published June 2008
Mafeking Road is a collection of stories that presents a moving glimpse into the lives of ordinary men and women in the Marico District of South Africa. The narrator is a wise (however offhand) Boer herdsman who witnesses the intricacies of the lives around him, giving the reader an unparalleled glimpse into a fascinating period of South African history. Bosman’s irreverent storyteller, Oom Schalk Lourens, tells us of a concertina player who leaves the Marico for fame and glory; a girl who returns from finishing school to dazzle and dupe the Marico yokels; the legendary leopard of Abjaterskop; and a man who kills and buries his wife under the dung floor of his house. Jealousies, hatreds, loves and betrayals—the entire range of human emotions laid bare in a manner at once satirical and moving. Mafeking Road reveals to us a distant world… and yet powerfully familiar.
The pacing and perspective of Bosman’s tales...are unlike anything else in English...The closest comparison may be Robert Frost poems or Bob Dylan songs.
"—Publishers WeeklyHe knows what to tell us and when, and most importantly he knows what not to tell us…A subtle and simple treatment of deep reflections…A classic set of stories, deserving of world attention to match the attention it already receives in Bosman’s home country.
"—David Lahti
An astonishingly rich, mythic new direction in modern French narrative.
"—Guy DavenportOne of the best-kept secrets in of modern French prose.
"—Publishers Weekly
Heine possesses that divine malice without which I cannot imagine perfection… And how he employs German! It will one day be said that Heine and I have been by far the first artists of the German language.
"—Friedrich Nietzsche
The Great Weaver from Kashmir
Laxness brought the Icelandic novel out from the sagas' shadow…to read Laxness is also to understand why he haunts Iceland—he writes the unearthly prose of a poet cased in the perfection of a shell of plot, wit, and clarity.
"—The Guardian
All One Horse
It is impossible to stop our ears against the excruciating power of what Breytenbach has to say.
"—Nadine Gordimer
Tranquility
With impressive force of language, Bartis succeeds in laying bare the ambivalences of his characters, their love-hate relationships and self-destructive energies…The play that mother and son perform...is part Strindberg and part Chekhov, but mostly sheer Beckett or even pure theater of cruelty.
"—Richard Kämmerlings, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
A Mind at Peace
The greatest novel ever written about Istanbul.
"—Orhan PamukEvery page is full of sharp insights into human nature, delivered with a linguistic confidence that cracks like a whip and warms one from the inside with a glow of recognition—the recognition that no matter how far away we think we might be from one another in time and space, we are all distilled from the very same mixture of passion and compassion, intelligence and foolishness.
"—Ugur Akinci
This beautiful amalgam of 'marvelous instances' tilts against the 'airy blades' of empty thought with vengeance. Equal parts tender wit, elegant aside and acid observation, Diary of Andrés Fava, which comes to us from the desk of one of the 20th century's greatest literary explorers, is 100 percent delight.
"—Laird Hunt
The Twin
Bakker captures the feel of life in the Dutch countryside in a style which is both dazzling and subdued....a poignant story, recounted in a tone at once spare and loving.
"—De Volkskrant