FOUR VOICES ON SAFETY & SURVIVAL – FICTION

In ELYSHA CHANG’s A Quitter’s Paradise, a young woman does everything she can to ignore her mother’s death, even as memories surface of her cold, strict upbringing with immigrant parents. How do you love a person who refused to make herself known? In CRYSTAL HANA KIM’s The Stone Home: A Novel, Eunju and her mother are living on the street in South Korea when they’re captured and sent to a state-sanctioned facility – a reformatory hiding a violent reality. In NAZLI KOCA’s The Applicant, Leyla is a Turkish 20-something in Berlin, scrubbing toilets at a hostel after losing her student visa, when an opportunity arises that could solve her problems at once. Parsing her unresolved past and untenable present, she gives voice to the working-class and immigrant struggle to find safety, self-expression, and happiness. And in SAMUEL KỌLÁWỌLÉ’s The Road to the Salt Sea: A Novel, Able is an employee at a hotel in Nigeria that caters to a privileged clientele. When he encounters a sex worker involved with a dangerous guest, he enters a world of violence, meeting a group of migrants, and moving into a treacherous unknown.

Buy A Quitter’s Paradise – Chang

Buy The Stone Home: A Novel – Kim

Buy The Applicant – Koca

Buy The Road to the Salt Sea: A Novel – Kọláwọlé