A General Theory Of Oblivion
José Eduardo Agualusa
Translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
As Angola is about the gain independence, a woman walls herself up in her apartment, protecting herself from the revolution and ensuring that the world forgets of her existence. Until, that is, many years later, a street urchin manages to break in and helps her confront a changed reality. An extraordinary story told in short, poetic but engaging chapters.
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Pedro Paramo
Juan Rolfo
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Seyers Peden
The Mexican writer Juan Rolfo wrote only two books, the novel Pedro Paramo and a collection of short stories. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was so taken with the novel that he read it twice in one night and memorised entire passages. Susan Sontag called it “not only one of the masterpieces of twentieth century world literature, but one of the most influential of the century’s books”.
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Notes On A Thesis
Tiphaine Rivière
Translated from the French by Francesca Barrie
In this graphic novel, Jeanne Dargan has just been approved for a PhD project with a highly sought-after supervisor at the university. From this moment of lightness Jeanne embarks on what will be a slow, meandering, journey that often threatens to run into a dead-end. A sobering story told extremely funnily, this book opens up a delightful new narrative form.
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The 7th Function Of Language
Laurent Binet
Translated from the French by Sam Taylor
The funniest book you’ll ever read featuring the leading philosophers and politicians from the Continent and America of the 1960s and 1970s. Binet insinuates an international plot, shady sex and a hapless inspector into an investigation of the death of Roland Barthes, after which all hell breaks loose and real-life events are superseded by a wild imagination.
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The Beautiful Summer
Cesare Pavese
Translated from the Italian by Peter Owen
Yes, it’s a summer romance, but with the kind of intensity and haunting power that perhaps only an Italian who wrote against as he lived – in this case, that also meant combating Fascism – could have achieved.
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Arunava Sinha translates classic, modern and contemporary Bengali fiction, non-fiction and poetry from India and Bangladesh into English. Over forty of his translations have been published so far. He is the Books Editor at Scroll.in.