Open Letter Review Roundup!

Over the past few weeks, our books have received a bunch of great reviews. Each time this happens, I plan on posting about it on the blog, then I start answering emails, or teaching a class, or doing some mundane publishing related task (sales reports! metadata!) and don’t get around to it. So, here’s a huge round-up with some quotes and links.

Once you see how amazing all of our books are, you’re going to want to buy them. You can do that at your local bookstore or favorite retailer, OR you can buy them directly from our website.

What I’d recommend doing is buying a subscription. That way you’ll never miss a book, and each one will be delivered directly to your door.

Here are some review highlights for our titles from recent times:

Lies, First Person by Gail Hareven reviewed at the Colorado Review by Eric Maroney:

Lies, First Person is an extremely ambitious novel, which in the end does not lend itself to firm or lasting conclusions. Hareven has produced a work of dramatic and impressive contradictions. Between the two poles of questionable truth and falsehood, she examines such weighty issues as sin, guilt, forgiveness, Judaism, Christianity, motherhood, womanhood, violence, and especially the limitations and possibilities of art.

Dalya Bilu, a veteran translator of most of Israeli’s premier authors, renders Hareven’s Hebrew prose into clear and lucid English, helping the reader through the thicket of this dense, intriguing novel and aiding Hareven’s mission to convey both a grand scope of life and history while simultaneously presenting a small world of disquieting, individual claustrophobia. In the end, Hareven’s novel rises above the difficulties and problems of its characters and Elinor’s unreliable narration to capture the very strange and forgivable ways people confront and deny difficult experiences and memories.

Street of Thieves by Mathias Énard reviewed at the New Statesman by Leo Robson:

Street of Thieves never calls for adjectives of that order (“involving” would be closer to the mark) though it still confirms Énard as the most brazenly lapel-grabbing French writer since Michel Houellebecq. Even on a quiet day, he has ideas and charisma to burn. [. . .]

The workings of orientalism – or whatever cross-cultural logic shapes European responses to North Africa – are exposed with clarity, even flair. A feeling for paradox crowds out the platitude, derived from ­Edward Said, whereby representatives of the developed west are only ever blundering and stupid.

Interview with Georgi Gospodinov about The Physics of Sorrow at Fiction Writers Review conducted by Steve Wingate:

GG: If we enter into that spatial matrix, I started from the “bottom up,” through the voice and through various scenes. The Boy and the Minotaur were there from the very beginning. Over the course of writing, somewhere near the middle, the idea of accumulation, lists, and collections grew stronger and became structurally defining. The quasi-classical narrative from the beginning had to disintegrate after the main character lost his ultra-empathy and began collecting and buying stories in some sort of pre-apocalyptic panic. Thus, from a certain moment onward the labyrinth gets the upper hand, the reader is forced into the labyrinth in place of the Minotaur himself. And as we know from Borges, the labyrinth can be located not only in space, but also in time.

[Quick note: This interview is truly amazing. And the answers are long, too long to run in full here. So go check it out, especially if you’ve read this novel.]

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The Physics of Sorrow was also featured in Foreword’s The Marvel and Mastery of Translation feature:

Having grown up in communist and post-communist Bulgaria (“life under communism was a long chain of secrets,” Gospodinov writes), under the threat of an atomic mushroom cloud, Gospodinov is all too attuned to his own mortality. A time-traveling empath, he uses story to call us to look beyond ourselves to what can root us and give our lives meaning in a world that can seem crushingly cold and cruel.

Rock, Paper, Scissors by Naja Marie Aidt reviewed at Seeing the World Through Books by Mary Whipple:

As compelling as the plot and Thomas’s psychology may be, the novel’s philosophical underpinnings and the universal themes which emerge from the conflicts are even more provocative. Underlying the entire novel are questions of who we are as human beings, how much our futures as individuals evolve from our own actions and choices, and how much damage can be inflicted upon us by others around us. Other events draw us in by mere chance, as we see in the random events which involve Thomas as he deals (or does not deal) with his own life and the people surrounding him. [. . .]

Filled with smart, crisp language; carefully described and introduced imagery; and occasionally lyrical passages, the novel owes much of its appeal in English to translator K. E. Semmel, who must have been challenged by the metaphysical aspects which parallel the narrative lines. With contrasting themes of life and death, love and hate, accident and design, strength and weakness, selfishness and altruism, and reality and invention, the novel offers much to ponder on many levels. Ultimately, one is even forced to consider the question of whether the existence of an alterego is real or a protective fiction created by a damaged ego.

Interview with Valerie Miles about A Thousand Forests in One Acorn at Shelf Awareness conducted by George Carroll:

GC: Can you give us a shortlist of recently released or forthcoming must-read authors who you are excited to see translated into English for the first time?

VM: ¡¡¡ALVARO ENRIGUE!!! His novel Sudden Death is one of the best pieces of writing I’ve experienced in a long time and it’s out from Riverhead in February 2016. Don’t miss it. I also absolutely adore the great Argentine writer Silvina Ocampo’s haunting short story collection from New York Review Books, Thus Were Their Faces, and Horacio Castellanos Moya’s story of alcohol-infused neurosis, The Dream of My Return. He’s a splendid writer, always unpredictable and his prose is absolutely incantatory. Also there’s Andrés Neuman, who has a glorious short story collection coming out from Open Letter in September, The Things We Don’t Do.