European Archives - Page 2 of 16

A Sister’s Story by Donatella Di Pietrantonio, translated by Ann Goldstein [in Shelf Awareness]

23 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Italian, Repost, Translation

Award-winning Italian writer Donatella Di Pietrantonio made her English-language debut with the lauded A Girl Returned, deftly translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (revered for her elegant Elena Ferrante translations). Author and translator return to the characters from their earlier collaboration with A Sister’s Story, another...

Hakim’s Odyssey, Book 2: From Turkey to Greece by Fabien Toulmé, translated by Hannah Chute [in Booklist]

22 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW French graphic creator Fabien Toulmé opens the second of three volumes featuring Syrian refugee Hakim and his extended family with a clever recap of the first entry, facilitated by Toulmé’s young daughter, who asks to accompany him for the next interview: Toulmé lays out...

Quake by Auður Jónsdóttir, translated by Meg Matich [in Shelf Awareness]

11 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Icelandic, Repost, Translation

Quake, by Icelandic Literary Prize-winning author Auður Jónsdóttir (The People in the Basement), is an engrossing, multi-layered mystery in which memories – imagined, erased and recovered – determine the future of a fractured family. Jónsdóttir introduces the protagonist in various scenarios in the novel's opening...

City of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, translated by Lucia Graves and Carlos Ruiz Zafón [in Booklist]

10 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Repost, Spanish, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW In addition to Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s standalone Marina (2015), Daniel Weyman previously narrated The Labyrinth of the Spirits, considered the finale to the internationally bestselling Cemetery of Forgotten Books series. Weyman – his continuity is especially affecting – returns for Ruiz Zafón’s posthumous collection of...

I’d Like to Say Sorry, but There’s No One to Say Sorry To: Stories by Mikołaj Grynberg, translated by Sean Gasper Bye [in Shelf Awareness]

05 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Eastern European, European, Fiction, Jewish, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Photographer/psychologist/author Mikołaj Grynberg is best known in his native Poland for his documentary nonfiction featuring his generation of Polish Jews, born after the Holocaust and raised by survivors. Grynberg turns to fiction for the first time with I'd Like to Say Sorry, but There's No One...

Hakim’s Odyssey, Book 1: From Syria to Turkey by Fabien Toulmé, translated by Hannah Chute [in Booklist]

26 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW French graphic creator Fabien Toulmé transforms “the words that were entrusted“ to him into this stupendous testimony of survival. The first of three volumes (the subsequent two have published in France and are scheduled to be published in the U.S. in 2022) begins with...

Alien Nation: 36 True Tales of Immigration by Sofija Stefanovic [in Shelf Awareness]

19 Oct, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Eastern European, European, Latina/o/x, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Pan-Asian Pacific American, Repost, South Asian American, Southeast Asian American

*STARRED REVIEW The expectation of consistent quality among 36 global voices seems daunting, but editor Sofija Stefanovic admirably achieves this in a majority of these stories. Alien Nation: 36 True Tales of Immigration began on "one of the best-known stages of New York City" – the "plush...

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri, translated by Jhumpa Lahiri [in Booklist]

27 Sep, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Indian American, Repost, South Asian American, Translation

Pulitzer Prize-winning polyglot Jhumpa Lahiri’s second title in Italian arrives in her own translation, narrated by Italian American Susan Vinciotti Bonito. Despite Bonito’s fluency in their shared language, her noticeably youthful timbre isn’t initially convincing as Lahiri’s unnamed, 40-something protagonist. And yet Lahiri’s unadorned, sharply...

Matrix by Lauren Groff [in Shelf Awareness]

17 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, British, European, Fiction, French, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Lauren Groff has built a significant career crafting novels and stories featuring sharp observations by and about modern women. In a surprising feat of time travel, the two-time National Book Award finalist (for Fates and Furies and Florida) leaps back to 12th-century England in Matrix and fictionalizes the life...

A Play for the End of the World by Jai Chakrabarti [in Shelf Awareness]

12 Aug, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Eastern European, European, Fiction, Indian, Indian American, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American

Time, geographies, and backgrounds all seem to flow effortlessly through Jai Chakrabarti's exquisite debut novel, A Play for the End of the World. At its core is the provenance of a possible love story between two strangers in New York City. Interwoven into this uncertain...

People Like Them by Samira Sedira, translated by Lara Vergnaud [in Shelf Awareness]

13 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, European, Fiction, French, Repost, Translation

Samira Sedira's first English-language title, translated by Sara Vergnaud, is clearly marked "a novel" on its cover, and yet so much of the story is true. People Like Them is a fascinating amalgam of gruesome headlines – French newspapers in 2003 reported that an entire family...

The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina, translated by Lucy Rand [in Booklist]

01 Jul, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Italian, Japanese, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW The titular phone booth is real: it stands at Bell Gardia in coastal Ōtsuchi, Japan, built in 2010 to communicate with a dead relative via an unconnected phone that carries conversations into the wind. Since the March 2011 Tōhoku disaster, 30,000 visitors have sought...

Among the Hedges by Sara Mesa, translated by Megan McDowell [in Shelf Awareness]

25 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Repost, Spanish, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Beyond familial bonds, is a relationship between an almost-14-year-old girl and a 54-year-old man possible? Intriguing Spanish writer Sara Mesa – who presented all manner of inappropriate relationships in Four by Four – continues to explore highly charged power dynamics in Among the Hedges, translated by...

Catch the Rabbit by Lana Bastašić [in Booklist]

12 May, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Bosnian, Eastern European, European, Fiction, Repost, Translation

Once upon a time, two Bosnian girls arrived at kindergarten with paper-doll selfies. Sara’s mother made hers, garbed in pink and glittery. Lejla’s was blank. “[I]t’s not like I wear the same clothes every day,” she insisted, as if already aware that future incarnations –...

Thirst by Amélie Nothomb, translated by Alison Anderson [in Shelf Awareness]

02 Apr, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, French, Repost, Translation

To portray Jesus Christ in fiction is not new – some would agree he was always a novel creation. From Nikos Kazantzakis's classic The Last Temptation of Christ to the ongoing bestselling manga series Saint Young Men, Jesus moves copies. Prolific writer Amélie Nothomb (Tokyo Fiancée; Pétronille), who's...

Anxious People by Frederik Backman, translated by Neil Smith [in Library Journal]

09 Mar, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Nonethnic-specific, Swedish, Translation, Uncategorized

*STARRED REVIEW Marin Ireland has a mere couple dozen audio credits – the majority of them in the last few years – yet she’s undoubtedly one of the industry’s most versatile, consistently stupendous narrators. Returning for her third Fredrick Backman pairing, Ireland superbly brings to life...

In the Company of Men by Véronique Tadjo [in Shelf Awareness]

16 Feb, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, African, European, Fiction, French, Repost, Translation

Véronique Tadjo (Far from My Father) could not have known how prescient her novel, originally published in France in 2017, would be just a few years later when it was translated for English readers. In the Company of Men gives polyphonic voice to those affected by...

The Parakeet by Espé, translated by Hannah Chute [in Booklist]

28 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Penn State University Press, already a publisher of award-winning graphic titles, launches a new imprint, Graphic Mundi, showcasing comics intent on “drawing our worlds together.” Among its inaugural line-up is French comics artist Espé’s spectacular, autobiographically inspired homage to a childhood haunted by mental...

Parenthesis by Élodie Durand, translated by Edward Gauvin [in Booklist]

22 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

At 24, “in 1994, or maybe 1995 already,” French artist Élodie Durand first began experiencing symptoms – what her family would later call her “spells” – that included abrupt memory loss and erratic behavior, such as baseless rage and violent outbursts. Her diagnosis of epilepsy...

Rabbit Island by Elvira Navarro, translated by Christina MacSweeney [in Booklist]

20 Jan, by SIBookDragon in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories, Spanish, Translation

Spare in pages, Elvira Navarro’s collection of 11 short stories proves dense with disconnection, dysfunction, and dismay as families fray, couples sunder, and animals are brutalized. Set between the seemingly familiar and elusively surreal, Navarro’s tales unsettle readers through oneiric landscapes. In “Rabbit Island,” a non-inventor...

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