La rentrée littéraire, always a big deal in France, is feeling particularly strong in the UK this year, with festivals, new releases and events packing the calendar. So we wanted to mark the beginning of autumn with a big set of reviews of our recent reading.
We have a new reviewer onboard this month, in the shape of Rasoul Sorkhabi, a travel writer and geologist, who takes on the second part of Erika Fatland’s Russian borderlands travelogue.
We welcome back Darcy Hurford with a review of part two in Selim Özdoğan’s Turkish-German trilogy, and Paul Burke is back with reviews of books by Maylis de Kerangal and Shumona Sinha from French translation specialist press Les Fugitives.
We explore more Ukrainian literature, with Jennifer Sarha covering an author we’ve seen a lot of at ELNet, but have not yet reviewed: Oksana Zabuzhko.
La Española columnist Alice Banks anticipates our Spanish Riveter (coming next year) with a review of Lara Moreno, translated by our guest editor for the magazine, Katie Whittemore. And our resident poet, Anna Blasiak, enthuses about the latest collection from Nora Gomringer.
We have no reviews of European noir this month, but our crime-fiction regular Barry Forshaw is present in the form of his comprehensive study of the life and work of Georges Simenon, reviewed by our other crime specialist, Max Easterman.
And finally, I have to confess to some self-indulgence this month – but to a level I think is justifiable. I have written two long reviews: one of Elisa Shua Dusapin’s two published novels; the other of Natalia Ginzburg’s extraordinary tome All Our Yesterdays.
Enjoy these insights into recent European writing in translation, and if you’re tempted to buy the books, please do so via our devoted Bookshop.org Riveting Reviews page.
We’re always looking for new reviews and reviewers, so if you read European literature in English translation and are keen to write about it, do get in touch at reviews@eurolitnetwork.com. Our next set of reviews will be published in December.
Until then, enjoy the literary autumn.
—West Camel