15 Books We Can’t Wait to Read: November 2024
Fiction
Nevermore by Cécile Wajsbrot (translated by Tess Lewis) - November 5 (Seagull Books)
A meditation on loss and recovery through the act of translation and its recuperative powers. An unnamed translator mourning the loss of a close friend retreats to Dresden to translate the “Time Passes” section of Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse. Translating this lyrical evocation of time and its devastations in a city with which the writer has no connections and where neither her language nor Woolf’s are spoken offers an interruption to the course of her life. She immerses herself in this prose poem of ephemerality.
She's Always Hungry: Stories by Eliza Clark - November 12 (Harper Perennial)
"She's Always Hungry is a howlingly good collection by an author at the very height of her powers. By turns funny, repulsive, and tender, it is a collection that begs you to pick a favourite story and yet confounds you at every turn with its range and dexterity. Clark is a writer whose mastery of voice and genre is impossible not to envy." -- Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea and Private Rites
Something Close to Nothing by Tom Pyun - November 12 (Bywater Books)
“The story is delightfully unpredictable, sophisticated about the complexities of race and class, and a thoroughly entertaining read. Pyun is a gifted writer with a flair for balancing pathos and humor. His characters are flawed in interesting ways that simultaneously engender anger and the urge to root for them. It’s a fantastic debut.” —Toni Ann Johnson, author of Light Skin Gone to Waste and winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction
The Burrow by Melanie Cheng - November 12 (Tin House Books)
“The Borrow's restrained prose and heartbreaking honesty capture the paradox of living with trauma, where the smallest of daily interactions are often the most debilitating. Yet despite dealing with such weighty material, The Burrow is an engrossing, compulsive, and uplifting read--a testimony to Cheng's mastery of style and keen insight into human nature.” --Rajia Hassib, author of In the Language of Miracles
Taiwan Travelogue by Shuang-Zi Yang (translated by Lin King) - November 12 (Graywolf Press)
May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She's been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear. Soon a Taiwanese woman--who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name--is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko's travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It's only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the "something" is.
What We Tried to Bury Grows Here by Julian Zabalbeascoa - November 12 (Two Dollar Radio)
"In the tradition of such master story tellers as Isaac Babel and Phil Klay, Julian Zabalbeascoa has written a piercing narrative set during the Spanish Civil War. Alive with wonderful characters, moments of dread, bathos and humour, What We Tried to Bury Grows Here illuminates a crucial period of history. This is a timely and absorbing novel." --Margot Livesey, author of The Boy in the Field, Mercury, and The Flight of Gemma Hardy
Every ARC Bends Its Radian by Sergio de la Pava - November 12 (Simon & Schuster)
“Sergio De La Pava is one of America’s most inventive writers, and his new novel bends minds and genres in equal measure. Starting life as a hard-boiled detective story, it cuts a heady and frequently funny path through travelogue, horror, and sci-fi. Like some postmodern Poe bringing news of the maelstrom, Every Arc Bends Its Radian offers a wild ride to ‘the innermost heart of reality.’”—Garth Risk Hallberg, New York Times bestselling author of City on Fire and The Second Coming
Set My Heart on Fire by Izumi Suzuki (translated by Helen O'Horan) - November 12 (Verso Fiction)
Set in the underground bar and club scene of 1970s Tokyo, Set My Heart On Fire tells the story of Izumi in her turbulent twenties. Through a series of disarmingly frank vignettes, author Izumi Suzuki presents an unforgettable portrait of a young woman encountering missteps and miscommunication, good music and unreliable men, powerful drugs and disorientating meds. Izumi usually keeps her relationships short but complicated, until she meets Jun. Set My Heart on Fire is a visceral novel about mistaken relationships and the convolutions of desire, about regret and acceptance. Pulsing through the narration is the protagonist's love of music, a vital soundtrack spanning the Zombies, T. Rex and the Rolling Stones as well as underground Japanese psychedelic-rock bands such as the Tigers and the Tempters.
Lazarus Man by Richard Price - November 12 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
"Richard Price has long been lauded as an expert observer of urban life in the United States. Lazarus Man, a streetwise story of a small group of New Yorkers brought together unexpectedly by tragedy and the quest for redemption, will only enhance that reputation . . . With his keen eye, efficiently constructed scenes, and, above all, crisp dialogue . . . [Price] follows the lives of these world-weary characters over the course of roughly 10 days, while artfully revealing the elements of their pasts that have brought them to this singular moment.” —Harvey Freedenberg, Shelf Awareness
The Magnificent Ruins by Nayantara Roy (Algonquin Books)
"The Magnificent Ruins gripped me from the first page and moved me to tears on the last. A wise, beautiful and haunting story about difficult mothers and daughters, the complications of family life, and redefining the meaning of home, this novel will stay close to my heart for a long, long time to come." --Thrity Umrigar, author of The Museum of Failures
An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth by Anna Moschovakis - November 19 (Soft Skull)
"Like Anna Kavan and Mary Shelley before her, Anna Moschovakis knows that the phone call is always coming from inside the building. An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth is a haunting in nine acts--a terrifyingly apt commentary on contemporary psychology in which what has been lost is somehow too close to touch." --Lucy Ives, author of Life Is Everywhere
The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami (translated by Philip Gabriel) - November 26 (Knopf Publishing Group)
From the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World comes a love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for these peculiar times. The long-awaited new novel from Haruki Murakami, his first in six years, revisits a Town his readers will remember, a place where a Dream Reader reviews dreams and where our shadows become untethered from our selves. A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for these strange post-pandemic times, The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature's most important writers.
Darkly by Marisha Pessl - November 26 (Delacorte Press)
Arcadia “Dia” Gannon has been obsessed with Louisiana Veda, the game designer whose obsessive creations and company, Darkly, have gained a cultlike following. Dia is shocked when she’s chosen for a highly-coveted internship, along with six other teenagers from around the world. Why her? Dia has never won anything in her life. Darkly, once a game-making empire renowned for its ingenious and utterly terrifying toys and games, now lies dormant after Veda’s mysterious death. The remaining games are priced like rare works of art, with some fetching millions of dollars at auction. As Dia and her fellow interns delve into the heart of Darkly, they discover hidden symbols, buried clues, and a web of intrigue. Who are these other teens, and what secrets do they keep? Why were any of them really chosen? The answers lie within the twisted labyrinth of Darkly—a chilling and addictive read by Marisha Pessl.
Non-Fiction & Poetry
From the Ground Up: The Women Revolutionizing Regenerative Agriculture by Stephanie Anderson - November 19 (New Press)
From the Ground Up, by award-winning author Stephanie Anderson, offers a journey into the root causes of our unsustainable food chain, revealing its detrimental reliance on extractive agriculture, which depletes soil and water, produces nutritionally deficient food, and devastates communities and farmers. Anderson then delivers an uplifting, deeply reported narrative of women-led farms and ranches nationwide, supported by women-led investment firms, farmer training programs, restaurants, supply chain partners, and advocacy groups, all working together to create a more inclusive and sustainable world. From the Ground Up sheds light on a set of inspiring journeys, with stories that will transform the way we think about the food chain--one that can weather the storms of climate change, conflicts, and global pandemics.
Hold Me by jade vine - November 19 (Split Lip Press)
"Within its deceptively spare 148 pages, Hold Me contains an electrifying multiplicity of novel forms, spanning the lyric to the diagnostic, the ghost note to the terminally online, each in their own way unlocking extraordinarily intimate access to the dysmorphic effects of the many different modes of love and longing on memory and body over a lifetime in midst of bloom. jade vine is locked in, a strident voice worth sitting up for." —Blake Butler, author of Molly
