Cult X by Fuminori Nakamura (2018)

Part 1
1
He’d hoped to stumble into something wilder, something that would change him completely. Something that would make him lose all concern for morals and ethics and the confused human condition. Something that would obliterate him and the life he had lived until now (17).

3 ( Read more... )

The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose (2018)

Part One
Chapter 7 Art creates a certain familiarity with loneliness. And possibly with pain. Physical, mental, it doesn’t really matter. It’s all a catalyst. I don’t like to admit that because it’s depressing, but in truth pain is the stone that art sharpens itself on time after time ( Read more... )

Higher Ground by Anke Stelling (2018) translated from the German by Lucy Jones (2021)

Everybody knows thatVera sent me an email months ago, which said: ‘This is where we part ways.’ Which I hadn’t interpreted as: ‘You better figure out pretty quickly where you’re going to live, because I’ll get Frank on to you next ( Read more... )

Fish Soup by Margarita García Robayo, translated by Charlotte Coombe (2018)

Better Than Me
‘I lost them both,’ said Orestes, self-absorbed.

‘What did you say?’ said Yara.

‘There’s not even a word to describe my situation,’ he went on. ‘Children without parents are orphans, but parents without children, what are they? Bad parents?’ (74)

( Read more... )

Alternative Remedies for Loss by Joanna Cantor (2018)

Chapter OneHer mother would have wanted to come to the night market. She would have drunk sweet, fragrant tea out of a glass with Olivia-she would have known, as Olivia did, that anything that boiled was clean ( Read more... )

Suicide Club: A Novel About Living by Rachel Heng (2018)

Chapter 10Memory worked in strange ways when you had lived to a hundred and beyond. For the most part, the things that had happened in her early childhood were the ones that could be counted on to stay put. They were the permanent fixtures, firmly lodged into the architecture of the mind, ( Read more... )

Ordesa by Manuel Vilas (2018), translated from the Spanish by Andrea Rosenberg (2020)

Chapter 1We’re all poor souls thrust into the tunnel of existence. Existence is a moral category. Existing obliges us to do, to do something, anything at all ( Read more... )

Girls Against God by Jenny Hval (2018), translated from the Norwegian by Marjam Idriss (2020)

1. The WitchcraftI grew up in southern Norway’s white Scandinavian paradise: white walls, white fresh snow, white painted laminate and white chipboard, white flagpoles and white chalk lines on the blackboard, white cheese and white fish, milk, fish ( Read more... )

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata (2018), translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori (2020)

CHAPTER 2My town was a collection of nests, a factory for manufacturing babies. I was a tool for the town’s good, in two senses ( Read more... )

The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish by Katya Apekina (2018)

Part I: New York
Chapter 2: Letter from Amanda Singer to Detstvo PublishersI am writing my dissertation on the work of the American writer Dennis Lomack. One of his books is a translation of Russian folk tales. There is one story in particular that fascinated me, but when I showed it ( Read more... )