In Maya Arad’s epistolary novel "Happy New Years", an Israeli immigrant writes annual Rosh Hashanah letters to her friends back home, masking the reality of her life in the US. From 1966 to 2016, Leah writes to women from her... Read More

The subsistence existences of those who contend with harsh environments and harsher government policies are the focus of the illuminating novel "Desert Rites". In Xuemo’s historical novel "Desert Rites", Chinese villagers struggle... Read More

A Toronto woman tries to balance motherhood with being a musician in Lindsay Zier-Vogel’s heartfelt novel "The Fun Times Brigade". Amy’s newborn daughter, Alice, screams, won’t sleep, and won’t take a bottle. Amy’s husband,... Read More

In a remote Italian town, an unassuming cobbler is drawn into helping partisans fight against fascists and Nazis in Sacha Naspini’s novel "The Bishop’s Villa". Despite missing several fingers, René is the cobbler of Le Case. He’s... Read More

In Afabwaje Kurian’s novel "Before the Mango Ripens", Nigerians fight against white American missionaries for control over their country’s future. “Transition [is] afoot in Nigeria” in 1971, just after the nation’s... Read More

Set in the Netherlands, Jaap Robben’s novel "Afterlight" is about an elderly woman’s work to discover what happened to her child. In the book’s present, Frieda is in her eighties. After her husband, Louis, dies, she is deemed too... Read More

Itamar Vieira Junior’s novel "Crooked Plow" is a work of magical realism in which sisters fight to survive and improve conditions on the land they love. As children in Brazil, Bibiana and Belonísia discover their grandmother’s... Read More

In Ludmilla Petrushevskaya’s novel "Kidnapped", two boys are switched at birth, leading to unexpected consequences. The story unfolds against the backdrop of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Alina, a poor university student who has been... Read More