Readers International: 11 books

Cathedral of the August Heat, Pierre Clitandre’s first novel in English and the first novel from Haitian French translated for a new generation, is a modern classic reflecting the kaleidoscope of Haitian life and the struggle of the very poorest people of the Americas that still goes on today. The...

Funny, shocking and absurd, tales of a dissident's life in Prague before the fall of communism, by one of the greatest Czech writers. Engagingly down-to-earth stories still relevant today. "These are the best Czech short stories since the days of Karel Capek," says The Financial Times

In the face of Europe's rising nationalism and intolerance, this timely anthology by Czech writers addresses a key issue for today. The courage of Czech writers is legendary. During the Cold War they kept their nation's conscience alive by clandestine publishing while imprisoned as "dissidents” or...

Author of the radical 2000 Words manifesto for writers during the Prague Spring of 1968, Ludvík Vaculík was banned from all official publishing after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in the decades until the fall of communism with the Velvet Revolution of 1989. However, as founding editor...

This novel,a classic of African literature, still speaks to us today. We look back at Africa’s grotesques like Idi Amin of Uganda, Bokassa of the Central African Empire or Zaire’s Mobutu, but now we must also look around us at comic opera heads of state posturing extravagantly on our domestic...

Sergio Ramírez, writer and former civilian leader in the Sandinista revolutionary government from 1985-1990, has now won the Cervantes Prize, the highest literary award in the Hispanic world. He wrote his great panoramic novel from exile, and this was the first Nicaraguan novel ever translated into...

In the two decades since Sergio Ramírez left active politics as a Sandinista leader of one of the great leftist revolutions of the Americas, his output as a writer and the appreciation of his literary achievement have only grown larger, culminating in his winning the Cervantes Prize, the highest...

His magisterial prose and poetry have won Abdellatif Laâbi successively France’s Prix Goncourt and the Grand Prix de la Francophonie from the Académie Française. Rue du Retour brings to the English reader the full drama and intensity of the poet’s thought and words in this account of his...

MICHAL VIEWEGH’s short and witty novel Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia is the story of Beata Kralova and her not-so-young tutor. Beata is a 20-year-old drop-out and daughter of Denis Kral (i.e., King), a Czech “new millionaire” of dubious connections. Beata embraces lover after lover as well as...

The Ship of Fools has established Cristina Peri Rossi, author of a dozen other books of poetry and prose, as a leading writer in Europe and Latin America. This is her most important work in English and is recognized as a modern classic. The Ship of Fools subverts and reinvents the novel form,...

Acclaim for Mothers and Shadows: "In the silence after her death, her novel, full of voices as passionate as her own, is particularly precious ... The end of the story is wrenching; it invades the reader's space as the confrontational Dolores has invaded the falsely secure space of Irene,...