Tag: new fiction

Black cat in Italy

Through the Sad Wood Our Corpses Will Hang by Ava Farmehri

September 4, 2017

You can judge a book by its cover, to an extent. You can also, maybe to an even greater extent, judge a book by its title. Debut novelist Ava Farmehri borrows this one from Dante, and subsequently presents a work that lives up to its impact. Sheyda Porrouya, a twenty-year-old Iranian born at the time … More Through the Sad Wood Our Corpses Will Hang by Ava Farmehri

chili-peppers-and-cans

Alain Mabanckou’s Piquant Picaresque: Black Moses

July 25, 2017

Francophone Congolese writer Alain Mabanckou’s Black Moses, out this year in an English translation by Helen Stevenson, is the story of a man whose full name in the Lingala language means “Thanks be to God, the black Moses is born on the earth of our ancestors.” Moses also frequently goes by “Little Pepper,” having earned the moniker … More Alain Mabanckou’s Piquant Picaresque: Black Moses