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Finalist for the 2021 PEN Translation Prize A Best Translation of the Year at World Literature Today That Hair is a family album of sorts that touches upon the universal subjects of racism, feminism, colonialism, immigration, identity and memory. “The story of my curly hair,” says Mila, the narrator of Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s autobiographically inspired tragicomedy, “intersects with the story of at least two countries and, by extension, the underlying story of the relations among several continents: a geopolitics.” Mila is the Luanda-born daughter of a black Angolan mother and a white Portuguese father. She arrives in Lisbon at the tender age of three, and feels like an outs...
Nearly three decades after her pioneering anthology, Daughters of Africa, Margaret Busby curates an extraordinary collection of contemporary writing by 200 women writers of African descent, including Zadie Smith, Bernardine Evaristo and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. A glorious portrayal of the richness and range of African women's voices, this major international book brings together their achievements across a wealth of genres. From Antigua to Zimbabwe and Angola to the USA, overlooked artists of the past join key figures, popular contemporaries and emerging writers in paying tribute to the heritage that unites them, the strong links that endure from generation to generation, and their common obstacles around issues of race, gender and class. Bold and insightful, brilliant in its intimacy and universality, this landmark anthology honours the talents of African daughters and the inspiring legacy that connects them-and all of us.
A previously untranslated classic of Portuguese feminist literature originally published in 1978, Carvalho's Empty Wardrobes introduces English-speaking readers to a forgotten and underappreciated woman writer a la recent publishing sensations Lucia Berlin, Natalia Ginzburg, Ingeborg Bachmann, Silvina Ocampo, and Armonia Somers. Empty Wardrobes is a tightly plotted, highly entertaining read, that, thanks to an ingenious detached narrative technique (one that makes the plot all the more fun to revisit and rethink), is both darkly humorous and devastatingly true.
"A novel par excellence that is destined to become a classic' of almost byzantine splendour . . . At its best worthy of comparison with Gabriel García Márquez" Catherine Taylor, Irish Times "Afonso Cruz is one of the strongest voices in contemporary Portuguese literature" Antonio Saez Delgado, El Pais At the age of forty-two, Bonifaz Vogel begins to hear a voice. But it doesn't belong to the mice or the woodworm, as he first imagines. Nor is it the voice of God, as he comes to believe. It belongs to young Isaac Dresner, who takes refuge in the cellar of Vogel's bird shop on the run from the soldier who shot his best friend. Soon Vogel comes to rely on it for advice: he cannot make a sale w...
Inspired by a real event, this is the story of a woman and a city that were violated. It is 2014. There is euphoria in Brazil, especially in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The World Cup is about to take place, and the 2016 Olympics are in sight. It is a time of hope and of frenzied construction. Júlia is a partner with an architecture firm that is planning projects for the future Vila Olímpica. During a break from one of these meetings at the town hall, Júlia goes for a run in Alto da Boa Vista. Suddenly, someone puts a revolver to her head, takes her to a secluded spot, and rapes her. Left abandoned in the woods, she drags herself home, where her boyfriend and some family members wait for her. Vista Chinesa brings light and shadow to a city whose stunning beauty cannot conceal the most serious human and political problems. This is a novel that turns a tragic, real chapter in the story of a woman into great literature.
Sweet Medicine takes place in Harare at the height of Zimbabwe's economic woes in 2008. Tsitsi, a young woman, raised by her strict, devout Catholic mother, believes that hard work, prayer and an education will ensure a prosperous and happy future. She does well at her mission boarding school, and goes on to obtain a scholarship to attend university, but the change in the economic situation in Zimbabwe destroys the old system where hard work and a degree guaranteed a good life. Out of university, Tsitsi finds herself in a position much lower than she had set her sights on, working as a clerk in the office of the local politician, Zvobgo. With a salary that barely provides her a means to surv...
A captivating and transporting travel novel, Scorpionfish reveals how what we leave behind may be exactly what we've been looking for all along. After the unexpected deaths of her parents, academic Mira returns to her childhood home in Athens. On her first night back, she encounters a new neighbor, a longtime ship captain who has found himself, for the first time in years, no longer at sea. As one summer night tumbles into another, Mira and the Captain’s voices drift across the balconies of their apartments, disclosing details and stories: of careers, of families, of love. For Mira, love has so often meant Aris, an ex-boyfriend and rising Greek politician who has recently become engaged to...
'Zesty' Daily Mail 'A real gem of a book' Stylist A wickedly funny tale of two rebellious sisters in 1940s Rio de Janeiro Euridice is bright and ambitious. But this is Brazil in the 1940s, and society expects her to be a loving wife and mother. While Antenor is busy congratulating himself on his excellent catch, Euridice spends her humdrum days ironing his shirts and removing the lumps of onion from his food, dreaming of the success she could have made of herself – as a writer, dressmaker or culinary whizz – in another life. Her free-spirited sister Guida, on the other hand, is the kind of person who was 'born knowing everything'. When she returns from her failed elopement with stories of heartbreak and loss, the lives of Euridice and her husband are thrown into confusion, with disastrous consequences. The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao is a darkly comic debut, bursting with vibrant Brazilian spirit and unforgettable characters – a jubilant novel about the emancipation of women.
***WINNER of the 2021 RSL Ondaatje Prize*** 'I binged it like a Netflix show ... It's stunning' Luke Kennard, author of The Transition ______________________________ A photograph is hung on a gallery wall for the very first time since it was taken two decades before. It shows a slaughter house in rural Ireland, a painting of the Virgin Mary on the wall, a meat hook suspended from the ceiling - and, from its sharp point, the lifeless body of a man hanging by his feet. The story of who he is and how he got there casts back into Irish folklore, of widows cursing the land and of the men who slaughter its cattle by hand. But modern Ireland is distrustful of ancient traditions, and as the BSE cris...
“Dazzling." —Marcela Valdes, The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice) "A spellbinding novel by one of the best writers of the Americas." —Junot Díaz, author of This is How You Lose Her From the author of the award-winning The Black Cathedral, a darkly magical tale of a haunted young dreamer, born in the wrong body and time, who believes himself to be a doomed prophetess from ancient Greek mythology. Ten-year-old Rauli lives in a world that is often hostile. His older brother is violent; his philandering father doesn’t understand him; his intelligence and sensitivity do not endear him to the other children at school. He loves to read, especially Greek myths, but in Cuba in th...