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November 2025
STRUGGLES ON THE PERIPHERY: PROFUNDITY IN THE EVERYDAY – FICTION
Carlos Manuel Álvarez’s False War: A Novel, translated by Natasha Wimmer, portrays ambivalent castaways living lives of deep estrangement from their home country. Álvarez links extraordinary stories of ordinary people from Havana to Berlin – barbers and dissidents, thieves and chess players – each immersed in a fake war waged with little real passion. In Robert Busby’s Bodock: Stories, an ice storm hits the fictional titular Mississippi town, leaving lives and landscapes fractured. From two siblings surveying their family’s damaged orchard and a cop mourning his son to a divorced slacker aiding in his former father-in-law’s lung transplant surgery,…
IN THE SHADOW OF THE HOLOCAUST & WWII – FICTION
Heather Clark’s The Scrapbook: A Novel begins in the late 1990s with Harvard student Anna, who falls for Christoph, a visiting German student, and follows him to his home country. Their romance unfolds amid family legacies – including those of Anna’s grandfather, an American GI, and Christoph’s, a Nazi soldier. Traumas of the past and the aftershocks of fascism haunt them, reverberating through to the present. In Maggie Stiefvater’s The Listeners: A Novel, it’s January 1942 and the aristocratic owners of the elegant Avallon Hotel &…
PEN AMERICA PRESENTS: AFTERGLOW – WRITING AFTER RECOGNITION – FICTION
In Javier Fuentes’ Countries of Origin: A Novel, pastry chef Demetrio returns to Spain as an undocumented immigrant, leaving behind his beloved uncle in New York. On the flight, he meets the sensitive, aristocratic Jacobo, sparking a subtle electricity. Amid Madrid’s bars and coastal beaches, they form an intense relationship, navigating identity, class, and intimacy, until a family tragedy forces them to confront their true feelings. In Torrey Peters’ Stag Dance: A Novel & Stories,…
SISTERS, SECRETS & FAMILY STRUGGLES – FICTION
Esther Chehebar’s Sisters of Fortune: A Novel is the story of three sisters in a Syrian Jewish family: a rebellious – and single – older sister; a middle sister questioning her upcoming marriage; and a baby sister sneaking around with a charming older bachelor. They find themselves caught between tradition and modernity, reckoning with what their tight-knit community wants for them against what they want for themselves. Jeanine Cummins’ Speak to Me of Home: A Novel is a multigenerational story of family and identity.…