18 new books coming into the world today.
Don’t walk—run—to the nearest bookstore. This week sees the publication of new books by Margaret Atwood, Sarah Moss, Kathryn Davis, and more.
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Margaret Atwood, Burning Questions
(Doubleday)
“One of the most notable aspects of this collection is how engaged Atwood, now 82, has remained with the pressing issues of the day … Atwood is clearly undaunted by opprobrium, calling instead for fairness and accountability.”
–The Observer
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, The Sex Lives of African Women
(Astra House)
“Ghanaian activist and blogger Sekyiamah debuts with a dazzling series of soul-searching and taboo-breaking conversations with women throughout Africa and the diaspora about relationships, sex, and identity.”
–Publishers Weekly
Yoko Tawada, tr. Margaret Mitsutani, Scattered All Over the Earth
(New Directions)
“According to Yoko Tawada, literature should always start from zero. She is a master of subtraction, whose characters often find themselves stripped of language in foreign worlds.”
–The New Yorker
Yevgenia Belorusets, tr. Eugene Ostashevsky, Lucky Breaks
(New Directions)
“In describing the effects of one of the most brutal conflicts to have occurred during — and to be in part aided by — the age of fake news, Lucky Breaks asks essential questions about the ethical implications of blurring the boundary between fiction and reality.”
–The Financial Times
Sarah Moss, The Fell
(FSG)
“Indeed, one of the most profoundly unsettling attributes of The Fell is the way it questions that elemental source of human succour: storytelling.”
–The Guardian
Missouri Williams, The Doloriad
(MCD x FSG)
“This is a gripping look at humanity’s treatment of women and questions whether human survival at all costs is worth it.”
–Booklist
Claire-Louise Bennett, Checkout 19
(Riverhead)
“So many of Bennett’s lines are worth quoting in full. Because she is, first and foremost, a master of the sentence, directing the foggy, expansive contents of her mind through one breathtaking construction after another.”
–Vanity Fair
Rebecca Kauffman, Chorus
(Counterpoint)
“Readers…will be happy to see [Kauffman] return with this packed family tale.”
–Library Journal
Rodrigo Blanco Calderon, tr. Daniel Hahn and Noel Hernández, The Night
(Seven Stories Press)
“Venezuelan writer Blanco Calderón weaves a labyrinthine study of language, writers, and obsession against a backdrop of rampant femicides and the energy and political crises in contemporary Caracas.”
–Publishers Weekly
Meghan O’Rourke, The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness
(Riverhead)
“With a poet’s sensibility, journalist’s rigor, and patient’s personal investment, O’Rourke sheds light on the physical and mental toll of having a mysterious chronic illness … Readers will be left in awe.”
–Publishers Weekly
Pankaj Mishra, Run and Hide
(FSG)
“An intense, probing novel examines rampant materialism and spiritual bankruptcy.”
–Kirkus
Sarah Krasnostein, The Believer
(Tin House)
“The Believer is a fascinating book, and one that asks big questions – about connectedness and separation, certainly, but also about love and grief, resilience and faith, and all the ways in which we situate ourselves within the world.”
–The Guardian
Phoebe Giannisi, tr. Brian Sneeden, Cicada
(New Directions)
“[A] vibrant lyric consideration of metamorphosis, mortality, and poetry as song, all centered around the figure of the shapeshifting insect.”
–Poetry Foundation
Kathryn Davis, Aurelia, Aurélia: A Memoir
(Graywolf)
“Novelist Davis (The Silk Road) conjures real and imagined worlds in this lithe and cerebral exploration of life, death, and the ways both influence craft.”
–Publishers Weekly
Michael Kazin, What It Took To Win
(FSG)
“[An] insightful introduction to the complex history of the ‘oldest mass party in the world.'”
–Publishers Weekly
Lee Cole, Groundskeeping
(Knopf)
“Cole’s nimble debut combines elements of Southern fiction, the campus novel, and youthful romance.”
–Publishers Weekly
Jack E. Davis, The Bald Eagle
(Liveright)
“[A] majestic history of the bald eagle and how it has reflected the nation’s changing relationship to nature.”
–Kirkus
Solmaz Sharif, Customs
(Graywolf)
“Sharif (Look) movingly excavates in her powerful second collection an internal landscape haunted by psychic dissonance and fractured identity.”
–Publishers Weekly
