This match was judged by Hilary Plum—you can learn more about her writing and editing at her or on Twitter at @ClockrootBooks.

For more information on the Women’s World Cup of Literature, click here or here. Also, be sure to follow our and like our And check back here daily!

The stands are packed on both sides, tension palpable. Mexico糖心传媒檚 entry into this year糖心传媒檚 tournament: Carmen Boullosa糖心传媒檚 Texas: The Great Theft, in Samantha Schnee糖心传媒檚 endlessly sly translation. The novel kicks off in 1859, in a lightly fictionalized version of the Mexican/Texas border, along the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande (depending on where you糖心传媒檙e sitting) and in the twin cities糖心传媒攐r, a Mexican city and a sad Texan excuse for one糖心传媒攐f Matas谩nchez and Bruneville. As the title reminds us and the novel renders in profound detail, this border was drawn in bloodshed and greed: land that is now the state of Texas had first belonged to Mexico, until the Republic of Texas was declared in 1835, for among other reasons the desire to legalize slavery, which was counter to Mexican law. In 1846, Texas joined the U.S., resulting in the war of 1848 that our textbooks know as the Mexican-American War, but which could just be called a U.S. invasion. The US declared a new, more southerly border and land north of it was redirected into American hands糖心传媒攊.e.: stolen. Amid all this, the conflicts with and among the American Indians who were either of or had been relocated to the region continued. If this sounds like a highly complex geopolitical moment in which to set what seems to be a comic novel, you糖心传媒檙e right on.

On one dusty high noon in July in Bruneville, the sheriff/mediocre carpenter of Bruneville insults Don Nepomuceno, son of a prominent Mexican family. Shots are fired, conflict ensues糖心传媒攁n intricate and bloody chain of consequences that our narrator relates with relentless Pynchonian inventiveness. The pace is fast, the tone witty, the speed may be manic but this novel won糖心传媒檛 lose its cool. When I picture this team, its game is soccer as spectacle: moves showy as hell, hairstyles unprecedented. Each short passage in Texas zips into the next, into and out of the lives of a massive cast of characters, ever precise but never not flip. Boullasa糖心传媒檚 form of procedural improvisation is her own, though one thinks too of Aira and Bola帽o: this is art along the high-tide line, style poised, glittering, mid-crash, before exhausting itself. Through the snap and pizazz of the prose, the horrors of this conflict surface; we recall how close we are to the landscape through which Cormac McCarthy糖心传媒檚 Judge raged, the kid with his mindless taste for violence.

Daring, even absurd, Mexico糖心传媒檚 game starts strong: Boullosa糖心传媒檚 nonstop stand-up routines, winking and shapeshifting, take us to halftime with a 2糖心传媒�1 Mexican lead.

We turn then to the Colombian side, where Laura Restrepo糖心传媒檚 Delirium sets a quite different pace: a fluid elegance, a taut lyricism that, we糖心传媒檒l come to see, can both give and take real devastation. The achievements of Restrepo糖心传媒檚 novel糖心传媒攊n Natasha Wimmer糖心传媒檚 translation糖心传媒攁re curiously hard to describe. Its structure is more conventional than Texas糖心传媒檚, without really being conventional; setting the two novels side by side illuminates how Restrepo, too, is playing with genre, though more quietly, so that the reader may almost not notice. The novel is centered on Agustina, a young Colombian woman of upper-class background who is deep in an episode of糖心传媒攐ne could call it delirium, or madness, or mania: in any case she is far from reality. She has spent her life, as we糖心传媒檒l learn, in and out of such episodes, while also believing herself, perhaps being believed by others, to possess visionary powers. Agustina is a sort of absent center, then糖心传媒攅ven though she is one of the novel糖心传媒檚 four narrators, sometimes referring to herself in the first person, sometimes in the third, she also constitutes its vital mystery. What has caused the new and terrible instance of madness in which we discover her in the novel糖心传媒檚 opening scene? This is the question her lover, Aguilar糖心传媒攆ormer professor of literature; current dog-food salesman糖心传媒攕ets out to answer, and which seems to drive the book糖心传媒檚 plot, against the background of 1980s Bogot谩. Aguilar narrates the course of this search, while Agustina糖心传媒檚 sections are set during her childhood, amid the layers of secrecy and oppression that make up her deeply patriarchal family. Agustina糖心传媒檚 grandfather, a German musician obsessed with a young student, occupies the third, haunting narrative strand; the fourth belongs to the propulsive voice of Midas McAlister, Agustina糖心传媒檚 one-time boyfriend and a money launderer who may have just run dangerously afoul of cocaine king Pablo Escobar.

The novel seems, then, to be driven by suspense, infused by noir: a madwoman, a mystery, a detective on the hunt. Yet gradually糖心传媒攏o spoilers here糖心传媒擱estrepo sets aside the simplifying logic of cause and effect and refuses any expectation of easy resolution. One narrator yields to the next, ongoingly, and the instability of each character糖心传媒檚 story reflects a greater instability, a vulnerability intimate to each voice and yet which also belongs to the societal and political moment糖心传媒攄rug traffickers running the nation, guerrillas claiming the highways, bombs detonating downtown糖心传媒攊n which they live. In Wimmer糖心传媒檚 translation, Restrepo糖心传媒檚 syntax is capable of swift architectural feats (you may think of Sebald), suddenly building a world that is half-reality, half-dream, and just as quickly replacing it with another, each creation given life by a vivid sensual glimmer or an offhand flash of her intelligence.

The match is a tense one; both teams play at the top of their games. In the stands you all should have Texas in one hand, Delirium in the other, not able even to pick up your beer till you糖心传媒檝e finished reading. It could go either way, but today, since I糖心传媒檓 the judge, I see Colombia pull away in the game糖心传媒檚 second half, a greater range of moves at its disposal. Texas is so insistently various and vaudevillian that it becomes, in its way, consistent, and loses a bit of momentum: all short fast passes, less chance of the long desperate lob toward goal, of sinking to one糖心传媒檚 knees on the field. We end with a hard-fought 3糖心传媒�2, victory Delirium, in what has surely been another incarnation of the beautiful game.

There we go! All six countries in the quarter- and semi-finals have been decided: Germany, Canada, Cameroon, Australia, Costa Rica, and Colombia. (Very much different from the actual semifinals!)

In terms of pairings, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine gets the top bye and will play the winner of Assault on Paradise vs. Delirium. Oryx & Crake gets the other bye and will face off against the winner of Burial Rites vs. Dark Heart of the Night.

More info soon about these final match-ups. For now, enjoy today’s actual Women’s World Cup quarterfinals . . .

Click here for all past and future posts in this series.

by Inka Parei, translated by Katy Derbyshire

Language: German
糖心传媒–辞耻苍迟谤测: Germany
Publisher: Seagull Books

Why This Book Should Win: Seagull produces some damn beautiful books.

Today糖心传媒檚 post is by Hilary Plum, an editor with Interlink Publishing and co-director of Clockroot Books. Her novel They Dragged Them Through the Streets is forthcoming from FC2.

Hell and Dunkel (in German: Light and Dark) are two squatters in Berlin, young or youngish women, the only remaining residents in their wing of a “formerly elegant Jewish apartment house.” At the opening of The Shadow-Boxing Woman, Hell糖心传媒檚 monotonous daily life is disturbed: Dunkel has disappeared. Hell sets out on a search for her missing neighbor, not out of friendship糖心传媒攕he and Dunkel rarely speak糖心传媒攐r even any real sense of morality, but some other more visceral drive, one which leads her and the novel through a dark picaresque in ’90s, post-Wall Berlin. Her tone deceptively flat, Parei offers an unsettlingly intimate evocation of the city. In her portrayal Berlin is both sinisterly populated and desolate, everywhere its surfaces defaced and indistinguishable from the prevailing refuse and excrement, a place in a state of ruin and troubled growth, continual becoming and decay (as the Eastern philosophy the novel toys with might put it).

“I can糖心传媒檛 imagine a greater contrast than between Dunkel糖心传媒檚 apartment and mine. At least bearing in mind that the layouts are exactly the same, mirrored across the axis of the stairwell,” Hell tells us, and maybe you糖心传媒檙e starting to sense what this uncanny, masterfully structured novel is up to. The Shadow-Boxing Woman is a political fable in contemporary motifs: never simple allegory, but through the story of these two women offering a profound commentary on existence in fractured and then reunited Berlin. Hell is joined on her search for Dunkel by Markus M盲rz, some kind of old consort of Dunkel糖心传媒檚, who has come from the suburbs in search of a father long lost to him in Germany糖心传媒檚 division. M盲rz is a bank robber of sorts (the novel糖心传媒檚 understatement and ambiguity make an “of sorts” always in order as one describes it), and his and Hell糖心传媒檚 hunt for Dunkel echoes the forms of both a crime novel and a classic tale of the Wild West, two outlaws teamed up on a near-hopeless quest. Interspersed with this plotline is a series of scenes from Hell糖心传媒檚 past, just as the Wall is coming down, when she suffered some monstrous incident of violence; in response she has turned to martial arts, as well as developing, it seems, the relentlessly precise awareness that pervades the novel, the extraordinary eye for detail that is both hypnotic and suffocating. Hell deploys her martial arts skills several times in the novel糖心传媒檚 course, with a casual brutality befitting any cowboy; but in time specters will return to haunt her, and us.

Parei sets all this up playfully, with a wicked humor that will have you grinning at lines糖心传媒攚hich makes the poignant moments that radiate briefly from this dark landscape all the more moving. “We need a dream-world in order to discover the features of the real world we think we inhabit“ is the old line by Feyerabend that often returns to me, especially when confronting a dream world as deftly made as this one, feeling so real to the senses and suffused with a wisdom that can糖心传媒檛 be easily distilled. The Shadow-Boxing Woman is marvelously made, strange and commanding, its deep political insight resonating perfectly from within the novel糖心传媒檚 architecture. How nice to give such a subtly constructed work the grand applause of a big award糖心传媒攕o give this novel the BTBA!

Click here for all past and future posts.

Touch by Adania Shibli, translated by Paula Haydar

Language: Arabic
Country: Palestine
Publisher: Clockroot
Pages: 72

Why This Book Should Win: Only book translated from the Arabic on the list; Clockroot Books deserves more attention and praise; she is 糖心传媒淭he Most-Talked-About Writer on the West Bank.糖心传媒�

Today we finally get another publisher involved, as Hilary Plum of Clockroot wrote this post.

In 2008 when Pam and I were starting Clockroot糖心传媒攁 new imprint of Interlink Publishing for literature in translation糖心传媒攚e readied ourselves for questions such as: how do you decide what translations to publish? What works to translate? I don糖心传媒檛 know if we expected anyone out in the world to ask us this, or whether we were really asking ourselves. In any case, we had our answer prepared, having stolen it from Adania Shibli, who when asked by the Guardian what Arabic writers should be translated into English replied:

I remember a story from four years ago in Ramallah. One night the Israeli army stormed a building in which somebody I knew lived. Everyone was told to get out. After a few hours, the army announced it wanted to blow up the building and gave the inhabitants 20 minutes to go up to their rooms and retrieve what they could. When my friend went up he didn糖心传媒檛 know what to take; he had all of his life there, he was totally lost. He finally went to the washing machine, emptied it and went out with the washing, leaving everything else behind to be blown up a few minutes later.

In the same way, I could never say which text to have translated from Arabic into English; if I did, it might be the least important.

It糖心传媒檚 the better story to say that on reading this we decided that the texts we should translate should be Adania Shibli糖心传媒檚. In some way this must be true糖心传媒攚e signed on both of Adania糖心传媒檚 novels without being able to either in full, relying on tantalizing pieces that had been published in translation in magazines, and a stunning essay translated and introduced by Anton Shammas in the 2007 Words Without Borders anthology.

As publishers, we have to do what we can for our books, let our hands get dirtied in 糖心传媒渢he market,糖心传媒� or maybe we should just call it the world. A few years ago Ahdaf Soueif wrote an article in which she hailed Adania as 糖心传媒渢he most talked-about writer in the West Bank糖心传媒澨切拇綌a phrase we of course used in publicity, and which several reviews noted as ultimately maybe regrettable hype. Of course it糖心传媒檚 hype, we replied, but we would like people to read her books糖心传媒攁ctually, of course, we didn糖心传媒檛 reply, how could we? Which is no doubt why I am doing so here. The point is, on behalf of our authors sometimes we must deny ourselves the freedom and rigor of expression that we value in our authors. (In a recent interview, when asked 糖心传媒淒o you feel that you represent the new generation of Palestinian authors?糖心传媒� Adania answered, 糖心传媒淣o. (In fact I hardly represent myself and most often fail to do so.)糖心传媒� and proceeded to discuss exile in the internet age, the late work of Darwish, Palestinian literature as 糖心传媒渢he literature of the last breath that never ends.糖心传媒�)

All publishers know: when the world calls for hype, you hype. But how do we get the taste of all this hype out of our mouths, how do we get to talk again about literature, about falling in love? And糖心传媒攂ecause, after all, our own feelings should not be that important糖心传媒攈ow do we shield our writers from all this hype, all this world? How do we hold a space open for Adania and her writing in English translation, under the weight of such labels as 糖心传媒渢he new generation of Palestinian writers,糖心传媒� a 糖心传媒淧alestinian woman writer糖心传媒� (picture here all the tired stereotypes of 糖心传媒淢uslim women speaking out,糖心传媒� that sort of thing糖心传媒攖hese will be lingering in the shadows, in the US of 2011 we can糖心传媒檛 be free of them, they糖心传媒檙e there). Let糖心传媒檚 try to answer all these questions at once, for Touch. Because the answer isn糖心传媒檛 so hard糖心传媒擾Touch_ holds open its own space, and luminously:

Everyone managed to find black outfits to wear, except the little girl. The search for a black outfit for her, followed by an attempt to improvise one, nearly made the family forget their grief, so it was decided that this task should be left to her.

The closet door was always half open, because no one fixed it or showed any interest in fixing it.

The girl removed all the clothes from the closet and placed them in the small space between the closet on one side and the beds on the other. The pile of clothes remained multicolored, despite what the constantly angry art teacher said, that all colors mixed together would make white.

A pair of dark blue velvet pants and a wool sweater that had in addition to the dark blue other little colors won the almost-black outfit contest. After she put them on, she found a hole in the pants near the left knee.

On the way to the mosque, she bought a bottle of cola with a red ribbon on it. The liquid inside it was black, or closer to black than to any other color around her. She continued on her way, holding the bottle in her right hand and hiding the hole in her pants with her left.

She was the last to arrive at the square of the mosque. When she got there, she found that the mother had fainted and had been taken to an ambulance parked out back, so she headed in that direction.

The back door of the ambulance was open, but she could not get to it, because a huge crowd of women in black created an immense wall between her and the door. She could not even get a glimpse of the mother糖心传媒檚 shoes. As the crowd of women in black got bigger and bigger, she, in her dark blue clothes, got pushed further and further back, unable to resist. Her right hand was holding the bottle and her left was covering the hole. She could not remove her hand, or everyone would see the hole.

The pushing became harder and harsher, and each time it would force her hand away from the hole, so she would press on it harder and harder, using all her strength, including that in her right hand. That hand now had weakened its hold on the bottle, and a little black liquid leaked out with each step she was pushed backward.

At the end of the square, the wall of the mosque rose behind the girl, keeping her from getting pushed back any further. She stood there looking toward the ambulance, which had no white left, after the black drape of women wrapped it. But above, on top of the ambulance, the red light kept spinning inside itself, not veiled by anything, switching regularly from dark red to light red. She waited for its regular return to dark red, so that it would look like the red label on the empty bottle in her hand.

Translated from the Arabic by Paula Haydar

In years of reading literature in translation, of reading Arabic fiction糖心传媒攔eally just in years of reading糖心传媒擯am and I had never read anything quite like Touch. Its spare, idiosyncratic beauty, the slow pace of the girl糖心传媒檚 encounter with the world, so slow as to be merciless, to break your heart, but no, you must go on steadily, as she does. When I think of the novel, I don糖心传媒檛 remember particular phrases so much as a feeling, something like: the side of a fist rubbing away the breath fogged within a car windshield糖心传媒攐utside, it糖心传媒檚 just night. Can I say that this is a book like that? And then add that, also, it糖心传媒檚 not糖心传媒攊f as publishers we can only offer so much, it糖心传媒檚 nice to remember that at least we糖心传媒檝e offered each book the chance to go out and speak for itself.