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Fall preview 2014: international books

In the July/August issue, Q&Q looks ahead at fall’s most anticipated titles.

FICTION

Three years following the English-­language publication of the near 1,000-page epic 1Q84, Haruki Murakami has another anticipated release. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (Bond Street Books, $29.95 cl., Aug.) investigates an unsolved murder among a group of high-school friends. The novel, translated by Philip Gabriel, is said to revisit the lyrical realism of Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. • After the star-studded film adaptation of Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell makes a literary return with a novel that follows a runaway girl with a mystical identity along six different timelines. The Bone Clocks (Knopf Canada, $34 cl., Sept.) explores the stakes of mortality in the face of personal and political battles.

LetMeBeFrankWithYouLet Me Be Frank With You (HarperCollins, $32.99 cl., Nov.) is anticipated both for its author, Richard Ford, and its titular character, middle-aged New Jersey real estate agent Frank Bascombe. The new collection, a set of four novellas, marks the latest instalment in a series that includes Ford’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Independence Day. • Another celebrated series gets an update with the release of Will Self’s Shark (Grove Press/Raincoast Books, $32.50 cl., Nov.), the sequel to the British author’s Man Booker Prize finalist Umbrella. The second book in a planned trilogy navigates the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing, exposing relationships between pathology and violence in the 20th century. • Ian McEwan takes on the 21st century in his latest, The Children Act (Knopf Canada, $29.95 cl., Sept.), in which a judge is confronted by a family’s refusal to save their young son from a fatal illness due to their religious beliefs.

BirthOfABridgeFrench author Maylis de Kerangal tackles the timeless subject of humankind’s desire to “domesticate our world through built form” in her latest, Birth of a Bridge (Talonbooks, $14.95 pa., Sept.). Translated by Jessica Moore, the Médicis Prize–winning novel is written from the perspective of engineers and construction crews as they build a massive suspension bridge in a fictional California city. • The Moor’s Account (Simon & Schuster Canada, $29.99 cl.) is an historical saga arriving in October. Fulbright fellow Laila Lalami shares the testimony of a Moroccan slave who played a central role in the 16th-century Spanish expedition to claim the Gulf Coast.

Ben Lerner follows his acclaimed debut, Leaving the Atocha Station (winner of the 2011 Believer Book Award), with an equally witty second novel about artistic immortality. Centred on an author whose literary ascent is interrupted by a fatal diagnosis and potential fatherhood, 10:04 (McClelland & Stewart, $27.95 cl., Sept.) takes place in a New York that may soon be underwater due to increasingly frequent super-storms.

First-time novelist Peyton Marshall’s Goodhouse (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Raincoast, 29.99 cl., Sept.) touches down in dystopian 21st-century America. Genetic testing has become central to the penal system, singling out at-risk boys and sending them to “goodhouses” for correction, but a radical religious group violently takes the “rehabilitation” too far. • Shelly Oria arrives on the scene with a collection of short stories, New York 1, Tel Aviv 0 (Bond Street Books, $22 pa., Nov.), an exploration of love, intimacy, and the Israeli-American experience.

CRIME, MYSTERY, AND HORROR

EdgeOfEternityStephen King’s Revival (Scribner/S&S, $36 cl., Nov.) is the author’s second novel of 2014, following June’s Mr. Mercedes. Set in small-town New England, the book spans several decades and sees a young boy and a minister lose their way after a family tragedy. • Another eminent thriller author returns this fall with Edge of Eternity (Dutton/Penguin, $36 cl., Sept.), the final instalment in Ken Follett’s Century trilogy. Five family dramas play out against a backdrop of seminal political events, including the Cold War and the American civil rights movement. • Swedish author Lars Kepler’s The Sandman (M&S, $24.95 pa., Aug.) is set to appear in North America following its successful European release. The fourth book in the Joona Linna series follows the investigation of a serial killer suspected of being active beyond the walls of his psychiatric care facility.

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August 12th, 2014

4:21 pm

Category: Preview

Tagged with: fall preview 2014