Contemporary Global Literature Series

  'This new generation of Latin American writers has exchanged history for memory, dictators for narcos and political engagement for gender and class consciousness.' El País Ten years on from the first Bogotá 39 selection, which brought writers such as Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Alejandro Zambra and Junot Díaz to fame, comes this story collection showcasing thirty-nine exceptional new talents.

Garcia Robayo delves into the lives of her characters, simultaneously evoking sympathy and revulsion, challenging the reader's loyalties throughout the remarkable universe that is Fish Soup.

In Wonder, past and present, science and emotion, speak to each other to create a brilliant whole from three distinct parts. Readers are swept from a devastating volcanic eruption in 1902 to today's Montreal by way of a scientific love story in Victorian England. Along the way readers follow Baptiste Cyparis, 'The Man who Lived Through Doomsday,' who travelled the length and breadth of the United States with Barnum & Bailey's circus. They also meet Edward Love, the mathematician who discovered the mysterious waves that shake the earth.

The Witch is dead. And the discovery of her corpse--by a group of children playing near the irrigation canals--propels the whole village into an investigation of how and why this murder occurred. Rumors and suspicions spread. As the novel unfolds in a dazzling linguistic torrent, with each unreliable narrator lingering on new details, new acts of depravity or brutality, Melchor extracts some tiny shred of humanity from these characters that most would write off as utterly irredeemable, forming a lasting portrait of a damned Mexican village.

A story of love and race centered around a young man and woman from Nigeria who face difficult choices and challenges in the countries they come to call home.

In an unnamed African city in secession, profit-seekers of all languages and nationalities mix. They have only one desire: to make a fortune by exploiting the mineral wealth of the land. Two friends: Lucien, a writer with literary ambitions home from abroad, and his childhood friend Requiem, who dreams of taking over the seedy underworld of their hometown, gather in the most notorious nightclub in town: the Tram 83. This debut novel by a Congolese author uses jazz rhythm to evoke the frenzied exploitation of land and people in contemporary Africa.

In Killing Commendatore, a thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna, a pit in the woods behind the artist's home, and an underworld haunted by Double Metaphors.

Follows the efforts of a family to find the mother who went missing from Seoul Station and their sobering realizations when they recall memories that suggest she may not have been happy. The first South Korean and first woman to win the Man Asian Literary Prize.

An evocative coming-of-age story of a young boy, a lost childhood and a shattered homeland. Burundi, 1992. For ten-year-old Gabriel, life in his comfortable expatriate neighborhood of Bujumbura with his French father, Rwandan mother and little sister Ana, is something close to paradise. A novel of extraordinary power and beauty, Small Country describes an end of innocence as seen through the eyes of a child caught in the maelstrom of history. Shot through with shadows and light, tragedy and humor, it is a stirring tribute not only to a dark chapter in Africa's past, but also to the bright days that preceded it.

Adina is a young schoolteacher. Paul is a musician. Clara works in a wire factory. Pavel is Clara's lover. But one of them works for the secret police and is reporting on the rest of the group. One day Adina returns home to discover that her fox fur rug has had its tail cut off. On another occasion it's the hindleg. Then a foreleg. The mutilated fur is a sign that she is being tracked by the secret police--the fox was ever the hunter. Images of photographic precision combine into a kaleidoscope of terror as Adina and her friends struggle to keep mind and body intact in a world pervaded by complicity and permeated with fear, where it's hard to tell victim from perpetrator.

A Lake Beyond the Wind is a novel about the most catastrophic year in Palestinian history, a time marked by violent clashes between Zionist forces and the volunteers of the Arab Liberation Army. Yakhlif tenderly gathers all the town folk, the soldiers of the beleaguered army, the animals and the natural world into his tale, which makes it all the more powerful a lament for a world that is no more.

In the village of al-Awafi in Oman, we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries after a heartbreak; Asma, who aspires to a different kind of life and marriage; and Khawla, who chooses to refuse all offers and await a reunion with the man she loves, who has emigrated to Canada. The story of these three women and their families is set against a backdrop of a rapidly changing Oman, a country evolving from a traditional, slave-owning society into its complex present. The first novel originally written in Arabic to ever win the Man Booker International Prize, and the first book by a female Omani author to be translated into English.

It's the night before the feast in the village of Furstenfelde (population: an odd number). The village is asleep. Except for the ferryman--he's dead. And Mrs. Kranz, the night-blind painter, who wants to depict her village for the first time at night. A bell-ringer and his apprentice want to ring the bells--the only problem is that the bells have gone. A vixen is looking for eggs for her young, and Mr. Schramm is discovering more reasons to quit life than to quit smoking.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has opened up a huge consumer market, but how do you sell things to a generation that grew up with just one type of cola? When Tatarsky, a frustrated poet, takes a job as an advertising copywriter, he finds he has a talent for putting distinctively Russian twists on Western-style ads. But his success leads him into a surreal world of spin doctors, gangsters, drug trips, and the spirit of Che Guevera, who, by way of a Ouija board, communicates theories of consumer theology.