Pedro the Vast by Simón López Trujillo, translated from the Spanish (Chile) by Robin Myers (Algonquin Books, January 13)
In the disorienting, devastatingly tense world of López Trujillo, a eucalyptus farm worker named Pedro starts coughing. Several of his coworkers die of a strange fungal disease, which has jumped to humans for the first time, but Pedro, miraculously, awakes. His survival fascinates a foreign mycologist, as well as a local priest, who dubs his mysterious mutterings to be the words of a prophet. Meanwhile Pedro’s kids are left to fend for themselves: the young Cata, whose creepy art projects are getting harder and harder to decipher, and Patricio, who wasn’t ready to be thrust into the role of father. Their competing efforts to reckon with Pedro’s condition eventually meet in a horrifying climax that readers will never forget.
The Luminous Fairies and Mothra by Takehiko Fukunaga, Yoshie Hotta and Shin’ichiro Nakamura, translated from the Japanese by Jeffrey Angles (University of Minnesota Press, January 13)
Mystical and benevolent, the colossal lepidopteran Mothra has been one of the most beloved kaiju since 1961, when The Luminous Fairies and Mothra was originally published in Japanese. Commissioned by Tōhō Studios from three of Japan’s most prominent postwar literary writers (Shin’ichirō Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta), the novella formed the basis for the now-classic monster film Mothra, with a protagonist second only to Godzilla in number of film appearances by a kaiju. Finally available in its first official English translation, The Luminous Fairies and Mothra will captivate ardent, longtime fans of the films as well as newcomers.
Scorpions by Yumiko Kurahashi, translated from the Japanese by Michael Day (Wakefield Press, January 20)
Yumiko Kurahashi’s 1968 novella Scorpions takes the form of a transcript of a one-sided interview with L following the arrest and institutionalization of her twin brother K. The two have played a role in a series of horrifying deaths culminating in the murder of their mother. Through a first-person narrative that varies in tone from scientifically clinical to darkly humorous, mingling together references to the Bible and Greek mythology, odd bits of dialogue, and obtuse descriptions, we learn of K and L’s shocking crimes, the gruesome plight of their religion-obsessed mother, and the professional and personal entanglement of L and an older man they call the RED PIG, their mother’s former lover.
With the Heart of a Ghost by Lim Sunwoo, translated from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim (Unnamed Press, February 10)
With the Heart of a Ghost is a debut collection of eight fantastical stories translated by Chi-Young Kim that explore feelings unseen, unconveyed, unexplainable….A ghost who looks just like the narrator reflects her feelings back to her in a bun shop; mutant jellyfish take over the world and if you touch one you become one yourself; a heartbroken man becomes a tree in his ex’s apartment; the ghost of a wannabe K-pop star stuck in a vacuum cleaner wants out; Jugyeong helps a man hibernate by burying him up to his neck; Huiae, in deep conflict with her husband, reconnects with her strange old friend; Jo has lost his best friend–a gecko–but won’t give up the search; and Suyeong plots revenge on a wild dog that killed her cats by channeling her inner cat.
Revolver Christi by Anna Albinus, translated from the German by Rachel Farmer (Dedalus Books, February 13)
No one knows the exact origins of the enigmatic Revolver Christi, a holy relic with a sinister past. When the revolver is implicated in a mysterious crime, Thomas finds himself drawn into an ever-tightening web of intrigue. A piano teacher, a photograph in the attic, an underground sect, an unexplained illness—with each thread he pulls, Thomas inches closer to unravelling the truth. But those elusive answers he craves may lie unnervingly close to home. Subtle, subversive, and filled with a creeping sense of dread—this genre-bending novella is a bold exploration of religion, superstition and human nature.
Strange Buildings by Uketsu, translated from the Japanese by Jim Rion (Pushkin Press, February 26)
Eleven strange buildings. One terrible secret. A lonely hut in the woods. A hidden chamber. A mysterious shrine. A home in flames. A nightmarish prison… Each of the buildings in this book tells a chilling story. Each one is part of a puzzle. Look closely… and you’ll see that everything is connected. All leading to a revelation so horrifying you won’t want to believe it. Millions of readers have become addicted to solving Uketsu’s dark mysteries. Strange Buildings is the strangest, and darkest, so far.
City Like Water by Dorothy Tse, translated from the Chinese by Natascha Bruce (Graywolf Press, March 3)
Your city is gone, as if sunk to the bottom of the ocean. So much has vanished with it—counterfeit watches, streets echoing with the sound of stilettos, and even some of your classmates and teachers. Your mother joins in a housewives’ protest, each woman waving the fake, bloody lotus roots they were sold until they’re turned into statues. Then it’s just you and your father at home. But soon he is absorbed into the enormous TV gifted by the government, and you can only see him in the background of soap operas. And didn’t you once have a little sister? When the police go undercover and transform your neighborhood into a violent labyrinth, where does it all leave you? Lucid, nightmarish, and indelible, City Like Water is a wondrous tale of a city not so different from your own.
Cabaret in Flames by Hache Pueyo, translated from the Portuguese (Brazil) by the author (Tordotcom, March 10)
Hache Pueyo returns after But Not Too Bold with her new novella Cabaret in Flames, where Interview with the Vampire meets Certain Dark Things in an alternate-Brazil where brutal flesh-hungering Guls stalk the night streets and manipulate the government from their glittering cabaret.
I Was Alive Here Once: Ghost Stories (anthology) (Two Lines Press, March 10)
Through eight contemporary stories exploring a range of genres, from fantasy and horror to eco-fiction and romance, this collection breathes new life into the ghost story, foregoing familiar tropes to speak to today’s unique political and ecological horrors. Both lighthearted and menacing, I Was Alive Here Once will lead you into the haze where the living and the dead meet.
The Monroe Girls by Antoine Volodine, translated from the French by Alyson Waters (Archipelago Books, March 17)
Breton has seen brighter days. Now his body sags as he pulls a pair of binoculars to his withered face. He peers from the grimy window of a near-empty psychiatric compound—one of the last buildings standing after an unspecified disaster—spying rue Dellwo below, dreary in perpetual rain. Into this world of devastation drop the Monroe girls—paramilitaries trained in the “dark place” by Monroe, a dissident executed long ago. Their mission to revamp the Party is futile in this bleak, decaying world. Breton, our schizophrenic narrator, is tasked (and tortured) by what remains of the Party to locate and identify the Monroe girls using special optical equipment and his powers of extrasensory perception. Breton’s journey through a bardo-like, hostile labyrinth invites us into a sensual swirl of bodily decay, political acquiescence, and civilizational collapse. In this derelict setting, Volodine ruminates on identity, surveillance, life after death, and love (which, alas, does not conquer all). An urgent and blistering tale, beautifully rendered with Volodine’s distinct pathos and humor.
Woodwind Harmony in the Nighttime by Reza Ghassemi,
translated from the Persian by Michelle Quay (Deep Vellum, March 17)
Suspenseful, yet darkly humorous, Woodwind Harmony In The Nighttime explores the trauma of displacement, and challenges readers to piece together the story of a life shattered by exile.
The Raven of Ruwi and Other Stories from Oman by Hamoud Saud, translated from the Arabic by Zia Ahmed (Syracuse University Press, March 18)
In this lyrical collection, author Hamoud Saud invites readers into the soul of Oman, a country famed for its long coastline, rugged mountains, and stark desert landscapes. This geography provides the backdrop for stories that reveal both the beauty and hardship of a country and people on the margins. Focused on the capital city, Saud’s Muscat is not a postcard-perfect city but a living, breathing place of cement forests, forgotten roundabouts, and ravens perched on flagpoles. Each story is fabulist in spirit but grounded in the textures of everyday life….
This’ll Make Things a Little Easier by Attila Veres, translated from the Hungarian by the author (Valancourt Books, March 24)
In the opening story, ‘a pit full of teeth’, an aspiring Hungarian horror writer gets the exciting news that one of his stories will be translated into the obscure language of a reclusive tribe that almost no one knows anything about. But when his copy of the translation arrives, he discovers that it doesn’t match what he wrote: instead, the text contains a much more horrific narrative that seems to be playing out in reality. In ‘The Designated Contact Individual’, a traveling representative for a soft drink company finds his sales territory expanding when he is sent to an alternate reality where they have their own nightmarish use for his cola. ‘Damage d10+7’ tells of a group of gamers who commit a terrible outrage in the fantasy world of their game and which has a deadly ripple effect in their real lives. The narrator in ‘The Summer I Chose to Die’ has decided that life is no longer worth living, but his worldview is shaken up when a murderous army of fish-people begins to rise from the oceans. And in the title story, money literally does grow on trees when the Hungarian government tries to alleviate poverty by supplying families with a strange new plant species, but their newfound financial gain will come at a terrible cost.
City of Rats by Copi, translated from French by Kit Schluter (New Directions, March 31)
Told in a series of letters purportedly written in rat language and posted from Gouri to his former master, City of Rats is the second novel by French-Argentine exile, novelist, cartoonist, playwright, actor, and queer provocateur Copi to be translated into English and perhaps his most madcap work, an X-rated fable with high-velocity prose that smashes through societal taboos— moral, sexual, or otherwise—like a bullet train hitting a glass house.
The White Desert by Luis López Carrasco, translated from the Spanish (Spain) by Rosalind Harvey (Granta Books, April 6)
Life on earth is fading to a whisper. Faced with a stalled future of economic precarity and mounting authoritarianism, Carlos and Aitana must make a decision, monumental and world-altering, about what they are prepared to sacrifice to cleave to life. Through sleight of hand and ingenious puzzle-like logic, The White Desert orbits Carlos and Aitana’s story and emerges as a collective portrait, mapping the true cost of our frictionless lifestyles. Effortlessly moving between genres, it is an adventure novel for an era of globalism, an epistolary novel set in a world of near-instantaneous communication, and a mystery novel which plays out amid bountiful data and hyperconnectivity.
The Witch by Marie NDiaye, translated from the French (France) by Jordan Stump (Vintage, April 7)
Equal parts dreamlike and disquieting, The Witch tells a tale as old as time, with a dark twist: Without looking back, children fly the nest, laying bare the tenuous threads of family that have long threatened to snap. With simmering tension and increasing panic, NDiaye’s latest novel in English captures the terror and precarity of motherhood and marriage, and the uncertainty of slowly realizing that your progeny are more dangerous—to the world and to your heart—and freer than you ever could have dreamed.
The Perfect Circle by Claudia Petrucci, translated from the Italian by Anne Milano Appel (World Editions, April 7)
Two women far apart in time, a mysterious unsellable mansion in Milan that connects them: two lives that start to overlap as impossible parallels are revealed in this story of passion, betrayal, and selfish desire.
On the Calculation of Volume (Book IV) by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell (New Directions, April 14)
We’re a little more than halfway through Balle’s hypnotic, monumental seven-volume novel about a woman set adrift within the walls of November 18th…In Book III we saw the addition of a handful of new characters to Tara’s world—fellow travelers within November 18th—and now Book IV heralds the arrival of many others, and soon to be even more, roaming uncertainly through the same November day. Could this be the first stirrings of an alternate civilization? The big house in Bremen turns into the headquarters for this growing group of time-trapped individuals. But who are they and what has happened to them? Are they loopers, repeaters, or returners? A brilliant modern spin on the myth of Babel, Book IV asks urgent questions, concerning the naming of things, and people, and of the functions of language itself–must a social movement have a common language in order to exist?…Amid the buzz and excitement of a new social order coming into being, Book IV ends with a sudden, unexpected, and tantalizing cliffhanger that no one—not even Tara, our steady cataloger and cartographer of the endless November day—could have foreseen.
The Weathering by Artem Chapeye, translated from the Ukrainian by Daisy Gibbons
Award-winning Ukranian author Artem Chapeye’s new novel follows a young couple who, upon returning to Kyiv from a bucolic summer vacation in the Carpathian Mountains, discover that the world as they once knew it no longer exists. As they contend with the aftermath of an earth-shattering event that they didn’t witness, the couple is must align themselves with the rest of the survivors to retain their humanity and forge a new world in the ashes of the old.
If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light by Kim Choyeop, translated from the Korean by Anton Hur (S&S/Saga Press, April 28)
From Korean science fiction author Kim Cho-yeop, a stunning and poignant collection of literary speculative fiction stories that explore the complexities of identity, love, death, and the search for life’s meaning, perfect for fans of Exhalation and The Paper Menagerie.
Project V by Park Seolyeon, translated from the Korean by Gene Png (HarperVia, April 28)
STEMinist mecha fantasy meets reality television in this high-stakes novel from the author of A Magical Girl Retires—a wildly imaginative tale of sibling bonds, unexpected friendship, and an existential quest to understand what it means to be human.
Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun by Mónica Ojeda, translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker (Coffee House Press, May 12)
In the near future, best friends Noa and Nicole flee their home in Guayaquil, Ecuador to attend the Solar Noise Festival, a week-long, retro-futuristic gathering at the foot of an active volcano. While Noa fully embraces the haze of narcotics and hedonism in an effort to obscure her true reason for attending, Nicole senses something darker at play behind the festival’s so-called “celebration of life.” Amid technoshamanic poetry, collective hallucinations, and ritualistic dances, each girl navigates her own path in an effort to escape her past and reclaim her right to a future.
Self-Worth by Emma Tholozan, translated from the French (France) by Emma Ramadan (Scribe US, May 19)
Fresh from graduating with her master’s in philosophy, Anna is shocked when a career counsellor tells her she has ‘no special skills’. Desperate for work and financial independence, she accepts a thankless job at a TV talk show. She might be making minimum wage, but at least she has her boyfriend Lulu, the love of her life, to come home to at night. But one day Lulu starts throwing up cash — thousands of euros in just a few days — hurtling the twenty-something couple into unforeseen wealth. Having spent their lives proudly rejecting consumer society, they suddenly find themselves rich, and Anna is loving every minute of it: she gets a designer bag, they vacation in Tahiti, they throw wild parties in their fancy new apartment. As Anna grows accustomed to a life of luxury, Lulu’s health suffers, and she wonders: what would be worse, losing him or losing the money?
Teddy Bears Never Die by Cho Yeeun, translated from the Korean by Sung Ryu (Run For It, May 26)
A young woman and a possessed teddy bear set out on a revenge quest unlike any other in this stylish slasher from Cho Yeeun, a rising star in Korean horror.
Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir, translated from the Icelandic by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Nightfire, May 26)
Unnur was living a normal, if lonely, life until a black cat showed up at her door. Trying to do the right thing, Unnur reunites the lost pet with its owner—a young woman named Ásta who is in desperate need of some help. Unnur reluctantly agrees to take in the cat until Ásta is able to care for it again herself. Soon, Ásta becomes a fixture in Unnur’s life and the two form an unlikely friendship. But like a black cat, trouble is tailing Ásta, and Unnur is the only one there when things take a violent turn. Nothing tests a friendship like blood on your hands.
The Last Canterbury Tales by Jean Ray, translated from the French (Belgium) by Scott Nicolay (Wakefield Press, May 26)
Drawing on the lineage of British Gothic fiction, German Romanticism, and—with such character names as Mistress Squeak, Dick Wallet, Teddy Ruddle, and old Mr. Pankeydrop—Dickensian humor, Ray spins a series of tales that embody his own distinct mixture of weird Catholic mythology and cosmic horror. The Last Canterbury Tales, first published in French in 1944, makes no pretense of finishing Chaucer’s masterpiece but instead works toward a denouement of its own that reveals an unexpected act of storytelling underpinning this collection.
Shift by Cho Yeeun, translated from the Korean by Yewon Jung (Honford Star, May 29)
Detective Yi Chang needs another miracle. Ten years ago his sister was healed of her deadly cancer by a mysterious cult leader, but now his young niece has inherited the same disease. The only lead Yi Chang has is the body of a murder victim found in an abandoned building in the Korean seaside. The man was stabbed repeatedly, but the knife found next to the body is covered with someone else’s blood. Even stranger, the victim’s face is covered with malignant melanoma, a disease he did not have. With time running short, Yi Chang must discover how this murder is related to the cult leader he so desperately seeks.
The Heart of the Nhaga by Lee Young-do, translated from the Korean by Anton Hur (Harper Voyager, June 2)
Welcome to Lee Young-do’s epic classic series, The Bird That Drinks Tears. The master of Korean fantasy—often cited as the J.R.R. Tolkien of South Korea—Lee Young-do has created a tale of castles built on the backs of flying mantas, giant birdmen, heartless immortals, and a quest that will change the very nature of the world and its gods, available for the first time in English by award-winning translator Anton Hur.
Home in the Dark by Jayanta Dey, translated from the Bengali by Sayari Debnath (University of Chicago Press, June 5)
When civility is just a mask, what happens when it slips? This collection of gripping stories pries open the cracks in urban life, revealing the chaos and cruelty beneath. Home in the Dark peels back the polished surface of middle-class life to expose the shadows lurking underneath: violence, betrayal, and the unsettling truths we refuse to see. In these fifteen gripping stories, Jayanta Dey weaves a world where desperation takes strange forms: a woman on the brink of suicide finds an unlikely savior in a rat, a stolen clock carries the weight of communal hatred, and a writer–publisher duo rides the highs of literary success—until their lucrative business in pornography turns against them.
Animal Spiral by Luis Othoniel Rosa, translated from the Spanish (Puerto Rico) by Katie Marya (Charco Press, June 23)
The post-colonial birth, life, and death of the collective consciousness known as the Animal. Middle-aged streamer twins in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, are the first human beings to successfully connect—sharing their consciousness across 34 translucent cables. In that moment, the Animal is born, an intracerebral force that quickly grows to encompass anthills of synaptically entwined bodies, a floating library kitchen redolent of rice and beans far above the Mississippi river, and a transhuman compound in a future Cuba on the Isle of Youth.
From the Earth to the Moon: Annotated for Our Spacefaring Age by Jules Verne, edited by Anastasia Klimchynskaya, translated from the French by Walter James Miller (MIT Press, June 30)
A new, annotated edition of Jules Verne’s classic, which considers the past, present, and future of spaceflight from scientific as well as humanistic angles. In an age when the idea of a “planet B” seems tempting, this edition of Verne’s classic From the Earth to the Moon (1865) offers a complete and unabridged translation into English alongside extensive annotations and essays from contributors that span disciplines. It uses the prescient novel as a launching pad to consider the past, present, and future of spaceflight from scientific, humanistic, social, legal, and ethical angles.
The Playful Lem: A Short Story Sampler by Stanislaw Lem, translated from the Polish by Michael Kandel (Modern Language Association of America, July 1)
Conjuring worlds in which robots are kings and Earthlings exist on the fringes of the universe, Stanisław Lem’s anachronistic fairy tales and science fiction parables envision knights who fight for the favor of a mechanical princess, a computer that can create anything (so long as it begins with the letter n), and a human astronaut who goes undercover on a planet ruled by robots. In celebrated translations by Michael Kandel, these stories highlight age-old human weaknesses—vanity, jealousy, cowardice, and cruelty—while tickling the reader with layered humor ranging from satire to wordplay to slapstick.
Visions & Apparitions: Selected Tales of the Uncanny by Ladislav Klíma, translated from the Czech by Jed Slast (Twisted Spoon Press, July 6)
Collected here for the first time in English, Visions & Apparitions represents the greater part of Klíma’s output of ghost stories. Klíma employed the horror genre as a way to explore his subjectivist philosophy, and by all accounts he enjoyed writing them to pass the time. At times playful and lyrical, if not outright comical, the stories were written at various stages, the last text, ostensibly a one-act play about the undead, penned (or dictated) in the final months of his life. Taken together, they reflect Klíma’s lifelong preoccupation with the nature of “reality” as a matrix of madness, hallucination, and dream permeated with all-to-real phantoms and ghouls. Akin to Poe, ghosts emerge from the unconscious or the power of imagination and materialize as more than mere figment, visible even to others.
Not Yet Gods by Djuna, translated from the Korean by Gord Sellar and Jihyun Park (Kaya Press, July 14)
Following the landmark English-language publication of Everything Good Dies Here, Kaya Press delivers more provocative thought experiments by pseudonymous author Djuna, whose writings on internet culture have attracted a cult following in South Korea. Not Yet Gods explores the universe-shattering effects of teenage anger cross-pollinated with radiation-induced psychic powers, unscrupulous governments and corporate avarice.
The Mulai by Munir Hachemi, translated from the Spanish by Julia Sanches (Coach House Books, July 14)
Interstellar via Invisible Cities: spec-fic translated from Spanish imagines life on another planet….Drawing on Borges, Le Guin, and Calvino, The Mulai is a mind-bending work of metafiction whose interlocking puzzles resound with Munir Hachemi’s singularly playful and eclectic style.
China + 100: Stories from a Century After the Outbreak, edited by Xueting C. Ni, various translators from the Chinese (Comma Press, July 23)
China + 100 poses a simple question to ten leading Chinese science fiction writers: what might China look like in the year 2119 – a century after the first outbreak of Covid-19. How might this event – which triggered a global health crisis, and altered the world’s relationship with China – impact the development and position of China a century later? Exploring everything from big tech, class warfare, transhumanism, government infringements on personal freedoms, and global security, these stories ask all the difficult questions: will China and the world have learned from the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic, and be prepared for even greater health threats in the future, or will new, man-made dangers have emerged?
Five by César Aira, translated from Spanish (Argentina) by Chris Andrews (New Directions, July 28)
Five, selected from over 100 untranslated novels and stories by “the Duchamp of Latin America” (Natasha Wimmer), brings together—each an astonishing work—Margarita: A Memory, The Dream, Musical Brushstrokes, Princess Springtime, and The Hormone Pill. Following a cast of dreamlike characters including cyber nuns, a young princess forced to be a hack translator, a newspaper vendor, and General Winter and his sadistic sidekick, the Little Christmas Tree, Five shows the many facets of Aira’s multifarious mind as he turns expectations inside-out and gleefully explodes genre conventions.
A Plagued Sea by Kim Bo-Young, translated from the Korean by Sophie Bowman (Tor Nightfire, August 11)
While waiting for a train to Haewon, an isolated Korean seaside village, bodyguard Mu-young gets a disaster alert on her phone. TVs throughout the station report breaking news of a massive earthquake on the eastern coast. Despite the danger, Mu-young boards the train with her niece: she’d rather face the earthquake than leave the girl in her mother’s care. That choice haunts her for the rest of her life. Three years later, Haewon Village is home to horrors. The earthquake unleashed an ancient plague that transforms its victims into fishy monsters, and the government’s lockdown has cut off any hope for help. Mu-young’s niece is dead, and all that’s left for her is to hunt villagers who break isolation. When an officious bureaucrat from Seoul arrives in the village, he stirs up even deeper trouble. Will Mu-young survive? Does she even deserve to?
Slow Elephants of Milan by Ángel Bonomini, translated from the Spanish (Argentina) by Jordan Landsman (Transit Books, August 11)
In twelve short fictions threaded together by an insatiable curiosity about time, memory, art, and the divine, Ángel Bonomini (The Novices of Lerna) explores “the sweet and subtle interrelations of things.” Originally published in 1978 and appearing in English for the first time, Slow Elephants of Milan is an indispensable addition to our literature of the strange and fantastic.
The Formosa Exchange by Huang Chong-kai, translated from the Chinese (Taiwan) by Jeremy Tiang (Honford Star, September 18)
On the 20th of May, 2024, one day after the inauguration of Taiwan’s first Indigenous President, the entire population of the island wakes up to discover they have suddenly switched places with the residents of Cuba.
Pan by Francesco Dimitri, translated from the Italian by by Sophia McDougall (Tor Books, October 13)
Jim Butcher meets Claire North in this brutal modern Italian retelling of the story of Peter Pan, now in English for the first time.
Living in Fire: A Post-Exotic Novel by Antoine Volodine, translated from the French by Lia Swope Mitchell (University of Minnesota Press, October 13)
A soldier engulfed in napalm suspends his death by composing a family saga in which he learns to live within the flames.
Paradise Burns by Pol Guasch, translated from the Catalan (Spain) by Mara Faye Lethem (FSG, October 20)
When Rita and Líton meet at a party, they quickly form a bond that will indelibly shape their lives. Theirs is not an easy world: most wildlife is extinct and the earth is tormented by drought and floods; the last vestiges of natural life are kept under lock and key in a mysterious greenhouse a day’s travel away. Like the other young men of the Service, Líton is frequently enlisted to put out the seemingly never-ending fires that tear through the valley; Rita lives perched on a hill in the Colony, where other men, including her father, empty an almost barren mine. Yet their bond grounds them. They navigate the love affairs, setbacks, and thwarted idealism of their twenties together, finding in each other a vital reprieve for their disillusionment—that is, until Líton, like other gay men, falls deathly sick.
Nordic Nightmares: The Best of Nordic Horror, edited by Margrét Helgadóttir (Solaris, October 20)
Twenty nightmarish horror tales featuring folkloric beasts, apocalyptic disasters, and psychological terrors are brought together in a collection sure to keep readers up at night, from the very best voices in contemporary Nordic fiction. Featuring stories by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Marko Hautala, Steinar Bragi, Hildur Knútsdóttir, Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, Martin Schjönning, Rakel Helmsdal, Johanna Sinisalo, Markus Sköld, Boel Bermann, Jon Ewo, Aleksander Brun, Madeleine Bäck, Nanna Árnadottir, Pivinnguaq Mørch, Mikkel Harris Carlsen, AR Frederiksen, Sólrún Michelsen, Gertrud-Marie Kreutzmann, and Tor Åge Bringsværd.
On the Calculation of Volume (Book V) by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell (New Directions, November 17)
It’s been a while since Tara Selter was all alone in her repeating November day. It’s been even longer since she was one half of a unit called T&T Selter, an antiquarian book dealership she ran with her beloved husband Thomas. Her hazy days of confusion are behind her, and so are her desperate and doomed attempts to reattach herself to linear time. Tara has begun to settle into a new life, with new habits, and new people, and so have the many other time-trapped individuals who have joined her along the way. And yet we can’t help but wonder whether she and her fellow travelers will ever find their way out of a trap so inexplicable and profound—and will they even still want to? In Balle’s hands the time loop becomes a parable of loss, longing, marital loneliness, and our own mortality. With gradual, breathtaking power, Balle deftly explores a series of existential and philosophical questions, and grapples with the form of the novel itself, charging full steam ahead in reinventing and reinvigorating its possibilities. And now we’ve arrived at the thrilling fifth book of Solvej Balle’s septology.
Blood to the True Crown by Sung-il Kim, translated from the Korean by Anton Hur (Tor Books, November 17)
The fate of the world will be decided in Blood to the True Crown, the epic conclusion to the Bleeding Empire trilogy, from award-winning Korean author Sung-il Kim and translated by the world-renowned Anton Hur.
