Author Archives: Rachel Cordasco

Review: Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

translated by the author original publication (from the Gikuyu): 2004 this edition: Pantheon, 2006 grab a copy here or through your local independent bookstore or library “Sprawling” is the best way to describe Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow, a multi-layered, complex, and hilariously absurd magical realist book about the deeply corrupt

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Review: You Glow in the Dark by Liliana Colanzi

translated by Chris Andrews original publication (in Spanish): 2022 this edition: New Directions, 2024 grab a copy here or through your local independent bookstore or library “Liliana Colanzi’s first collection in English, Our Dead World (2017), was so intriguing and strange that, when I found out about her second collection, You Glow in the Dark,

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Review: The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa

translated by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain original publication (in Arabic): 2023 this edition: Restless Books, 2024 grab a copy here or through your local independent bookstore or library “Reading a book about reading books is like entering a hall of mirrors: the experience is at once fascinating and disturbing. Like other stories about books

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Review: Spinner of Darkness and Other Tales by Intan Paramaditha

trilingual edition: English, German, Indonesian translated by Stephen J. Epstein (English), Pauline Kurbasik (German) Lontar, 2015 grab a copy here or through your local independent bookstore or library The four short stories in this lovely and haunting collection by Indonesian author Intan Paramaditha leave the reader feeling unmoored and unsure of what just happened. Each

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Review: It Happened Tomorrow: A Collection of 19 Select Science Fiction Stories from Various Indian Languages

edited by Bal Phondke various translators National Book Trust, India, 1993 grab a copy here or through your local independent bookstore or library translated stories: “The Ice Age Cometh” by Jayant V. Narlikar, tr. from Marathi by the author “The Impostor” by Bal Phondke, tr. from Marathi by the author “Einstein the Second” by Laxman

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Out This Month: April

“The Rambler” by Shen Dacheng, translated from the Chinese by Cara Healey (Clarkesworld, April 1) The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated from the Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain (Restless Books, April 30) A perilous and fantastical satire of banned books, secret libraries, and the looming eye of an all-powerful government. Oracle

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Review: Behind the Red Mist by Ho Anh Thai

translated by Nguyen Qui Duc, Regina Abrami, Bac Hoai Tran, Phan Thanh Hao, and Dana Sachs Curbstone Press, 1998 grab a copy here or through your local independent bookstore or library speculative stories included: “The Goat Meat Special” (tr. Ho Anh Thai and Wayne Karlin) “The Man Who Believed in Fairy Tales” (tr. Ho Anh

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