August #RivetingReviews by West Camel

The long hot summer has broken, and the torpor it provoked in many across Europe seems to have been shrugged off – by our Riveting Reviewers, at least, because we have another bumper crop of reviews this month.

Lucy Popescu reflects on the immigrant experience, represented by the often harrowing but ultimately life-affirming What We Owe, Golnaz Hasemzadeh Bonde’s tale of an Iraqi refugee in Sweden.

Traumatic but life-affirming seems to be a theme this month: Sofi Oksanen’s Norma, Gine Cecilia Pedersen’s Zero, and Evald Flisar’s A Swarm of Dust all share these qualities, according to our contributors, while Domenico Starnone’s Trick is more equivocal, according to Tasja Dorkofikis.

As always, we include a crime novel – this time, Greek: Pol Koutsakis’s Baby Blue. And we have essays too, by Germany’s Hans Magnus Enzensberger.

Leading our August line-up are two star reviewers. We welcome back the great Estonian writer Rein Raud, reviewing for us Narrator by Iceland’s Bragi Ólafsson.

And we have the great pleasure to introduce as a reviewer acclaimed BBC journalist and presenter, Caroline Wyatt, who provides our feature review this month – of Hard Times, a collection of stories by Ukrainian satirist – and one the country’s bestselling writers in the 1930s – Ostap Vyshnia.

Enjoy these and our other reviews. And if you’d like to join our ever-growing line-up of reviewers, please read the #RivetingReviews Rules and then get in touch with us via our contact page. Our next deadline is 10 September.

By West Camel