The shortlist for this year's Booker International Prize was released last week. As someone who would like to read more literature translated into English, this is a gift. All of these books, save one, is available in the U.S. now and the last one is scheduled to be published this fall. The books:
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar: Bahar is a 13-year-old girl, or was. She is now a ghost who narrates the story of how her family fled Tehran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and her mother's continuing journey. The work is touted as uplifting the ancient culture that was confronted by oppressors.
The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara: Argentina has an epic poem by Jose Hernandez about a gaucho, Martin Fierro. He does everything from defend the frontier against indigenuous people to kill men in bar fights to becoming an outlaw who is joined as a comrade-in-arms by one of the police hunting him. This is a retelling with a female protagonist in 1872 Argentina. This could be really, really good.
Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann: Another retelling, this time of The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel. That's an 1876 novel by a Belgian, Charles De Coster, based on a 14th century German personality, Till Eulenspiegel. The older novel is billed as an allegory of a prankster's adventures. The contemporary novel, according to the publisher, has magical realism and a journey through a Europe beset by the Thirty Years War. As with the above modern retelling, this one shows promise.
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor: A novel of unreliable narrators as a village investigates the death of a witch in a Mexican village. According the publisher, the author looks for the small bits of humanity hidden in a village damned by mythology and violence.
The Memory Police by Yōko Ogowa: Objects disappear on an unnamed island near an unnamed coast. While most islanders aren't paying attention, those who notice live in fear of the Memory Police. One is a young writer determined to save herself and her editor.
The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld: A young girl lives with her very religious parents and siblings on a diary farm where fun is the same as sin. When an accident happens, Jas blames herself. She and her siblings begin to develop their own religion of rituals and fantasies based on their curiosity about death. As the publisher notes: In the absence of comfort and care, what can the mind of a child invent to protect itself? And what happens when that is not enough? Rijneveld is a 28-year-old author who identifies as male, uses the pronouns they/them and lived through their older brother being killed when they were three. This novel is scheduled for a U.S. publication in the autumn.
The Booker International winner will be named May 19.
I am most interested in the two retellings of older stories but Discomfort may be something I'll look for next winter. The psychological wonderings remind me of the best dark crime fiction that explores the human psyche.