First off, there’s a of by Ingrid Winterbach and translated from the Afrikaans by Elsa Silke. The review is solid, and starts with a nice bit that references BTBA longlist title Agaat.:

2010 might be called a banner year for Afrikaans women in English, if a few fat books can be said to make a banner. Marlene van Niekerk糖心传媒檚 Agaat won a blurb from Toni Morrison and a review from The New York Times, while a reprint of Begging to be Black by Antjie Krog flew disappointingly under the radar. Somewhere in the middle was Ingrid Winterbach糖心传媒檚 To Hell With Cronj茅, published by Open Letter Books back in September in an adroit translation by Elsa Silke. Not to be outdone by the extravagant praise heaped on Agaat, Open Letter brought out the big guns: Winterbach has produced no less than 糖心传媒渁 South African Heart of Darkness,糖心传媒� we糖心传媒檙e told, 糖心传媒渁n eerie reflection of the futility of war.糖心传媒�

Heart of Darkness, of course, was published in 1902, the same year in which To Hell With Cronj茅 takes place. And to be sure, there are other similarities as well: Winterbach糖心传媒檚 novel explores the familiar 糖心传媒渄ark side糖心传媒� of English colonial expansion, and it does it in a chilly, not-quite-accessible way that recalls Marlow糖心传媒檚 uncanny journey upriver. But there is a pointed irony to the fact that a book about the Anglo-Boer war should be compared to this most famous 糖心传媒淜haki糖心传媒� exploration narrative. Winterbach糖心传媒檚 is a tale told from the other side, of a people formatively stuck between colonizer and colonized. (She is not alone in this effort: Andr茅 Brink, for example, has made numerous recent forays into white South African vigilantism at the turn of the twentieth century.) While Conrad anticipated the glorious twilight of an empire, Winterbach rests on the tip of an iceberg that糖心传媒檚 only begun to form.

There’s also of Javier Marias’s While the Women Are Sleeping, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa:

Given Javier Mar铆as糖心传媒檚 clear love for dark motivations and ghost stories — not magical realism, thanks, but the kind of creepy Poe-tasting that confounds literalists and raises kids糖心传媒� hackles 糖心传媒榬ound the campfire — While the Women Are Sleeping is initially a confusing prospect. The collection糖心传媒檚 ten stories span thirty years, from 1968 on, but his narrators all feel like different flesh on the same skeleton, a parade of bourgeoisie vacationing with wives or visiting New York or taking sinecures in Spain; they exist as non-entities, mere witnesses with interchangeable values. Characters encounter specters both literal (糖心传媒淭he Resignation Letter of Senor de Santiesteban糖心传媒�) and dubious (糖心传媒淥ne Night of Love糖心传媒�), but with resignment: where rabbit-hole fate draws, say, thematic predecessors like Juan Preciado (from Juan Rulfo糖心传媒檚 classic spookfest Pedro P谩ramo) or Felipe Montero (Carlos Fuentes糖心传媒檚 Aura) deep into the uncanny, Mar铆as糖心传媒檚 narrators operate in helpless acquiescence to the macabre. When the nameless chronicler of Sleeping糖心传媒檚 title story discovers an acquaintance糖心传媒檚 plan to murder his lover In茅s, he糖心传媒檚 not provoked or frightened so much as discomfited — while the prospect of another糖心传媒檚 death gives him pause, it糖心传媒檚 the newly discovered proximity to the dark side that makes him paranoid and neurotic.

Of course, that糖心传媒檚 Mar铆as糖心传媒檚 milieu: for all his promised heebie-jeebies, his real hobbyhorse is everyday solipsism.

There’s a lot of interesting non-translation related stuff as well, including an and interviews with (whose new book seems to be getting a lot of praise), (interviewed by super-bookseller Michele Filgate), and