On the BOOKSHELF

Red Milk (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

by Sjón

by Quentin Mills-Fenn

Sjón’s novel tells the story of Gunnar Kampen, an ordinary Icelander, anti-Semite, white nationalist, and neo-Nazi. From his WWII childhood, with his staunchly anti-Hitler parents, to his first encounters with the far right, to his conversion and how he ended up dead on a train in the English countryside, this is the banality of evil under a microscope, a look at someone you wouldn’t look twice at on the streets of Reykjavík. Fascinating. (Translated by Victoria Cribb)

If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English (Graywolf Press)

by Noor Nagao

Noor Naga’s powerful and provocative debut novel depicts a cross-cultural love affair in modern-day Cairo, between an Egyptian-American woman, obvious in her privilege, and a photographer who stopped taking pictures after the failed revolution, his useless camera always around his neck. Told in alternating voices that only heighten the differences and distances between them, the story builds to some shattering moments

Present Tense Machine (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

by Gunnhild Øyehau

Award-winning Norwegian writer Gunnhild Øyehaug’s novel concerns two lives, a woman and her daughter. Thirty years ago, Anna was reading while her young daughter Laura played in the yard. Then Anna misreads a word and their universes separate. In one, Anna remarries and has two different children. In the other, motherless Laura is starting her own family. And yet, both feel something is missing throughout their lives. A haunting essay on loss, if not grief.