As a go-to metaphor across genres and media, cleansing rain is instantly understandable: drenched by it, a world and its characters are made fresh and born anew. But what about a dark, filthy rain? The kind that occludes windows and darkens the street? That sticks to you like film? That churns up filth as it…

When Gwen’s mother realizes her daughter is in love, she gives her a family heirloom — a ring that has been passed down from mothers to their daughters for centuries. She tells Gwen that the ring lets her choose three things to change about her beloved. Like all blessings, this may also be a curse.…

Elena doesn’t know anything anymore, she will come to think; for now, she is all certitude. Elena knows her daughter Rita has been found hanged in the church belfry, and she knows it can’t have been suicide, in spite of what everyone else thinks, because her daughter never went near a church when it was…

Imagine a darkened theatre and an ordinary stage set with the minimum of furniture needed to reflect the spaces of an apartment: a bed, a table. There is a woman on the bed, a baby beside her. Very soon, a man walks in. Behind them all, not hidden in the wings of the stage but…

However, Aisha is a bit different than everyone else. She abhors social conventions and niceties, the restrictive gender roles she is expected to follow, and the path set out for her, represented by the kind market boy Hassan who, as her grandmother astutely notes, likes her. To Aisha, this pronouncement is as “grave as though…

Our editors share a few of the most memorable books they read in 2021. Michelle Bailat-Jones, translations editor In 2021, my reading life was ruled by three different kinds of hunger: first, a continuation of my post-pandemic appetite for comfort reading and old favorites; second, an intermittent but intense craving for books that tackled issues…

The sixteen stories in this slim volume by Cheryl Pappas may be short, but they’re large-hearted and packed with beautiful nuggets of mystery and resonance. These micro and flash gems exist in surrealist or slightly off-kilter realms, and the style and form of the stories varies to pleasing effect. As the title suggests, the stories…

The female body has been studied, medicalized, regimented, and categorized by countless scientists and physicians throughout the ages. Glorified, idealized, and romanticized for its capacity to create life, it has also been simultaneously considered defective compared to the ideal male body, to the point that the condition of being female counts as a state of…

For the diasporic characters in The Infinite Library and Other Stories, the library and its infinite potential symbolize a visionary escape into a kind of afterlife where polyglotism and complex transnational backgrounds are inevitable facts. Victor Fernando R. Ocampo’s collection is simultaneously a meaningful addition to the genre of speculative fiction and a powerful manifesto…

Little Bird is a book of tiny, fabulous adventures. Its narrators — mostly women who seem estranged from themselves — tell stories as if from the middle of a tightrope strung between small buildings. Anything can happen: One woman goes to a job interview with a wounded bird in her coat pocket; another meets a…

“I didn’t know how to take care of someone,” declares Willa Chen at the beginning of Win Me Something. Kyle Lucia Wu’s debut novel asks: What are the costs of caring? What are the politics — racial, gendered, class-related — of caring for and being a part of a family? What does belonging mean to…

No Diving Allowed is a collection of lively, wily stories that creep up from behind to pack unexpected punches. In this glorious scrap-box of richly-patterned fragments, each story is an all-too-brief immersion in a fully-formed world. The linking theme is swimming pools, yet Louise Marburg’s writing is so deft that it takes a while for…