DAWN by Selahattin Demirtaş

Crown Publishing
Publishing Date April 23d,
SJP for Hogarth


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Written from behind bars, the unforgettable collection from one of Turkey’s leading politicians and most powerful storytellers.
 
In this essential collection, Selahattin Demirtaş’s arresting stories capture the voices of ordinary people living through extraordinary times. A cleaning lady is caught up in a violent demonstration on her way to work. A five-year-old girl attempts to escape war-torn Syria with her mother by boat. A suicide bombing shatters a neighborhood in Aleppo. And in the powerful story, 'Seher', a young factory worker is robbed of her dreams in an unimaginable act of violence. 
 
Written with Demirtas’s signature wit, warmth, and humor, and alive with the rhythms of everyday speech, DAWN paints a remarkable portrait of life behind the headlines in Turkey and the Middle East – in all its hardship and adversity, freedom and hope.

My thoughts

Coming soon

75 NOTABLE TRANSLATIONS OF 2018

Manzoor Ahtesham, The Tale of the Missing Man, trans. Jason Grunebaum & Ulrike Stark (Northwestern University Press)

Yvan Alagbé, Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York Review Comics)

Gabriela Alemán, Poso Wells, trans. Dick Cluster (City Lights Books) 

Ahmet Altan, Like a Sword Wound, trans. Brendan Freely & Yelda Türedi (Europa Editions)

Maxim Amelin, The Joyous Science: Selected Poems of Maxim Amelin, trans. Derek Mong & Anne O. Fisher (White Pine Press)

Nathacha Appanah, Waiting for Tomorrow, trans. Geoffrey Strachan (Graywolf Press)

Pénélope Bagieu, Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World, trans. Montana Kane (Ebury Press)

Giorgio Bassani, The Novel of Ferrara, trans. Jamie McKendrick (W. W. Norton)

Maïssa Bey, Do You Hear in the Mountains . . . and Other Stories, trans. Erin Lamm (University of Virginia Press)

Verónica Gerber Bicecci, Empty Set, trans. Christina MacSweeney (Coffee House Press)

Therese Bohman, Eventide, trans. Marlaine Delargy (Other Press)

Golnaz Hashemzadeh Bonde, What We Owe, trans. Elizabeth Jane Clark Wessel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Tanella Boni, The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn, trans. Todd Fredson (University of Nebraska Press)

Beatriz Bracher, I Didn’t Talk, trans. Adam Morris (New Directions)

Dror Burstein, Muck, trans. Gabriel Levin (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Arnaldo Calveyra, Letters So That Happiness, trans. Elizabeth Zuba (Ugly Duckling Press)

José Manuel Cardona, Birnam Wood / El Bosque de Birnam: A Poetic Anthology, trans. Hélène Cardona (Salmon Poetry)

Paolo Cognetti, The Eight Mountains, trans. Simon Carnell & Erica Segre (Atria)

Mia Couto, Woman of the Ashes, trans. David Brookshaw (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Christelle Dabos, A Winter’s Promise: Book One of the Mirror Visitor Quartet, trans. Hildegarde Serle (Europa Editions)

Jabbour Douaihy, Printed in Beirut, trans. Paula Haydar (Interlink)

Gaël Faye, Small Country, trans. Sarah Ardizzone (Hogarth)

Rodrigo Fresán, The Bottom of the Sky, trans. Will Vanderhyden (Open Letter)

Julián Fuks, Resistance, trans. Daniel Hahn (Charco Press)

Inga Gaile, 30 Questions People Don’t Ask: Selected Poems, trans. Ieva Lešinska (Pleiades Press)

Alisa Ganieva, Bride and Groom, trans. Carol Apollonio (Deep Vellum)

Margarita García Robayo, Fish Soup, trans. Charlotte Coombe (Charco Press)

Stella Gitano, Withered Flowers: Short Stories, trans. Anthony Calderbank (Rafiki)

Hubert Haddad, Desirable Body, trans. Alyson Waters (Yale University Press)

Nora Ikstena, Soviet Milk, trans. Margita Gailitis (Peirene Press)

Jin Eun-young, We, Day by Day, trans. Daniel Parker & YoungShil Ji (White Pine Press)

Uwe Johnson, Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, trans. Damion Searls (NYRB)

Najla Jraissaty Khoury, ed., Pearls on a Branch: Tales from the Arab World Told by Women, trans. Inea Bushnaq (Archipelago Books)

Mieko Kawakami, Ms Ice Sandwich, trans. Louise Heal Kawai (Pushkin Press)

Esther Kinsky, River, trans. Iain Galbraith (Transit Books)

Ibrahim al-Koni, The Fetishists, trans. William M. Hutchins (University of Texas Press)

Roque Larraquy, Comemadre, trans. Heather Cleary (Coffee House Press)

Cixin Liu, Ball Lightning, trans. Joel Martinsen (Tor Books)

Luljeta Lleshanaku, Negative Space, trans. Ani Gjika (New Directions)

Shahriar Mandanipour, Moon Brow, trans. Sara Khalili (Restless Books)

Brice Matthieussent, Revenge of the Translator, trans. Emma Ramadan (Deep Vellum) 

Dunya Mikhail, The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq, trans. Max Weiss & Dunya Mikhail (New Directions)

Yukiko Motoya, The Lonesome Bodybuilder: Stories, trans. Asa Yoneda (Soft Skull Press)

Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore, trans. Phillip Gabriel & Ted Goossen (Knopf)

Perumal Murugan, One Part Woman, trans. Aniruddhan Vasudevan (Black Cat) 

Trifonia Melibea Obono, La Bastarda, trans. Lawrence Schimel (Feminist Press) 

Ondjaki, Transparent City, trans. Stephen Henighan (Biblioasis)

Masatsugu Ono, Lion Cross Point, trans. Angus Turvill (Two Lines Press)

Anna Maria Ortese, Neapolitan Chronicles, trans. Ann Goldstein & Jenny McPhee (New Vessel Press)

Gunnhild Øyehaug, Wait, Blink: A Perfect Picture of Inner Life, trans. Kari Dickson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Abdulla Pashew, Dictionary of Midnight, trans. Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse (Phoneme Media) 

Hagar Peeters, Malva, trans. Vivien Glass (DoppelHouse Press) 

Sergio Pitol, Mephisto’s Waltz, trans. George Henson (Deep Vellum) 

Alejandra Pizarnik, The Galloping Hour: French Poems, trans. Patricio Ferrari & Forrest Gander (New Directions) 

Agneta Pleijel, Sister and Brother: A Family Story, trans. Harald Hille (Gallaudet University Press)

The Popol Vuh, trans. Michael Bazzett (Milkweed Editions)

Edy Poppy, Anatomy. Monotony., trans. May-Brit Akerholt (Dalkey Archive)

Nayrouz Qarmout, The Sea Cloak and Other Stories, trans. Perween Richards (Comma Press) 

Roberto Ransom, Missing Persons, Animals, and Artists, trans. Daniel Shapiro (Swan Isle Press)

Shahad Al Rawi, The Baghdad Clock, trans. Luke Leafgren (Oneworld)

Yasmina Reza, Babylon, trans. Linda Asher (Seven Stories)

Jérôme Ruillier, The Strange, trans. Hegle Dacher (Drawn & Quarterly)

Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad, trans. Jonathan Wright (Penguin Books)

Evelyn Schlag, All Under One Roof, trans. Karen Leeder (Carcanet)

Ófeigur Sigurðsson, Öræfi: The Wasteland, trans. Lytton Smith (Deep Vellum)

Ersi Sotiropoulos, What’s Left of the Night, trans. Karen Emmerich (New Vessel Press)

Ulf Stark, My Little Small, ill. Linda Bondestam; trans. Annie Prime (Enchanted Lion)

Ellisiv Stifoss-Hanssen, Let Me Sleep until This Is Just a Dream, trans. May-Brit Akerholt (Dalkey Archive Press)

Su Wei, The Invisible Valley, trans. Austin Woerner (Small Beer Press)

Yoko Tawada, The Emissary, trans. Margaret Mitsutani (New Directions)

Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Text Publishing)

Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir, Stormwarning, trans. K. B. Thors (Phoneme Media)

Dubravka Ugrešić, Fox, trans. Ellen Elias-Bursać & David Williams (Open Letter) 

Eugene Vodolazkin, The Aviator, trans. Lisa Hayden (Oneworld)

Mikhail Zoshchenko, Sentimental Tales, trans. Boris Dralyuk (Columbia University Press)

A CHANGE OF TIME by Ida Jessen

ARCHIPELAGO PRESS
Publishing date March 29, 2019

About

A penetrating study of a woman who, in the wake of her domineering husband's death, must embrace her newfound freedom and redefine herself.

Set in rural Denmark in the early 20th century, A Change of Time tells the story of a schoolteacher whose husband, the town doctor, has passed away. Her subsequent diary entries form an intimate portrait of a woman rebuilding her identity, and a small rural town whose path to modernity echoes her own path to joyful independence.

LITTLE by Edward Carey

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Personal copy

Recommend ed by WORD BY WORD

About

An amazing achievement...A compulsively readable novel, so canny and weird and surfeited with the reality of human capacity and ingenuity that I am stymied for comparison. Dickens and David Lynch? Defoe meets Margaret Atwood? Judge for yourself." --Gregory Maguire, New York Times bestselling author of Wicked
The wry, macabre, unforgettable tale of an ambitious orphan in Revolutionary Paris, befriended by royalty and radicals, who transforms herself into the legendary Madame Tussaud. 

In 1761, a tiny, odd-looking girl named Marie is born in a village in Switzerland. After the death of her parents, she is apprenticed to an eccentric wax sculptor and whisked off to the seamy streets of Paris, where they meet a domineering widow and her quiet, pale son. Together, they convert an abandoned monkey house into an exhibition hall for wax heads, and the spectacle becomes a sensation. As word of her artistic talent spreads, Marie is called to Versailles, where she tutors a princess and saves Marie Antoinette in childbirth. But outside the palace walls, Paris is roiling: The revolutionary mob is demanding heads, and . . . at the wax museum, heads are what they do.

THE FARM by Joanne Ramos

5.5

Random House
Publishing date May 19, 2019

About

Would you trade nine months of freedom for a better life?

Nestled in the Hudson Valley is a sumptuous retreat boasting every amenity: organic meals, private fitness trainers, daily massages--and all of it for free. In fact, you get paid big money--more than you've ever dreamed of--to spend a few seasons in this luxurious locale. The catch? For nine months, you belong to the Farm. You cannot leave the grounds; your every move is monitored. Your former life will seem a world away as you dedicate yourself to the all-consuming task of producing the perfect baby for your überwealthy clients.

Jane, an immigrant from the Philippines and a struggling single mother, is thrilled to make it through the highly competitive Host selection process at the Farm. But now pregnant, fragile, consumed with worry for her own young daughter's well-being, Jane grows desperate to reconnect with her life outside. Yet she cannot leave the Farm or she will lose the life-changing fee she'll receive on delivery--or worse.

Heartbreaking, suspenseful, provocative, The Farm pushes our thinking on motherhood, money, and merit to the extremes, and raises crucial questions about the trade-offs women will make to fortify their futures and the futures of those they love.

My View

The Farm is a futuristic novel taking us into a world easily imagined. It is also the story of immigrants leaving their homeland hoping a better future lays ahead for themselves and their loved ones left behind.

We meet Ate a Philipina working as a nanny for New York's elite, Jane her niece soon joins the ranks of nannies recommended by Ate, earning bonuses and travels to exotic places allows Jane some financial comfort, Ate however has even grander ideas for her niece.

Golden Oaks, a place were young women can increase their financial needs in luxury, a spa of sorts.
Ate arranges an interview for Jane with Miss Yu, the organiser of Golden Oaks. Jane readily signs a contract putting her trust in Ate.

Does Jane and the other young women at Golden Oaks fully understand what lies beyond carrying a rich woman's embryo? Will the the financial gain be worth the nine month stay at Golden Oaks? The silence each girl must keep, the monitored surveillance?

What could go wrong? Is Golden Oaks so far in the future....

I enjoyed this novel immensely, highly recommend

Thank you to Random House for this early arc
Thank you to NetGalley