Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius

December 18, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch. Peirene Press, 2010. Originally published 2006. 125 pgs. Library copy. In January 1943, a young, pregnant woman named Margherita takes a walk through the streets of Rome. Such a walk would be unremarkable where it not for the fact that she came to Rome to be with her husband, a member of the German Army fighting in North Africa. Her German nationality affords her certain benefits in Rome – a […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, German, Italy, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Friedrich Christian Delius

Soviet Milk by Nora Ikstena

December 13, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the Latvian by Margita Gailitis. Peirene Press, 2018. Originally published 2015. 196 pgs. Purchased. In Ikstena’s novella, the title refers to the emotional and physically nurturing (not) offered by the oppressive, political regime of the Soviet Union in present-day Latvia. A nameless mother and her nameless daughter serve as the narrators and central focus of the novella with Ikstena following them from 1969 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In Latvian […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Europe, Fiction, Latvian, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Nora Ikstena

Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal

October 21, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the Catalan by Laura McGloughlin and Paul Mitchell. Peirene Press, 2011. Originally published 1985. 128 pgs. Library copy. In the nineteenth century, thirteen-year-old Concepció — known as Conxa to her family — is sent to live with her childless aunt and uncle among the foothills of the Catalan Pyrenees because her parents have too many children to feed. And Conxa’s position as the youngest girl makes her all the more of a burden to her […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Catalan, Europe, Fiction, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Maria Barbal

Shatila Stories by Omar Khaled Ahmad, Nibal Alalo, Safa Khaled Algharbawi, Omar Abdellatif Alndaf, Rayan Mohamad Sukkar, Safiya Badran, Fatima Omar Ghazawi, Samih Mahmoud, and Hiba Marei

October 9, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Peirene Press, 2018. Translated from the Arabic by Nashwa Gowanlock. Purchased. For Shatila Stories, the publisher commissioned nine Palestinian refugees — some born in the camp, some who fled to it from Syria — to tell the story of the Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon. Their short stories were then interwoven together to create a narrative that follows Adam and his extended. Adam’s older sister finds liberty within the camp; the economic freedom of having her own job […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Arabic, Fiction, Israel/Palestine, Middle East, Peirene Press, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Fatima Omar Ghazawi, Hiba Marei, Nibal Alalo, Omar Abdellatif Alndaf, Omar Khaled Ahmad, Rayan Mohamad Sukkar, Safa Khaled Algharbawi, Samih Mahmoud, Sefiya Badran

The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov

September 30, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield. Peirene Press, 2014. Originally published 2011. 128 pgs. Library copy. In a remote part of Kazakhstan, Soviet scientists and military personnel test atomic weapons as they race to catch up to the Americans. A young boy named Yerzhan lives near the test site with his mute mother, grandparents, and the daughter of their only neighbors. His grandfather discovers he is a child prodigy with instruments, including the violin, and […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Asia, Fiction, Peirene Press, Russian, Translated • Tags: Hamid Ismailov

Mr Darwin’s Gardener by Kristina Carlson

September 11, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the Finnish by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah. Peirene Press, 2013. Originally published 2009. 112 pgs. Library copy. In the late 1870s, Thomas Davies works in the village of Downe in Kent, England as a gardener for the famous naturalist, Charles Darwin. Davies does not believe in any given religion and refuses to attend church with the rest of the villagers at the start of the novella. Having recently lost his wife Gwyneth, Davies is […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Finnish, Peirene Press, Translated, United Kingdom • Tags: Kristina Carlson

The Blue Room by Hanne Ørstavik

September 6, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the Norwegian by Deborah Dawkin. Peirene Press, 2014. Originally published 1999. 174 pgs. Library copy. The introduction to Ørstavik’s novella by the publisher, Meike Ziervogel of Peirene Press, is certainly an eyebrow-raising one. In it, Ziervogel recommends people who have read Fifty Shades of Grey read Ørstavik because the book: “…holds up a mirror to a part of the female psyche that yearns for submission. The story shows how erotic fantasies are formed by the relationship with our […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Norwegian, Peirene Press, Scandinavia, Translated • Tags: Hanne Ørstavik

The Murder of Halland by Pia Juul

July 24, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken. Peirene Press, 2012. Originally published 2009. 189 pgs. Library copy. Bess awakens one morning in her home office to find that her husband, Halland, has left. His disappearance isn’t suspect; her normally leaves for work without waking her. But just as Bess prepares to step into the shower, the doorbell rings and the neighbor standing at her doorstep announces that he’s making a citizens arrest of her for the […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Crime, Danish, Europe, Fiction, Peirene Press, Scandinavia, Translated • Tags: Pia Juul

Under the Tripoli Sky by Kamal Ben Hameda

July 8, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — Kindle edition. Translated from the French by Adriana Hunter. Peirene Press, 2014. Originally published 2011. 128 pgs. Purchased.i In the 1960s, a young boy named Hadachinou moves between the public streets of Tripoli and the private spaces inhabited by his mother, her best friend, and other women of his acquaintance. His age and size means he isn’t viewed as a threat in Libya’s patriarchal society, allowing him to blend in and go unnoticed in female spaces. It also […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Africa, Feminism, Fiction, French, Peirene Press, ReadDiverse, Translated • Tags: Adriana Hunter, Kamal Ben Hameda

Breach by Olumide Popoola and Annie Holmes

June 24, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – print. Peirene Press, 2016. 160 pgs. Purchased. The English Channel may separate the two countries, but the city of Calais has become a border town between France and Great Britain. Migrants and refugees hoping to settle in Britain have flocked to the French side of the Chunnel, building a community known as “The Jungle”. The eight short stories included in this collection by Popoola and Holmes are largely set in “The Jungle” and feature the voices of refugees […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, France, Peirene Press, Short Stories, United Kingdom • Tags: Annie Holmes, Olumide Popoola

The Cut by Anthony Cartwright

June 10, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Peirene Press, 2017. 129 pgs. Purchased. Meike Ziervogel, the publisher of Periene Press, writes in her short introduction that she “commissioned Anthony Cartwright to build a fictional bridge between the two Britains that opposed each other on referendum day”. To achieve that aim, Cartwright gives us two characters — Grace, a documentary film maker from London, and Cairo Jukes, a day laborer in Dudley — and alternates their story in the “before” and the “after”. “You people, is […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Peirene Press, United Kingdom • Tags: Anthony Cartwright