New Directions

The fourth installment of Balle’s expansive, and highly ambitious On the Calculation of Volume teems with new faces, new people, and voices from every corner of the western worldWe’re a little more than halfway through Balle’s hypnotic, monumental seven-volume novel about a woman set adrift within the walls of November 18th. Balle’s riveting project continues to wring ever more fascinating dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal captives. In Book III we saw the addition of a handful of new characters to Tara’s world—fellow travelers within November 18th—and now Book IV heralds the arrival of many others, and soon to be even more, roaming uncertainly through the same November day. Could this be the first stirrings of an alternate civilization? The big house in Bremen turns into the headquarters for this growing group of time-trapped individuals. But who are they and what has happened to them? Are they loopers, repeaters, or returners? A brilliant modern spin on the myth of Babel in

Available in a beautiful print edition for the first time, this brilliant lecture delivered by László Krasznahorkai, winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Literature, reads like an unforgettable short storyAddressed to a rapt audience in Stockholm two days before being awarded his Nobel Prize, L嫳zl?Krasznahorkai's moving lecture asks: "Human being--astonishing creature--who are you?" In a message about hope (or his lack thereof), Krasznahorkai compassionately considers humanity and how, from our degraded current epoch, destruction might emerge --or rebellion.

Sato Reang enjoys an idyllic childhood of soccer, fighting crickets, and mischief in his Indonesian village--until the day he must be circumcised, and his observant father forces him into a life of Islamic piety. For years, Sato outwardly obeys his father, but all the while the boy chafes at the strictures of his religious routine, longing for everyday pleasures and vowing to himself that he will "become a child who was not pious." His freewheeling linked anecdotes--mixing worldliness and na鴳et? cruelty and innocence--are narrated with a toggling between first and third person ("I"/"he" or "Sato Reang") that potently conveys his disassociation. His adolescent, hormone-fueled crotchetiness expresses dissent: I stopped going to mosque. I no longer joined in worship. I never said my prayers before bed. Sato Reang eats with his left hand--so stupid--and barges in where he pleases, without calling out a greeting. If I was feeling lazy, I'd just piss on a banana tree, and I wouldn't wash mys

One morning, Takahashi, a writer who has just stayed up all night working, is interrupted by a phone call from his old friend Sonomura: barely able to contain his excitement, Sonomura claims that he h

I grew up longing for the day when I could tear down the veil of darkness and absurdity concealing the true face of the universe and discover at last a smile of kindness and wisdom; I grew up in the c

As Pankaj Mishra remarked in The Nation, one of the remarkable qualities ofBola?o’s short stories is that they can do the “work of a novel.” The InsufferableGaucho contains tales be

Pablo Neruda, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, finished writing The Captain's Verses in 1952 while in exile on the island of Capri--the paradisal setting for the blockbuster film Il Posti

In seventeenth-century Denmark, Christenze Kruckow, an unmarried noblewoman, is accused of witchcraft. She and several other women are rumored to be possessed by the Devil, who has come to them in the form of a tall headless man who gives them dark powers: they can steal people's happiness, they have performed unchristian acts, and they can cause pestilence or death. They are all in danger of the stake.The Wax Child, narrated by a wax doll created by Christenze Kruckow, is an unsettling horror story about brutality and power, nature and witchcraft, set in the fragile communities of premodern Europe.Deeply researched and steeped in visceral, atmospheric detail, The Wax Child is based on a series of real witchcraft trials that took place in Northern Jutland in the seventeenth century. Full of lush storytelling and alarmingly rich imagination, Olga Ravn also weaves in quotes from original sources such as letters, magical spells and manuals, court documents, and Scandinavian grimoires.

Lyrical and swashbuckling, tender and surreal, Gabriela Cabezón Camara’s new novel finds glimmers of hope for the future in the brutal history of colonial Latin AmericaWINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATUREDeep in the wilds of the New World, Antonio de Erauso begins to write a letter to his aunt, the prioress of the Basque convent he escaped as a young girl. Since fleeing a dead-end life as a nun, he's become Antonio and undertaken monumental adventures: he has been a mule driver, shopkeeper, soldier, cabin boy, and conquistador; he has wielded his sword and slashed with his dagger. Now, caring for two Guaran?girls he rescued from enslavement, and hounded by the army he deserted, this protean protagonist contemplates one more metamorphosis, which just might save the new world from extinction...Based on the life of Antonio de Erauso, a real figure of the Spanish conquest, We Are Green and Trembling is a queer baroque satire and a historical novel that blends element