Having neither a beginning nor an end, a perfect circle is continuous—a loop made of points equidistant from a fixed center. How fitting, then, that Claudia Petrucci’s The Perfect Circle, translated from the Italian by Anne Milano Appel, resists a singular beginning. Instead of starting from a single point in time, the novel cycles between…

In migration tales, a distinction prevails between those called “immigrants” and others known as “expats.” The latter are usually white and rich, or at least, richer than immigrants. Implicit in their privilege is the fact that desire, not need, has compelled them to leave their home countries. They can also choose to travel between their…

Often told in women’s voices, McConnell’s stories in this collection range in time from the 1930s to the Covid-19 pandemic and take place in a transatlantic world, ranging from Italy and Puerto Rico to California, New York City, and the American Midwest. While McConnell’s women sometimes find themselves through their lovers, they also strive for…

“I need to travel to purge myself of Sweden and Swedish stupidity,” wrote August Strindberg in a letter to his editor in 1884. Renowned for his itchy feet, the celebrated Swedish playwright travelled extensively throughout his lifetime, living in dozens of different places in Stockholm and abroad. Yet he spent the vast majority of his…

The central premise of The Abyss by the Tamil writer Jeyamohan is the philosophical question of existence: What makes us human?  Or, to put it more bluntly, as Jeyamohan lays out in an interview with his translator, Suchitra Ramachandran: “If you subject human beings to an acid test, what remains?”  To explore this question, Jeyamohan…