The interesting point about most of the stories in Karen Joy Fowler's superb new collection is what doesn't matter in them. Most feature some element of the fantastic, which typically would be their point. But here, the fantastic element or idea is always less interesting than Fowler's character or milieu.
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Maike Wetzel has begun to garner considerable attention in her native Germany and beyond, but, at present, her published prose consists of just two short story collections, with the promise of a novel in the pipeline. Long Days is the first of Wetzel's works to be translated into English, and it has left me breathlessly waiting for more.
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Nawal el Saadawi is a feminist, novelist, poet, playwright, political activist, doctor, teacher, mother, daughter. She has a formidable intellect, is courageous, forthright and controversial. This reader brings together el Saadawi's writing from the past thirty years
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Ana María Shua's Death as a Side Effect is a perfectly pitched, darkly comic satire, set in a dystopian near-future Argentina. Politicians perform comedy routines on television, the streets are no-go areas, infested with gangs of marauding vandals, and neighbours are strangers, drowning out evidence of each others' presences with blaring music.
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As readers, we crave a story whose content and execution work together seamlessly to draw us in. Yet we don't always get all we want, and the question arises: when all is said and done, what tips the balance and makes us glad we have read a book?
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