fiction
HER NAME IS KNIGHT
These titles earned the Kirkus Star:
Angoe, Yasmin Thomas & Mercer (431 pp.) $24.95 | Nov. 1, 2021 978-1-5420-2995-7
AN IMPOSSIBLE LOVE by Christine Angot; trans. by Armine Kotin Mortimer......................................................... 4 YOU FEEL IT JUST BELOW THE RIBS by Jeffrey Cranor; trans. by Janina Matthewson.................................................................5
A debut whose larger-than-life heroine is a Miami-based assassin for the African Tribal Council. This novel begins with a series of trigger warnings, so you can be sure you’re in for a wild ride with Nena Knight, nee Aninyeh Ama Asym, code-named Echo, as she alternately takes down her people’s enemies and explains the background that made her who she is. Shuttling back and forth between Aninyeh’s childhood in N’nkakuwe, a village in Ghana led by her father, Michael Asym, and a present in which Nena and her crack team methodically execute enemies of the Tribe, Angoe presents Michael’s betrayal by his old school friend Paul Frempong; the deaths of Michael and most of his family members; the gang rape of Aninyeh and the burning of the village; Aninyeh’s sale into slavery; her escape and adoption by Noble Knight, High Council of the Tribe; and her training as a skilled assassin. Nena’s violent but satisfying life is upended when she unexpectedly meets Cortland Baxter, a U.S. federal attorney targeted by the Tribe at the request of wealthy businessman Lucien Douglas, whom the Council is eager to add to their numbers, and decides that she can’t kill him, at least partly because she’s falling for him. The stakes in her disobedience rapidly mount as she realizes she’s not the only person to walk away from the massacre at N’nkakuwe and assume a new identity. A parable of reclaiming personal and tribal identity by seizing power at all costs.
SMALL WORLD by Jonathan Evison...................................................10 OLGA DIES DREAMING by Xochitl Gonzalez................................... 11 THE ANOMALY by Hervé Le Tellier; trans. by Adriana Hunter........18 THE WEDDING PARTY by Liu Xinwu; trans. by Jeremy Tiang...... 20 SLUG AND OTHER STORIES by Megan Milks...................................22 THE TRANSENTIENTS by Sergio Missana; trans. by Jessica Powell........................................................................ 24 LOVE, LISTS, & FANCY SHIPS by Sarah Grunder Ruiz.................. 26 THE DAYS OF AFREKETE by Asali Solomon......................................27 WHERE YOU COME FROM by Saša Stanišić; trans. by Damion Searls....................................................................... 28 THE ANTARCTICA OF LOVE by Sara Stridsberg; trans. by Deborah Bragen-Turner........................................................ 28 NOOR by Nnedi Okorafor....................................................................36 WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin; trans. by Bela Shayevich.......................... 37 THE SINGLES TABLE by Sara Desai...................................................38 THE LOVE CON by Seressia Glass........................................................39 AFTER DARK WITH THE DUKE by Julie Anne Long.........................39
AN IMPOSSIBLE LOVE
THE LOVE CON
Angot, Christine Trans. by Armine Kotin Mortimer Archipelago (240 pp.) $18.00 paper | Nov. 16, 2021 978-1-953861-04-7
Glass, Seressia Berkley (320 pp.) $16.00 paper | Dec. 14, 2021 978-0-593199-05-3
The most recently translated autofiction by controversial French literary phenomenon Angot brings her unflinching intelligence to a terrible childhood trauma. The novel starts with the love story of the narrator’s parents. It’s the 1950s in the small French town of Châteauroux when beautiful, impoverished Rachel meets Pierre, the cultured scion 4
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15 october 2021
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fiction
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kirkus.com
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