the oldest story of all.\
Joan Didion
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewThere is no plot in South and West, or conflict, or ending. The pleasures of this short book, rather, are found in observing the South through Didion’s eyes. She is particularly sensitive to Southerners’ relationship to history, a relationship that stands in sharp contrast to the prevailing attitude in California.
Riad Sattouf
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewAlready a success in France, The Arab of the Future will do little to complicate most people’s perceptions of Libya or Syria. Life in both countries seems like a living hell, with no moments of relief or pleasure. But this book also has occasional flashes of beauty.
