In Cho Haejin’s intricate, touching novel "Simple Heart", a transnational adoptee returns to Korea. Nana, an actor and playwright, grew up in South Korea. Abandoned by her mother at a train station, she lived with the conductor and at... Read More

A night of violence is routine, expected, and devastating in Francisco Maciel’s literary novel There’s No Point in Dying. There is a favela (slum) in the birthplace of samba. At its center are three bars. They’re close enough that... Read More

An elder shares her story in Chi Zijian’s reflective novel "The Last Quarter of the Moon". An unnamed Evenki woman laments the loss represented by her home’s emptiness. Her family voted to leave their mountains; modernization... Read More

Fausta Cialente’s multifaceted historical novel "A Very Cold Winter" explores the individual and collective dynamics of an extended family as they adjust to life in postwar Italy. Though the war ended, Milan is still shadowed by... Read More

In Emanuela Anechoum’s nuanced novel "Tangerinn", a Londoner returns to her Calabrian hometown after her father’s death, seeking closure and emotional clarity. Mina grew up in a “provincial mafia-run” town near the sea. Her... Read More

In Rinny Gremaud’s fascinating novella "Generator", a woman investigates nuclear energy and her parentage. “I was born in 1977 at a nuclear power plant in the south of South Korea,” the unnamed narrator opens. She and her mother... Read More

A writer searches for her vanished cousin in "The Year of the Wind", Karina Pacheco Medrano’s unforgettable novel about the personal and generational costs of political chaos. As a girl in Peru, Nina thrilled in stories of mythical... Read More

A half-submerged island is the setting of a love story “not meant for land” in "When Water Became Blue", Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette’s sweetly wanton novel about women’s desire. Brought to shore by her partner and child, Anaïs, a... Read More