Dance by the Canal by Kerstin Hensel

October 9, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the German by Jen Calleja. Peirene Press, 2017. Originally published in 1994. Purchased. Born the daughter of a famous surgeon and a society hostess, Gabriela von Haßlau is expected to fulfill the high expectations of her parents and, later, the Communist leaders of the East German town of Leibnitz. But Gabriela finds herself unable to please either power structure in her life. To her parents, she is a failure at the violin and at rubbing […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, German, Germany, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Jen Calleja, Kerstin Hensel

The Time In Between by María Dueñas

September 27, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the Spanish by Daniel Hahn. Atria Books, 2011. Originally published 2009. 626 pgs. Purchased.  After following her lover from Spain to Morocco, Sira Quiroga is suddenly left abandoned and penniless in the Protectorate at the start of the Spanish civil war. The illegitimate daughter of a wealthy man, Sira is accused by her half-brother of robbing their father and faces prosecution should she secure the funds to return home. Using her wits and her […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Africa, Book Club, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Spain, Spanish, Translated • Tags: Daniel Hahn, María Dueñas

Faces on the Tip of My Tongue by Emmanuelle Pagano

September 13, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the French by Jennifer Higgins and Sophie Lewis. Peirene Press, 2019. 128 pgs. The short stories included in this collection are connected through its shared characters, the shared setting of rural France, and the shared themes of dispossession, hitchhiking, and suicide. Some of these shared connections are stronger than others; there was, for example, little about the setting that stood out as distinctly French to me. If I had not read about the setting in […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, France, French, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Emmanuelle Pagano, Jennifer Higgins, Sophie Lewis

The Last Summer by Ricarda Huch

August 7, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch. Peirene Press, 2016. Originally published 1910. 121 pgs. Purchased. Amid the political upheaval of the beginning of the twenty century in Russia, the governor of the state university in St. Petersburg shutters the university’s doors and decamps to his summer residence with his family. There, a letter arrives in the post, promising to kill the governor is he fails to take the “right” side by reopening the university. Concerned for […]

Categories: 20BooksofSummer, Crime, Europe, Fiction, German, Peirene Press, Russia, Translated • Tags: Jamie Bulloch, Ricarda Huch

You Would Have Missed Me by Birgit Vanderbeke

July 15, 2019 by Christina

Print – fiction. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch. Peirene Press, 2019. Originally published 2016. 154 pgs. Purchased. The early 1960s, a young girl arrives in West Germany from East Germany with her parents. The family is settled into a camp for displaced people where the little girl befriends a family unit consisting of a woman and two men, who instruct the little girl to refer to them as her aunt and uncles. Her parents attempt to sever this […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Europe, Fiction, German, Germany, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Birgit Vanderbeke, Jamie Bulloch

Don’t Look Back by Karin Fossum

July 10, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the Norwegian by Felicity David. Mariner Books, 2005. Originally published 2004. 320 pgs. Purchased. Near the base of Kollen Mountain, a little girl leaves her friend’s home after a sleepover and sets out with her toys, including a baby buggy, for the short walk home. Along the way, the little girl encounters neighbors who hastily say hello as they head to work until one man stops to offer her a ride home. A few hours […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Awards and Prizes, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Glass Key Award, Norwegian, Scandinavia, Translated • Tags: Karin Fossum

This Place Holds No Fear by Monika Held

July 8, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the German by Anne Posten. Haus Publishing, 2015. Originally published 2013. 272 pgs. Purchased.  In 1964, a Viennese man named Heiner is called to Frankfurt to testify at the war crimes trial of former SS officials and guards from Auschwitz. Heiner was deported to Auschwitz in April 1942 for his membership in the Austrian Communist Party, and his testimony about typing death records in the prisoner’s infirmary is crucial to the prosecutor’s case. As […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Europe, Fiction, Genocide, German, Germany, Holocaust, Poland, Translated • Tags: Monika Held

Into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg

June 26, 2019 by Christina

Nonfiction – print. Translated from the Russian by Paul Stevenson and Manya Harari. Persephone Books, 2014. Originally published 1967. 344 pgs. Purchased. In February 1937, a professor, journalist, and proud member of the Communist Party in Kazan named Eugenia Ginzburg was arrested for failing to denounce her fellow professor, Nikolay Naumovich Elvov. Ginzburg, whose non-Latinized name is often spelled as Yevgenia or Evgenia, was accused of participating in Elvov’s counter-revolutionary Trotskyist group through her position on the editorial board of […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Europe, Nonfiction, Persephone Books, Russia, Russian, Translated • Tags: Eugenia Ginzburg

Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

June 17, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the Swedish by Steven T. Murray. Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2003. Originally published 1991. 280 pgs. Purchased. On a cold January night, an elderly Swedish farmer awakens in the middle of the night to an eerie feeling. As his eyes and ears adjust to the faint light cast across the remote landscape, the farmer realizes the back window of his neighbor’s home has been broken into. Hurrying next door, the farmer finds his neighbor bludgeoned to […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Awards and Prizes, Crime, Europe, Fiction, Glass Key Award, Scandinavia, Swedish, Translated • Tags: Henning Mankell

The Orange Grove by Larry Tremblay

June 10, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Translated from the French by Sheila Fischman. Peirene Press, 2017. Originally published 2013. 160 pgs. Purchased. Twin brothers, Ahmed and Aziz, live near an orange grove established by their grandfather. The orange grove provides Ahmed and Aziz with a shaded, safe place to play-act, as young children are ought to do. When a bomb falls on the grandparents’ house, the people living on the other side of the mountain – people that Ahmed and Aziz have been […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Fiction, French, Middle East, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Larry Tremblay, Sheila Fischman

Beside the Sea by Véronique Olmi

May 22, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the French by Adriana Hunter. Tin House Books, 2012. Originally published 2001. 110 pgs. Library copy. Rather than recap the book for myself, I’d like to copy the summary provided by the publisher as I think it best incapsulates the haunting tone of this novella: “A single mother takes her two sons on a trip to the seaside. They stay in a hotel, drink hot chocolate, and go to the funfair. She wants to […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, France, French, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Adriana Hunter, Véronique Olmi

The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke

May 6, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – Kindle edition. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch. Peirene Press, 2013. Originally published 1990. 112 pgs. Library copy. At the start of Vanderbeke’s novella, a mother and her two teenage children sit down to enjoy a feast of mussels, a meal laboriously prepared for the husband who loves mussels and is expected to shortly arrive home with news of a promotion. The scene is set to be one of domestic tranquility, of the home that every German […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Awards and Prizes, Europe, Fiction, German, Germany, Peirene Press, Translated • Tags: Birgit Vanderbeke, Jamie Bulloch