Fiction chronicle May 2022
Unimaginable, imagined, imaginary
On Pollak’s Arm by Hans von Trotha, Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, Civilizations by Laurent Binet & It’s Getting Dark by Peter Stamm.
Department: “Fiction chronicle”
Fiction chronicle November 2021
Huis clos
On The Passenger, by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, Hard Like Water, by Yan Lianke, Awake, by Harald Voetmann & A Sunday in Ville-d’Avray, by Dominique Barbéris.
Fiction chronicle May 2021
Afterwards
On “The Invisible Land,” by Hubert Mingarelli, “Ferdinand, The Man with the Kind Heart: A Novel,” by Irmgard Keun, “Dissipatio H.G.: The Vanishing,” by Guido Morselli & “Mr Cadmus,” by Peter Ackroyd.
Fiction chronicle November 2020
The slow & the dead & other authors
A review of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis, The Dominant Animal and Aug 9—Fog by Kathryn Scanlan & The Caretaker by Doon Arbus.
Fiction chronicle May 2020
Myself, ourselves, others
On Interior, by Thomas Clerc; The Sweet Indifference of the World, by Peter Stamm; the short-story collection Machines in the Head, by Anna Kavan; and Beyond the Sea, by Paul Lynch.
Fiction chronicle November 2019
First persons, singular
On The Ditch by Herman Koch, translated by Sam Garrett; Family Record by Patrick Modiano, translated by Mark Polizzotti; Metropolitan Stories: A Novel by Christine Coulson; and Girl: A Novel by Edna O’Brien.
Fiction chronicle May 2019
Myths, legends & monsters
On Metamorphica, by Zachary Mason; The Thirty-Five Timely & Untimely Deaths of Cumberland County, by Mason Ball; 77, by Guillermo Saccomanno; Article 35: A Novel, by Tanguy Viel; and Rock and Roll Is Life, by D. J. Taylor.
Fiction chronicle November 2018
Three dystopias & a disappearance
On Hazards of Time Travel: A Novel, by Joyce Carol Oates; Kolyma Stories, by Varlam Shalamov; The Kremlin Ball, by Curzio Malaparte, & To the Back of Beyond, by Peter Stamm.
Fiction chronicle May 2018
Not just remembrance
On Nightmare in Berlin by Hans Fallada, Theory of Shadows by Paolo Maurensig, A Legacy of Spies by John le Carré & The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Koreaby Bandi.
Fiction chronicle May 2017
Sinners in the hands of an angry buddha
On Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, Autumn by Ali Smith, Universal Harvester by John Darnielle, Ill Will by Dan Chaon, & I’d Die For You by F. Scott Fitzgerald.