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World Literature/Books in Translation
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The lying life of adults
by Elena Ferrante
The best-selling author of My Brilliant Friend presents the story of an Italian teen who searches for a sense of identity and clear perspectives when she finds herself torn between the refinements and excesses of a divided Naples.
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A girl returned
by Donatella Di Pietrantonio
A 13 year old girl is sent away from the only family she's ever known to begin a new life of struggle, tension and conflict in Abruzzo in central Italy in the English-language debut of the award-winning Italian novelist. Original.
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The memory police
by Yōko Ogawa
An Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance finds a young novelist hiding her editor from mysterious authorities who would erase all memories of people who once existed
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Human acts : a novel
by Kang Han
A U.S. release of an award-winning, controversial best-seller from South Korea follows the aftermath of a young boy's shocking death during a violent student uprising as told from the perspectives of the event's victims and their loved ones.
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Flights
by Olga Tokarczuk
A meditative collection from Poland explores themes of travel, movement and existentialism in stories that feature protagonists who question their shifting perspectives in time and space as they tackle extreme agendas.
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Mouthful of birds : stories
by Samanta Schweblin
A first English-language collection of stories by the Man Booker International Prize-finalist author of Fever Dream incorporates themes of high suspense, psychological tension, unearthly restlessness and distortions in reality
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Disoriental
by Négar Djavadi
In an intricately woven tapestry of Iranian history, politics, culture, family drama and triumph, 25-year-old Kimia Sadr, facing the future she has built for herself after leaving her family behind, is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors in the waiting room of a Parisian fertility clinic. Original.
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The door
by Magda Szabó
"The Door is an unsettling exploration of the relationship between two very different women. Magda is a writer, educated, married to an academic, public-spirited, with an on-again-off-again relationship with Hungary's Communist authorities. Emerence is a peasant, illiterate, impassive, abrupt, seemingly ageless. She lives alone in a house that no one else may enter, not even her closest relatives. She is Magda's housekeeper and she has taken control over Magda's household, becoming indispensable to her. And Emerence, in her way, has come to depend on Magda. They share a kind of love--at least until Magda's long-sought success as a writer leads to a devastating revelation. Len Rix's prizewinning translation of The Door at last makes it possible for American readers to appreciate the masterwork of a major modern European writer"
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The discomfort of evening : a novel
by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
When her strictly religious family is torn apart by a tragic accident, 10-year-old Jas, along with her siblings, develop a curiosity about death that leads her into disturbing rituals and fantasies. Original. 10,000 first printing.
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The sound of things falling
by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
A U.S. release of an award-winning novel by the author of The Informers finds Bogotá resident Antonio Yammara reflecting on a mid-20th-century uprising between Pablo Escobar's drug cartel and government forces that trapped Pablo's community in a nightmarish existence and culminated in a friend's murder.
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Frankenstein in Baghdad : a novel
by Amad Sa'dw
Hadi, an eccentric scavenger in U.S.-occupied Baghdad, collects human body parts and cobbles them together into a single corpse, but discovers his creation is missing just as a series of strange murders begins to plague the city.
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The Meursault investigation
by Kamel Daoud
"This response to Camus's The Stranger is at once a love story and a political manifesto about post-colonial Algeria, Islam, and the irrelevance of Arab lives. He was the brother of "the Arab" killed by the infamous Meursault, the antihero of Camus's classic novel. Seventy years after that event, Harun, who has lived since childhood in the shadow of his sibling's memory, refuses to let him remain anonymous: he gives his brother a story and a name--Musa--and describes the events that led to Musa's casual murder on a dazzlingly sunny beach. Harun is an old man tormented by frustration. In a bar in Oran, night after night, he ruminates on his solitude, on his anger with men desperate for a god, and on his disarray when faced with a country that has so disappointed him. A stranger among his own people, he wants to be granted, finally, the right to die. The Stranger is of course central to Daoud's novel, in which he both endorses and criticizes one of the most famous novels in the world. A worthy complement to its great predecessor, The Mersault Investigation is not only a profound meditation on Arab identity and the disastrous effects of colonialism in Algeria, but also a stunning work of literature in its own right, told in a unique and affecting voice."
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Perfume : the story of a murderer
by Patrick Süskind
Follows an odorless baby found orphaned in Paris in 1738 as he grows into a monster obsessed with his perfect sense of smell and a desire to capture, by any means, the ultimate scent that will make him human
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The elegance of the hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
The lives of fifty-four-year-old concierge Rene Michel and extremely bright, suicidal twelve-year-old Paloma Josse are transformed by the arrival of a new tenant, Kakuro Ozu
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The three-body problem
by Cixin Liu
Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project's signal is received by an alien civilization, which plans to invade Earth, while on Earth different camps start forming to either welcome the superior beings or to fight against the invasion
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Girls of Riyadh
by Rajā' 'Abd Allāh Sāni'
Originally banned in Saudi Arabia, the tale of four young women university students from Riyadh follows their struggles to navigate the precarious paths between desire, fulfillment, and Islamic tradition while witnessing the ways in which the Arab world is being changed by new economic and political realities. A first novel. Reprint.
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Miss Iceland
by Auður A. Ólafsdóttir
Moving to 1960s Reykjavik to pursue her literary ambitions, an aspiring novelist moves in with her gay childhood friend only to be confronted by a small male-dominated community that does not believe women belong in the art world. Original.
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The Rabbit Back Literature Society
by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen
Selected as the new, 10th member of an exclusive and elite writer's club headed by a renowned children's author, Ella discovers the other participants are involved in disturbing secrets, mysterious rituals and have books in which the words begin to rearrange themselves. Simultaneous.
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The big green tent
by Liudmila Ulitskaia
An orphaned poet, a gifted pianist and a budding photographer meet in a mid-20th-century Moscow school and eventually embody the heroism, folly, compromise and hope of the Soviet dissident experience. By the author of The Funeral Party.
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Devil on the cross
by Ngg wa Thiong'o
"The great Kenyan writer and Nobel Prize nominee Ngg wa Thiong'o's powerful fictional critique of capitalism One of the cornerstones of Ngg wa Thiong'o's fame, Devil on the Cross was written in secret, on toilet paper, while Ngg wa Thiong'o was in prison. It tells the tragic story of Wariinga, a young woman who moves from a rural Kenyan town to the capital, Nairobi, only to be exploited by her boss and later by a corrupt businessman. As she struggles to survive, Wariinga begins to realize that her problems are only symptoms of a larger societal malaise and that much of the misfortune stems from the Western, capitalist influences on her country. An impassioned cry for a Kenya free of dictatorship and for African writers to work in their own local dialects, Devil on the Cross has had a profound influence on Africa and on post-colonial African literature"
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