Admiel Kosman’s “Approaching You in English”

Reviewed by E.C. Belli

Sitting in any of the rooms that is each poem in "Approaching You In English" you’ll notice a tear in the ceiling; none of these poems are sealed shut

Alexandra Chreiteh’s “Always Coca-Cola”

Reviewed by Emma Garman

"Always Coca-Cola" comes off as a work of searing intensity that powerfully conjures the atmosphere of contemporary Beirut.

Dubravka Ugresic’s “Karaoke Culture”

Reviewed by Jean Harris

Part of the allure is for the amateur to wrest the microphone away from the stars and, for a moment, to take their place in the limelight.

Tomás Eloy Martínez’s “Purgatory”

Reviewed by Anderson Tepper

On a certain level, "Purgatory" is a metaphorical ghost story—a meditation on loss, invisibility, and vanishing

Abdourahman Waberi’s “Passage of Tears”

Reviewed by Anderson Tepper

On its most immediate level, "Passage of Tears" is coiled tight with the tensions of a thriller.

Jose Donoso’s “The Lizard’s Tale”

Reviewed by Megan Berkobien

In many ways, "The Lizard’s Tale" is an exercise in concealment through regeneration, or adaptation

Zoran Drvenkar’s “Sorry”

Reviewed by Nina Herzog

Rare is the thriller that surpasses the limits of genre fiction. But Zoran Drvenkar’s Sorry is one such book: a thriller on its face, but also a thoughtful study in guilt and innocence, violence and redemption.

Anja Utler’s “engulf – enkindle”

Reviewed by E.C. Belli

Utler’s volume snares readers with a haunted, elliptical syntax. The words walk through these poems as in a preserve

Juan Pablo Villalobos’s “Down the Rabbit Hole”

Reviewed by Thomas Bunstead

"Down the Rabbit Hole" is told from the point of view not of a gangster, a cop or a prostitute, but that of a young child.

Meir Shalev’s “My Russian Grandmother and her American Vacuum Cleaner”

Reviewed by Emma Garman

Happily for psychological posterity and for us, Tonia Ben-Barak and her never-ending battle against grime have been commemorated by her grandson

Eduardo Chirinos’s “Reasons for Writing Poetry”

Reviewed by E.C. Belli

At the heart of "Reasons for Writing Poetry," there is a figure: ostensibly, it’s all zebra from the waist down, but from there up, the Okapi, as it’s called, looks like a giraffe

Sergio Chejfec’s “My Two Worlds”

Reviewed by Jennifer Croft

Technology, for one, has begun to batter life’s perfect syntax

Raymond Roussel’s “Impressions of Africa”

Reviewed by Stefanie Sobelle

Imagine an extravagant pageant during which a marksman shoots off the top of a soft-boiled egg

Quim Monzó‘s “Guadalajara”

Reviewed by Mythili G. Rao

Monzó is a master of the open-ended conclusion; his characters are often left hovering either on the brink of breakthrough, or of a perfect replay of their previous errors

Lars Kepler’s “The Hypnotist”

Reviewed by Emma Garman

Laszlo Krasznahorkai and Max Neumann’s “Animalinside”

Reviewed by Jean Harris

"Animalinside" is a cultural event in itself.

Antonio Lobo Antunes’s “The Land at the End of the World

Reviewed by Adam Eaglin

There’s a feral quality to this particular novel’s narration, with sentences that furiously push forward for entire paragraphs.

Shigeru Mizuki’s “Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths”

Reviewed by Deji Olukotun

"Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths" fictionalizes the real-life experiences of the author while he was stationed on the Pacific island of New Britain

Carlos Franz’s “The Absent Sea”

Reviewed by Mythili G. Rao

After twenty years of self-imposed exile, Laura has returned for a reckoning of her own.

Enrique Vila-Matas’s “Never Any End to Paris”

Reviewed by Anderson Tepper

“Am I a lecture or a novel?” the narrator asks himself

Mihail Sebastian’s “The Accident”

Reviewed by Oana Sanziana Marian

Eerily prophetic in its title, "The Accident" was the last work Sebastian published under his own name

Georges Perec’s “The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise

Reviewed by Laird Hunt

The English-language Perec enjoys a certain sartorial charm—an ink-and-paper analog of the author’s legendary formal brio.

David Albahari’s “Leeches”

Reviewed by Nina Herzog

As one clue unravels into another, flirtations with chaos and order form the backdrop for a reflection on post-war Serbia and anti-Semitism.

Ludvik Vaculik’s “The Guinea Pigs”

Reviewed by Shaun Randol

Ludvík Vaculík’s novel The Guinea Pigs is charming and unsettling at the same time.

Marcelo Figueras’s “Kamchatka”

Reviewed by Anderson Tepper

Figueras chooses to capture the drumbeat of history in the small, offbeat details of a boy’s life.

Darina Al-Joundi and Mohammed Kacimi’s “The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing

Reviewed by Emma Garman

All the more startling, then, to read "The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing," a sizzling, beautiful, and maddening memoir

Modern Poetry of Pakistan

Reviewed by Swetha Regunathan

For a country often drawn in newspapers as the backdrop of mosque and market bombings, troubled politics, and underdevelopment, poetry seems to waft through every aspect of Pakistani life.

Kotaro Isaka’s “Remote Control

Reviewed by George Fragopoulos

But for Isaka and his protagonists there is no way home, and no escape from this world and its global order.

Andrzej Sosnowski’s “Lodgings”

Reviewed by E.C. Belli

When asked how he responds to the weight of certain preconceptions about Polish poetry, Sosnowksi´s answer is simple: “I’m not sure that I do.”

The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda

Reviewed by Anderson Tepper

Rodoreda’s characters struggle with the crushing realities of life—airless marriages, the shrinking of dreams and horizons brought on by war and poverty, illness and grief, separations and departures.

Dezsö Kosztolányi’s “Kornel Esti: A Novel”

Reviewed by Jean Harris

Esti is not a classic, Gothic doppelganger, not Jekyll to the narrator's Hyde, but more of a magician who can seem to lift a house by playing a magic flute.