In Alien Stories, Nigerian-born E.C. Osondu collects playful parables of immigrants and exotic cultures, all of which orbit a vague idea that there might be something “else” out there, a life somewhere that’s different from our own. While the title is an easy bit of wordplay (Osondu not-so-subtly captures the overlay between the “aliens” of […]

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is, by both artistic and political measures, one of the most important writers of the last fifty years. A novelist, playwright, and essayist, he is often cited as the first East African writer to be published in English, but the most revolutionary aspect of his vast body of work was his turn, […]

Hur’s new novel offers a suspenseful search for family secrets, populated with ghosts and Korean folk stories.

Not being able to go home again resembles the nature of trauma: it can be located, but it cannot be solved.

When Henry enters a Walmart to steal medicine for his sick child, he glances up to see an American flag dangling from its side, “turning its stripes into prison cell bars.” With thirty-eight cents in his pocket, he struggles to focus on his mission while being enticed and overwhelmed by the abundance of goods on […]

Nors achieves exquisite interiority in these narratives, burrowing so precisely into a character’s memory and revealing its ever-present nature in the mind.

Missaghi’s book maps the city and its dead, maps the way women move and act in public and private spaces in the city, maps history and overlaps it with a present.

The seventy-one pieces in this dexterous, surprising collection are often weird and unexpectedly weighty, particularly for such trim stories, like Lydia Davis by way of David Lynch.