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“A Dream Come True” by Juan Carlos Onetti [Why This Book Should Win]

Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards.  Spencer Ruchti is an intern at Tin House Books and formerly a bookseller at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge. His writing has appeared in The Adroit Journal, The Rumpus, and ...

“One Out of Two” by Daniel Sada [Why This Book Should Win]

This entry in the Why This Book Should Win series is by Lucina Schell, editor of Reading in Translation. We will be running two (or more!) of these posts every business day leading up to the announcement of the finalists.   One Out of Two by Daniel Sada, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver (Mexico, ...

Latest Review: "Dinner" by César Aira

The latest addition to our Reviews section is by Lori Feathers on Dinner by César Aira, translated by Katherine Silver and out from New Directions. The first time I read César Aira was four years ago: Ghosts and The Literary Conference. At the time I had my opinions about both, but in retrospect—and this surprises ...

Dinner

César Aira dishes up an imaginative parable on how identity shapes our sense of belonging with Dinner, his latest release in English. Aira’s narrator (who, appropriately, remains nameless) is a self-pitying, bitter man—in his late fifties, living again with his mother in his childhood home, in debt, jobless, never ...

The Lasting Impact of Bolaño's Quotes [3 Books]

After a couple weeks of touring and hosting events, I finally have time to get back to my “weekly” write-ups of new and forthcoming books. Last time I talked about a couple Indonesian titles one of which, Home by Leila Chudori, I’m greatly enjoying. I also complained about school starting before Labor Day, ...

Horacio Castellanos Moya and the Permanent Influence of Faulkner [Month of a Thousand Forests]

As a weekend send-off, I thought I’d round off this week’s entries in the Month of a Thousand Forests with a bit from one of my favorite books of recent times — Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya. You hopefully know this by now, but if you order A Thousand Forests in One Acorn from the Open Letter ...

Latest Review: "Conversations" by César Aira

The latest addition to our Reviews section is by Tiffany Nichols on César Aira’s Conversations, translated by Katherine Silver and out from New Directions. After a wild World Cup of Literature ride, what better way to wind down or frustrations or victorious cries than to talk about them (or bite each other over ...