Difference between revisions of "Forthcoming Publications"

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__NOTOC__
 
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'''10 APRIL'''
+
'''26 FEBRUARY'''
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Guadalupe Nettel and Rosalind Harvey (Translator)
+
|author=Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)
|title=The Accidentals
+
|title=The Disappearing Act
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=4
|genre=Short Stories
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|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This collection was truly enchanting in all senses of the word: spellbinding with its fantastical, magical elements and charming in its gentle portrayal of nature and human relationships. Guadalupe Nettel writes intelligently and precisely, her stories structured by a wisdom that appears to want to teach us something about the world.
+
|summary=Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself.
|isbn=1804271470
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|isbn=1804272329
}}
 
'''22 MAY'''
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Annie Ernaux and Anna Moschovakis (translator)
 
|title=The Possession
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Autobiography
 
|summary=Ernaux opens with a disclaimer, warning readers that what follows is more or less a confession: ''I have always wanted to write as if I would be gone when the book was published''. Towards the end of the book, she claims that the title (somewhat enigmatic at first) bares witness to a brief period of time in her life, labelled and documented here as ''The Possession'', in which she felt herself in the throes of an all-encompassing and seductive jealousy targeted at the new partner of W, a man she has since separated from after a six-year long affair.  
 
|isbn=1804271497
 
 
}}
 
}}
'''5 JUNE''
+
'''9 APRIL'''
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Helene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)
+
|author=Polly Barton
|title=Lili is Crying
+
|title=What Am I, A Deer?
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. Like the lives of her characters, they are often left tragically incomplete.
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|summary=Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the process of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved?
|isbn=1804271675
+
|isbn=1804272175
 
}}
 
}}

Latest revision as of 10:15, 8 February 2026

26 FEBRUARY

1804272329.jpg

Review of

The Disappearing Act by Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself. Full Review

9 APRIL

1804272175.jpg

Review of

What Am I, A Deer? by Polly Barton

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the process of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved? Full Review