The beginning of the school year imposes a frenetic pace with pending errands, chores and varying degrees of post-holiday nostalgia: it is the September slope, much less publicized than that of January. The new volume of micro-stories by the American writer and translator Lydia Davis can help with this. Those people we don’t know (Eterna Cadencia, September). Dubbed “writer’s writer,” Davis is one of the most intelligent, unique and entertaining authors, capable of moving and making people laugh in stories that sometimes barely exceed a couple of lines.
the cultural return of 2024
Also arriving in this last quarter of 2024 are Margaret Atwood’s 15 new stories collected in Lost in the woods (Salamander, November). This is the first novelty from the Canadian company since The willsthe novel continuation of the dystopia of The Handmaid’s Talewhich has become almost a popular reading in the last decade. Seven of Atwood’s new stories follow the story of the same couple over decades of marriage. And without leaving the universe of the story, the volume that brings together seven stories by Donald Antrim, arrives on September 30 to liven up the start of autumn, Another Manhattan (Chai editora), considered the best work to date by this friend and generational companion of David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen. The new book is probably the ideal way to approach this peculiar and brilliant author. Much better known to the general public is Amor Towles, the author of A gentleman in Moscowwhich returns to the new releases table in mid-September with the half dozen stories set in New York around the year 2000, which make up Table for two (Salamander).
One of the big themes of the coming months will be the presidential elections in the United States, and some works of fiction are coming out that touch on this issue from another perspective to a greater or lesser extent. The ancient hours (Gatopardo, September), by Michael Bible, delves into the nihilism and rage in the heart of a town where a young man wanted to burn himself to death in a church. This blind world (Sexto Piso, September) Jesmyn Ward tells the heartbreaking first-person story of a slave. And David Leavitt’s new novel, Under shelter (Anagrama, September), focuses with its usual irony on a wealthy couple from New York who, after Trump’s victory in 2016, decide to remodel a house in Venice.
It is precisely in the city of canals where it takes place The lover without a fixed addressthe novel by Fruttero & Lucentini, the great duo of editors and translators of the Einaudi label who ended up writing fiction stories, in this case, about love, recovered by Siruela in October. Meetings and disagreements of couples will not be lacking in the novels that are to come in the next months. Sally Rooney, in her Intermezzo (Random House Literature, September), part of the mourning for the death of a father to tell the story of two brothers and their partners. The Swedish Carolina Setterwall starts Everything will be fine (Seix Barral, October) with a divorce sought by the protagonist, and everything will turn against her. The archive of feelings (Acantilado, October) by German Peter Stamm has as its protagonist a documentary filmmaker who resumes after a long time a romance with a famous singer, and this revolution will question the order that he has worked so hard to create. The elderly baron who is the protagonist of the new novel by Hungarian László Krasznahorkai, winner of the 2024 Formentor Prize and one of the most interesting voices on the Central European scene, also wants to meet his teenage love again. Baron Wenckheim returns home (Acantilado, September) tells in a choral way the return to his native Hungary of the aristocrat of the title after having triumphed and been ruined in Argentina, the voices of each one will tell his story. The Romanian Mircea Cărtărescu approaches in Theodoros (Impedimenta, September) the rise of a ruthless emperor whose story includes battles, miracles and adventures.
For her part, the Danish Solvej Balle makes her debut before the Spanish-speaking public with the succinct and disturbing On the calculation of volume I (Anagrama. November), the first of the seven installments that make up a series that has triumphed around the world. A couple of second-hand booksellers star in this story in which they end up trapped in time, living the same day, although only she notices. Disturbing and openly dystopian is the novel that won the Booker in 2023, by the Irishman Paul Lynch, The song of the prophet (Alfaguara, October): A family saga in a totalitarian state starring a mother of four children, whose husband is arrested. Also coming out in these months Termush (Impedimenta, September) the novel written by Danish author Sven Holm about a nuclear disaster and the shelter where a group of multimillionaires manage to escape. The arrival of other survivors will force the balance of the group.
But the dystopia that we still have in mind, the one that touches us closest, is the confinement of the pandemic and that is precisely the framework of the novels. The vulnerable (Anagrama, September) by Sigrid Nunez and the return of the author of The hoursMichael Cunningham, with Day (Lumen, September). Nunez brings humor and a certain generational clash to his story, while Cunningham once again plays with the clock by telling his story on the same day in three consecutive years: 2019, 2020 and 2021.
And if we’re talking about big comebacks, Canadian Anne Michaels takes out The hug (Alfaguara, September), a novel in which she once again shows off her ability to weave stories that span space and time, in this case from 1902 to 2025, segmented but united by a sensitivity and tone that does not force the connection of one piece to another. It has also been praised by critics The imposture (Salamandra, October) Zadie Smith’s new work of fiction, a story that goes back to 19th century London, with a plot of impostors and a sensational trial in the middle.
You can follow Babelia in Facebook and Xor sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
#Short #stories #romances #divorces #dystopias #elections #background #international #narrative #autumn