2024 reading

As with last year, good reading, averaging 10 books per month, over an extended range ... highlights, 2024 releases marked with an asterisk:

For me, this year's biggest discovery was Vietnamese postwar literature, sparked by Nguyễn Thanh Hiện's Chronicles of a Village* (Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng) [Yale/Margellos], which led on to Duong Thu Huong (Novel without a Name, Paradise of the Blind), Bao Ninh (The Sorrow of War), and, from Curbstone Press' "Voices from Vietnam" series, shorts by Nguyen Huy Thiep and Ho Anh Thai; also but less so, the foundational early 19thc Nguyễn Du's The Song of Kiều.

Less from the rest of the east, but Hiromi Ito's The Thorn Puller deserves mention, and even moreso Keiichiro Hirano's Eclipse*.

Moving on to Eastern Europe, of course I made time for Laszlo Krasznahorkai's Herscht 07769*, which marked a return to form, but more rewarding were Magda Szabó (Katalin Street, The Door), Norman Manea (Captives, Exiled Shadow*), and Vera Mutafchieva (The Case of Cem*), and, in poetry, Ana Blandiana's Five Books. 

For South America, Charco Press offered Republic of Consciousness and Cercador Prize (new BTBA?) winner from Brazil, Ana Paula Maia's Of Cattle and Men, along with Argentina's Claudia Piñeiro (A Little Luck); otherwise, César Aira's Festival & Game of the Worlds* and Silvina Ocampo's posthumous The Promise; off-the-runs included Borges contemporaries Ángel Bonomini (The Novices of Lerna*) and Osvaldo Lamborghini (Two Stories).

*** (all 2024 releases) archipelago books had another banner year. Difficult to choose among, but stand-outs include Scholastique Mukasonga's Sister Deborah, Fine Gråbøl's What Kingdom, and Charles Ferdinand Ramuz's Great Fear on the Mountain (and I still have to get to Eliana Hernández-Pachón's The Brush and the lately lamented Elias Khoury's NBCC-longlister Children of the Ghetto: Star of the Sea). Adjacently, archipelago board members contributions were Edwin Frank's Stranger Than Fiction and translator Tess Lewis with Lutz Seiler's Star 111 and Cécile Wajsbrot's Nevermore. ***

I spent some time on Nobelaureates that I'd neglected, but the best was alternate Nobel winner Maryse Condé's Segu.

Other noteworthy books:

Éric Chevillard, Museum Visits* (Daniel Levin Becker) [Yale/Margellos]

Ferit Edgü, The Wounded Age and Eastern Tales* (Aron Aji) [nyrb]

Erri De Luca, Impossible (N.S. Thompson) [Mountain Leopard]

Patrick Langley, The Variations* [nyrb]

Gabriel Josipovici, Infinity The Story of a Moment & Partita / A Winter in Zürau* [Carcanet]

Inka Parei, What Darkness Was (Katy Derbyshire) [Seagull]

Philippe Claudel, Brodeck (John Cullen) [Anchor]

and in poetry:

Tomasz Różycki, Colonies (Mira Rosenthal) [Zephyr]

Anne Carson, Wrong Norma* [NDP]

Diane Seuss, Modern Poetry* [Graywolf]

Lorine Niedecker, Collected Works (Jenny Penburthy, ed) [California]

The above by no means exhausts what was worthwhile, the full rundown can be had at The Fictional Woods