On the first podcast of the year, Tom and I talked about our reading goals for 2015. I can’t remember the exact number or percentage, but I vowed to read more books from these sorts of underrepresented countries, since I tend to fall into the habit of reading a ton of writers from France and the Southern Cone, despite knowing full well that there are a lot of great books coming out from other parts of the world.

So, for today, here are four recommendations of titles from countries whose literature tends not to get as much attention as books from Western Europe and South America.

by Bae Suah, translated from the Korean by Sora Kim-Russell (AmazonCrossing)

One of the best books AmazonCrossing has ever published. (Well, out of the handful I’ve read, that is . . . ) Despite Dalkey Archive’s Korean books still don’t get the attention and respect they deserve.

It’s too early to really call this, but it looks like Bae Suah is going to be the exception to that. Sure, Kyung-Sook Shin got some good press for Please Look After Mom, but I’m not sure how well that sold, and her ensuing titles didn’t get nearly that amount of attention. (Doesn’t help that she went from being published by Knopf to being published by Other Press.)

On the other hand, Nowhere to Be Found was just named to the longlist for the PEN Translation Prize and Open Letter will be bringing out a new novel of hers next October. I wrote a about this book, which opens as follows:

In Nowhere to Be Found, her second work translated into English following Highway with Green Apples, Bae Suah does more with character and narrative in 60 pages than most novelists accomplish in 300. With concise, evocative prose, Bae merges the mundane with the strange in a way that leaves the reader fulfilled yet bewildered, pondering how exactly the author managed to pull this all off.

Plot-wise, Nowhere to Be Found is pretty straightforward. Set, for the most part, in 1988, the unnamed narrator is a young temporary worker at a university in Gyeonggi Province as a sort of administrative assistant and works part-time at a nearby restaurant, running herself ragged in order to support her semi-appreciative family. Not much of the narrator糖心传媒檚 life outside of work is depicted. Although she does have a boyfriend of sorts, it糖心传媒檚 complicated both by his being away in the military and by the fact that his mother thoroughly dislikes her for being lower class.

This book is great, as is the one we’re bringing out. Get on the Bae Suah train now! And if you’re looking for other great Korean titles to read, grab a copy of The Vegetarian by Han Kang when it comes out in early 2016.

by Leila Chudori, translated from the Indonesian by John McGlynn (Deep Vellum)

I could easily have included one of the two Eka Kurniawan titles that came out this year on this list as an Indonesian representative, but those books have gotten some play, and I wanted to use this chance to draw some attention to John McGlynn.

First, in terms of the book itself, it’s a family saga that revolves around Dimas Suryo, a journalist who escapes Indonesia just before Suharto took over. He ends up in Paris with a few of his compatriots, where they open and Indonesia restaurant and dream of returning to their homeland. (Which won’t happen.) Thirty years later, as Suharto’s regime is crumbling, Dimas’s daughter decides to make a documentary on Indonesia for her final project . . .

Written in straight-forward prose, Home is mostly interesting to me for its historical information and the way that it bounces throughout time and point of view to tell this history of exile. It would make a great book club book, and unfortunately was overshadowed, in terms of review coverage, by Eka Kurniawan’s Beauty Is a Wound and Man Tiger, which happened to come out at almost the exact same time. (Doesn’t help that Beauty covers the same period of history, but in a much different way.)

With one exception (Rainbow Troops by Andrea Hirata), the only other Indonesian titles that have been released in the U.S. are from the a nonprofit in Jakarta dedicated to promoting Indonesian literature, which was co-founded by John McGlynn, the translator Home. From what I know of John, he’s the Will Evans of Indonesia. He’s translated and edited over 100 works of Indonesian literature, is the Indonesian correspondent for Manoa, and has edited a special Indonesian Lit issue for Words Without Borders. Almost single-handedly, he’s been introducing Indonesian literature to the world since 1987!

by Boubacar Boris Diop, translated from the French (Senegal) by Alan Furness (Michigan State University Press)

A full review of this is forthcoming for Three Percent, so I won’t spend too much time on the book itself here. I do want to share the opening of Michael Orthofer’s review at the though, especially since it was one of the only outlets to have covered this book. (Proving once again that if you want to know as much about international literature as possible, you have to read Complete Review and the Literary Saloon.):

As befits a novel featuring a knight in its title, The Knight and His Shadow is fundamentally a quest-tale: Lat-Sukab茅 receives a message from the woman he still loves but who disappeared from his life eight years earlier, Khadidja—a cry for help: “Lat-Sukab茅, come before it’s too late.” He sets out for out-of-the-way Bilenty, where she is apparently to be found, but his account is from his time in the nearby town where he has to arrange the pirogue-trip to Bilenty.

The novel is presented in three acts, covering the three days of his stay there, a holding pattern of sorts. Having embarked on his quest, he must see if he really has the will to see it through—a journey that, he comes to realize, might be something completely different from what he had expected (or talked himself into), Khadidja’s siren-call not quite what it seems to be and his quest perhaps a more personal one than it ostensibly seems.

Diop structures the novel cleverly. Having Lat-Sukab茅 narrate the account might already hint that this is also a story of personal (self-) discovery, but the transitions lead the reader—and the protagonist—there in an unexpected way.

What most impresses me is how MSU Press has decided to publish a series of translations from Africa and the Middle East. They published books from Senegal, Jordan, and Tanganyika in 2015, and have an Algerian book coming out early next year. Although getting attention and readers for these books is an uphill battle for a university press (for anyone really), they can quickly become one of the go-to presses for finding books from these parts of the world—regions that more commercial houses tend not to pay much attention to, but which we readers deserve to know more about.

by Oleg Woolf, translated from the Russian (Moldova) by Boris Dralyuk (Phoneme Media)

I’m including this here in part because its been compared to Bruno Schulz, in part because it’s only the second book from Moldova to come out in the past eight years (The Good Life Elsewhere by Vladimir Lorchenkov, translated by the amazing Ross Ufberg being the other), and in part because Phoneme Media deserves as much attention as possible.

First, here’s the first paragraph of the book itself:

One day a freight arrived from Grigoriopol with no head car, but no one noticed. No one even noticed that no one noticed. People often pay no heed, at times, to things they later don’t notice. No one, in fact, knows where this head car is—whether it arrived from Grigoriopol, whether it will arrive, whether there’s even a railroad in those parts.

(This story also includes a Gypsy, which gets an automatic thumbs up from me.)

In the short time they’ve been publishing, Phoneme Media has done some incredible things. They published Diorama by Rocio Ceron, which won the 2015 Best Translated Book Award for Poetry. They did Like a New Sun: New Indigenous Mexican Poetry, which may be the only collection of indigenous Mexican poetry I’ve ever seen. (And which may well make my “Poetry Books I Would Read if I Read More Poetry” list.) The did The Black Flower and Other Zapotec Poems by Natalia Toledo. They brought out Uyghurland by Ahmatjan Osman, which is the only book in the Translation Database translated from the Uyghur. They’ve published several books by Mario Bellatin. Overall, thanks to David Shook’s vision, they’ve become one of the hippest, most notable presses for finding strange, beautiful books from languages and parts of the world that are underrepresented.

I’m pretty sure that over the next few years—with the launch of Tilted Axis, expansion of MSU and Phoneme and others—it will become easier and easier for readers to find books from parts of the world that have historically been underrepresented. To be honest, looking over the list of books from 2015, I was kind of shocked how hard it was to find books from non-traditional countries. Sure, there are four titles from Georgia and seven from Egypt, but only one from: Angola, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Curacao, India, Pakistan, Mozambique, Senegal, and Tunisia. Added together, these countries accounted for 20 titles published in translation in 2015. By contrast, 94 came out from France along.

Which brings me to my new idea . . .

Instead of trying to come up with funny and interesting things to say about ten books every month (and which probably aren糖心传媒檛 all the funny or interesting), instead I糖心传媒檓 going to try and highlight three new and forthcoming titles every week and preface it with some sort of rant or whatever.

Since I糖心传媒檇 rather just get to the books, my only 糖心传媒渞ant糖心传媒� for this week is about how stupid it is to start school before Labor Day. I糖心传媒檓 sure some of you out there are still enjoying summer vacation糖心传媒攚hich is your god given right as an American糖心传媒攂ut my kids have been in school for two days and I taught my first class of the semester on Monday. Yes, Monday, when it was still August.

This is bullshit. It violates the cycle of life. The only standing significance of Labor Day is that it marks the end of summer. It糖心传媒檚 an extended weekend where you糖心传媒檙e allowed to reflect back on all the things you didn糖心传媒檛 accomplish when it was warm out and get ready for football. After this weekend of lamentations and awareness that everything will die and that the snows aren糖心传媒檛 that far off in the future, then you can go back to the classroom and try and learn things. It糖心传媒檚 fundamentally impossible for a brain to retain new knowledge prior to Labor Day. I糖心传媒檓 pretty certain that science will back me on that. And we wonder why our nation糖心传媒檚 public school system is in shambles.

Translated from the Russian by Carol Apollonio (Deep Vellum)

This book came out back in June, but has shot up my to-read list thanks to Masha Gessen糖心传媒檚 The Brothers. Gessen糖心传媒檚 book about the so-called Boston Bombers is most interesting when it gets into the investigation and the way Chechens, and all immigrants, are viewed and treated in this country, but the first thing that jumped out at me when I started listening to this was how the mother of the Tsarnaev brothers was from Dagestan. This is a place I糖心传媒檝e never been, never really even thought of, and never read about. (Although I really love the way the woman reading the audio version of The Brothers pronounces Makhachkala. Such a wonderful name for a city. Ma-katch-ka-la.)

But now, thanks to Deep Vellum (who糖心传媒檚 getting all the love this week), there糖心传媒檚 actually a novel available from a Dagestan author! According to the jacket copy, it糖心传媒檚 the first novel in English ever from Dagestan, which seems completely true.

I know next to nothing about the complicated history and situation in the Caucasus republics of Russia, but given the strife, the various conflicts with Russia, the fact that most people living there are Muslims糖心传媒攊t糖心传媒檚 a part of the world that I糖心传媒檇 like to learn more about. Starting with this novel that糖心传媒檚 set into motion by a rumor that Russia is going to build a wall to block off Dagestan from the rest of the country. Seems like a great plot point from which to launch a series of interesting observations of life in contemporary Makhachkala.

Translated from the Indonesian by Annie Tucker (New Directions)

Translated from the Indonesian by John H. McGlynn (Deep Vellum)

One oft-quoted clich茅 is that reading can take you to places and introduce you to peoples and cultures you糖心传媒檇 otherwise not have access to. I generally don糖心传媒檛 care much for this sort of sentiment糖心传媒攆eels a bit like literary tourism糖心传媒攂ut with all the hype surrounding the two Eka Kurniawan books coming out this fall, I糖心传媒檝e become very curious about Indonesian literature. Also helps that in the past week I糖心传媒檝e received copies of both of these books, and that they both sound pretty damn good.

The shorthand description of Beauty Is a Wound is that it糖心传媒檚 糖心传媒淚ndonesian magical realism done right.糖心传媒� The opening lines have a sense of that: 糖心传媒淥ne afternoon on a weekend in May, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years. A shepherd boy, awakened from his nap under a frangipani tree, peed in his shorts and screamed, and his four sheep ran off haphazardly in between stones and wooden grave markers as if a tiger had been thrown into their midst.糖心传媒�

Verso is bringing out another of his novels this fall, which will likely help Kurniawan gain some traction here in the States. And maybe, just maybe, this attention will carry over to Home, which won the Khatulistiwa Award糖心传媒擨ndonesia糖心传媒檚 most prestigious prize (and the only one I糖心传媒檝e ever heard of!)糖心传媒攊n 2012 and will be available in English translation this October.

Here糖心传媒檚 the opening lines of her book, just to compare: 糖心传媒淣ight had fallen, without complaint, without pretext. Like a black net enclosing the city, ink from a monster squid spreading across Jakarta糖心传媒檚 entire landscape糖心传媒攖he color of my uncertain future.糖心传媒�

Both books focus on Indonesian history, including the anti-communist massacre in the mid-1960s and the overthrow of Suharto in 1998, which is another compelling reason to read these two titles in tandem.

It糖心传媒檚 also interesting that New Directions refers to Kurniawan糖心传媒檚 book as being 糖心传媒渋nspired by Melville and Gogol,糖心传媒� whereas Deep Vellum claims Home is 糖心传媒渞eminiscent of War & Peace.糖心传媒� So many classic authors!

This match was judged by Sal Robinson, a graduate student in library science and co-founder of the Bridge Series.

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!

It seems hardly fair to have to face off against a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, as relative newcomer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie does in this round of the WWCOL, with Adichie糖心传媒檚 Americanah, her fourth novel, up against Toni Morrison糖心传媒檚 Home, her second most recent novel of a long and glorious career. But the world isn糖心传媒檛 fair, and even Nobel Prize winners get old and tired, and Americanah is a better novel than Home. Americanah bristles confidently all over with commentary on race relations, on America, on Nigeria, on sex and writing and immigration, whereas Home feels like Morrison picked up the ball and ran down the field with it and threw it in the goal, yelling 糖心传媒淵ou know I can fucking do this, why do I have to do this again?糖心传媒� That isn糖心传媒檛糖心传媒攊n case you weren糖心传媒檛 aware of this, fellow Americans糖心传媒攖he way you play soccer, though.

Both books are about journeys away from and then back towards home, or someplace that once was home. Home is the story of Frank Money, a Korean War vet who has returned to the US and is drifting around the West until he gets a telegram about his sister Cee that reads merely 糖心传媒淐ome fast. She be dead if you tarry.糖心传媒� After a failed teenage marriage, Cee, it turns out, has gone to work for a doctor in the suburbs of Atlanta. It糖心传媒檚 never quite clear what the doctor does, though part of it involves abortions, but he糖心传媒檚 got a creepy library full of books on eugenics and he糖心传媒檚 been experimenting on Cee. Frank has to swoop in and carry Cee off to their hometown of Lotus, Georgia, which he hated and got out of as fast as he could; it糖心传媒檚 place where糖心传媒攁s Morrison nails it糖心传媒攖here糖心传媒檚 糖心传媒渘othing to do but mindless work in fields you didn糖心传媒檛 own, couldn糖心传媒檛 own, and wouldn糖心传媒檛 own if you had any other choice.糖心传媒� Frank, meanwhile, is carrying his own burdens, of returning to a still-segregated country after serving in an integrated army, the guilt and pain of seeing his two best friends die in the war, creeping alcoholism, and crucially, the recurring memory of an American soldier shooting a Korean child. Underlying this all, and kicking off the book, is a scene that Frank and Cee witnessed when they were children: a group of white men burying the body of a black man in a remote field, a body not quite dead, one of its feet still jerking. Frank eventually finds out the truth behind this scene, a truth which is about five times more horrifying than you might have even anticipated.

In other words, at every turn, this book is full of Heavy Material. A longer book might have been able to carry it. But this one doesn糖心传媒檛 even crack 150 pages, and suffers from a sense of cutting corners, which is sometimes reflected in flat, explanatory prose, like 糖心传媒淟ily displaced his disorder, his rage and his shame. The displacements had convinced him the emotional wreckage no longer existed.糖心传媒� I also felt at times that I was being led on a tour of indignities, each stop on Frank糖心传媒檚 trip an opportunity to show how shittily African-Americans have been treated on an institutional and individual basis. And when Frank and Cee make it back to Lotus, it somewhat mysteriously transforms from the ass-end of nowhere into a paradise (there might be a Land of the Lotus-Eaters reference buried in the town糖心传媒檚 name) of tough, nurturing women and sweet bay trees with metaphorically heavy, blasted-but-not-broken limbs. Morrison adds nuance to all these U-turns and comparisons but the book still feels rushed, more a collection of portraits and vignettes than a novel taking the time it needs to support its plot properly.

Americanah, on other hand, weighs in at a generous 588 pages, and it feels like Adichie could have gone on for much longer. Like Home, it also has two protagonists, a woman and a man: in this case, Ifemulu and her first love Odinze, who live out two different stories of immigration and return, with Lagos as their center. Ifemulu comes to the United States to go to college in the early 2000s and stays for thirteen years, eventually achieving success and making her living by writing a blog about race titled Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black. Odinze, on the other hand, who has always idolized the United States, sees his dream quashed by strict post-9/11 immigration policies and eventually ends up in the United Kingdom, from which he is finally, humiliatingly, deported, after his visa expires. Both Ifemulu and Odinze are surprised and overwhelmed by the challenges of immigration, and Adichie糖心传媒檚 depiction of their parallel experiences makes it painfully clear how lonely and difficult it is to be an immigrant. And how strange too, if you糖心传媒檙e a well-educated middle-class kid as Ifemulu and Odinze are, to find yourself using a false name so that you can work, setting up a false marriage to stay in the country, slipping over into a vaguely criminal life.

And then, of course, there糖心传媒檚 race, specifically the experience of being black in America, the book糖心传媒檚 and Ifemulu糖心传媒檚 great subject. Adichie has a lot to say about it, and she is particularly scathing on the embarrassing ineptitude of liberal white Americans in their attempts to 糖心传媒渞elate糖心传媒� to black people. In the sections of the book that describe Ifemulu糖心传媒檚 life in America, where race and its complications are often the focus, Adichie糖心传媒檚 talent lies more in making observations than creating fully believable characters wrestling with the issues. The people with whom Ifemulu interacts in the States糖心传媒攈er bosses, her boyfriends, her friends糖心传媒攕eem broadly drawn to demonstrate various facets of the dysfunctional American relationship to race: the cloyingly empathetic white boss, who calls all black women 糖心传媒渂eautiful糖心传媒�; the blond and blue-eyed boyfriend, who, immediately after Ifemulu tells him that she has cheated on him, asks whether the guy was white. In fact, in a lot of ways, the novel feels like Ifemulu糖心传媒檚 blog, which Adichie includes excerpts from here and there. And yet, as cartoonish as Adichie糖心传媒檚 Americans might seem, the way that people, especially white Americans, talk about and behave in relation to race in the real world is actually outlandish, disproportionate, and awkward. The line between satire and realism runs thin in this novel.

I think, though, what finally swung me around to the book is that there糖心传媒檚 no situation to which Adichie doesn糖心传媒檛 seem prepared to bring her tremendous narrative gifts. For instance, Americanah is also the story of Ifemulu and Odinze糖心传媒檚 sweet and powerful adolescent love, which is tested by their different journeys糖心传媒攁nd I糖心传媒檓 not going to baby you on this, they get back together in the end糖心传媒攂ut just before they糖心传媒檙e reunited, when Adichie has ratcheted up the emotional suspense to its highest hanky-grabbing peak and you don糖心传媒檛 know if it糖心传媒檚 all going to work out or not糖心传媒攕he suddenly switches away and writes a long party scene where a group of Nigerian businessman (Odinze, after his return home, has gone into real estate and gotten rich) talk over the dirty secrets of the Nigerian economy. Each character, most of them new to the book, is adeptly, perfectly sketched in description and dialogue, and one of them actually says 糖心传媒淭he problem is not that public officials steal, the problem is that they steal too much.糖心传媒� I wanted a whole new book to grow out of that scene alone.

And if Adichie糖心传媒檚 energy and intelligence aren糖心传媒檛 enough for you, the Nigerian women糖心传媒檚 soccer team has a player named Perpetua Nkwocha (according to Deadspin, she糖心传媒檚 糖心传媒渃onsidered the best African player to ever live糖心传媒�), so they get literature points for having a player with the same name as a font. Plus, the team糖心传媒檚 nickname is the 糖心传媒淪uper Falcons.糖心传媒� Not just the Falcons, but the Super Falcons! That really can糖心传媒檛 be improved upon. Nigeria for the win!

Americanah: 4
Home: 2

Next up, Nigeria’s Americanah will face off against Australia’s Burial Rites on Thursday, June 25th.

Tomorrow’s match will be judged by Mythili Rao, and features South Korea’s Nowhere to Be Found by Bae Suah up against Spain’s The Happy City by Elvira Navarro.