(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Contemporary Fiction Views: New publications [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-11-07
The book I planned to write about tonight requires I do some due diligence of more research and reflection. I hope to publish thoughts about it next week. Meanwhile:
Among the books scheduled for release this week are:
East Jerusalem Noir, edited by Barbara Rawya Jarjoura, and West Jerusalem Noir, edited by Eitan Maayan
Based on my collection of the Akashic Noir series, in which each volume focuses on one city, I need these.
The Future by Naomi Alderman. From the publisher:
The bestselling, award-winning author of The Power delivers a dazzling tour de force where a handful of friends plot a daring heist to save the world from the tech giants whose greed threatens life as we know it.
Above the Salt by Katherine Vaz. From the publisher:
John Alves, son of a famous Presbyterian martyr on the Portuguese island of Madeira, spends his childhood in jail and in poverty. When he meets Mary Freitas—though the adopted daughter of a master botanist, her true lineage is the subject of dangerous rumor—a spark kindles a lasting bond. But soon their families must confront the rising blood tide of warfare between Catholics and Protestants. Fleeing with only what they can carry, John and Mary are separated and arrive at different times and places in a rapidly growing and changing mid-nineteenth-century Illinois.
Again and Again by Jonathan Evison, who has been interviewed by Ali Velshi for the Velshi Banned Book Club. From the publisher:
Eugene “Geno” Miles is living out his final days in a nursing home, bored, curmudgeonly, and struggling to connect with his new nursing assistant, Angel, who is understandably skeptical of Geno’s insistence on having lived not just one life but many—all the way back to medieval Spain, where, as a petty thief, he first lucked upon true love only to lose it, and spend the next thousand years trying to recapture it.
How to Build a Boat is the story of how one boy's irrepressible dream finds expression through a community propelled by love out of grief. Lyrical and compassionate, it's a novel about the courage of conviction and the power of the imagination to transform--and how sometimes the best way to break free of old walls is to build something beautiful within them. A Booker longlist title.
The Vulnerables by National Book Award-winner Sigrid Nunez. From the publisher:
Elegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today, says a character in Sigrid Nunez’s ninth novel. The Vulnerables offers a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past.
A new translation of Ovid's Metamorphophoses translated by C. Luke Soucy, published by the University of California Press. From the publisher:
Soucy’s powerful version breathes new life into Ovid's mythic world, where canonical power dynamics are challenged from below to drain heroes of their heroism, give victims their say, and reveal an earth holier than heaven.
Hot Springs Drive by Lindsay Hunter. From the publisher (Roxane Gay’s imprint):
Jackie Stinson's best friend is dead, and everyone knows who killed her.
Jackie wants to be many things, but a martyr has never been one of them. She is an ex-emotional eater and mother of four, who has finally lost the weight she long yearned to be free of. In her new, sharp-edged body, she goes by Jacqueline. But leaving her old self behind proves harder than she ever imagined. And while she believes she should be happier, misery still chases her, and motherhood threatens to subsume what little is left of her.
Same Bed, Different Dreams by Ed Park. From the publisher:
In 1919, far-flung patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This government-in-exile proves mostly symbolic, though, and after Japan’s defeat in World War II, the KPG dissolves and civil war erupts, resulting in the tragic North-South split that remains today.
But what if the KPG still existed—now working toward a unified Korea, secretly pulling levers to further its aims?
Baumgartner by Paul Auster. From the publisher:
Paul Auster's brilliant eighteenth novel opens with a scorched pot of water, which Sy Baumgartner -- phenomenologist, noted author, and soon-to-be retired philosophy professor - has just forgotten on the stove.
Baumgartner's life had been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife, Anna, who was killed in a swimming accident nine years earlier. Now 71, Baumgartner continues to struggle to live in her absence as the novel sinuously unfolds into spirals of memory and reminiscence, delineated in episodes spanning from 1968, when Sy and Anna meet as broke students working and writing in New York, through their passionate relationship over the next forty years, and back to Baumgartner's youth in Newark and his Polish-born father's life as a dress-shop owner and failed revolutionary.
The Bay by Julia Rampen. From the publisher:
In an old-fashioned fishing community on Morecambe Bay, change is imperceptibly slow. Treacherous tides sweep the quicksands, claiming everything in their path. As a boy, Arthur had followed in his father's and grandfather's footprints, learning to read the currents and shifting sands. Now retired and widowed, though, he feels invisible, redundant. His daughter wants him in a retirement home. No one listens to his rants about the newcomers striking out nightly onto the bay for cockles, seemingly oblivious to the danger. When Arthur's path crosses Suling's, both are running out of options. Barely yet an adult, Suling's hopes for a better life have given way to fear: she's without papers or money, speaks no English, and chased by ruthless debt collectors. Her only next step is to trust the old man.
Forgetting by Frederika Amalia Finkelstein. From the publisher:
On her nighttime wanderings through a Paris saturated with cultural and historical meaning, she begins the slow work of grieving for her grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, and begins to unravel the ways that his experience continues to reverberate across generations.
Ndima Ndima by Tsitsi Mapepa. From the publisher:
From debut Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Mapepa comes the saga of the four Taha sisters, and the indomitable matriarch who carried her daughters--and her community--through times of drought and violence in their Harare neighborhood.
Theorem and Boys Alive by Pier Paolo Pasolini, from NYRB Classics. From the publisher:
Theorem: This tale about seduction, obsession, family, and the confines of capitalism is one of director Pier Paolo Pasolini's most fascinating creations, based on his transcendent film of the same name.
Boys Alive: A daring novel, once widely censored, about the scrappy, harrowing, and inventive lives of Rome's unhoused youth by one of Italy's greatest film directors.
A Nearby Country Called Love by Salar Abdoh. From the publisher:
Amid the alleyways of the Zamzam neighborhood of Tehran, a woman lights herself on fire in a desperate act of defiance, setting off a chain reaction of violence and protest. Haunted by the woman’s death, Issa is forced to confront the contradictions of his own family history, throughout which his late brother Hashem, a prominent queer artist in Tehran’s underground, had defied their father, a skilled martial artist bound to traditional notions of honor and masculinity.
A Grandmother Begins the Story by Michelle Porter. From the publisher:
Written like a crooked Métis jig, A Grandmother Begins the Story follows five generations of women and bison as they reach for the stories that could remake their worlds and rebuild their futures.
The Liberators by E.J. Koh. From the publisher:
At the height of the military dictatorship in South Korea, Insuk and Sungho are arranged to be married. The couple soon moves to San Jose, California, with an infant and Sungho’s overbearing mother-in-law. Adrift in a new country, Insuk grieves the loss of her past and her divided homeland, finding herself drawn into an illicit relationship that sets into motion a dramatic saga and echoes for generations to come.
The novel I’m looking forward to the most from those named is A Grandmother Begins the Story. What are you looking forward to reading?
READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/11/7/2203983/-Contemporary-Fiction-Views-New-publications?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
