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div>'The emotions unleashed in this tale... are painfully universal. Yet you know exactly where in the universe you are. This is the hallmark of great short stories, from Chekhov's portraits of discontented Russians to Joyce's struggling Dubliners.'—Radhika Jones, TimeNaja Marie Aidt's long-awaited first novel is a breathtaking page-turner and complex portrait of a man whose life slowly devolves into one of violence and jealousy.Rock, Paper, Scissors opens shortly after the death of Thomas and Jenny's criminal father. While trying to fix a toaster that he left behind, Thomas discovers a secret, setting into motion a series of events leading to the dissolution of his life, and plunging him into a dark, shadowy underworld of violence and betrayal.A gripping story written with a poet's sensibility and attention to language, Rock, Paper, Scissors showcases all of Aidt's gifts and will greatly expand the readership for one of Denmark's most decorated and beloved writers.Naja Marie Aidt was born in Greenland and raised in Copenhagen. She is the author of seven collections of poetry and five short story collections, including Baboon (Two Lines Press), which received the Nordic Council's Literature Prize and the Danish Critics Prize for Literature. Rock, Paper, Scissors is her first novel.K. E. Semmel is a writer and translator whose work has appeared in Ontario Review, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. His translations include books by Karin Fossum, Erik Valeur, Jussi Adler-Olsen, and Simon Fruelund.

'The Endless Summer by Madame Nielsen is my literary discovery of the year.'—SjónA passionate love story about a Danish woman and a much younger Portuguese artist, The Endless Summer confronts ideas of time, sexuality, and tragedy in a style reminiscent of both Marcel Proust and Lars Von Trier.Emotional and visceral, the novel drifts through time and space, relating the lives, loves, and dissolutions of everyone who surrounds this unexpected couple: the woman's former husband, who holds the family at gunpoint; her daughter and her lovers, who include a boy who finds himself and his true sexual identity in America; and the young boy who'is perhaps a girl, but does not yet know it,'who narrates everyone's stories.Propelled by a captivating story, the real charm of the novel resides in its impeccable style and atmosphere, which gathers a sense of longing, a slight nostalgia for times that ache with possibility, while knowing that even the endless summer doesn't last forever.An actor, musician, and novelist, Madame Nielsen is novelist, artist, performer, stage director and world history enactor, composer, chanteuse, and multi-gendered. Madame Nielsen is the author of numerous literary works, including a trilogy—The Suicide Mission, The Sovereign, and Fall of the Great Satan—and most recently, The Endless Summer, the'Bildungsroman'The Invasion, and The Supreme Being. Madame Nielsen is translated into nine languages and has received several literary prizes. The autobiographical novel My Encounters with The Great Authors of our Nation was published in 2013 under her boy's-name, Claus Beck-Nielsen, and was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2014.Gaye Kynoch is the translator of a book about Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) and Lime's Photograph by Leif Davidsen.

'Those of you who stay with Blas de Roblès's ultimately quite satisfying novel will find yourselves with a new European literary star to steer by.'—Alan Cheuse, NPRA stolen diamond and three right feet, wearing shoes of a non-existent brand, that wash ashore in Scotland set into motion the first plot of Island of Point Nemo, a rollicking Jules Verne-like adventure narrative that crosses continents and oceans, involves multilingual codes, a world-famous villain, and three eccentrically loopy detectives.Running parallel is the story of B@bil Books, an e-reader factory in France filled with its own set of colorful characters, including the impotent Dieumercie and his randy wife, who will stop at nothing—including a suspect ritual involving bees—to fix his'problem,'and their abusive boss Wang-ilWong, obsessed with carrier pigeons and spying on his employees.With the humor of a Jasper Fforde novel, and the structure of a Haruki Murakami one, Island of Point Nemois a literary puzzle and grand testament to the power of storytelling—even in our digital age.Born in Algeria, Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès is a truly international writer, having spent significant time in Brazil, France, Taiwan, and Libya. His novel Where Tigers Are at Home won the Fnac, Giono, and Médicis Prizes. Island of Point Nemo is his ninth novel.Hannah Chute has an MA in translation from the University of Rochester. In 2015, she received the Banff Centre Scholarship to work on Island of Point Nemo, her first full-length translation.

'Karastoyanov's novel is set in Bulgaria in the 1920s, but also invokes the spirit of John Lennon, and brings to mind Dostoevsky's Demons with its anarchists and assassins, lighthouses, zeppelins, and synthesis of modernist narrative techniques and Balkan storytelling.'—Berliner ZeitungIn June of 1923, a military coup established Aleksandar Tsankov as the new leader of Bulgaria. His fascist policies—especially aimed at the Bulgarian Communist Party—led to the failed September Uprising and an extended period of martial law.At that same time, Geo Milev—one of Bulgaria's most beloved poets—started a politically charged literary magazine with Georgi Sheytanov, a notorious anarchist on the run. Eighteen months later, the government assassinated both of them, although Milev's body wouldn't be found for another thirty years.In this multilayered historical novel that calls to mind Laurent Binet's HHhH, Hristo Karastoyanov deconstructs this period, blending this adventurous tale of resistance with current-day reflections on what this period meant to Bulgaria and the world.Hristo Karastoyanov is a multi-award winning contemporary Bulgarian novelist, playwright, and political essayist whose work has been translated into English, Turkish, and German. All seven of his novels have been shortlisted for the prestigious Helikon Award.Izidora Angel is a Bulgarian-born writer and translator. She has written essays and critique in English and Bulgarian for the Chicago Reader, Publishing Perspectives, Banitza, Egoist, and others. She received a grant from English PEN for her work on The Same Night Awaits Us All.

'Captivating and wild.... There is a vast, oceanic narrative power in Jóanes Nielsen's Faroese chronicle The Brahmadells.'—Anders Juhl RasmussenOne of the first Faroese books to be translated into English, The Brahmadells is an epic novel chronicling the lives of a particular family—nicknamed'the Brahmadells'—against the larger history of the Faroe Islands, from the time of Danish rule, through its national awakening, to its independence.Filled with colorful characters and various family intrigues, the novel incorporates a number of genres and styles as it shifts from individual stories to larger world issues. There are historical documents, including nineteenth-century medical journals, documents detailing the lives of real historical figures, digressions about religion, a measles outbreak, and many other travails, large and small.Referred to as the'Faroese Moby-Dick'for its scope, importance, and literary approach, The Brahmadells is a playful, engrossing look at life in an island nation whose rich history is relatively unknown to most English readers.Jóanes Nielsen is the author of four novels, a collection of stories, three volumes of essays, and eight poetry collections. He's been nominated on five occasions for the Nordic Council's Literature Prize.Kerri A. Pierce has published translations from seven different languages, including Justine by Iben Mondrup and The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am by Kjersti A. Skomsvold, which was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Spanning 500 years of Brazilian history, Her Mother's Mother's Mother and Her Daughters chronicles a family of women, beginning in 1500 with the birth of Inaiá, daughter of a Tupiniquim warrior, and ending in 2001 with Inaiá's distant descendent, Maria Flor. As each new daughter takes the place of her mother, and the mothers before her, Maria José Silveira's captivating, cinematic prose takes us through the formation of the country itself, as well as through the roles, customs, challenges, and intrigues of the women within it.Subversive and refreshing, Silveira blends great storytelling with personal politics to critique the machismo, authoritarianism, and abuses of power prevalent in Brazilian culture.It's a delicate subject, the family story is complicated, and not everything was wine and roses. There was, of course, much happiness and love, many battles and accomplishments, great feats—after all, the women here helped to build this country from nearly nothing. But there were also stories of insanity, or murderesses, and not a few sorrows and tragedies. Great disappointments. A good many of them.Maria José Silveira is the author of ten novels, including the prize-winning Her Mother's Mother's Mother and Her Daughters, the film rights to which were sold to TV Globo.Eric M. B. Becker is editor of Words Without Borders and an award-winning journalist and literary translator. He received a PEN/Heim Translation grant for his work on Mia Couto, and has also translated works by Lygia Fagundes Telles, Noemi Jaffe, and others.

'It all blends here unexpectedly: that past and memory with the present and space. [...] At times, your skin will crawl with pleasure from reading.'—Andrzej StasiukLying in bed in Gotland after a writer's conference, thinking about his compulsive desire to travel—and the uncomfortable tensions this desire creates—the narrator of Salki starts recounting tragic stories of his family's past, detailing their lives, struggles, and fears in twentieth-century Eastern Europe. In these pieces, he investigates various'salkis'—attic rooms where memories and memorabilia are stored—real and metaphorical, investigating old documents to better understand the violence of recent times.Winner of the prestigious Gdynia Literary Award for Essay, Salki is in the tradition of the works of W. G. Sebald and Ryszard Kapuscinski, utilizing techniques of Polish reportage in creating a landscape of memory that is moving and historically powerful.Wojciech Nowicki is a Polish essayist, journalist, critic, photographer, and even writes a culinary column. He is also the co-founder of the Imago Mundi Foundation devoted to promoting photography. Salki is his first book to be translated into English.Jan Pytalski is a graduate of the American Studies Center at the University of Warsaw, and has an MA in translation from the University of Rochester.

“Guðbergur Bergsson achieved success with his novel Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller, which shocked Icelandic readers in innumerable ways, lashing out as it does at the Icelandic society of the post-war years for its cultural confusion, amorality, and hypocrisy. The main character is a grumpy old man who speaks and writes in various styles, grumbles and babbles and criticizes everything.'—Dagný KristjánsdóttirA retired, senile bank clerk confined to his basement apartment, Tómas Jónsson decides that, since memoirs are all the rage, he's going to write his own—a sure bestseller—that will also right the wrongs of contemporary Icelandic society. Egoistic, cranky, and digressive, Tómas blasts away while relating pick-up techniques, meditations on chamber pot use, ways to assign monetary value to noise pollution, and much more. His rants parody and subvert the idea of the memoir—something that's as relevant today in our memoir-obsessed society as it was when the novel was first published.Considered by many to be the'Icelandic Ulysses'for its wordplay, neologisms, structural upheaval, and reinvention of what's possible in Icelandic writing, Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller was a bestseller, heralding a new age of Icelandic literature.Guðbergur Bergsson is the author of twenty-one books, from novels to children's literature, and a translator from Spanish into Icelandic. He has received the Icelandic Literary Prize and the Nordic Prize.Lytton Smith is the author of The All-Purpose Magical Tent, and has translated works from Bragi Ólafsson, Jón Gnarr, and Kristin Ómarsdóttir, among others.

New Novel from the Winner of the 2015 Best Translated Book AwardIntroduction by Porochista Khakpour.'One of the most raved-about works of translated fiction this year'—Jonathan Sturgeon, FlavorwireFrontier opens with the story of Liujin, a young woman heading out on her own to create her own life in Pebble Town, a somewhat surreal place at the base of Snow Mountain where wolves roam the streets and certain enlightened individuals can see and enter a paradisiacal garden.Exploring life in this city (or in the frontier) through the viewpoint of a dozen different characters, some simple, some profound, Can Xue's latest novel attempts to unify the grand opposites of life--barbarism and civilization, the spiritual and the material, the mundane and the sublime, beauty and death, Eastern and Western cultures.A layered, multifaceted masterpiece from the 2015 winner of the Best Translated Book Award, Frontier exemplifies John Darnielle's statement that Can Xue's books read'as if dreams had invaded the physical world.'Can Xue is a pseudonym meaning'dirty snow, leftover snow.'She learned English on her own and has written books on Borges, Shakespeare, and Dante. Her publications in English include The Embroidered Shoes, Five Spice Street, Vertical Motion, and The Last Lover, which won the 2015 Best Translated Book Award for Fiction.Karen Gernant is a professor emerita of Chinese history at Southern Oregon University. She translates in collaboration with Chen Zeping.Chen Zeping is a professor of Chinese linguistics at Fujian Teachers'University, and has collaborated with Karen Gernant on more than ten translations.Porochista Khakpour is the author of two novels, Sons and Other Flammable Objects and The Last Illusion.

'Irreducible to any single literary genre, the Volodinian cosmos is skillfully crafted, fusing elements of science fiction with magical realism and political commentary.'— Music & LiteratureThe most patently sci-fi work of Antoine Volodine's to be translated into English, Radiant Terminus takes place in a Tarkovskian landscape after the fall of the Second Soviet Union. Most of humanity has been destroyed thanks to a number of nuclear meltdowns, but a few communes remain, including one run by Solovyei, a psychotic father with the ability to invade people's dreams—including those of his daughters—and torment them for thousands of years.When a group of damaged individuals seek safety from this nuclear winter in Solovyei's commune, a plot develops to overthrow him, end his reign of mental abuse, and restore humanity.Fantastical, unsettling, and occasionally funny, Radiant Terminus is a key entry in Volodine's epic literary project that—with its broad landscape, ambitious vision, and interlocking characters and ideas—calls to mind the best of David Mitchell.Antoine Volodine (a.k.a. Lutz Bassmann, a.k.a. Manuela Draeger) is the primary pseudonym of a French writer who has published more than forty books, over twenty under this name. Seven of his titles are currently available in English translation, including Minor Angels, Bardo or Not Bardo, and Post-Exoticism in Ten Lessons, Lesson Eleven.Jeffrey Zuckerman is digital editor of Music & Literature. His writing and translations have appeared in Best European Fiction, 3:AM Magazine, the Rumpus, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Winner of the Vick Foundation Novel of the Year Award in 2007, Party Headquarters takes place in the eighties and nineties, during Bulgaria's transition from communist rule to democracy.The book—which is a love story, a parody, and a thriller about a political hoax—opens with the main character visiting his father-in-law, an old communist party boss who is dying, and being tasked with delivering a suitcase filled with one-and-a-half million euros.It's one of Bulgaria's most popular myths: As the communist party fell apart, high ranking officials squirreled away bags and suitcases containing a significant portion of the country's wealth, and that these bags are still circulating through Europe, waiting to be delivered to various conspirators.But this is just the beginning of the corruption and inequality that plagued Bulgaria during this time. While immersing himself in pornography and prostitution, the hero of Party Headquarters reflects back on his life and the emblematic events that took place around that time—the anticommunist protests, the arson attack on the Communist Party Headquarters in Sofia, and, most tragically and crucially, the Chernobyl disaster, during which the families of party officials were sheltered away and fed special, safe food, while the regular citizens suffered.Beautiful and tragic, Party Headquarters is an engrossing testament to the struggles that haunted Bulgaria after the fall of the Soviet Union, many of which continue to resonate today.Before penning the Vick Prize-winning novel Party Headquarters, Georgi Tenev had already published four books, founded the Triumviratus Art Group, hosted The Library television program about books, and written plays that have been performed in Germany, France, and Russia. He is also a screenwriter for film and TV.Angela Rodel earned an MA in linguistics from UCLA and received a Fulbright Fellowship to study and learn Bulgarian.

From the author nominated for the Best Translated Book Award and the PEN Translation Prize'Bae Suah offers the chance to unknow—to see the everyday afresh and be defamiliarized with what we believe we know—which is no small offering.'—Sophie Hughes, Music & LiteratureNear the beginning of A Greater Music, the narrator, a young Korean writer, falls into an icy river in the Berlin suburbs, where she's been housesitting for her on-off boyfriend Joachim. This sets into motion a series of memories that move between the hazily defined present and the period three years ago when she first lived in Berlin. Throughout, the narrator's relationship with Joachim, a rough-and-ready metalworker, is contrasted with her friendship with a woman called M, an ultra-refined music-loving German teacher who was once her lover.A novel of memories and wandering, A Greater Music blends riffs on music, language, and literature with a gut-punch of an emotional ending, establishing Bae Suah as one of the most exciting novelists working today.Bae Suah, one of the most highly acclaimed contemporary Korean authors, has published more than a dozen works and won several prestigious awards. She has also translated several books from the German, including works by W. G. Sebald, Franz Kafka, and Jenny Erpenbeck. Her first book to appear in English, Nowhere to be Found, was longlisted for a PEN Translation Prize.Deborah Smith's literary translations from the Korean include two novels by Han Kang (The Vegetarian and Human Acts), and two by Bae Suah, (A Greater Music and Recitation).

Winner of the 2017 Best Translated Book AwardLonglisted for the 2017 National Translation Award'The book itself is strange—part Faulknerian meditation on the perversities, including sexual, of degenerate country folk; part Dostoevskian examination of good and evil and God—but in its strangeness lies its rare power, and in the sincerity and seriousness with which the essential questions are posed lies its greatness.'—Benjamin Moser, from the introductionLong considered one of the most important works of twentieth-century Brazilian literature, Chronicle of the Murdered House is finally available in English.Set in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, the novel relates the dissolution of a once proud patriarchal family that blames its ruin on the marriage of its youngest son, Valdo, to Nina—a vibrant, unpredictable, and incendiary young woman whose very existence seems to depend on the destruction of the household. This family's downfall, peppered by stories of decadence, adultery, incest, and madness, is related through a variety of narrative devices, including letters, diaries, memoirs, statements, confessions, and accounts penned by the various characters.Lúcio Cardoso (1912-1968) turned away from the social realism fashionable in 1930s Brazil and opened the doors of Brazilian literature to introspective works such as those of Clarice Lispector—his greatest follower and admirer.Margaret Jull Costa has translated dozens of works from both Spanish and Portuguese, including books by Javier Marías and José Saramago. Her translations have received numerous awards, including the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In 2014 she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.Robin Patterson was mentored by Margaret Jull Costa, and has translated Our Musseque by José Luandino Vieira.

'Saer is one of the best writers of today in any language.'—Ricardo Piglia'What Saer presents marvelously is the experience of reality, and the characters'attempts to write their own narratives within its excess.'—BookforumIn modern-day Paris, Pichón Garay receives a computer disk containing a manuscript—which might be fictional, or could be a memoir—by Doctor Real, a nineteenth-century physician tasked with leading a group of five mental patients on a trip to a recently constructed asylum. Their trip, which ends in disaster and fire, is a brilliant tragicomedy thanks to the various insanities of the patients, among whom is a delusional man who greatly over-estimates his own importance and a nymphomaniac nun who tricks everyone—even the other patients—into sleeping with her.Fascinating as a faux historical novel and written in Saer's typically gorgeous, Proustian style, The Clouds can be read as a metaphor for exile—a huge theme for Saer and a lot of Argentine writers—as well as an examination of madness.Juan José Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Scars and La Grande), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event. Five of his novels are available from Open Letter Books.Hilary Vaughn Dobel has an MFA in poetry and translation from Columbia University. She is the author of two manuscripts and, in addition to Saer, she has translated work by Carlos Pintado.

Winner of the Eduard Vilde Literary AwardThe Brother opens with a mysterious stranger arriving in a small town controlled by a group of men—men who recently cheated the stranger's supposed sister out of her inheritance and mother's estate. Resigned to giving up on her dreams and ambitions, Laila took this swindling in stride, something that Brother won't stand for. Soon after his arrival, fortunes change dramatically, enraging this group of powerful men, motivating them to get their revenge on Brother. Meanwhile, a rat-faced paralegal makes it his mission to discover Brother's true identity...The first novel of Rein Raud's to appear in English, The Brother is, in Raud's own words, a spaghetti western told in poetic prose, simultaneously paying tribute to both Clint Eastwood and Alessandro Baricco. With its well-drawn characters and quick moving plot, it takes on more mythic aspects, lightly touching on philosophical ideas of identity and the ruthless way the world is divided into winners and losers.Rein Raud is the author of four books of poetry, six novels, and several collections of short fiction. He's also a scholar in Japanese studies and has translated several works of Japanese into Estonian. One of his short pieces appeared in Best European Fiction 2015.Adam Cullen was born and educated in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but currently resides in Tallinn where he's translated dozens of plays, stories, and poems. He's also translated three published novels, including Radio by Tõnu Õnnepalu and The Cavemen Chronicle by Mihkel Mutt.

'[Labbé] wreaks havoc on narrative rules from the start and keeps doing it.'—BookforumLoquela, Carlos Labbé's fourth novel and second to be translated into English, is a narrative chameleon, a shape-shifting exploration of fiction's possibilities.At a basic level, this book is like a hybrid of Julio Cortázar and Paul Auster: a distorted detective novel, a love story, and a radical statement about narrative art. Behind the silence that unites and separates Carlos and Elisa, behind the game that estranges the albino girls, Alicia and Violeta, from the best summer afternoons, behind the destiny of Neutria—a city that disappears with childhood and returns with desire—and behind a literary move­ment that might be the ultimate vanguard while at the same time the greatest falsification, questions arise concerning who truly writes for whom in a novel—the author or the reader.Through an array of voices, overlapping story­lines, a kaleidoscope of literary references, and a delirious prose, Labbé carves out a space for himself among such form-defying Latin American greats as Diamela Eltit, Juan Carlos Onetti, and Jorge Luis Borges.Carlos Labbé, one of Granta's'Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists,'was born in Chile and is the author of a collection of short stories and six novels, one of which, Navidad & Matanza, is available in English from Open Letter. In addition to his writings, he is a musician, and has released three albums.Will Vanderhyden received an MA in literary translation from the University of Rochester.

'Good readers will find something that can be found only in great literature, the kind written by real poets, a literature that dares to venture into the dark with open eyes and that keeps its eyes open no matter what.... The literature of the twenty-first century will belong to Neuman and a few of his blood brothers.'—Roberto BolañoPlayful, philosophizing, and gloriously unpredictable, Andrés Neuman's short stories consider love, lechery, history, mortality, family secrets, therapy, Borges, mysterious underwear, translators, and storytelling itself.Here a relationship turns on a line drawn in the sand; an analyst treats a patient who believes he's the real analyst; a discovery in a secondhand shop takes on a cruel significance; a man decides to go to work naked one day. In these small scenes and brief moments Neuman confounds our expectations with dazzling sleight of hand.With a variety of forms and styles, Neuman opens up the possibilities for fiction, calling to mind other greats of Latin American letters, such as Cortázar, Bolaño, and Bioy Casares. Intellectually stimulating and told with a voice that is wry, questioning, sometimes mordantly funny, yet always generously humane, The Things We Don't Do confirms Neuman's place as one of the most dynamic authors writing today.Andrés Neuman was born in Buenos Aires, and grew up and lives in Spain. He was included in Granta's'Young Spanish-language Novelists'issue and is the author of almost twenty works, two of which—Traveler of the Century and Talking to Ourselves— have been translated into English. Traveler of the Century won the Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize, and was longlisted for the 2013 Best Translated book award, and shortlisted for the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.Nick Caistoris a prolific British translator and journalist, best known for his translations of Spanish and Portuguese literature. He is a past winner of the Valle-Inclán Prize for translation and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4, Times Literary Supplement, and the Guardian.Lorenza Garcia has lived for extended periods in Spain, France, and Iceland. Since 2007, she has translated over a dozen novels and works of non-fiction from French and Spanish.