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<\/figure>Pedro the Vast<\/a><\/em> by Sim\u00f3n L\u00f3pez Trujillo, translated from the Spanish (Chile) by Robin Myers (Algonquin Books, January 13)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the disorienting, devastatingly tense world of L\u00f3pez 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\u2019s 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\u2019t ready to be thrust into the role of father. Their competing efforts to reckon with Pedro\u2019s condition eventually meet in a horrifying climax that readers will never forget.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n The Luminous Fairies and Mothra<\/a><\/em> by Takehiko Fukunaga, Yoshie Hotta and Shin’ichiro Nakamura, translated from the Japanese by Jeffrey Angles (University of Minnesota Press, January 13)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Mystical and benevolent, the colossal lepidopteran Mothra has been one of the most beloved kaiju since 1961, when The Luminous Fairies and Mothra<\/em> was originally published in Japanese. Commissioned by T\u014dh\u014d Studios from three of Japan\u2019s most prominent postwar literary writers (Shin\u2019ichir\u014d Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta), the novella formed the basis for the now-classic monster film Mothra, <\/em>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<\/em> will captivate ardent, longtime fans of the films as well as newcomers.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Yumiko Kurahashi\u2019s 1968 novella Scorpions<\/em> 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\u2019s 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\u2019s former lover.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n With the Heart of a Ghost<\/em> 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\u2019s 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\u2013a gecko\u2013but won’t give up the search; and Suyeong plots revenge on a wild dog that killed her cats by channeling her inner cat.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n 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\u2014with 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\u2014this genre-bending novella is a bold exploration of religion, superstition and human nature.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n 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\u2026 Each of the buildings in this book tells a chilling story. Each one is part of a puzzle. Look closely\u2026 and you\u2019ll see that everything is connected. All leading to a revelation so horrifying you won\u2019t want to believe it. Millions of readers have become addicted to solving Uketsu\u2019s dark mysteries. Strange Buildings<\/em> is the strangest, and darkest, so far.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n City Like Water<\/a><\/em> by Dorothy Tse, translated from the Chinese by Natascha Bruce (Graywolf Press, March 3)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Your city is gone, as if sunk to the bottom of the ocean. So much has vanished with it\u2014counterfeit watches, streets echoing with the sound of stilettos, and even some of your classmates and teachers. Your mother joins in a housewives\u2019 protest, each woman waving the fake, bloody lotus roots they were sold until they\u2019re turned into statues. Then it\u2019s 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\u2019t 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 <\/em>is a wondrous tale of a city not so different from your own.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Cabaret in Flames<\/a><\/em> by Hache Pueyo, translated from the Portuguese (Brazil) by the author (Tordotcom, March 10)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Hache Pueyo returns after But Not Too Bold<\/em> with her new novella Cabaret in Flames<\/em>, where Interview with the Vampire<\/em> meets Certain Dark Things<\/em> in an alternate-Brazil where brutal flesh-hungering Guls stalk the night streets and manipulate the government from their glittering cabaret.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s unique political and ecological horrors. Both lighthearted and menacing, I Was Alive Here Once<\/em> will lead you into the haze where the living and the dead meet.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n 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\u2014one of the last buildings standing after an unspecified disaster\u2014spying rue Dellwo below, dreary in perpetual rain. Into this world of devastation drop the Monroe girls\u2014paramilitaries trained in the \u201cdark place\u201d 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\u2019s 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\u2019s distinct pathos and humor.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Woodwind Harmony in the Nighttime<\/a><\/em> by Reza Ghassemi, Suspenseful, yet darkly humorous, Woodwind Harmony In The Nighttime <\/em>explores the trauma of displacement, and challenges readers to piece together the story of a life shattered by exile.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s 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….<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n This’ll Make Things a Little Easier<\/em> <\/a>by Attila Veres, translated from the Hungarian by the author (Valancourt Books, March 24)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Told in a series of letters purportedly written in rat language and posted from Gouri to his former master, City of Rats <\/em>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\u2014 moral, sexual, or otherwise\u2014like a bullet train hitting a glass house.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n The White Desert<\/a> <\/em>by Luis L\u00f3pez Carrasco, translated from the Spanish (Spain) by Rosalind Harvey (Granta Books, April 6)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/em> orbits Carlos and Aitana\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Equal parts dreamlike and disquieting, The Witch<\/em> 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\u2019s 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\u2014to the world and to your heart\u2014and freer than you ever could have dreamed.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n The Perfect Circle<\/a><\/em> by Claudia Petrucci, translated from the Italian by Anne Milano Appel (World Editions, April 7)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n We\u2019re a little more than halfway through Balle\u2019s hypnotic, monumental seven-volume novel about a woman set adrift within the walls of November 18th…In Book III <\/em>we saw the addition of a handful of new characters to Tara\u2019s world\u2014fellow travelers within November 18th\u2014and now Book IV <\/em>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 <\/em>asks urgent questions, concerning the naming of things, and people, and of the functions of language itself\u2013must 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 <\/em>ends with a sudden, unexpected, and tantalizing cliffhanger that no one\u2014not even Tara, our steady cataloger and cartographer of the endless November day\u2014could have foreseen.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s meaning, perfect for fans of Exhalation <\/em>and The Paper Menagerie<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Welcome to Lee Young-do\u2019s epic classic series, The Bird That Drinks Tears. The master of Korean fantasy\u2014often cited as the J.R.R. Tolkien of South Korea\u2014Lee 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.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n STEMinist mecha fantasy meets reality television in this high-stakes novel from the author of A Magical Girl Retires<\/em>\u2014a wildly imaginative tale of sibling bonds, unexpected friendship, and an existential quest to understand what it means to be human.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n 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\u2019s so-called \u201ccelebration of life.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n China + 100: Stories from a Century After the Outbreak<\/a><\/em>, edited by Xueting C. Ni, various translators from the Chinese (Comma Press, May 14)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n China +\u00a0100<\/em> poses a\u00a0simple question to ten leading Chinese science fiction writers: what might China look like in the year 2119 \u2013\u00a0a century after the first outbreak of Covid-19. How\u00a0might this event \u2013\u00a0which triggered a\u00a0global health crisis, and altered the world\u2019s relationship with China \u2013\u00a0impact the development and position of China a\u00a0century 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\u00a0emerged?<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Teddy Bears Never Die<\/a><\/em> by Cho Yeeun, translated from the Korean by Sung Ryu (Run For It, May 26)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n 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\u2014a young woman named \u00c1sta who is in desperate need of some help. Unnur reluctantly agrees to take in the cat until \u00c1sta is able to care for it again herself. Soon, \u00c1sta becomes a fixture in Unnur’s life and the two form an unlikely friendship. But like a black cat, trouble is tailing \u00c1sta, and Unnur is the only one there when things take a violent turn. Nothing tests a friendship like blood on your hands.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Visions & Apparitions: Selected Tales of the Uncanny<\/a><\/em> by Ladislav Kl\u00edma<\/a>, translated from the Czech by Jed Slast (Twisted Spoon Press, June 1)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Collected here for the first time in English, Visions & Apparitions<\/em> represents the greater part of Kl\u00edma’s output of ghost stories. Kl\u00edma 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 Kl\u00edma’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.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/nakamura.jpg\")
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<\/figure>Scorpions<\/a><\/em> by Yumiko Kurahashi, translated from the Japanese by Michael Day (Wakefield Press, January 20)<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>With the Heart of a Ghost<\/a><\/em> by Lim Sunwoo, translated from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim (Unnamed Press, February 10)<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>Revolver Christi<\/a><\/em> by Anna Albinus, translated from the German by Rachel Farmer (Dedalus Books, February 13)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>Strange Buildings<\/em> <\/a>by Uketsu, translated from the Japanese by Jim Rion (Pushkin Press, February 26)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>I Was Alive Here Once: Ghost Stories<\/a> <\/em>(anthology) (Two Lines Press, March 10)<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>The Monroe Girls<\/a><\/em> by Antoine Volodine, translated from the French by Alyson Waters (Archipelago Books, March 17)<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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translated from the Persian by Michelle Quay (Deep Vellum, March 17)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/saud.jpg\")
<\/figure>The Raven of Ruwi and Other Stories from Oman<\/a><\/em> by Hamoud Saud, translated from the Arabic by Zia Ahmed (Syracuse University Press, March 18)<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>City of Rats<\/a><\/em> by Copi, translated from French by Kit Schluter (New Directions, March 31)<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>The Witch<\/a><\/em> by Marie NDiaye, translated from the French (France) by Jordan Stump (Vintage, April 7)<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>On the Calculation of Volume (Book IV)<\/a><\/em> by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell (New Directions, April 14)<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light<\/em> <\/a>by Kim Choyeop, translated from the Korean by Anton Hur (S&S\/Saga Press, April 28)<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>The Heart of the Nhaga<\/a><\/em> by Lee Young-do, translated from the Korean by Anton Hur (Harper Voyager, April 28)<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>Project V<\/a><\/em> by Park Seolyeon, translated from the Korean by Gene Png<\/strong> (HarperVia, April 28)<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ojeda-683x1024.webp\")
<\/figure>Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun<\/a><\/em> by M\u00f3nica Ojeda, translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker (Coffee House Press, May 12)<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>Dead Weight<\/a><\/em> by Hildur Kn\u00fatsd\u00f3ttir, translated from the Icelandic by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Nightfire, May 26)<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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