Núria Bendicho: Dead Lands
Dead Lands (2021, tr: Maruxa Relaño & Martha Tennent, 2022), by Núria Bendicho, is a southern gothic in northeastern Spain, occupying a grim Faulknerian microcosm in and around a Catalonian…
Katixa Agirre: Mothers Don’t
Killing your darlings is well-worn advice given to writers labouring over something that just isn’t working and would be better excised from their work. However, in Katixa Agirre’s Mothers Don’t,…
Becky Chambers: To Be Taught If Fortunate
To Be Taught If Fortunate (2019) by Becky Chambers opens with an undisclosed situation on a exo-planet in the 22nd century and then recounts the story so far. Told by…
Sophie Jabés: Alice, the Sausage
Alice, the Sausage (2003, tr. Catherine Petit and Paul Buck, 2006) was the debut novel of French writer Sophie Jabés and published in English by Dedalus Books as part of…
Adam Nevill: Banquet for the Damned
Banquet for the Damned (2004) is what happens when you take the Scottish town of St Andrews and lay over it Casting the Runes by MR James. Though there are…
B.S. Johnson: Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry
With good writers it can take some time for us to become their contemporaries.” writes John Lanchester in his introduction to Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry (1973). This is certainly…
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 (1953) is the one of those books that, on coming into 2022, I felt I ought to have read by now. It’s another title, like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four…
Joaquim Ruyra: Jacobé / Finita
Jacobé and Fineta by Catalan writer Joaquim Ruyra (tr. Alan Yates, and published by Fum d’Estampa, 2022) are two short stories from early in the twentieth century, originally gathered in…
Graeme Macrae Burnett: His Bloody Project
His Bloody Project (2015) is a classic found document story, ostensibly presented as a collection of documents relating to a historical triple murder in a remote part of Scotland in…
Nicola Barker: I Am Sovereign
I Am Sovereign (2019) is typical Barker, where typical means quirky characters, pop culture references, typographical fun, and a playful narrative. Admittedly it’s a style that took a couple of…