How many ways can a human being disappear? Existentially: in the uncaring maw of an anonymizing city. Sensually: being completely disconnected from other humans. Noirishly: disappearing from sight. Physically: taken away, made not-human, by some vast and uncaring system. All these possibilities are explored in Perhat Tursun’s novel from Xinjiang, The Backstreets. Tursun started writing The Backstreets in…

Each of the nineteen sharply faceted stories comprising In the Between: 21st Century Short Stories, edited by Brice Particelli, differently takes up the theme of being misunderstood. In this state — disregarded, disrespected, dissed — you’re not the person you’ve been mistaken for, but you’re not quite yourself either. You’re in the between. Anchoring the collection are powerful stories…

Between 1989 and 1998, Icelandic-Canadian writer Kristjana Gunnars penned five short novels that traveled fluently through genres — philosophy, literary theory, criticism, memoir, fiction, poetry, even nature writing — and anticipated autofiction before the genre was defined. Published originally and exclusively in Canada, Gunnars’ quintet has been published a single volume: The Scent of Light.…

It’s the early twentieth century, and a young woman named Temerity West is working as an agent for the British imperial government. A young man, Kostya Nikto, is an NKVD officer under Stalin. In Constant Nobody, the award-winning novel from Canadian writer Michelle Butler Hallett, these two characters’ lives intertwine in unexpected ways that are…

Safe Places, Kerry Dolan’s debut story collection, explores the oddities of human bonds and longings. Set in various places from the city to the remote countryside, these stories evoke entire worlds. Though their settings vary, human responses — sometimes gentle, other times monstrous — form the heart of this collection. A fundamental aspect of human…

A flash fiction is like a snow globe. A writer creates a miniature world and gives it a good shake, setting glittering bits into motion. These flakes of action whirl and settle, inspiring a jolt of wonderment in the reader, who eagerly awaits the next surprising inversion. For most of us, the world shrank drastically…

One description of Ashleigh Bell Pedersen’s debut novel, The Crocodile Bride, might begin: Sunshine Turner lives in the town of Fingertip. Without knowing more than this, a reader can’t help but consider the metaphoric possibilities. Sunshine: a joy, a light to cure the darkness, a vital ingredient to life. Turner: someone who changes course or…

Warnings of human traffickers abound on Facebook. One post might say that a man was sitting alone in his car by a particular mall, and was perhaps scouting for victims. Be careful in this park, another will read. Someone was handing out flyers, probably an excuse to get within grabbing distance. Innocuous actions become signs…

Set on a remote island off the coast of Scotland, Emma Seckel’s debut The Wild Hunt unfolds within a magical frame that’s hitched to the island’s specific geography. In this stirring and atmospheric historical novel, the setting plays a dominant role. The island’s coastline of harsh cliffs appears out of the fog like the answer…

Rendered into Western literature, monotony is usually the afflicting boredom of the unafflicted: the daily punch-in-punch-out; mewling kids needing to be fed and un-mussed; long lines in the post office, dust dancing through late afternoon sunbeams. It’s assumed as a matter of convention that chaos is roiling underneath. But what if chaos is on the…

“The banal of today will be in journals some day,” the Brazilian musician Chico Buarque once wrote. I don’t know if Buarque was thinking of his contemporary, Caio Fernando Abreu, when he wrote that lyric. But Moldy Strawberries, Abreu’s newly translated story collection, takes daily constraints and desires, neuroses and visions, and turns them into…

How did I become a writer who could no longer write? This is the question Rebecca van Laer sets out to answer in her debut novella How to Adjust to the Dark, which weaves fiction, poetry and literary criticism to trace the journey of a self-proclaimed ex-poet as she examines her past writing and, through…