Reykjavik by Katrín Jakobsdóttir and Ragnar Jónasson Is it wise for presidents and prime ministers to try their hand at writing crime novels, however commercially tempting it ma
‘Have you tried exercising, vitamins or a better diet?’: a familiar refrain often heard by women seeking medical attention for exhaustion. In her first book translated into Eng
Have you ever seen photographs of rivers and streams meandering through the rugged terrain of Iceland? The way they create their own space, take ownership of obstacles and thrive i
W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie. This tongue-twister – sound-twister – resounded in my head at the sight/name of Aneta Kamińska’s birthplace: Szczebrzeszyn. No
There is a melancholy at the heart of both Family and Borghesia, but in neither novella does the source of this sadness become clear until the story’s close. Published late
Katja Oskamp won the Dublin Literary Award in 2023 with her book Marzahn Mon Amour, the story of a writer-turned-chiropodist working in Marzahn, the biggest housing estate in forme
In his recent book on the novel, one of the most famous literary critics and theoreticians, Fredric Jameson, states that a novel is an intervention, which a naïve reader mostly ta
Comprised of five chapbooks, each by a different contemporary writer, with colourful covers (that sometimes make more sense once you’ve read the book) and a brief format, Kūnai,
The Bonnet is the first prose work by the award-winning Slovak poet Katarína Kucbelová. Described in the publisher’s blurb as ‘literary reportage’, its poetic and psy
I am wary of epistolary novels based around social-media interactions, as in my view their form makes momentum and character depth hard to realise. Despentes, however, proves it ca
