While many of us may never be welcomed in another nation again once this administration is done, we can always travel in our minds! And in our fiction, much of which is oddly spaced out this year, so I’ve combined forces‚ and voila, now have enough titles to bother making a list. Some of the books on this list may make you yearn for other shores, but others feel more familiar than foreign, in ways that shed light on the enormous forces transcending national experience despite growing isolationism.
Jean Echenoz, Command Performance
Translated by Mark Polizotti
(NYRB)
This book is very French, by which I mean a bizarre melange of genre tropes, literary tangents, and surreal cynicism. Perhaps the best way to describe this book is as the kind of existential detective novel that would have made a great indie film in the mid-aughts (Jason Schwartzman, are you reading this?). In Command Performance, a former flight attendant takes a turn as a PI; his gross ineptitude and a series of strange coincidences then lead him to a new career in politics, and eventually, a mission to assassinate the head of his own party.
Ariel Dorfman, Allegro
(Other Press)
Could Johann Sebastian Bach have been murdered by an unscrupulous eye doctor? And could Mozart have put the pieces together and decided to investigate the unexpected death of his beloved mentor? That is the premise of Ariel Dorfman’s immersive new novel, Allegro, divided between Mozart’s precocious childhood and disillusioned adulthood.
Geetanjali Shree, Our City That Year
Translated by Daisy Rockwell
(HarperVia)
Written in 1998, Shree’s novel issues a prescient warning against rising nationalism and the slippery slope to unspeakable crimes, a subject that feels straight out of today’s headlines. Our City That Year takes place over a single year of steadily increasing tensions between communities and a growing likelihood of anti-Muslim atrocities, as three horrified intellectuals and one knowing old man try to make sense of the moment. Can they bear witness to its unfolding disasters, while retaining their sense of humanity? I highlighted just about every line in this book, and I can’t think of a better novel to make sense of our current era.
Maud Ventura, Make Me Famous
Translated by Gretchen Schmid
(HarperVia)
In this gripping saga of a pop star’s grueling rise to the top, fame is not for the faint-hearted. Maud Ventura blew me away with My Husband (especially that last page!) and Make Me Famous, a Highsmith-esque thriller following a singer’s brutal, callous efforts to become pop star royalty, should be just as viciously delightful. –MO
Daniel Kehlmann, The Director
Translated by Ross Benjamin
(Simon and Schuster / Summit Books)
The new novel from the internationally renowned Kehlmann centers on the turbulent life and art of G.W. Pabst, the Austrian screenwriter and director. Kehlmann’s novel traces Pabst’s journey fleeing from Nazi Germany, through the Hollywood doldrums, and back to Austria, where he’s soon recruited by Joseph Goebbels to produce propaganda films for the Reich. –DM
Franck Bouysse, Clay
Translated by Laura Vergnaud
(Other Press)
Franck Bouysse has done it again! By which I mean that Bouysse has written another truly disturbing noir exploration of the depths of human behavior. In Clay, a French farmhouse in the midst of WWI, bereft of its fighting-age men and plow-pulling horses, is the claustrophobic setting for a slow-burn psychological thriller. Bouysse examines the nature of conflict and the weight of history through a limited cast of characters, featuring a struggling mother, her adolescent son, and their resentful neighbor, spared from the draft but not from his own violence, as they grow ever closer to a devastating clash of personalities, ideals, and resentments.
Yiğit Karaahmet, Summerhouse
Translated by Nicholas Glastonbury
(Soho)
Yigit Karaahmet’s new novel is many things: a stunning love story, a thrilling mystery, and a luscious ode to a gorgeous landscape. As Summerhouse begins, we encounter an aging queer couple who have achieved the near-impossible: 40 years together, happy and free from persecution. Their private, luxurious home on a remote island is the key to their success as a couple, but when a family moves in next door for the summer with a rebellious, and gorgeous, teenage son in tow, all bets are off and the couple will have to fight harder than ever before to secure their future.
