Moshe Sakal’s "The Diamond Setter" is a spellbinding saga of love and family secrets. Characters’ stories overlap, all connected by a famous blue diamond: Sabakh. A handsome young man, Fareed, smuggles a piece of Sabakh across the... Read More

"Black Sugar" opens as pirate Henry Morgan dies clutching his gold, his ship sinking under a Caribbean forest. In this moment of vivid magical realism, Miguel Bonnefoy sets the stakes for his novel—sunken treasure in the islands and... Read More

Masatsugu Ono’s "Lion Cross Point" is an atmospheric, melancholy tale about memory and absence. Ten-year-old Takeru arrives at his mother’s childhood village by the sea. Under the care of a relative, Mitsuko, he settles into a... Read More

"The Bottom of the Sky" is about two boys, Isaac and Ezra, who are science-fiction fans. They fall in love with a girl they meet at one of their sci-fi club meetings. But it also revolves around a mysterious science-fiction novel called... Read More

Andreas Izquierdo’s "The Happiness Bureau" centers on a government employee, Albert Happy, whose tenderness may just redeem the role of bureaucracies. Happy is a decades-long employee of the Agency of Administrative Affairs; he runs... Read More

This beautiful allegorical novel highlights the heartrending issues of Palestinians and refugees with a magical style. "Deir Al Lauz", written by Lama Sakhnini and translated by Sabrina Sakhnini, is a harrowing and stylish novel that... Read More

The novel emphasizes how, no matter the circumstances, there’s room for belief in a future. Niccolò Ammaniti imagines the fallout of an epidemic fever in his gripping, post-apocalyptic "Anna". "Anna" will inspire comparison with The... Read More

In gorgeous prose, the novel blends together seemingly disparate narratives to form a harmonious whole. In "Sisters of the Cross", Alexei Remizov captures the strata of human experiences via evocative imagery and scintillating language.... Read More