Amatka

“A Locus Award Finalist

One of the Guardian’s Best Sci Fi and Fantasy Books of 2017

A surreal debut novel set in a world shaped by language in the tradition of Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. Le Guin.

Vanja, an information assistant, is sent from her home city of Essre to the austere, wintry colony of Amatka with an assignment to collect intelligence for the government. Immediately, she feels that something strange is going on: people act oddly in Amatka, and citizens are monitored for signs of subversion.

Intending to stay just a short while, Vanja falls in love with her housemate, Nina, and prolongs her visit. But when she stumbles on evidence of a growing threat to the colony, and a cover-up by its administration, she embarks on an investigation that puts her at tremendous risk.

In Karin Tidbeck’s world, everyone is suspect, no one is safe, and nothing—not even language, nor the very fabric of reality—can be taken for granted. Amatka is a beguiling and wholly original novel about freedom, love, and artistic creation by a captivating new voice.”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Ice Trilogy

One of those books that you’ll either love or hate.

“In 1908, deep in Siberia, it fell to earth. THEIR ICE. A young man on a scientific expedition found it. It spoke to his heart, and his heart named him Bro. Bro felt the Ice. Bro knew its purpose. To bring together the 23,000 blond, blue-eyed Brothers and Sisters of the Light who were scattered on earth. To wake their sleeping hearts. To return to the Light. To destroy this world. And secretly, throughout the twentieth century and up to our own day, the Children of the Light have pursued their beloved goal.

Pulp fiction, science fiction, New Ageism, pornography, video-game mayhem, old-time Communist propaganda, and rampant commercial hype all collide, splinter, and splatter in Vladimir Sorokin’s virtuosic Ice Trilogy, a crazed joyride through modern times with the promise of a truly spectacular crash at the end. And the reader, as eager for the redemptive fix of a good story as the Children are for the Primordial Light, has no choice except to go along, caught up in a brilliant illusion from which only illusion escapes intact.”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

The Ice Beneath Her

“Acclaimed Swedish author Camilla Grebe makes her solo American debut with a psychological thriller as cunning in its twists as it is captivating in its storytelling—for fans of the celebrated crime fiction of Camilla Läckberg, Jo Nesbø, Ruth Ware, and Fiona Barton.

Winter’s chill has descended on Stockholm as police arrive at the scene of a shocking murder. An unidentified woman lies beheaded in a posh suburban home—a brutal crime made all the more disturbing by its uncanny resemblance to an unsolved killing ten years earlier. But this time there’s a suspect: the charismatic and controversial chain-store CEO Jesper Orre, who owns the home but is nowhere to be found.

To homicide detectives Peter Lindgren and Manfred Olsson, nothing about the suave, high-profile businessman—including a playboy reputation and rumors of financial misdeeds—suggests he conceals the dark heart and twisted mind of a cold-blooded killer. In search of a motive, Lindgren and Olsson turn to the brilliant criminal profiler Hanne Lagerlind-Schön. Once a valued police asset, now marooned in unhappy retirement and a crumbling marriage, she’s eager to exercise her keen skills again—and offer the detectives a window into the secret soul of Jesper Orre.

But they’re not the only ones searching. Two months before, Emma Bohman, a young clerk at Orre’s company, chanced to meet the charming chief executive, and romance swiftly bloomed. Almost as quickly as the passionate affair ignited, it was over when Orre inexplicably disappeared. One staggering misfortune after another followed, leaving Emma certain that her runaway lover was to blame and transforming her confusion and heartbreak into anger.

Now, pursuing the same mysterious man for different reasons, Emma and the police are destined to cross paths in a chilling dance of obsession, vengeance, madness, and love gone hellishly wrong.”

“Impressive . . . a tour de force that lifts its author to the front rank among the increasingly crowded field of Nordic noir.” - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Ice

Winner of the Finlandia Prize & nominated for the Nordic Criti Prize

The epic of island life that has gripped Finland…

It is the summer of 1946. A novice Lutheran priest, his wife, and baby daughter arrive at a windswept island off the coast of Finland, where they are welcomed by its frugal, self-sufficient community of fisher folk turned reluctant farmers.

In this deeply atmospheric and quietly epic tale, Lundberg uses a wealth of everyday detail to draw us irresistibly into a life and mindset far removed from our own—stoic and devout yet touched with humour and a propensity for song. With each season, the young family’s love of the island and its disparate and scattered inhabitants deepens, and when the winter brings ice new and precarious links appear. Told in spare, simple prose that mirrors the islanders’ unadorned style, this is a story as immersive as it is heartrending.

View on Amazon

Redemption in Indigo

“Utterly delightful! The impish love child of Amos Tutuola [famed for his African folk tales] & Gabriel García Márquez [known as one of the best writers of the 20th century].” —Nalo Hopkinson

Bursting with humor and rich in fantastic detail, Redemption in Indigo is a clever, contemporary fairy tale that introduces readers to a dynamic new voice in Caribbean literature. Lord's world of spider tricksters and indigo immortals, inspired in part by a Senegalese folk tale [incorporating the Afro-Barbadian culture], will feel instantly familiar—but Paama's adventures are fresh, surprising, and utterly original.

Paama's husband is a fool and a glutton. Bad enough that he followed her to her parents' home in the village of Makendha, now he's disgraced himself by murdering livestock and stealing corn. When Paama leaves him for good, she attracts the attention of the undying ones—powerful spirits called the djombi—who present her with a gift: the Chaos Stick, which allows her to manipulate the subtle forces of the world. Unfortunately, a wrathful djombi with indigo skin believes this power should be his and his alone.

Karen Lord's debut novel, which won the prestigious Frank Collymore Literary Prize in Barbados, the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and the Mythopoetic Award, is an intricately woven tale of adventure, magic, and the power of the human spirit.

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

The Best of All Possible Worlds

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Buzzfeed

“Reads like smooth jazz comfort food, deceptively familiar & easy going down, but subtly subversive.” - LA Review

“A fascinating & thoughtful novel that examines adaptation, social change, & human relationships. I’ve not read anything quite like it, which makes it that rare beast: a true original.” - Kate Elliott

“A rewarding, touching and often funny exploration of the forms and functions of human culture.”- SFX

”A proud and reserved alien society finds its homeland destroyed in an unprovoked act of aggression, and the survivors have no choice but to reach out to the indigenous humanoids of their adopted world, to whom they are distantly related. They wish to preserve their cherished way of life, but doing so may mean changing their culture forever. Working together to save this vanishing race, a man and a woman from two clashing societies will uncover ancient mysteries with far-reaching ramifications. And as their mission hangs in the balance, the unlikely team—one cool and cerebral, the other fiery and impulsive—just may find in each other their own destinies . . . and a force that transcends all.”

“The Best of All Possible Worlds poses an interesting question: What parts of you do you fight to preserve when everything you know suddenly changes?” - Assoc. Press

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

In the Castle of My Skin

“Written through the eyes of a young boy, Lamming portrays the social, racial, political and urban struggles with which Barbados continues to grapple even with some thirty-three years of political independence from Britain.

‘They won't know you, the you that's hidden somewhere in the castle of your skin.’

Nine-year-old G. leads a life of quiet mischief, crab catching, teasing preachers and playing among the pumpkin vines. His sleepy fishing village in 1930s Barbados is overseen by the English landlord who lives on the hill, just as their 'Little England' is watched over by the Mother Country. Yet gradually, G. finds himself awakening to the violence and injustice that lurk beneath the apparent order of things. As the world he knows begins to crumble, revealing the bruising secret at its heart, he is spurred ever closer to a life-changing decision.

Lyrical and unsettling, George Lamming's autobiographical coming-of-age novel is a story of tragic innocence amid the collapse of colonial rule.”

“Rich and riotous.” - The Times

(Group read suggestion from Mia DeGiovine Chaveco, book club co-founder.)

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

It So Happen

Written in Caribbean-English (a localized non-standard form of English specific to each country of the Commonwealth Caribbean), this book with its stories of a village in Barbados is truly a Bajan classic.

“It So Happen focuses on the Barbadian/Caribbean village and the characters found there. Callender's fictional village is full of eccentrics who he exposes in a series of moral fables.

Saga Boy and Jasper prepare for a grand stick-fight. Big Joe will do anything for the girl he loves. All the men are determined to defeat Marie in the rum drinking competition, and Pa John, the Obeah Man is foiled by his own wicket spell.

This is a must read for every local and visitor alike. Students of language and culture will find in it a wealth of material.”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Natural Rebels

Although we are learning a lot from historians about the lives of slaves in the United States, we still know little about slavery in the Caribbean. Hilary Beckles's book on the social, economic, and labor history of slave women in Barbados, from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-19th century, is a major addition to this literature.

Drawing on contemporary documents and records, newspapers, and personal correspondence, Beckles reveals how slave women were central to the plantation economy of Barbados. They had two kinds of value for sugar planters: they could work just as hard as men, and they could literally reproduce the slave class.

Beckles details the daily lives of slave women in conditions of extreme exploitation. They suffered from harsh conditions, cruel punishments, malnutrition, disease, high mortality, and fear of abandonment when they were too old to work. He described the various categories and responsibilities of slaves, and the roles of children in the slave economy. Beckles looks at family structures and the complexities of interracial unions. He also shows how female slaves regularly resisted slavery, using both violent and nonviolent means. They never accommodated themselves to the system; as natural rebels, they fought in any way they could for survival.

View on Amazon | Bookshop.org (US) | SecondSale used book

Westminster's Jewel

“Westminster’s Jewel is a rare exposé on the history and evolution of Barbadian society that will captivate both Barbadians and citizens of the UK unfamiliar with the history of British colonialism in the Caribbean. The book is an interesting mix of narrative and poetry, done in the author’s own elegant—and at times caustic—style.

It presents the Barbados story in an easy, non-academic fashion—from the arrival of the British in 1627 to the present; and offers critical—sometimes biting—commentary on current social norms.

Westminster’s Jewel is one of the few books that combines local history (in easy reading style) with critical commentary and poetry to tell the story of Barbados from the inception to the present. The Barbadian will discover things about his society he hadn’t noticed before; the non-Barbadian will learn about the sordid history of enslavement and colonialism and its legacy on the island.

From a ‘jewel’ in the imperial crown, Barbados, today, is a struggling economy, dependent on tourism and an ever-declining sugar industry. The jewel has lost its sparkle, even as the sun has set on the Empire. The ravages of slavery and colonialism are never far from the eye. But the history of slavery and colonialism has not only left an economic legacy, it has also left a major psychological legacy as well: a people with a woeful lack of self-confidence—who live in the shadows of those who once dominated their lives. Westminster’s Jewel seeks to tell that story—the story of Barbados from settlement by the British in 1627 up to the present.”

(Group read suggestion from Mia DeGiovine Chaveco, book club co-founder.)

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Cecilia Valdés or El Angel Hill

“Cecilia Valdés is arguably the most important novel of 19th century Cuba. Originally published in NYC in 1882, Cirilo Villaverde's novel has fascinated readers inside and outside Cuba since the late 19th century. In this new English translation, a vast landscape emerges of the moral, political, and sexual depravity caused by slavery and colonialism. Set in the Havana of the 1830s, the novel introduces us to Cecilia, a beautiful light-skinned mulatta, who is being pursued by the son of a Spanish slave trader, named Leonardo. Unbeknownst to the two, they are the children of the same father. Eventually, Cecilia gives in to Leonardo's advances; she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby girl. When Leonardo, who gets bored with Cecilia after a while, agrees to marry a white upper class woman, Cecilia vows revenge. A mulatto friend and suitor of hers kills Leonardo, and Cecilia is thrown into prison as an accessory to the crime.

For the contemporary reader, Helen Lane's masterful translation of Cecilia Valdés opens a new window into the intricate problems of race relations in Cuba and the Caribbean. There are the elite social circles of European and New World Whites, the rich culture of the free people of color, the class to which Cecilia herself belonged, and then the slaves, divided among themselves between those who were born in Africa and those who were born in the New World, and those who worked on the sugar plantation and those who worked in the households of the rich people in Havana. Cecilia Valdés thus presents a vast portrait of sexual, social, and racial oppression, and the lived experience of Spanish colonialism in Cuba.”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

The Cuban Comedy

“A love story steeped in political satire, poetry, and the lightest touches of magical realism, Medina has created a bold, funny narrative with an uncanny heroine at its core: Elena of Piedra Negra, Cuba.

Piedra Negra is an isolated village, whose citizens consist mainly of soldiers injured in the revolution who pass the time drinking a firewater so intense, all hallucinate, and most never recover. The firewater distiller's daughter Elena longs to be a poet, and after a chance encounter with Daniel Arcilla, Cuba's most important poet, Elena wins a national poetry prize and leaves Piedra Negra behind for Havana. There, she encounters a population adjusting to a new way of life, post-revolution: there are spies and secret meetings, black marketeers, and censorship.

Full of outlandish humor and insights into an often contradictory and kafkaesque regime, Medina brings 1960s Cuba to life through the eyes of Elena.”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Waiting for Snow in Havana

“Have mercy on me, Lord, I am Cuban.’ In 1962, Carlos Eire was one of 14,000 children airlifted out of Havana—exiled from his family, his country, and his own childhood by Fidel Castro’s revolution. Winner of the National Book Award, this stunning memoir is a vibrant and evocative look at Latin America from a child’s unforgettable experience.

Waiting for Snow in Havana is both an exorcism and an ode to a paradise lost. For the Cuba of Carlos’s youth—with its lizards and turquoise seas and sun-drenched siestas—becomes an island of condemnation once a cigar-smoking guerrilla named Fidel Castro ousts President Batista on January 1, 1959. Suddenly the music in the streets sounds like gunfire. Christmas is made illegal, political dissent leads to imprisonment, and too many of Carlos’s friends are leaving Cuba for a place as far away and unthinkable as the United States. Carlos will end up there, too, and fulfill his mother’s dreams by becoming a modern American man—even if his soul remains in the country he left behind.

Narrated with the urgency of a confession, Waiting for Snow in Havana is a eulogy for a native land and a loving testament to the collective spirit of Cubans everywhere.”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Lights Out

“Dania was eleven the first time she meets a Judas Goat, a chivato. Likened to the goats that lead animals to the slaughter, the informants of communist Cuba would do anything to please the authorities. This one has his ear almost pressed against her neighbor’s door.

As an adult, Dania reflects on the chivato who terrified her. The incident sticks in her mind, and it isn’t the only danger she encounters under communist rule.

Suspicion and fear will follow.

Dania chronicles Fidel Castro’s rise to power and the truth behind the dictator. His fascination with Hitler, Mussolini, and other fascists lead to a totalitarian state of sorrow and pain. At the same time, she shows a deep love and respect for the history and culture of Cuba. Lights Out combines the childhood intimacy of Eire’s Waiting for Snow in Havana with the hard-hitting historical accuracy and relevance of Demick’s Nothing to Envy. Castro is determined to erase the past, but Lights Out is a monument to the Cuba before Castro.”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

The Year 200

“The best and most popular novelist of this genre that the island has ever given.” —Yoss

“Agustín de Rojas authored a trilogy that pushes the boundaries of our imaginations.” —SF Signal

”The cult classic from the godfather of Cuban science fiction, Agustín de Rojas’s The Year 200 is both a visionary sci-fi masterwork and a bold political parable about the perils of state power.

Centuries have passed since the Communist Federation defeated the capitalist Empire, but humanity is still divided. A vast artificial-intelligence network, a psychiatric bureaucracy, and a tiny egalitarian council oversee civil affairs and quash ‘abnormal’ attitudes such as romantic love. Disillusioned civilians renounce the new society and either forego technology to live as ‘primitives’ or enhance their brains with cybernetic implants to become ‘cybos.’ When the Empire returns and takes over the minds of unsuspecting citizens in a scenario that terrifyingly recalls Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the world’s fate falls into the hands of two brave women.

Drawing as much from the realms of the adventure novel, spy thriller, and political satire as from hard science fiction, horror, and fantasy, The Year 200 has been proven prophetic in its consideration of cryogenic freezing, artificial intelligence, and state surveillance, while its advanced weapons and robot assassins exist in an all-too-imaginable future. Originally published in 1990, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before the onset of Cuba's devastating Special Period, Agustín de Rojas’s magnum opus brings contemporary trajectories to their logical extremes and boldly asks, ‘What does the greatest good for the greatest number really mean?”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

33 Revolutions

“A young man’s political awakening takes shape in the aftermath of Castro’s Revolution in this ‘prayer of a novel’ by the grandson of Che Guevara” - Cleaver Magazine

”At the dawn of Communist Cuba, our unnamed hero, a young black Cuban man, loses his father to death and his mother to emigration. Now he spends much of his time with his Russian neighbor, discovering the pleasures of reading. The books he reads gradually open his eyes to the incongruity between party slogans and the oppressive reality that surrounds him: the office routine; the daily complaints of his colleagues; his own obsessive thoughts which circulate around his mind like a broken record.

Every day, he photographs the spontaneous eruptions of dissent on the streets and witnesses the sad spectacle of young people crowding onto makeshift rafts to escape the island. His frustration grows until a day when he declares his unwillingness to become an informer. And this is when his real troubles begin.”

“Not since Reinaldo Arenas has a Cuban literary voice arrived on American shores with such beaten madness, and sense of personal desperation.” —Cleaver Magazine

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

The Island of Eternal Love

"A magical new novel ‘of loss and love across more than a century of Cuba's past.’ -Chicago Sun-Times)

"It's a rich, moving, musical novel, which has already won the Best Spanish Language Book prize in the Florida Book Awards, and that only makes you wonder where the English versions are of the rest of Chaviano's works." -LOCUS Magazine

“Melodious . . . reminiscent of Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits . . . a dream-like haze hangs over the novel from start to finish.” -Críticas

”Alone in a city that haunts her, far from her family, her history, and the island she left behind, Cecelia seeks refuge in a bar in Little Havana where a mysterious old woman's fascinating tale keeps Cecelia returning night after night. Her powerful story of long-vanished epochs weaves the saga of three families from far-flung pieces of the world whose connection forms the kind of family that Cecelia has long been missing-one cast from legendary, unbreakable love. As Cecelia falls under the story's heady sway, she discovers the source of the visions that plague her, and a link to the past she cannot shake.”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Firefly

“Firefly is a dream-like evocation of pre-war Cuba, replete with hurricanes, mystical cults, and slave-markets. The story is the coming-of-age of a precocious and exuberant boy with an oversized head and underdeveloped sense of direction, who views the world as a threatening conspiracy. Told in breathless and lyrical prose, the novel is a loving rendition of a long-lost home, a meditation on exile, and an allegory of Cuba’s isolation in the world.”

“The penultimate novel by Sarduy. This book would seem to be a translator’s nightmare, but Fried has maintained the dark beauty and mystery of the work. Sarduy’s circuslike world takes some getting used to …the narrative takes the first of many surreal turns in the first chapter [and soon after], the story loses any linear coherence it has, but the flow of images is dazzling and ultimately quite haunting.” - Kirkus Reviews

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

My Lost Cuba

“Dramatic history, lush scenery, and a colorful cast transport us to the time of Cuba's turning point—the late 1950s.

Set against the tropical landscape of Cuba's countryside and the glamour of 1950s Havana, this moving story of Cuban life at a pivotal time in the country's rich history will resonate with anyone who has experienced the loss of family or homeland.

It is 1958, the last year of Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship. Mike, the son of Don Miguel, a wealthy land owner and rancher, is summoned home from his MBA studies in the United States because of his father's failing health. Still recovering from the loss of his wife, Mike's return is an immediate tonic for Don Miguel. Caught between his family obligations and his desire to pursue his own dreams, Mike quickly finds himself succumbing to his father's desire for him to take over the responsibilities of running the family ranch. As Mike settles back into the life he was groomed for, Don Miguel, reinvigorated, spends more and more time socializing in Havana.

Changes are happening everywhere. The government is encroaching on civil liberties and social and political upheaval is in the air. There are rumblings about Castro's guerillas organizing in the mountains. On the ranch, long-time employees of Don Miguel resent the changes that Mike is making, setting the stage for a confrontation that change the lives of everyone involved.

With evocative language, vibrant characters, and explosive history, My Lost Cuba pulls us into fascinating time and place.”

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)

Smilla’s Sense of Snow (aka Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow)

Named Best Book of the Year by Time, Entertainment Weekly & People magazines

“She thinks more highly of snow and ice than she does of love. She lives in a world of numbers, science and memories—a dark, exotic stranger in a strange land. And now Smilla Jaspersen is convinced she has uncovered a shattering crime...

It happened in the Copenhagen snow. A six-year-old boy, a Greenlander like Smilla, fell to his death from the top of his apartment building. While the boy's body is still warm, the police pronounce his death an accident. But Smilla knows her young neighbor didn't fall from the roof on his own.

Soon she is following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow. For her dead neighbor, and for herself, she must embark on a harrowing journey of lies, revelation, and violence that will take her back to the world of ice and snow from which she comes, where an explosive secret waits beneath the ice.”

Note: Depending upon your country, this book may be titled Smilla’s Sense of Snow or Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow.

(Group read suggestion from Ivor Watkins, book club moderator.)

View on Amazon (US) | (UK)