20 new books to cozy up to this week.
We’re just accepting the fact that the TBR pile is an ever-growing beast, and that we’re never going to catch up, right? This week brings us new titles from Gary Shteyngart, Ai Weiwei, Mario Vargas Llosa, and more.
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Kyle Lucia Wu, Win Me Something
(Tin House)
“…beyond impressive … Wu perfectly captures the feeling of being young and unmoored in a large city, unable to find close friends, and still carrying a dull pain from a childhood that was neither really happy nor unhappy.”
–NPR
Gary Shteyngart, Our Country Friends
(Random House)
“Our Country Friends, the author’s fifth novel, is his finest … brilliant about so much: the humiliations of parenting and of being parented; the sadism of chronic illness; the glory of friendship.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Claire Tomalin, The Young H.G. Wells: Changing the World
(Penguin Press)
“A vivid portrait of the early years of an author of astounding vision, who predicted many of the horrors of the 20th century.”
–Kirkus
Ai Weiwei, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
(Crown)
“[A] combination history of modern China, biography of a dissident poet and memoir by his provocateur son.”
–Shelf Awareness
Judith Mackrell, The Correspondents
(Doubleday)
“Mackrell lucidly sketches military and political matters. The result is a rousing portrait of women who not only reported on history, but made it themselves.”
–Publishers Weekly
Rax King, Tacky
(Vintage)
“An engaging, hilarious, unabashed look at what we love in culture and why we should value it for what it is.”
–Kirkus
Sarah Hall, Burntcoat
(Custom House)
“The hope in this sparse, sumptuous, brilliant book is that the work of finding meaning and truth can be continued even in extremity, even as art and love slip away.”
–The Guardian
Yevgeny Zamyatin, Bela Shayevich, We
(Ecco)
“Zamyatin’s all-seeing state is sufficiently chilling all the same. Translator Shayevich does a good job of preserving his affectless, sometimes nearly robotic prose, and the book is highly readable—and indeed should be read.”
–Kirkus
Mario Vargas Llosa, tr. Adrian Nathan West, Harsh Times
(FSG)
“History here gets a compelling human face through an artist’s dramatic brilliance.”
–Kirkus
Katharine Blake, The Uninnocent
(FSG Originals)
“This introspective book covers some disturbing and unsettling ground, yet appropriately so because of the subject matter. Readers looking to explore the ideas of mercy and forgiveness will be given plenty to think about.”
–Library Journal
Michael Eric Dyson, Entertaining Race
(St. Martin’s)
“Throughout, Dyson maintains a firm grip on the cultural moment and offers razor-sharp insights into American history, politics, and art. This is a feast of insights.”
–Publishers Weekly
Uwem Akpan, New York, My Village
(W.W. Norton)
“Akpan writes as much to educate as to entertain, adding lengthy and lucid historical passages with footnotes to source material along with excerpts from the book Ekong is editing.”
–Publishers Weekly
Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees
(Bloomsbury)
“This is a wonderful novel. Normally one keeps this comment for the last line of the review, but I am so enthusiastic about The Island of Missing Trees that I want to put my cards on the table straightaway … one of the most entertaining history lessons you have ever had.”
–The Irish Times
Okezi Nwoka, God of Mercy
(Astra House)
“…the prose is rhythmic and stylish … A well-turned dramatization of spiritual and social culture clashes.”
–Kirkus
Aisha Sabatini Sloan, Borealis
(Coffee House Press)
“Essayist Sabatini Sloan (Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit) muses on ice, art, and her exes in this lyrical exploration of Homer, Alaska … There’s plenty here to please essay fans.”
–Publishers Weekly
Peter Ho Davies, The Art of Revision
(Graywolf)
“A fresh perspective on revision that should inspire even apprehensive writers.”
–Kirkus
László Krasznahorkai, tr. John Batki, Chasing Homer
(New Directions)
“Krasznahorkai’s strange and engrossing novella (after Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming) reads like a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie dreamed up by Beckett and Kafka.”
–Publishers Weekly
Wolfgang Hilbig, tr. Isabel Fargo Cole, The Interim
(Two Lines Press)
“…the novel succeeds in replicating the uncertainty of a life in late Cold War Germany. C., as avatar of East and West, struggles to find purchase amid the chaos. It’s a wily tale, smartly told.”
–Publishers Weekly
Tom McCarthy, The Making of Incarnation
(Knopf)
” McCarthy arcs and zigzags through the parameters of contemporary fiction and achieves a brilliant new form. The whooshing, trawling result is the epitome of sui generis.”
–Publishers Weekly
