Set in the Netherlands, Jaap Robben’s novel "Afterlight" is about an elderly woman’s work to discover what happened to her child. In the book’s present, Frieda is in her eighties. After her husband, Louis, dies, she is deemed too... Read More

The freedom to live life on its own terms is at stake in Omar Youssef Souleimane’s novel "The Last Syrian", about the Arab Spring in Syria. When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in desperation over the situation in his native... Read More

A lonely hairdresser finds comfort and inspiration in an unlikely place in Stéphane Carlier’s effervescent English-language debut, "Clara Reads Proust". The people working at the Cindy Coiffure hair salon are a dissatisfied bunch.... Read More

A determined, empathetic woman works to preserve the stories that others dismiss in Valérie Perrin’s scintillating novel "Forgotten on Sunday". Orphaned as a toddler and raised by her grandparents, Justine could be cynical at... Read More

Self-consciously “phantasmagoric and allegorical,” this ambitious novel revels in a wide-eyed traveler’s surreal trek across all of Africa’s nations. Acquiescing to the outlandish is obligatory in Areg Azatyan’s epic adventure... Read More

In Christophe Bernard’s novel "The Hollow Beast", a patriarch’s fervent pursuit of revenge has intergenerational consequences with the emergence of a mysterious beast that haunts one of his descendants decades later. During a fateful... Read More

Louis Timagène Houat’s harrowing, hopeful abolition novel "The Maroons" introduces a crucial Black narrative to the English canon. A maroon, a term used during the Indian Ocean slave trade, is defined as a fugitive, a Black person who... Read More

Cultures and generations clash in Maya Arad’s insightful novella collection "The Hebrew Teacher", which follows three storylines whose flows are sometimes concentric. Ilana is a Hebrew professor. She’s been at her school for “forty... Read More