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contents

DEPARTMENTS 4

a note from the publisher

excerpts

novel thinking

photo essay

middle shelf

poetry

staff picks

small press reviews

spanish an interview with Sergio Chejfec

10 14

66 last words french an interview with David Scott Hamilton 67 contributors english an interview with Micheline On the cover: Aharonian Marcom

lat long lit books from Argentina to Djibouti

bulgarian translator essay by Olga Nikolova

hebrew translator essay by Yardenne Greenspan

Photograph: (top photo) Dutch Landscapes by Mishka Henner

photograph by Wolfgang Kaehler www.wkaehlerphoto.com

a word from the

publisher

“T

TRANSLATION

ranslators are the shadow heroes of literature, the often forgotten instruments that make it possible for different cultures to talk to one another, who have enabled us to understand that we all, from every part of the world, live in one world,” wrote Paul Auster. This quote is an apt one to open this issue, which celebrates both books in translation and the shadow heroes who translate them. In our interview with David Scott Hamilton, whose translation of Exit by Nelly Arcan was nominated for the Governor General’s Award and whose translation of Perrine Leblanc’s Kolia has just been published by House of Anansi, he echoes Auster’s thoughts on translation: “What really draws me to this particular métier is that it rests upon the act of writing, which, if it is done well, has the power to transport literature across the river that divides two languages and two cultures, and recreate the aesthetic experience of the original text for the reader of its translation.” Irish-born Emma Donoghue, whose novel Room was short-listed for the 2010 Man Booker Prize, gives translators this reverent nod: “When I think of this profession I think of priestly, tireless dedication to getting it right.” And in fact I am writing this note on September 30, which as it turns out is International Translation Day, celebrated on the feast day of St. Jerome, known as the patron saint of translators for his translation of the Hebrew bible into Latin. So happy translation day, and enjoy this literary trip around the globe. Margaret Brown publisher

Like what you read? Click on any book cover to purchase from an online bookstore, or click on the publisher website for more information.

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013

Photograph: Belinda Baldwin

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Rancho Park Publishing is proud to have been selected as the translation agency for the new Spanish edition of “Lamb to the Slaughter.” Rancho Park Publishing has specialized in Spanish translation for publications since 1988.

Lamb to the Slaughter by Pete Delohery (tr anslated to spanish) “Set against the vividly rendered backdrop of professional boxing, Pete Delohery’s hard-bitten yet generous-spirited novel focuses on three men at a crossroad in their lives. A moving portrait is created of the men, each damaged by a brutal world, who flee from personal demons toward the only imperfect redemption available to them, victory in a fight.”

“This heartfelt tale makes a powerful emotional impact.” —Blue Ink Starred Review

AVAILABLE November 1 on Amazon.com, B&N.com and petedelohery.com in e-book, paperback and hardcopy.

w w w. p e t e d e l o h e r y. c o m

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spanish

The Dark by Sergio Chejfec translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary Open Letter Books www.openletterbooks.org

ergio Chejfecâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s The Planets was a finalist for the 2013 Best Translated Book Award. The latest of his books translated into English, The Dark further reveals Chejfecâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s brilliant, inventive writing. Originally from Argentina, Chejfec teaches Creative Writing in Spanish at NYU.

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Shelf Unbound: The narrator is obsessed with a young female factory worker, and everything we know of her is filtered through his warped view of her. How did you go about giving the reader a close glimpse of these characters while actually revealing very little about them? Sergio Chejfec: The story’s narrator finds inspiration in the mystery zone between what he knows and what he does not know: He loves the girl because she is a factory worker and because, while being a factory worker, she has a unique subjectivity. As a factory worker she cannot have the psychological attributes literary characters usually present. She belongs to another culture. Maybe that is why the narrator knows too much and too little at the same time.

these layers settle uniformly and without hurry …” This line in The Dark well describes your writing style: You have almost no plot and without hurry build the story layer upon layer. Did you build the story sparely from the start or did you pare it down in the editing process? Chejfec: In reality I give the same importance to the first draft as to subsequent ones. Sometimes I believe my novels are built basically from my effort to get away from the first draft, something incomplete or inaccurate. In my case, the versions advance and expand as I go about the editing process.

Shelf: In an interview in Guernica, you said, “Literature needs to be a machine of illusions.” What did you mean by that? Chejfec: Almost all stories are Shelf: “Like dust in an empty room, presented as a natural and obvi-

said, just as happened every day when she took her place at the machines.” What drew you to this theme? Chejfec: The narrator is observant and analytical. He feels attraction to what is different and what he cannot understand. He likes to plot hypothesis, but not clarify mysteries. This novel is a small testimonial to the working class, so forgotten in spite of sustaining the world. It seemed honest to assume a non-paternal view—contrary to what the social or testimonial literaShelf: Being ture usually has— diminished or not and try to describe fully seen is a theme in the novel. that world as if it For example, you write of Delia: were about epitomes, through a “She had a special capacity for moral digression that is at the same imparting an overabundance of time anthropological. being; not a longer life, but rather a more emphatic presence. This Shelf: What did you learn about quality, by a predictable mecha- this novel or about your writing in nism of compensation, tended to the process of having it translated distance her, dilute her, and make into English? her nearly transparent, like I’ve Chejfec: I feel very fortunate in ous outpouring of the real world, but they are not. I believe they should be presented as visions of the world, although partial, and as barely hypnotizing effects. When I say “machine” I mean that the novel only appears as an artificial organization of words, actions and arguments that because of its artificial character is able to talk about things more eloquently than the narrations that are seeking to erase the distance between what is said and what is apparently real.

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trusting the criteria and decisions of Heather Cleary and Margaret Carson (they have translated my books). Sometimes, during a translation a question makes me review phrases or paragraphs in the original version, and almost always I discover I have not been very clear. I have the impression that every writer has the privilege of being more or less ambiguous (not many take advantage of it). But that privilege does not permeate to foreign languages. Therefore, you have to pay a price; the price is translation, and the translator is the only one capable of permeating that privilege. Otherwise, the review of the works to clarify to the translator the significance or textuality is the most absurd experience I have gone through. As if the translator were the guardian of the palace and I had to find the password to enter.

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french

Kolia by Perrine Leblanc translated from the French by David Scott Hamilton House of Anansi www.houseofanansi.com

he story of a boy born in a Soviet Gulag and destined for a life of hardship, Kolia was written by a female Canadian author fascinated by Russia and the fall of the Soviet Bloc. We talked to the novelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s translator, David Scott Hamilton, about the book and the process of translation.

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Shelf Unbound: We last spoke to you in 2011 on the publication of your translation of Exit by Nelly Arcan, which was subsequently nominated for a Governor General’s Award. How did you come to translate Kolia? And please tell a bit about the book and its author. David Scott Hamilton: From what I understand, House of Anansi offered me the commission to translate Kolia on the strength of my translation of Paradis, clef en main (Exit), which was very gratifying, considering that Anansi is arguably the most prestigious literary press in Canada. They are committed to publishing translations of titles by Canada’s best Francophone authors, and this year they launched a dedicated imprint (Arachnide) for French to English literary translations. Kolia is published under this new imprint. Perrine Leblanc is in her early thirties and is one of Quebec’s brightest new literary stars. Kolia (originally published in Quebec in 2010, under the title L’homme blanc) was quickly picked up by the renowned French

publisher Gallimard (Paris) after Leblanc won the Governor General’s award for French fiction, among numerous other honours. Kolia is her first novel. The narrative takes place in Russia and tracks the long journey of a Gulag inmate, born under the vicious repression of Stalinism, as he makes his way across the landscape of modern Soviet history, attempting to find his place and himself. It is a story of survival and dogged determination. Contemporary fiction is full of examples of characters who end up in a real or metaphorical gulag. What is uplifting about Leblanc’s novel is that Kolia’s journey takes him in the opposite direction—from the Gulag to the circus. He becomes a clown. Shelf: Both Exit and Kolia were written by women. Were you sensitive to possible gender-specific elements of voice when translating these women? Hamilton: Yes, I had to be. The last thing I wanted was to be accused of

distorting the narrative voice of either text with a “male gaze.” However, it’s important to point out that the two novels are very different in this respect. Exit is written in the first person, and the narrator/protagonist is a woman, whereas Kolia is narrated by an omniscient third person, whose “gender” is neutral, and its protagonist is male. I was surprised to learn that Exit was the subject of a feminist analysis of gender and translation as part of a master’s program at the Sorbonne in Paris last year—and pleasantly surprised that my translation came out relatively unscathed, although I did get my fingers slapped for a few “political” infractions. Shelf: Take this passage, for example, from Kolia: “There are smells that lodge in the memory and linger on the skin. The stench of the camp shithouses and the foul odour of the dead bodies that were discovered in the spring trailed behind him into the free world. A body returning from the

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camps can never be clean.” You seem to pay particular attention to rhythm and flow. Is it possible to translate rhythm and flow from another language or do you have to invent them anew in English? Hamilton: Good question. French and English have very different rhythm and stress patterns, at both the word level and the sentence level. French is a syllable-timed language whereas English is stress-timed. This places a significant constraint on the translator’s ability to reproduce the rhythms of French prose in English. Nonetheless, the overall “flow” of the text can be approximated fairly well. Sentence length, rhythm and stress all play a crucial role in establishing voice and register, so I do pay particular attention to these. Shelf: As you mentioned, the original version of this novel, titled L’homme blanc, won the Governor General’s Award for literary fiction. What about the novel, do you think, made it stand out to the judges? Hamilton: What makes Kolia so

of the drafts for Exit and Kolia both took six months.) In spite of the vow of poverty this work entails, I wouldn’t do anything else. Literary translation is enormously satisfying, and although it isn’t regarded as such, it is a genre unto itself that seems to be ideally suited to me and my “skill set.” It demands analytical skills that constantly test a translator’s knowledge of language, linguistics, culture and history. But what really draws me to this particular métier is that it rests upon the act of writing, which, if it is done well, has the power to transport literature across the river that Shelf: What are the chaldivides two languages and lenges of translating literary fiction two cultures, and recreate the aesand what do you enjoy about it? thetic experience of the original text Hamilton: The major challenge is for the reader of its translation. And paying the rent! Literary translation that is its greatest challenge. in Canada is almost exclusively funded by the Canada Council for the For more on Arachnide Editions, Arts, and the rates paid to transla- House of Anansi’s new imprint for tors remain woefully low when you French-to-English translations showconsider that the translation of an casing the best voices from Canada’s average-length novel can take up to Frenh-speaking regions, visit www. half a year. (The writing and revisions houseofanansi.com. unique and groundbreaking is that it is set entirely outside a Canadian context and is “outward looking,” whereas much of Quebec fiction is introspective and insular. Leblanc manages to create a sense of place and historical veracity that is both evocative and convincing—despite her never having set foot inside the former Soviet Union. In the character of Kolia, she succeeds in crafting a hero who immediately captures the reader’s loyalty and whose odyssey towards self-acceptance is a daily struggle that resonates with the mundane and the universal.

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feature

interview

A Brief History of Yes by Micheline Aharonian Marcom Dalkey Archive Press | www.dalkeyarchive.com

A Brief History of Yes wallows in the fizzling of a breakup at the edge of madness. Its main character, Maria, is a middle-aged woman of mixed heritage—Armenian and Portuguese. She is divorced and has an 8-year-old son. She is difficult to characterize since much of the novel focuses on her inexpressible emotions and internal conflicts (at one moment she summons this disheartening reaction: “I would not like this feeling that I have now,

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013

which is a feeling without a name, not a feeling even…”). She is passionate, a woman who “loves love,” and she is flawed—she believes quite wrongly that her lover is some sort of savior. The lover is an engineer, and we have Maria’s understanding of him to rely upon: “a man who is reasonable above all things (above love).” Between the characters lie a multitude of insurmountable dichotomies and intractable psychological wounds: Maria is

from a Roman Catholic family, he: a Protestant; Maria is metaphorically the heart, the lover is the head (in fact, he has a concaved chest as if no heart can lie beneath his ribs); they are both haunted by parental abuses—she by her father’s, he by his mother’s. The polarities continue as she says “yes” to everything, while he says the decisive “no.” It is a relationship ill-fated from the outset as Maria intuitively knows, yet she continues to believe that they were brought together because she “called” to him, as her grandmother had “called” for her husband, Maria’s grandfather. There is a mysticism that runs through this novel. Ghosts, daemons, and old-world gods inhabit Maria’s mind—holdovers from her heritage, perhaps. But they’re not to be dismissed. They give her depth and soulfulness, whereas her lover denies his deeper passions and seeks “only … playful and happy girl[s] to sleep with and to love.” The interplay of gods and spirits relates to the overall time structures of the novel, too. From the first sentence there is a sense that for the next 119 pages the reader will hear a tale that has been told before, that

is perhaps both ancient and modern: “So that, yes, here are the two lovers, again…” (my itals.) Marcom steeps herself in an heirloom narrative— unrequited love—and time is elusive and recursive in A Brief History of Yes. In the timeline of the novel, the earliest chapter is just a few months before the lovers meet, and the latest one is three months after the break-up. With each chapter we shift forward and backward, shuffling vortex-wise around the night of the break-up. Music appears elsewhere in the novel and entwines itself with language. Marcom has called her novel a “literary fado” comparing the novel to a style of Portuguese music that is mournful, characterized by sentiments of resignation and melancholy. “Song is always a nostalgic form, the past is always its guide—the longing for home,” she writes. By the end of the novel, Maria is a woman in exile—her ex-husband and son celebrate Thanksgiving without her, her lover doesn’t want to see her, she is hundreds of miles away from her mother, even further from her native home of Portugal. Amália Rodrigues’ “Fado Portugues” plays on the radio. It is around this time the word saudade emerges:

“In English you don’t have this word, and there’s no accurate translation of it. Is it nostalgia? Or yearning for the absent one? Or the love that remains after the beloved has gone? All of this could be saudade. Have you not seen your Christ on the cross? And why does the Protestant deny the image where the knowledge can be felt.” I love that, “where the knowledge can be felt.” It is without words, obscure, similar to the hermit thrush’s song, to Whitman walking with the “knowledge of death,” to the elegiac voice of Amália Rodrigues, to Maria’s internal place where she goes when she is feeling pain, a place without language. In fact, A Brief History of Yes, and most of Micheline Aharonian Marcom’s work, is a challenge to the sufficiency of language. She strives through neologisms and disarticulated and run-on sentences to press the English language to do more. And despite the third person perspective, A Brief History of Yes is ultimately a private narrative, built out of one individual soul’s language, unhinged from collective rules of punctuation and meaning and time. There are few living American

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writers who write novels as challenging, mesmerizing, and intriguing as Micheline Aharonian Marcom. She proves herself again and again to be a writer with an unremitting gaze, and her work wounds and leaves behind sacred scars as they show us a love for humanity’s spectrum— its gorgeousness and wretchedness. Since she takes on as her subject the ineffable in her characters, her novels are difficult to talk about and convey. Her characters often go to a place—whether internally or externally—that is beyond or without language. And, if they themselves have no language for their feelings, what is our hope in being able to speak about it? We offer our silent commiseration, our imperative as sincere readers. Often I sense there is something in the novels that aches to re-experience the charge and mystery of myth, and as with A Brief History of Yes, her novels read like poetry. Structured, yes, but full of sequences that don’t succumb to the dictates of prose, passages that go on unpunctuated and grow wild on the page. —Jason DeYoung, in Numéro Cinq (read the entire review here). Excerpted with permission. All rights reserved.

Shelf Unbound: You have called this novel a “literary fado,” referring to the Portuguese form of music characterized by melancholy and resignation. What appealed to you about writing in the style of fado? Micheline Aharonian Marcom: I’m not sure that the style of the novel is a fado, but perhaps like a fado, it is characterized by the sensation of “saudade”—of longing for what is not present, of melancholy, of the acute beauty found in thinking about the absent one. And “fado” in Portuguese means “fate”—the novel is about an ill-fated love affair and about the inevitability of some things and some relationships. Shelf: I asked Jason DeYoung if we could excerpt his review of A Brief History of Yes because I thought he so thoroughly and deeply read and wrote about the novel. He writes, “... A Brief History of Yes, and most of Micheline Aharonian Marcom’s work, is a challenge to the sufficiency of language. She strives through neologisms and disarticulated and run-on sentences to press the English language to do more.” Would you say that is apt, that you find standard language and constructions insufficient? Marcom: I would say that what Mr. DeYoung says is correct. It seems to be one of the driving forces of my novels, hoping that they will, via form and sentences and syntax, say more, do more, so that the story can be told at its pitch. It’s not that I find standard language or construc-

tions insufficient, I suppose it would be like an oil painter finding his oil paints insufficient per se, but like any artist I am pushing against the known towards what is intuited but not (yet) articulated ... trying to push into language what has been felt, what is, but what is not yet said, at least in this particular manner. Shelf: For me, one of the most heartbreaking things about this novel is that Maria seems so alone, even when—especially when—she is with her lover. Are you painting a picture of Maria specifically, that she cannot really authentically connect with another person because of her childhood traumas, or are you suggesting an existential idea of aloneness, that it is an in ineluctable part of being human? Marcom: I don’t think it’s that Maria cannot connect to any other person, it is this relationship with this particular man. I also hope the novel doesn’t suggest it is “because” of her childhood that she acts in certain ways; I would hate to conclude anything about a character or define a character (or a person) based on a set of childhood experiences in some kind of easy psychological way. Yes, perhaps it is as you say, an ineluctable part of being human: this feeling, at times, despite the billions of us, of not connecting, of feeling isolated, misunderstood, unloved. It’s an old story: unrequited love. To what can we attribute such a thing? What I do is inquire. Novels for me are always inquiries. UNBOUND

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globe trotting

LAT LONG LIT From Argentina to Djibouti, the Three Percent 2013 Best Translated Book Award Fiction Finalists

Hungary Satantango (winner) by László Krasznahorkai translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes “… Satantango takes a look at evil in its everyday forms. Satantango is a diabolical novel, a bleak, haunting, hypnotic, philosophical, black comedic deconstruction of apocalyptic messianism.” —Will Evans New Directions | www.ndbooks.com

Russia Maidenhair by Mikhail Shishkin translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz “Maidenhair is the novel I have been waiting for; a powerful, moving novel that combines everything I love about literature in general, the beauty of language, the power of ideas, the love of characters, the genius of the Author as Master.” —Will Evans Open Letter Books | www.openletterbooks.org 18

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013

Argentina The Planets by Sergio Chejfec translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary “… another slim yet weighty work straddling the border between the novel and memoir, all with a healthy dose of philosophical mediation.” —Deborah Smith Open Letter Books | www.openletterbooks.org

Brazil A Breath of Life by Clarice Lispector translated from the Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz “[A Breath of Life] reintroduces a canonical writer to English readers [and] is a beautiful, original, and deeply intelligent book by a writer who leaves us, like the sphinx, mute and wondering at her genius and her mystery.” —Will Vanderhyden New Directions | www.ndbooks.com UNBOUND

France Prehistoric Times by Eric Chevillard translated from the French by Alyson Waters “Chevillard is one of France’s most mercurial and impish contemporary writers. ... Prehistoric Times is an intellectual roller coaster and fun house mirror gallery in one.” —Tess Lewis Archipelago Books www.archipelagobooks.org

France Autoportrait by Edouard Levé translated from the French by Lorin Stein “… while it may ultimately be egotistical to call a book that acts as a mirror one of the most memorable I’ve read this year, I think Autoportrait is a remarkable and unforgettable exploration of all that’s singular and universal in the self.” —Stephen Sparks Dalkey Archive Press www.dalkeyarchive.com

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013

Switzerland My Father’s Book by Urs Widmer translated from the German by Donal McLaughlin “A fictionalized biography of [the author’s] own father, Walter Widmer, this novel is by turns heart-wrenching and laugh-out loud funny. Heady, intellectual passages alternate with slapstick comedy in this exploration of how much we can know even those closest to us.” —Tess Lewis

Romania The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller translated from the German by Philip Boehm “Herta Müller’s masterpiece, The Hunger Angel, describes life in a Soviet forced-labor camp right after the war through a powerful, almost uncanny, melding of imagination and first-hand testimony.” —Bill Marx Metropolitan Books us.macmillan.com

Seagull Books www.seagullbooks.org

Iran Djibouti Transit by Abdourahman A. Waberi translated from the French by David Ball and Nicole Ball “Djibouti. Such a fun word to say. And a place that most people couldn’t find on a map. But it’s home to one of the most interesting contemporary authors in Waberi, whose other books—The United States of Africa and Passage of Tears— are also worth reading.” —Chad Post Indiana University Press www.iupress.indiana.edu

The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi translated from the Persian by Tom Patterdale “… its ‘alternative history’ of the revolution is passionately, powerfully nightmarish, a great literary achievement in addition to being a brave and important window onto a world of which English-readers are still all too ignorant.” —Deborah Smith Melville House www.mhpbooks.com

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The Woman of Porto Pim by Antonio Tabucchi

translated from the Italian by Tim Parks The Woman of Porto Pim

s .

italian

Antonio Tabucchi

The Woman of Porto Pim

Antonio Tabucchi

Translated from the Italian by Tim Parks

a rc h i p e l a go

b o o k s

Archipelago Books www.archipelagobooks.org

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013

Postscript A Whale’s View of Man By Antonio Tabucchi, one of the most renowned voices in European literature and the foremost Italian writer of his generation, The Woman of Porto Pim is made up of enchanting, hallucinatory fragments that take place on the Azores Islands off the coast of Portugal. Told by a visiting Italian writer unearthing legends, relics, and histories of the inhabitants, the tales shed light on a local restaurant proprietress’s impossible love with an Azorean fisherman during the Second World War, a dazzling whaling expedition of eras past, shipwrecks both metaphorical and real, and a playful look at humankind from the perspective of a whale.

lways so feverish, and with those long limbs waving about. Not rounded at all, so they don’t have the majesty of complete, rounded shapes sufficient unto themselves, but little moving heads where all their strange life seems to be concentrated. They arrive sliding across the sea, but not swimming, as if they were birds almost, and they bring death with frailty and graceful ferocity. They’re silent for long periods, but then shout at each other with unexpected fury, a tangle of sounds that hardly vary and don’t have the perfection of our basic cries: the call, the love cry, the death lament. And how pitiful their lovemaking must be: and bristly, brusque almost, immediate, without a soft covering of fat, made easy by their threadlike shape which excludes the heroic difficulties of union and the $15

magnificent and tender efforts to achieve it. They don’t like water, they’re afraid of it, and it’s hard to understand why they bother with it. Like us they travel in herds, but they don’t bring their females, one imagines they must be elsewhere, but always invisible. Sometimes they sing, but only for themselves, and their song isn’t a call to others, but a sort of longing lament. They soon get tired and when evening falls they lie down on the little islands that take them about and perhaps fall asleep or watch the moon. They slide silently by and you realize they are sad. From The Woman of Porto Pim by Antonio Tabucchi, translated from the Italian by Tim Parks, Archipelago Books 2013, www.archipelagobooks. org. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

A Kirkus Reviews Recommended Indie Title click HERE to read the full review

OUR LOVE

COULD LIGHT THE You know the Dugans. They’re that scrappy bunch down the street. Their yard is overgrown, they don’t pick up after their dog. The father hasn’t earned a cent in years. The wife holds them together on her income alone. Their five children run free, leaving chaos in their wake. You can hardly blame the wife for leaving one day. Without her at the helm, the rest carry on the best they can. While they never follow the rules, or completely conquer adversity, they stare it down, meet their challenges, and earn some much-needed respect. The 12 linked stories in Our Love Could Light the World depict a dysfunctional family that’s messy and rude, cruel and kind, and loyal to the end. “Parrish is in possession of such precise prose, devilish wit, and big-hearted compassion that I couldn’t help but be drawn into the hijinks and mishaps of the Dugan family. I found myself one moment laughing out loud, and the next, overcome with emotion. I’d compare these linked stories to those of George Saunders, Elizabeth Strout, or perhaps even Flannery O’Connor, if Parrish’s voice weren’t so clearly and wonderfully her own.” —Ross McMeekin, Editor, Spartan

WORLD By Anne Leigh Parrish Distributed through Ingram Available at Amazon and BarnesandNoble

www.anneleighparrish.com

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indian

Biting through the Skin:

An Indian Kitchen in America’s Heartland

by Nina Mukerjee Furstenau

University of Iowa Press www.uiowapress.org

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or years, I have been miserly in what I shared of my family’s traditional Bengali foods. I kept the door firmly closed on the story of each dish: the story created by my family and the years of eating and preparing it in Kansas, and the older story from India, from the trees that fruited and the grains that ripened half a world away. The texture of a cooked grain of rice, firm yet a little pulpy on the fingertip, the slide of smooth mango down the throat: there are many portals to the heart. If you are lucky, you see connections even in aromatic spices. Such tiny, brown bits of larger things are indeed Whitman’s “journey-work of the stars.” A recipe is the journey-work, the template, of culture and family, as well as tangible evidence of what we’re willing to share of both. I read a recipe and see great expanses of land, cultivars

of grain and vegetable, stunning lengths of history, and I imagine someone who feeds me, the dance behind the routine of cooking, the pop of memory, and the sizzle of love. Making that leap, trusting that the people of my home state of Kansas, and later Missouri, could see the gift presented with each meal, was a long time coming. Food was my tether to heritage; it revealed my world and transformed me into someone willing to share that story with others. Something my daughter, Anna, once said comes to me now: “I find it fascinating how unaware I was when my mind was changing.” From Biting through the Skin: An Indian Kitchen in America’s Heartland by Nina Mukerjee Furstenau, University of Iowa Press 2013, www.uiowapress.org. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

W W W. JOAOCERQUEIR A .COM NE W HIS TORIC AL FIC TION PITS C A S TRO AGAINS T JFK ... WITH A LIT TLE HELP FROM GOD. “T h e Tr ag e d y of F id e l C a s t ro i s ve r y m u c h re c o m m e n d e d rea d ing fo r t h o s e w h o like re lig io u s a n d al te r na t i ve hi s to r y rea d s, n ot to b e mi s s e d. — M i d w e st Bo o k Revi e w ‘’ T hi s b o o k ha s a ma z ing d e pt h a n d c o n n e c t io n s t ha t b ea r re p ea te d s c r u t iny a n d inve s t ig a t io n. T h e Tr ag e d y of F id e l C a s t ro i s hig hl y re l ev a nt to o u r s o c ie t y to d ay, a n d I hig hl y re c o m m e n d i t .” — Po r tla n d Bo o k Revi e w ‘’C e rq u eir a s h ow s p ote nt ial to b e a big na m e in t h e f u t u re.’’ — Co nte m p o ra r y Lite ra r y Revi e w I n d ia ‘’Pla c ing C e rq u eir a into t h e s a m e c a te g o r y a s t h e t r ia d I’ve m e nt io n e d [Sw i f t , K a f k a, Go g ol] w o uld b e i s s uing to o m u c h c re d i t o n to o s mall a n ini t ial d e p o si t . [...]. Bu t t h e re’s e n o ug h in hi s s h o r t a n d s ha r p C a s t ro to s ug g e s t t ha n o n e d ay h e mig ht .’’ — A lexa n d e r Bo ot

ForeWord Rev iew s Book of t he Year Aw ard Finalis t 25 UNBOUND

translations

bulgarian

verything Happens as It Does is a peculiar sort of Christmas carol, maybe a Bulgarian sort of Christmas carol, and if the reader has no acquaintance with Bulgarian literature, this novel may be a good beginning. The book tells the story of an extended family at whose center looms the evasive, yet strangely omnipresent persona of Maria, mother of three of the characters and wife to two, a woman as difficult to grasp as is her appearance (eyes the color of fog, long dark hair, covering her like a swaddle while she sleeps, her tiny feet the only spots of white). The fragmented narrative gradually pulls together the experiences of the different characters (except Maria, Everything Happens as It Does who is given a chapter at the end, only by Albena Stambolova to affirm the futility of speaking), and translated from the Bulgarian gets resolved by a mere coincidence in by Olga Nikolova time. Everything happens one Christmas night — without the stylistic decorations. Open Letter Books As much as it owes to fairy tales, www.openletterbooks.org Everything Happens as It Does does not deal with anything that we might call a moral lesson. The characters are neither good, nor bad. They have more or less intense experiences of a reality that is shared but communicable only in sparks, and mostly through gesture. They speak more or less. They love more or less. Their paths cross in ways that seem both fortuitous and predetermined — in a nutshell, as the author says, “it is the story of everyone.” The narrative style, very bare yet somehow almost baroque, continuously intertwines two narrative viewpoints — the minute description of inner phenomena and the broad strokes of the tale, while avoiding the more common middle ground that often helps the reader navigate temporal references in a familiar manner. And time is warped, even if inconspicuously, in this novel. What is a tale without magic? — Olga Nikolova

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013

First time since launch: Mirror Deep, featured on Book Bub at 0.99, November 20-29

MIRROR DEEP | JOSS LANDRY A dynamic mystery, as unstoppable as the attraction between the book’s two main characters. ~ Kirkus Reviews

www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ unknown/mirror-deep/

Dangerand

Romance

…Roll like thunder in Kat Bonner’s world, when a known felon comes to the ranch to drop a bomb about her past. Kat turns to Pierce for help, the same Pierce who bucks her every chance he gets … and whose feverish investigation lands them in trouble with the law and directly in the path of a serial killer. Mystery deepens, fraught with wrong turns, bumbling detectives, old murders, and Kat’s doppleganger no one ever sees but her, just as she never sees the change in Pierce’s feelings toward her brewing, mounting, until she can no longer deny them.

FROM THE AUTHOR:

Katherine is a wonderful heroine. Tall, athletic, she loves to ride, and she can usually exact good behavior from most wild steed, except from her second cousin Pierce who bucks her at every crack of the whip. She is determined, full of life, and slightly stubborn I’ve been told. Pierce is a handsome CEO who shares an office with Andalusian horses as he manages Bonner-Willow’s 1500 acre ranch. He loves Lightfoot’s music and gives a very good rendition when he plucks his guitar.

Available on Amazon at http://goo.gl/VXGIET

www.josslandry.com

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translations

hebrew

t’s been decades since the parents and grandparents of young Israelis— our parents and grandparents—came to Israel and were thrown into what was then proudly called the melting pot of culture, to become full-fledged Israelis of no competing origin or tradition. Luckily, some things stuck, such as traditional food and diverging religious traditions. Despite these celebrated differences, the population centering around Tel Aviv sometimes fails to acknowledge the rift of inequality that remains. In a country of less than eight million, the crossing of which takes about seven hours by car, we Some Day assume there is no margin, no place for by Shemi Zarhin secrets to be kept. translated from the Hebrew In Some Day, Shemi Zarhin reveals the by Yardenne Greenspan life of a Sephardic family in Tiberias, a northern city on the shores of the Sea New Vessel Press of Galilee. A city lost in time and space, www.newvesselpress.com whose trials and tribulations rarely make it to the national news; a city surrounded by kibbutz settlements, the Ashkenazy inhabitants of which are convinced that they are solely responsible for building Israel, ignoring the decades and often centuries that their Sephardic counterparts’ ancestors have spent in the Holy Land. Zarhin shouts out what has been kept silent and is still being buried beneath the more commonly-told European immigrant narrative, the happinesses and tragedies we don’t normally hear about. In translating Some Day, Zarhin and I made a point of maintaining dominant Sephardic heritage and lingo. We kept almost all original food names, Arabic slang and Ladino spellings. For example, Zarhin insisted that I find a non-Yiddish alternative to the commonly-used “yahrzeit” as a translation for the Hebrew ner neshama—memorial candle. We used every word-choice challenge as an opportunity to stay true to the story and its characters, to the lives they lead and the language they speak, even in translation. — Yardenne Greenspan 28

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WOLFGANG KAEHLER W W W.WK AEHLERPHOTO.COM }} CLICK ON THE LINKS BELOW FOR MY COFFEE TABLE EBOOK APPS {{ iPhone and iPad versions: World Heritage Sites | Galapagos | Antar tica Android versions: World Heritage Sites | Galapagos | Antar tica

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novel thinking: spanish

Shelf Unbound: The Tragedy of Fidel Castro has a fantastical cast of characters, including God (who “does not represent God”), JFK (“someone other than the American president with the same initials”), and Fidel Castro (who has “some similarities” with the actual Fidel Castro). Where did the idea for this story and these characters come from?

The Tragedy of Fidel Castro by João Cerqueira translated from the Spanish by Karen Bennett and Chris Mingay

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013

João Cerqueira: Religion has played an important role in my cultural development. I was christened, I went to catechism classes, I was confirmed and I went to mass until the age of 14. At the same time, I have always been intrigued by the story of the Miracle of Fátima: the Virgin Mother and the angels descend from the heavens and reveal three secrets to three shepherd children — the description of hell, the end of Communism and a third secret, which for a long time was believed to be the end of the world. In addition the Holy Virgin warned them that the sun would move on the 13th of October, 1917, and thousands of people travelled to Fátima and swore that they really did see it move. For believers it was a miracle, for skeptics it was a hoax produced with the aid of mirrors or a collective hallucination, and some even believed that there had been some kind of extraterrestrial intervention. My imagination had all it needed to create a story featuring these characters. Then, as there was a prediction about the end of Communism, the connection between the sun miracle and Fidel Castro became — in terms of literature — credible. Castro is a fascinating historical figure. He led a revolution, defied America for decades and almost started a nuclear war. Communism collapsed, but, old and sick, Castro resisted. How could he stay in power for so many years and not be overturned like other tyrants? Recently, I spent considerable time in Cuba, where I was told stories by those who had experienced Fidel Castro’s regime firsthand. For example, the students who were brought from Havana to the countryside and for a whole month picked tomatoes and other vegetables without any payment. They also told me the story of the execution of one of the nation’s heroes, General Arnaldo Ochoa — who helped the MPLA Marxist guerrillas to win the Angolan civil war (he is the inspiration for the character Camilo Ochoa). In a way, the idea for writing a novel about El Comandante began at this point.

Rancho Park Publishing Translations for Publications...since 1988 unbound 2013

feature

photo essay

Dutch Landscapes by Mishka Henner

hen Google introduced its free satellite imagery service to the world in 2005, views of our planet only previously accessible to astronauts and surveyors were suddenly available to anyone with an Internet connection. Yet the vistas revealed by this technology were not universally embraced. Governments concerned about the sudden visibility of political, economic and military locations exerted considerable influence on suppliers of this imagery to censor sites deemed vital to national security. This form of censorship continues today and 32

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013

techniques vary from country to country with preferred methods generally including use of cloning, blurring, pixelization, and whitening out sites of interest. Surprisingly, one of the most vociferous of all governments to enforce this form of censorship were the Dutch, hiding hundreds of significant sites including royal palaces, fuel depots and army barracks throughout their relatively small country. The Dutch method of censorship is notable for its stylistic intervention compared to other countries; imposing bold, multi-coloured polygons over sites rather than the subtler UNBOUND

and more standard techniques employed in other countries. The result is a landscape occasionally punctuated by sharp aesthetic contrasts between secret sites and the rural and urban environments surrounding them. In the original book of this series, these interventions are presented alongside physical alterations made to the Dutch landscape through a vast land reclamation project that began in the 16th Century and is ongoing. A third of the Netherlands lies below sea level and the dunes, dikes, pumps, and drainage networks engineered over hun34

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The Dutch method of censorship is notable for its stylistic intervention compared to other countries; imposing bold, multicoloured polygons over sites... UNBOUND

dreds of years have dramatically shaped the country’s landscape, providing it with huge swathes of arable land that would otherwise be submerged. Seen from the distant gaze of Earth’s orbiting satellites, the result is a landscape unlike any other; one in which polygons recently imposed on the landscape to protect the country from an imagined human menace bear more than a passing resemblance to a physical landscape designed to combat a very real and constant natural threat. —Mishka Henner 36

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013

Seen from the distant gaze of Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s orbiting satellites, the result is a landscape unlike any other...

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The Association of Independent Authors (AiA) is a global not-for-profit membership organization representing, advancing, supporting and encouraging self-published (independent) authors. Our membership spans five continents, with directors based in the USA, Asia, Australia and South Africa. The role of the AiA is to guide, educate, support, encourage and unite authors who have chosen to self-publish. Our Body of Knowledge (BoK) is a comprehensive resource on all aspects of selfpublishing and running a small businessâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s authors must understand the business side of publishing (sales, marketing, promotion, legal and financial issues) and how to sell a book in a global marketplace.

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BOOK The Evolutionist by Rena Mason

lagued by cryptic nightmares in a post-apocalyptic world where she is the sole survivor, Las Vegas woman Stacy Troy must decipher maddening clues hidden within her nocturnal visions. These scenes begin to enter her everyday life and destroy everything that made it worth living. Out of time, she must make a heartrending decision before her cataclysmic dreams become reality.

GOODREADS LINK www.renamasonwrites.com Available at Amazon and Nightscape Press. Death’s Twisted Tales by J.J. White “Every story ends in death if one waits long enough.”

o quotes Death as he introduces twenty-eight twisted tales for your enjoyment. Written by award-winning author, J. J. White, these tales have been published internationally and have won awards from the California Writers Club, Oregon Writers Colony, Arizona Mystery Writers, Florida Writers Association and Writer’s Digest. www.jjwhite.webs.com Available at Amazon.

809 Jacob Street by Marty Young

he house on Jacob Street calls to them all, but what will they find when they open its door? “This is a writer cutting his own way through horror, and I can’t wait to see where his journey takes him.” —Joe McKinney, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Flesh Eaters and Dead City

www.martyyoung.com Available at Black Beacon Books and Amazon.

Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 62 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $375/quarter page as seen here. Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK Firehurler, Book 1 of the Twinborn Trilogy by J.S. Morin

The Alpha Gambit by Will Winfield

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liens attack Earth to save the planet from destructive human activity, and to enslave the survivors. This story is predominantly about a middleaged downsized factory manager who makes his way through the Alien devastation and relocation while others plan to repel the Invaders.

www.jsmorin.com/shelf-unbound Available at Amazon.

Available at Buy Books and Amazon.

One world of magic. One world of reason. Two lives intertwined in a connection mistaken for a dream.

amed one of the “Best Indie Fantasy Books Worth a Read” on Goodreads, Firehurler introduces epic fantasy readers to the world of the Twinborn, where dreams are not what they seem.

The Biology of Luck by Jacob M. Appel

“O

dd-job queen Starshine Hart is about to go on somebody else’s perfect date. It could be with you….”

Available at Amazon. www.jacobmappel.com

Dream Caster by Najeev Raj Nadarajah

is settlement massacred, Weaver seeks refuge in a hidden city, there discovering he possesses the amazing power to cast his dreams into reality. But Weaver is nothing like the Dream Eater, who uses the same powers to bring nightmares to life. Up against these monsters, Weaver must master his powers before his new home and all of mankind are destroyed.

www.nrnadarajah.com Available at Amazon.

BOOK Hush, Boy by George Beddingfield

USH, BOY is a novel about Jonathan Harding, a young boy growing up in the Deep South in the 1930s and ‘40s. Jonathan is full of questions about life, but the only answer he gets is, “Hush, boy, we don’t talk about that.” Jonathan’s tales follow him to mature adulthood when he finally discovers some of the truths he has long sought. www.georgebeddingfield.com Available at CreateSpace and Amazon. Secretsincity by Deray Ogden

RINEY RUZA has created a bizarre graffiti game, but the walls she paints on begin using her to release secrets they were built to contain. One secret lures Briney to Terezin, once a Jewish Ghetto under Nazi control during WWII. Here the walls draw her deep into the conspiracies surrounding the Holocaust, corruption and rise of neo-Nazism … with a deadly outcome. www.ogdenimprint.com Available at Xlibris.com, Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, iBookstore, and most major online bookstores.

Deceit by Robert Wangard

DECEIT W “Great series . . . excellent . . . ” BookReview.com

hat do you do when a former lover turns up dead ... and you discover everything she told you was a lie? That question burns in Pete Thorsen’s mind and drives his investigation into the ROBERT WANGARD death of Lynn Hawke in this latest Pete Thorsen Mystery thriller! “... events as chilling as the weather ...“ —BookReview.com

www.rwangard.com Available in independent bookstores and online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The Vampire Girl Next Door by Richard Arbib

ark falls in love with Sylvia, the beautiful, but quirky girl next door, not realizing that she’s a vampire who killed his last neighbor. When Mark first meets Sylvia, he tells her, “You’re the girl of my dreams!” Sylvia smiles and responds with a warning—“Be careful what you wish for.” “Alternately eerie and funny, the novel blends horror, romance, and humor.” —from the publisher’s press release. www.thevampiregirlnextdoor.com Available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle. Paperback and all e-book formats available on author’s website.

BOOK Backseat by Tom Wascoe

n 1969 failure from college or dropping out meant the draft and possibly Vietnam. Michael’s freshman year has not gone well. He believes that pledging a fraternity will put him on the right path. To get in he must hitchhike 1,500 miles in one weekend. The rides he gets, the people he meets change his life. www.TomWascoe.com Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iBookstore.

Operation Doublepayback by Jack Freeman

fast-paced thriller set in 1961. An ex-CIA officer turned London-based beat generation bookseller, blackmailed into infiltrating a revolutionary terror group (RPI), is quickly involved in an attack on the U.S. London Embassy, assassination in Amsterdam, bombs in Berlin, fire fights in Venice and L.A., affair in Miami, torture in Mayfair, and a conspiracy to provoke all-out nuclear war in N.Y.C. jackfreeman_writer@hotmail.co.uk Available at Amazon.

The Beautiful American by Marilyn Holdsworth

My Prison Without Bars by Taylor Evan Fulks

2013 IRDA & READERS FAVORITE AWARD WINNER

lizabeth Monroe, James Monroe’s wife, and Jasmine, a young slave girl, develop an extraordinary relationship as they are united by pivotal historic events and personal tragedies. From a bucolic Virginia plantation to the bloodied streets of post-revolutionary Paris, this powerful tale follows the lives of two courageous women from the past as they inspire a woman of today’s world. www.marilynholdsworthauthor.com Available at Amazon and BarnesandNoble.

courageous, harrowing journey through the catacombs of hell, from the voice of a little girl, living with her own monster underneath her bed. This novel is less memoir and more psychological thriller, chronicling one woman’s attempt to claw her way out of the darkness of Child Sexual Abuse. *Dark and Graphic Content.

www.taylorfulks.com Available at Amazon and BarnesandNoble.

BOOK Pennies from Hell by D.L. Williams

Dream Operative by G. Gary Westfal

“A hilarious tale of misadventure...”

“Well-written multiple story lines, expertly woven! A fun, fast read.” —Writer’s Digest

“I

n Williams’ debut novel, several colorful characters pursue fortune, only to discover how much of life is beyond price. The group’s wacky adventures are consistently entertaining and, at times, surprisingly touching. … In the end, the group learns firsthand how the power of love, in all its forms, is what truly brings a person happiness. … A quirky, fun-filled tale about the seductive power of cold, hard cash.” —Kirkus Reviews www.dlwilliamsauthor.wix.com Available at Amazon. Damian Garcia: PhD Drug Smuggler by Chris Mosquera

his is a story of Damian Garcia and the international drug trade in opium and hashish by PhD graduate students in New York City, circa 1972. It is about love, friendship, family, loyalty, and an extremely discreet and very lucrative international drug smuggling business plan, with the financial returns totaling in the many millions of dollars. Those that knew would never tell; that was the family code.

www.outskirtspress.com/damiangarcia Available at Outskirts Press, Amazon, and BarnesandNoble.

linical psychologist Joey “G” Weston has a passion for Oneirology - the study and analysis of dreams. But that passion proves to be a doubled-edged sword when word gets out that G has discovered the ability to consciously manipulate and freely move about in his dreams, and various governmental agencies pursue him in an attempt to exploit him ... or eliminate him altogether. www.gwestfal.com Available at Amazon and BarnesandNoble.

Special Advertising Section For Authors Promote your book in Shelf Unbound in our new Special Advertising Section for Authors. Each issue of Shelf Unbound is distributed to more than 125,000 people in the U.S. and 57 countries around the globe. Our introductory ad rate for this section is $375/quarter page as seen here. Contact publisher Margaret Brown to reserve your space.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK Heroes of Old by Todd Crusan

Ezrah’s Plateau by Jacqueline Mahan

nnaturally perceptive detective John Larocque resigns in disgrace after his delusional father dies, a victim of an apparent accident. Discovering his father was the secret protector of a trove of ancient manuscripts, John must glean the origin of his family’s strange abilities from the seven hundred year-old tale of the Forgotten Ones, and why it was worth dying for.

ngela Horne discovers an old diary in the attic of her grandmother’s house that reveals secrets about Ezrah’s Plateau. After reading it, her attempts to shed light on a centuries old town secret and the truth about the local cemetery witch are dismissed. However, some people want those secrets preserved and both Angela and the diary out of the way.

www.toddcrusan.com Available at Amazon.

www.jacquelinemahan.com Available at Amazon.

Waking Sleep Beauty Freak by Nina Lora

aking Sleep Beauty Freak is a nonfiction inspirational tale about disillusionment, self-discovery and the universal web of pain and growth. This “Girls-grownup” style narrative addresses what happens when an ambitious hard-working, world traveling PR girl-verging-on-woman wakes up from a seven-year relationship to realize she is on the wrong life path and married to the wrong person. What happens now? www.wakingsleepbeautyfreak.com FACEBOOK LINK Available at Amazon.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga edited by Scott Wiggerman and Constance Campbell

ssential reading for haiku and poetry lovers everywhere. A perfect marriage of form—haiku— and subject—the limitless inspirations of the American Southwest. Thirty-three stunning haiga make this collection a treat for the eye. With work by 131 poets from all over the world, Lifting the Sky breathes new life into the stunning landscapes of the Southwest. www.dosgatospress.org Available at Dos Gatos Press, Amazon, and Small Press Distribution.

Life in a Jar The Irena Sendler Project by Jack Mayer

he true story of a Holocaust hero who rescued 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto, but whose heroism was forgotten. Sixty years later, three Kansas teenagers, each carrying her own burden, “rescue the rescuer” and elevate Irena Sendler to an international hero, championing tolerance and respect for all people. 2012 IndieReader Discovery Award, 2011 Kansas Notable Book Award, 2011 Eric Hoffer DaVinci Eye Award. www.longtrailpress.com Available at Amazon, BarnesandNoble, and the iBookstore.

Lion’s Head Deception by Chuck Waldron

n investigative blogger uncovers a sinister conspiracy, a billionaire’s plan backed by select government officials, designed to exterminate citizens who do not live up to a predetermined screening matrix; under the guise of rioting and a destabilized city, the plan is implemented and the blogger fights not only to discover and reveal the truth, but to survive.

Hello by Amanda Tenshi

or readers who enjoy literary works and challenging and metaphysical journeys comes a 600-word short story inspired by the style of Nobel-prize winning novelist Yasunari Kawabata. From a new voice is a window made into a brief, thoughtful self-discovery. “Hello” Who are you trying to reach?

www.chuckwaldron.com Watch the trailer here: http://youtu. be/2AFCcjdCsmQ Available at Amazon.

Download it free on lulu.com. Available on the IBookstore and through the Nook for less than a dollar.

BOOK The Chip by James E. Park

crooked senator’s fiendish plot to rule the Internet via a computer chip traps Mark Stone, a beautiful woman, and an Asian into doing his bidding. After a one-night tryst with the woman, Mark uncovers an obscure code which is the basis for the computer chip’s design. What happens afterwards will leave the reader wanting more.

www.jameseparkauthor.com Available at Amazon-Kindle. Divine Messages by Gary Savitsky

“G

ary Savitsky’s wisdom book is support for my soul! He taps the Divine healing force through sacred art. The messages from the symbols are given to guide, heal, and bless us all.” —Anita Eubank, author of The Rainbow of Hope Spiritual art and message together are combined to provide a wonderful experience of energy for ones soul and life. http://www.messageart.ca/divine-messages/ Available at www.messageart.ca/divinemessages/.

Come Hell or High Water by Stephen Morris

“A

group of professors specializing in folklore attempts to prevent George, a powerful priest, and Elizabeth, an Irish vampire, from unleashing an evil that threatens to destroy all of Prague.... The first half of the novel is a mystery in which the professors try to identify the four magical items that protect Prague from evil, while the second half becomes a suspenseful race as both sides try to obtain the items.” —Kirkus Indie Reviews www.stephenmorrisauthor.com Available at Amazon.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK Deacon’s Winter by Roger Burgraff

hen a battered woman on the run enters his church, Deacon is drawn into a world of blackmail, murder and political corruption in Chicago. Suspected of murder, he draws on his connections with street people and colleagues from the secret society of Gabrians to clear himself, prevent an assassination and fight Chicago’s worst snowstorm to protect the woman he loves.

www.rogerburgraff.com Available at Amazon. Reflections of the Heart: A Story of Hope by Tsungi Chiwara

20/20 Blindsight by Busser Howell 20/20 Blindsight, Powerful New Book Illuminates the Accomplishments/ Challenges of Blind Artists. ritten by Busser Howell, an artist who lost ninety-eight percent of his vision at aged fifteen, 20/20 Blindsight is the world’s only book dedicated to the work and achievements of visually impaired artists, illustrating that people see the same way, through the use of their visual cortex.

www.busserhowell.com Available at Amazon, Google Books, and Kindle. Have No Shame by Melissa Foster HAVE NO SHAME, where civil rights and forbidden love collide.

his intense novel takes you on a journey with Kui, focusing on her teenage years. She leads a somewhat cushioned life in Zimbabwe and grows up during pre and post-independence. She experiences much soulsearching and turmoil within her heart, including love issues. Is it possible to find God amidst pain and rejection? It is primarily for readers searching for purpose.

he racially-charged prejudice of the deep South forces 18-year-old Alison Tillman to confront societal norms—and her own beliefs—when she discovers the body of a hate crime victim, and the specter of forbidden love turns her safe, comfortable world upside down. For fans of The Help and A Time to Kill.

www.tsungichiwara.com Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Reader Store, Kobo, and the.iBookstore.

www.melissafoster.com Available at Amazon.

BOOK Sympathy for the Devil by Gary Acton

Holy Water by Robert Schwab “Four Stars … an artfully constructed first novel. Schwab is a capable and engaging storyteller.” —ForeWord Reviews What can the French Quarter teach a young doctor about healing? Everything. “… tells a good story but also explores the complexities of walking the tight rope of balancing one’s life and career choice along with one’s morals and convictions.” —Annals of Emergency Medicine GOODREADS PAGE Available as a paperback or ebook at Amazon. Cover of Darkness by Gregory Delaurentis

high profile murder of a Wall Street executive pits three people against the criminal underbelly of Manhattan’s brutal and sometimes heartless nightlife. Cover of Darkness is the first in a series that follows the lives of three ordinary people who struggle to retain their humanity while they confront, unafraid, a methodical and vicious killer. www.darknessnovels.com Available at Amazon, BarnesandNoble and other retailers.

ympathy For The Devil is a tragicomic true story, bordering on the surreal. It reveals the extraordinary world inhabited by those involved in cancer drug development. It’s a place where money, medicine and magic collide. You need the luck of the Devil to survive. This is a unique account of an important issue, told with an irresistibly irreverent black humor.

Available at Amazon.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK Deadly Links by Paul Murphy

eadly Links is a Canadian murder mystery with a golf backdrop that weaves unexpected plot twists through a story filled with rich characters and biting dialogue. Former golf protégé Michael Flanigan risks his life trying to find out if murders at his home course are connected to the death of his wife.

www.blackrosewriting.com Available at Amazon, BarnesandNoble, and other online bookstores. When Sarah Laughed by Allegra Magrisso WHEN SARAH LAUGHED is a playful adaptation of the Biblical story about Abraham and Sarah. In this delightful retelling, God notices something is missing on his Bee-eautiful Earth and in the home of Abraham and Sarah. When Sarah laughs the world is awakened by something wonderful. The warm and humorous text and watercolor illustrations will engage families from different faith traditions. www.allegramagrisso.com Available at Amazon.

Smart Customers, Stupid Companies by Michael Hinshaw and Bruce Kasanoff

ustomers strike back! Read how power is shifting dramatically from companies to customers, changing the rules of business and giving customers—like you—options never before possible. This shift will not only change who you buy from and how you do it, it can also dramatically impact your career. “One of the most exciting business books I’ve ever read” —Don Peppers, 1to1 Marketing Available on Amazon. Patriot’s Blood by Richard Holcroft

hen Marchetti investigates a murder, he finds evidence of a coverup in the Oklahoma City bombing and a plot to strike at a major hotel and an airliner inbound to DFW Airport. When minutes count down to the difference between life and death, Marchetti and his sidekick become the only two who can stop the terrorist attacks in time. http://richardholcroft.com Available at Amazon, BarnesandNoble, and Smashwords.

BOOK A Taste for Truth by Thistle Brown

“A

newlywed uncovers some unsettling family secrets. Anne’s strong narrative voice guides the story through WASP family get-togethers, newlywed clashes and office politics, offering pointed observations about relationships. Lively writing, brisk pacing and a likable narrator fill out this promising debut.” —Kirkus Reviews “The book aptly examines the fragile realities of two people who enter into a marriage with conflicting expectations.” —Christina Hamlett for Clarion Reviews www.thistlebrown.com Available at Amazon. Love Crazy: A Memoir by Selby Fleming McPhee

n this memoir, the discovery of a forbidden box of letters sends the author on a bumpy ride through her family’s history in the first half of the American twentieth century. On the box’s lid is a provocative warning: “Personal letters of Mr. and Mrs. J. J. Fleming—to be destroyed unopened,” an invitation if there ever was one … www.selbyflemingmcphee.com Available at Amazon, BarnesandNoble, and Martin Sisters Publishing.

Surviving Curtis Hall: The Lure of Blood by L.A. Matthies

hese compelling teens strive for excellence in academics, sports, arts, and music; all while maintaining lifelong friendships. Tristen, Billy and Sasha’s lives are made more perilous when they transfer to a new school filled with a fascinating array of subterranean tunnels, glyphic codes, and a labyrinth. The sharply etched, appealing characters, both human and supernatural, lead us down a path of intrigue while attempting to sort out their love/hate/friendship triangles. www.SurvivingCurtisHall.com Available at Amazon and BarnesandNoble.

Margaret@shelfmediagroup.com 214.704.4182.

BOOK Introduction to Islam by Haj Dawud Bell

slam is a religion of over one billion people, and is the fastest growing religion in the West. Yet it is largely misunderstood and misrepresented. Fanatics in any religion tend to occupy the headlines, and unfortunately, few Westerners look beneath these headlines. This book is written for the Western reader, including relatives and/or friends of those who have embraced Islam and wish to understand the basics.

Available at Amazon and Trafford Publishing. The Girl in the Butternut Dress by Joanne Hardy

abrielle, an illegitimate orphan, comes of age on the eve of the Civil War and her familiar world comes apart. Sent to help on a nearby farm, she discovers it is a station on the Underground Railroad. Based on real historical events in a border state, the county is alive and volatile with Copperheads, vigilantes, Union Army deserters, and war-hardened veterans. Can Gabrielle’s love for a Southern-sympathizer have a future? With postage paid, author will send signed copies; contact BJH110233@gmail.com. www.joannehardyauthor.com; www.joannehardy.blogspot.com Available on Amazon, Kindle, and BarnesandNoble.

Buying the Farm by Kimberly Conn

hen a horrific accident leaves Missi Jennings scared and alone, it also becomes a catalyst for the change her tired, urban life needs. From the chaotic streets of Washington, D.C. to the fragrant fields of rural Mississippi, family secrets give way to family love in this heartwarming portrait of one woman’s journey to discover her Southern roots.

www.kimberlyconn.com Available at Amazon and Smashwords.

Boiling Point by Eileen Susan Eckert

sychologist Sara Bradley finds herself triggered by haunting memories of her past while working with a child who possibly witnessed her mother’s death. The attorney for the admitted murderer, Michael Grey, is thrown up against his violent past while defending his client. A chance meeting between Sara and Michael fuels a mutual attraction. Can their relationship survive the mysteries they uncover?

www.eileensusaneckert.com Available at Amazon.

BOOK Penalty Stroke By Susan Leigh Shallcross

A Prison of Lies by Robert Thomas Doran

FAMILY/CHILDCARE

A Prison of

In his novel, A Prison of Lies, Robert Thomas Doran portrays a troubled youth, who confronts a world of sadness and hopelessness and comes to question the existence of God. Beset by challenges on every quarter: unable to fit in with his peers, shamed by his sexuality, ill equipped for emotional intimacy and unable to express himself with girls; he slips from a depression into full blown mental illness. In the depths of his illness, he battles internal demons that threaten to steal his innocence with evil thoughts and hallucinations.

A Prison of Lies is a brutally honest look into one man’s odyssey into the darkness of mental illness and finally out into the light where he finally heals his broken spirit and begins a new chapter in his life.

As this fiction is inspired by his own struggle with mental illness Robert Thomas Doran is grateful to god for helping him recover from mental illness. Today he lives in Pennsylvania with his wife of fifteen years. A Prison of Lies was written as an act of faith and with the hope of helping others afflicted with mental illness.

U.S. $XX.XX

Age of the Gentiles and the White God Delusion by Timothy Hugee

he book is a logical Bible study and in-depth examination of Race, Sex, Power, Politics and War. The Author addresses the false doctrine and propaganda that has been fronted for centuries, by Christianity and Judaism, as to their supremacy above other religions and black and Semite races. www.authortimhugee.info Available at Authorhouse, Amazon, and BarnesandNoble.

RO B E RT TH O M AS D O RAN

enalty Stroke is a thrilling mystery centered on the wealthy, aristocratic Abbott family—and the dark secrets of their past that haunt the present. When Lady Madison’s university friend unexpectedly dies at a charity polo match, no one believes it was murder, except Madison. Not knowing who she can trust— maybe not even herself—Madison struggles to solve the mystery and her erase her own haunted past. www.susanleighshallcross.com Available at Amazon and Audible.

Lies

In A Prison of Lies, Doran presents a story of anguish, breakdown, and recovery with the hope that this journey through mental illness might raise our consciousness; kindle a common understanding and most importantly, facilitate the recovery of individuals who may be similarly afflicted. As he offers this compelling glimpse into a man’s personal crisis that includes the reasons why he loathed himself and developed a massive inferiority complex, Doran illuminates an intriguing and often frightening path into what exactly motivates suicides and fuels crimes of passion. Highlighted in his story are insightful poems and compelling conversations therapists and hypnotists.

ith its brutal honesty, witness one man’s odyssey into the darkness of mental illness and his slow A Prison of emergence out of ROBERT THOMAS DORAN that darkness where a broken spirit is healed and a life begins anew. A Prison of Lies offers a candle in the cave for those seeking to understand and for those who are themselves lost and unable to find their way. (Mature content)

Lies

www.aprisonoflies.com; www.stopharm.com Available at Amazon, BarnesandNoble, and iUniverse. Blooms on the Bones by Yvonne Kohano

Who’s next for romance in Flynn’s Crossing?

ld bones, predestined love, and troubled adversaries clash as an unlikely relationship soars to conquer the spirit world. The story of Tess and Powers is heating up Main Street! www.YvonneKohano.com. Find your copy at your favorite ebook or paperback vendor.

BOOK WTF? How Karl Rove and the Establishment Lost … Again By C. Edmund Wright

his book has the Republican Establishment in shock—a stunning indictment of two decades of beltway failures that threaten the country. Wright’s conversational style and logic approach mixes in just the right amount of humor and anger as he explains our current political universe like no other. A must read for all political junkies, and others worried about the country. www.tokyorove.com Available at Amazon.

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Gabriel’s Wizard

Gabriel’s Wizard by Daniel Turner

Daniel Turner

abriel’s Wizard is a tale of metaphysics and magic in the real world today. A young adventurer makes his way to Alaska and encounters an old Alaskan mountain man, Daniel Turner a powerful wizard as wise in the ancient teachings as he is in the modern world. Together they journey through encounters and dangers that test his spirit as he learns of wisdom and power. A Mystical Journey Through Alaska

www.gabrielswizard.com Available at Amazon.

Ixeos: Book One of the Ixeos Trilogy by Jennings Wright

hen they’re lured from our world into Ixeos, an alternate Earth, the McClellands find themselves in a maze of tunnels that lead all over the world. They’ve been brought to Ixeos for one purpose: to take the planet back from humanoid aliens who have claimed it. The aliens aren’t the only problem on Ixeos. The worst? There’s no way home.

www.jenningswright.com Available at Amazon. All The Light There Was by Nancy Kricorian

t the beginning of ALL THE LIGHT THERE WAS, Maral Pegorian, a teenage girl, peers through shuttered blinds as German troops march into Paris. Her journey to adulthood over the next six years takes her through a world transformed by war, but also by everyday acts of heroism and love. www.nancykricorian.net Available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and wherever books and ebooks are sold, including from Amazon, BarnesandNoble. and Powells.

BOOK Field of Vision by Michael Jarvis

My Life On Craigslist by Alexandra Ares

HAVE YOU READ IT YET?

hotographer Jake Mayfield finds racial trouble and multiple passions on a beautiful Caribbean island, but feels his journey spiraling downward into paranoia and criminal tourism. A surprising literary adventure story of sex, war, art, love, travel and survival. “....Field of Vision is a formidable achievement from a talented new writer.” —ForeWord Clarion Reviews www.michaeljarvis.net Available at Amazon and BarnesandNoble. Cemetery Whites by Connie Knight

mateur detective Caroline Hargrove Hamilton solves two murders, one from 1875 and one from today. Biracial friendships, during slavery and after the Civil War, are discovered in her research. She finds the corpse of history professor Thomas Harrison, a black man, in the Hargrove Family Cemetery, then she uncovers family secrets that solve the crime.

www.ConnieKnightBooks.com eBook available at Amazon and BarnesandNoble.

New York girl who works in the arts lives vicariously on Craigslist where she runs into big trouble ... But she has a special talent. Finalist of Best Books USA. Recommended by Midwest Book Review, US Review of Books and Readers’ Favorite. Heartbreaking and Zany! Critics say it is funny like Seinfeld. www.alexandraares.com Available in paperback and e-book on Amazon. Operation Doublepayback by Jack Freeman

BOOK Blood and Whiskey: A Cowboy and Vampire Thriller by Clark Hays and Kathleen McFall

Endor the Wizard Trilogy by John R. Garland

ndor leads the peaceful country of Greysmire, who must join forces with neighboring Dame, to overcome the wicked powers of the evil Lord Gundermire. Book 1, Endor the Wizard, introduces Endor from the beginning. Book 2, Endor’s Adventures, takes Endor into Dame to bond an allegiance against the might of Gundermire. Book 3, The Final Chapter, brings about the end.

nlightenment just took a strange detour. Welcome to LonePine, Wyoming, population 438; it’s like any other slowlydying western town, only with vampires. When a cowboy falls for a beautiful vampire, saddle up for a metaphysical ride through love, death and the afterlife. “Strong writing, funny characters, and plenty of action; a riveting tale of love and blood in the modern West.” —Kirkus Reviews

www.endorthewizard.com Available at Amazon, BarnesandNoble, and Lulu.

www.cowboyandvampire.com Available at Amazon.

Lamb to the Slaughter is a novel about love and courage, sin and redemption. “Iron” Mike McGann, 32 years old, is facing the twilight of his prizefighting career. Desperate for his future, he has refused to honor his promise to his wife to quit the ring and start a family. In despair, his wife, Madge, is leaving him. Rufus “Hurricane” Hilliard, Mike’s next opponent, is the most menacing presence in prizefighting. He has won all 22 of his fights by knockout and is said to be a former enforcer for something called The Black Mafia. But behind Rufus Hilliard’s menacing ring presence lives a man nobody knows, a complex man who despises his own image. Unexpectedly left alone before his bout with McGann, Rufus “Hurricane” Hilliard is forced to confront the past that haunts him and the future he dreads. Charles “Charliehorse” O’Connell, Rufus’s cornerman, has been terrorized by a mob kingpin to sabotage him. O’Connell, who is an alcoholic and a compulsive gambler, blames himself for the ring deaths of two prizefighters. Trapped in a moral crisis, Charles “Charliehorse” O’Connell must finally

n Eirelan you will live for a time with men and women, old and young, fighters and writers, poets andªxHSLEQFyship 3 9270zv*:+:!:+:!@ captains, who cannot take for granted that anything they treasure will survive to be the inheritance of their children. Conor, Fethnaid, Oran, Mairin travel a road unlike ours. It is a dangerous road, yet one well worth exploring. Contact the author: highc.king@ verizon.net.

confront his “Cardinal Sin.” Rufus “Hurricane” Hilliard vs “Iron” Mike McGann, just another fight shown on The Continuous Sports Network, but by the time it is over the lives of these and many others will be forever different.

(101870)

www.eirelan.com Available at Amazon in print and as ebook.

DELOHERY

ISBN: 978-1-4653-3927-0

Lamb to the Slaughter by Pete Delohery

PETE DELOHERY LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER

Eirelan—Saga of the Latter-Day Celts by Liam O’Shiel

“S

et against the vividly rendered backdrop of professional boxing, Pete Delohery’s hard-bitten yet LAMB TO THE generous-spirited novel S l au g h t e R focuses on three men at crossroads in their lives. The moving portraits Delohery creates of three men, each damaged by a brutal world, who flee from personal demons toward the only imperfect redemption available to them: victory in a fight. This heartfelt tale makes a powerful emotional impact.” —Blue Ink Starred Review www.petedelohery.com

Available at Amazon, xlibris, and BarnesandNoble.

BOOK Mirror Deep by Joss Landry Danger and Romance …

oll like thunder in Kat Bonner’s world, when a known felon comes to the ranch to drop a bomb about her past. Kat turns to Pierce for help, the same Pierce who bucks her every chance he gets, and whose feverish investigation lands them in trouble with the law and directly in the path of a serial killer.

www.josslandry.com Available at Amazon, Kobo, BarnesandNoble, Indigo Chapters, EbookPie, and E Sentral. Awaken Our Spirit Within by Patsie Smith

his book will awaken your true reality, shift your perceptions, and raise your consciousness onto a higher plane. it contains words of wisdom from our core and essence, conveyed with concise simplicity, clarity and insight. A must-read for the transformation and transcendence from the web of human ignorance and suffering, into true inner peace and joy. www.patsiesmith.com Available at Balboapress, Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and all leading online bookstores.

Tales from the Loon Town Cafe by Dennis Frahmann

ame, fortune, ambition and love collide when smalltown boy leaves big city job for his northwoods hometown. Much like the writings of Garrison Keillor, this novel captures the characters, rhythms and sometimes downright loopiness of a town where most everyone thinks they know most everything about what’s going on.

www.loontowncafe.com Available at Amazon, the iBookstore, and BarnesandNoble. The Vampire Girl Next Door by Richard Arbib

Sips Card puts short fiction and poetry into local coffee shop venues around the country. We are a publication run by artists, for artists. Each card contains a QR code, loaded with a short story, or set of poems, from an independent writer, meant to last as long as a cup of coffee. Our passion is to share the work of other artists with likely readers. Visit

www.sipscard.com for more information.

Call for submissions: We are accepting short fiction and poetry submissions for our October 2012 issue from August 1st through August 31st. Guidelines can be found at www.sipscard.com/submit.

SHELF UNBOUND’S COOL READS FOR KIDS.

New in 2013:

If You Were Me and Lived In ...

Shelf Unbound’s Middle Shelf magazine Know any middle-schoolers who are avid readers? This fall, we’re launching Shelf Unbound’s Middle Shelf—Cool Reads for Kids magazine. Like Shelf Unbound, Middle Shelf will feature the best of small press and indie reads, all directed to a middlereader audience. Like Shelf Unbound, it will include author interviews, reviews, excerpts, and photo essays. And like Shelf Unbound, subscriptions are free. To learn more and sign up for a free subscription, go to www.shelfmediagroup. com/pages/introducingmiddle-shelf

If You Were Me and Lived In … by Carole P. Roman www.caroleproman.com

In her delightful series of books for children, Carole P. Roman introduces readers to the lives and languages of other cultures around the world. Here she tells Shelf Unbound how the series came to be. 58

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013

hile on a family vacation in Las Vegas, the many different themes of the hotels were observed by my 4-yearold grandson. We discussed the pyramids of Egypt, the Coliseum in Rome, and the Eiffel Tower. We walked the strip and sampled crepes and other specialties of that area. When we got home, we looked up these places on the computer and it started a wonderful journey around the world to observe the differences in our cultures. I wrote If You Were Me and Lived In ... Mexico—A Child’s Introduction to Culture Around the World that evening. I wanted to keep it simple, just enough to whet an inquiring mind, but not bore the child or parent into rushing though a book. Each page was hard to edit, as I learned fascinating facts on places I’ve never been. The book’s purpose is to open the door and let the parent or educator decide how much they want to explore. Each page can be a topic or project, discussing the currency—what does it tell us about that country? Is it rich or poor based on the weight of the money? Agricultural or industrial? What kind of government do you think it has? What have you tasted from this country? Do you think it’s rural? If they eat a lot of fish—what do you think that means? Are the names familiar? The holidays? Would you like to play with their games and toys? Where would you take a visitor in this country and why? Each subject is elastic enough to interest a wide variety of age groups and interests. The funny thing is that most parents have written that they have learned new information as well! We live in a global world and need to communicate with each other better. If children learn to appreciate our differences at a young age, perhaps in some way it will promote tolerance. I stayed away from politics and religion in order to not press a hot button, but certainly parents can take it a step further if they are comfortable. I love this series and have enjoyed discovering so much information about the world. People have been wonderfully forthcoming when I ask them questions about their homeland, and I love their pride. Mexico, France, South Korea, Norway, Turkey, and Kenya are published. I tried to reach for the “four corners” of the earth and not pick countries that I am familiar with. I was asked by friends to include India and Australia, which are in production. I hope to keep going and try to do every country I can. Happy exploring! —Carole P. Roman UNBOUND

poetry

From pH Neutral History by Lidija Dimkovska, translated from the Macedonian by Ljubica Arsovska and Peggy Reid, Copper Canyon Press 2013, www.coppercanyonpress.org. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013

Key by Lidija Dimkovska When the key hung around your neck your head was Buddha’s tummy, rubbed by relatives and entrepreneurs with an unchanging New Year’s wish (money = health, happiness, and love), they had their pet dream, you had your pet nightmare, Bach on the radio, beans in the bowl, and Bruno Schulz standing to attention in the shower cabinet. A happy man gets charged up outside, and emptied at home (pockets, stomach, brain, and sperm), only the emptiness is left on the anatomical pillow that remembers your head even when the key has long since lost its string. And now, when unhappiness too is a charging, Buddha’s tummy needs to be rubbed against the pillowcase or be replaced by some newer deity, changing the bed linen changes fortune too, like a battery charger that no longer blinks. You need a key for everything but your conscience horticulturally arranged with an English lawn, a garden gnome, and a sensor fence, a home where the one and only god is the community nurse who comes to visit three days after the birth and three days before death. In her black bag locked with a two-pronged key once she carries scales to weigh life, the next time to weigh death.

poetry

Poetarzan by Jorge Santiago Perednik me be poet me respect language that be foreign to me like own language, good friend language, companion me no know what language is but me love her language be like sun me no know sun know what it does to us white man teach me read and me discover there said: when jungle of letters cover jungle inside me know poetarzan never be without jungle

From The Shock of the Lenders and Other Poems by Jorge Santiago Perednik, translated from the Spanish by Molly Weigel, Action Books 2012, www.actionbooks.org. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

UNBOUND

on our shelf

OPERATION MASSACRE

DAYS IN THE HISTORY OF SILENCE

inner of the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and the Nordic Council Literature Prize, Days in the History of Silence finds an elderly couple struggling with secrets long held from their three daughters—he, that he is Jewish and escaped the Holocaust; she, that as a teen she gave up a son for adoption. The husband has retreated into silence, the wife into memories. A quiet, deep, precisely written novel. —Anna Nair Days in the History of Silence by Merethe Lindstrøm, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Bruce, Other Press 2013, www.otherpress.com. 62

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013

n June 9, 1956, 12 working-class men gathered at a Buenos Aires home were seized by police, taken to a field, and shot. Six months later, writer Rodolfo Walsh learned there were survivors and began investigating the story, which had not been covered in the media. The result, Walsh’s 1957 classic Operation Massacre, reads like a crime novel and, as Ricardo Piglia writes in the afterword, “elevates the raw truth of the facts.” —Ben Minton Operation Massacre by Rodolfo Walsh, translated by Daniella Gitlin, Seven Stories Press 2013, www.sevenstories.com.

L’AMOUR

’Amour is a spare, poetic wisp of a novel in which three unnamed characters drift in and out of cryptic exchanges and encounters. The book requires the reader to suspend the reliance on plot, description, and dialog afforded by traditional narratives. But slowly, carefully, subtly, Duras lifts the veil. It is a remarkable piece of writing—a cinematic story writ small. —Margaret Brown L’Amour by Marguerite Duras, translated from the French by Kazim Ali and Libby Murphy, Open Letter Books, www. openletterbooks.org.

Find your next favorite book in SHELF UNBOUND’S

COOL READS FOR KIDS.

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small press reviews Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car by Nuala Ní Conchúir

Templar Poetry www.templarpoetry.com

iny though it is, Nuala Ní Conchúir’s Portrait of the Artist with a Red Car is dense with sensual imagery. Indeed, the economy of language that Conchúir employs throughout this volume is reminiscent of Ezra Pound’s “In a Station at the Metro.” This parallel, moreover, does not appear to be accidental: In one of the longer pieces of this collection, “Flaneuse,” Conchúir includes a section titled “on the metro,” which, like Pound’s haiku-esque masterwork, presents the reader with the prospect of meeting strangers in underground public spaces. Yet while Conchúir may be a student of Pound’s spare yet powerful language, she rejects the cold aloofness of the modern, particularly with respect to the women she depicts. The women of Conchúir’s poetry are sensual and alive—thriving, in fact, within the medium of human imperfection and ambivalence. The pregnant figures (and there are a few) of Conchuir’s poetry are filled with an endearing mixture of hope and worry. They pray to Saint Gerard, patron of motherhood. They dream of other people’s babies. They are acutely aware of the lives growing inside of them—and perhaps even more so of the dangers that lurk outside the womb. Pregnancy and motherhood, however, are not the only themes of Conchúir’s latest collection. Throughout the volume, she also examines love, sex, aging, and infidelity as she continues the complex, moving exploration of the human soul that makes her work such a joy to read. —Marc Schuster, www.smallpressreviews.wordpress.com Shelf Unbound Contributing Editor Marc Schuster is the author of The Grievers, The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl, Don DeLillo, Jean Baudrillard, and the Consumer Conundrum, and, with Tom Powers, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy: The Discerning Fan’s Guide to Doctor Who. He is the editor of Small Press Reviews, and his work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals. Marc teaches writing and literature courses at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania.

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013

a war…”

“There was always

The Last Death of Tev Chrisini Winner of the Shelf Unbound Writing Competition for Best Self-Published Book

“An exceptionally well-built world... the sheer depth was done brilliantly.” —Fantasy Book Review UK “Jennifer Bresnick’s enchanting Tolkien-esque epic fantasy The Last Death of Tev Chrisini captivated our judges from page one and held us in thrall through its conclusion 467 pages later. We fell in love with the story and its characters and with Bresnick’s assured literary tale-spinning.” —Margaret Brown, Shelf Unbound magazine

Available on

and

W W W. J EN N I FER B R E SN I CK .CO M UNBOUND

OPTIMUS PRIMER

“

Translation is that which transforms everything so that nothing changes.

”

— Günter Grass

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013

october/november JOÃO CERQUEIRA has a PhD in History of Art from the University of Oporto. He is the author of seven books: Art and Literature in the Spanish Civil War, Blame It on too Much Freedom, The Tragedy of Fidel Castro, Devil’s Observations, Maria Pia: Queen and Woman, José de Guimarães (published in China by the Today Art Museum), José de Guimarães: Public Art. SERGIO CHEJFEC, originally from Argentina, has published numerous works of fiction, poetry, and essays. Among his grants and prizes, he has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in 2007 and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 2000. His books have been translated into French, German, and Portuguese. He teaches in the Creative Writing in Spanish Program at NYU. His books published by Open Letter: My Two Worlds (2011, translated by Margaret Carson), The Planets (2012, translated by Heather Cleary), The Dark (2013, translated by H.C.). LIDIJA DIMKOVSKA is a poet, novelist, and translator born in Skopje, Macedonia. In her native language she has published eight books. She is the recipient of numerous literary awards, and her work has been translated into more than 20 languages. She lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia. NINA MUKERJEE FURSTENAU is a journalist and teacher. She teaches a food and wine writing course for the University of Missouri science and agriculture journalism program. Her nonfiction has appeared in publications such as Painted Bride Quarterly and Missouri Life. YARDENNE GREENSPAN was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, to an American father and an Israeli mother. She graduated with honors in 2009 from Tel Aviv University, where she majored in Comparative and Hebrew Literature and in Multidisciplinary Arts. After completing her undergraduate studies she went on to travel in South America and East Asia, feeding her love of languages and cultures and writing throughout her travels. DAVID SCOTT HAMILTON studied linguistics and French at Simon Fraser University, and French literature and law at the University of Ottawa. He spent a decade living in the Outaouais region of Quebec where he taught English and worked as a freelance translator, producing significant works for numerous clients, including the Canadian Museum of Civilization. He now divides his time between Vancouver and Chambéry, France, and has turned his

contributors

attention exclusively to literary translation. Exit (Paradis, clef en main by Nelly Arcan), his debut literary translation, nominated for the 2011 Governor General’s Literary Award for French to English translation. MISHKA HENNER was the recipient this year of the ICP Infinity Award for Art and was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. His works are held in the Tate Collection, the Centre Pompidou, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Portland Museum of Art, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. MICHELINE MARCOM is the author of Three Apples Fell from Heaven, which was a New York Times Notable Book. The Daydreaming Boy won the 2005 PEN/USA Award in fiction and was named a best book by the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. OLGA NIKOLOVA was born in Sandanski, Southern Bulgaria, but grew up in the small industrial city of Pernik. After graduating from Pernik’s Modern Languages High School, she pursued a master’s degree in English at Sofia University, where she won the Marko Minkoff scholarship for her thesis on the poetry of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. She completed her PhD at Harvard University. JORGE SANTIAGO PEREDNIK (1952-2011) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. An influential poet and literary critic, he was also a publisher and a translator of English and American poetry. He had a long career as a teacher and became an important interlocutor for multiple generations of poets. CAROLE P. ROMAN is an award-winning author and former social studies teacher. Author of the highly successful Captain No Beard series, she lives on Long Island with her husband and near her children and grandchildren. ANTONIO TABUCCHI was born in Pisa in 1943 and died in Lisbon in 2012. A master of short fiction, he won the Prix Médicis Etranger and the Italian PEN Prize and was named a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. Shelf Unbound is published bimonthly by Shelf Media Group LLC, 3322 Greenview Drive, Garland, TX 75044. Copyright 2013 by Shelf Media Group LLC. Subscriptions are FREE, go to www.shelfmediagroup.com to subscribe.