Eagerly Awaiting: August 2022
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This is the novel you want to read forever. It's the one you want to live inside of and the one you want to stay up late for and the one that'll suffice as a meal, a feast. The spareness of it is backlit by the luxury of it; the soaring in it is tempered by the intimacy. --Erica
Spooky, speculative fun...so atmospheric (and full of dread) that I couldn't pull myself away. Perfect for lovers of The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. --Maggie
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Here's how you take a great sin--maybe The great sin--and particularize it so that our minds can grasp it. The Germans and the British and the Portuguese and the Dutch (and now, of course, the US and China and ad nauseam)--all of these governments have, at one time or another, wanted to get their hands on Africa--really get in there--all the way in--and do what they want to it. Gurnah and his magical Nobel Prize-winning pen tells us the story of a family battered by the complexities of colonialism and their risings and fallings and re-risings. Deep, satisfying, horrifying, wonderful. --Erica
The legacy of Oxford’s Royal Institute of Translation - or Babel - begins and ends with students like Robin Swift - foreign children with a skill for language and victims of the British Empire. Taking advantage of gaps and differentials in translation, power is derived from other languages and carved into silver, further empowering Britain’s supremacy. Babel is expertly weaved with questions of colonial violence, the otherness produced by cultural supremacy, and the imperialism of translation. It is a life-changing powerhouse of a book, with a revolutionary premise and a resplendent alternate history of the power of language. --Jordan
In two of the most memorable stories from her new collection, May-Lee Chai puts us in situations that most of us couldn't possibly imagine being in. One involves an execution and one takes place on a Martian colony. But the deftness of her writing places us just as assuredly in the heads and hearts of these characters as any other. Throughout the book, Chai lead us on explorations of love and longing, and prejudice and patriarchy across the spectrum of the Chinese diaspora. If you've ever felt like an outsider, been separated from a loved one, or had a difficult relationship with a family member, you'll likely find yourself in these characters. Even if you find yourself on Mars! --Tony
