Love in the Big City is an energetic, joyful, and moving novel that depicts both the glittering nighttime world of Seoul and the bleary-eyed morning-after. Young is a cynical yet fun-loving Korean student who pinballs from home to class to the beds of recent Tinder matches. He and Jaehee, his female best friend, frequent nearby bars where they push away their anxieties about their love lives, families, and money with rounds of soju and Marlboro Reds. Over time, even Jaehee leaves Young to settle down, leaving him alone to care for his ailing mother and to find companionship in his relationships with a series of men, including one whose handsomeness is matched by his coldness, and another who might end up being the great love of his life. Love in the Big Cityis an exploration of millennial loneliness as well as the joys of queer life, that should appeal to readers of Sayaka Murata, Han Kang, and Cho Nam-Joo.

An eighty-year-old woman slips into a deep depression at the death of her husband, then resurfaces to gain a new lease on life. Her determination to fly in the face of convention - including striking up a friendship with a hijra person - confuses her bohemian daughter, who is used to thinking of herself as the more 'modern' of the two. At the older woman's insistence they travel back to Pakistan, simultaneously confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of Partition, and re-evaluating what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman, a feminist. Rather than respond to tragedy with seriousness, Geetanjali Shree's playful tone and exuberant wordplay results in a book that is engaging, funny, and utterly original, at the same time as being an urgent and timely protest against the destructive impact of borders and boundaries, whether between religions, countries, or genders.

The Impossible Fairy Tale tells the story of the nameless 'Child', who struggles to make a mark on the world, and her classmate Mia, whose spoiled life is everything the Child's is not. At school, adults are nearly invisible, and the society the children create on their own is marked by cruelty, soul-crushing hierarchies and an underlying menace. Then, one day after hours, the Child sneaks into the classroom to add ominous sentences to her classmates' notebooks, unlocking a series of events with cataclysmically horrible consequences. But that is not the end of this eerie, unpredictable novel... Han Yujoo's The Impossible Fairy Tale is a fresh and terrifying exploration of the ethics of creativity, and of the stinging consequences of neglect.

And I struggle to find my place in this dark novel. I yearn for passion and despair - for that is what makes good literature - while Ishwari seeks a life of joy for herself and her son.' A powerful novel from the author of Panty about a woman who runs away from home, seeking to free herself from the shackles of society and familial attachments, and instead devote her attentions to writing a novel. When she realises that her five year old son Roo has followed her, Ishwari struggles with her identity as a mother and the responsibilities that brings, versus the guilty knowledge that she cannot want her own child when his existence requires her to suppress her own dreams. Ishwari and Roo wander the streets at night, looking for a place to stay, until an elderly caretaker takes pity on them and offers them an empty room on the terrace of a guest house. Ishwari gets work as a caregiver to the handsome gentleman who lives next door, while Roo, who is lame, spends all day locked up in the room on the roof. Pulsating with raw energy, Abandon gives voice to the perpetual conflict between life and art.

In the city of Yong'an, a fiction writer and amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These creatures, with their greenish stomachs or gills or strange birthmarks, live alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness, some with ancient forbears, others engineered as artificial breeds. Guided - and often misguided - by her elusive university professor and his scrappy sidekick-student Zhong Liang, our narrator finds herself on a mission to track down each species. And as she blunders from one implausible situation to the next, she comes one step closer to revealing her own multifaceted beastliness... Part detective story, part metaphysical enquiry, Strange Beasts of China addresses existential questions of identity, being, love and morality with whimsy and grace.

An unforgettable book, A Life in Trans Activism will leave the reader questioning the 'safe' and 'comfortable' binaries of male/female that so many of us take for granted.' - Feminism in India. Born in Southern India to a conservative family of modest means, it wasn't long before Revathi noticed she wasn't comfortable participating in life as a man. This realisation set her on a long and winding search for survival and for a life on her terms. From the supportive yet strict -- and at times exploitative -- hijra communities to non-profit spaces rife with other forms of discrimination, Revathi made a name for herself as a fearless advocate for sexual minorities and Dalit rights. In an intimate, months-long conversation with Nandini Murali, Revathi speaks not only about her own journey but also about the obstacles and challenges faced by another, oft-overlooked part of Indian society: trans men. The result is a free-flowing and brutal account of life on the margins that is also shot through with the bright lights of friendship, determination, and solidarity.

A Vietnamese woman living in Paris travels back to Sai Gon for her estranged mother's funeral. Her brother had recently built a new house and staged a grotesquely lavish ceremony for their mother to inaugurate what was rumoured to be the first elevator in a private home in the country. But shortly after the ceremony, in the middle of the night, their mother dies after mysteriously falling down the elevator shaft. Following the funeral, the daughter becomes increasingly fascinated with her family's history, and begins to investigate and track an enigmatic figure, Paul Polotsky, who emerges from her mother's notebook. Like an amateur sleuth, she trails Polotsky through the streets of Paris, sneaking behind him as he goes about his usual routines. Meanwhile, she researches her mother's past - zigzagging across France and Vietnam - trying to find clues to the spiralling, deepening questions her mother left behind unanswered - and perhaps unanswerable.

Roemer makes her English-language debut with this classic of queer Black literature... As Roemer pushes at the boundaries of the senses, she melds biting postcolonial social commentary with a lush dreamscape. Scott's translation is a gift to English-language readers.' -- Publishers Weekly. On a Woman's Madness tells the story of Noenka, a courageous Black woman trying to live a life of her own choosing. When her abusive husband of just nine days refuses her request for divorce, Noenka flees her hometown in Suriname, on South America's tropical northeastern coast, for the capital city of Paramaribo. Unsettled and unsupported, her life in this new place is illuminated by romance and new freedoms, but also forever haunted by her past and society's expectations. Strikingly translated by Lucy Scott, Astrid Roemer's classic queer novel is a tentpole of European and post-colonial literature. And amid tales of plantation-dwelling snakes, rare orchids, and star-crossed lovers, it is also a blistering meditation on the cruelties we inflict on those who disobey. Roemer, the first Surinamese winner of the prestigious Dutch Literature Prize, carves out postcolonial Suriname in barbed, resonant fragments. Who is Noenka? Roemer asks us. 'I'm Noenka,' she responds resolutely, 'which means Never Again.'

Love in the Big City is an energetic, joyful, and moving novel that depicts both the glittering nighttime world of Seoul and the bleary-eyed morning-after. Young is a cynical yet fun-loving Korean student who pinballs from home to class to the beds of recent Tinder matches. He and Jaehee, his female best friend, frequent nearby bars where they push away their anxieties about their love lives, families, and money with rounds of soju and Marlboro Reds. Over time, even Jaehee leaves Young to settle down, leaving him alone to care for his ailing mother and to find companionship in his relationships with a series of men, including one whose handsomeness is matched by his coldness, and another who might end up being the great love of his life. Love in the Big Cityis an exploration of millennial loneliness as well as the joys of queer life, that should appeal to readers of Sayaka Murata, Han Kang, and Cho Nam-Joo.

An eighty-year-old woman slips into a deep depression at the death of her husband, then resurfaces to gain a new lease on life. Her determination to fly in the face of convention - including striking up a friendship with a hijra person - confuses her bohemian daughter, who is used to thinking of herself as the more 'modern' of the two. At the older woman's insistence they travel back to Pakistan, simultaneously confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of Partition, and re-evaluating what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman, a feminist. Rather than respond to tragedy with seriousness, Geetanjali Shree's playful tone and exuberant wordplay results in a book that is engaging, funny, and utterly original, at the same time as being an urgent and timely protest against the destructive impact of borders and boundaries, whether between religions, countries, or genders.

The Impossible Fairy Tale tells the story of the nameless 'Child', who struggles to make a mark on the world, and her classmate Mia, whose spoiled life is everything the Child's is not. At school, adults are nearly invisible, and the society the children create on their own is marked by cruelty, soul-crushing hierarchies and an underlying menace. Then, one day after hours, the Child sneaks into the classroom to add ominous sentences to her classmates' notebooks, unlocking a series of events with cataclysmically horrible consequences. But that is not the end of this eerie, unpredictable novel... Han Yujoo's The Impossible Fairy Tale is a fresh and terrifying exploration of the ethics of creativity, and of the stinging consequences of neglect.

And I struggle to find my place in this dark novel. I yearn for passion and despair - for that is what makes good literature - while Ishwari seeks a life of joy for herself and her son.' A powerful novel from the author of Panty about a woman who runs away from home, seeking to free herself from the shackles of society and familial attachments, and instead devote her attentions to writing a novel. When she realises that her five year old son Roo has followed her, Ishwari struggles with her identity as a mother and the responsibilities that brings, versus the guilty knowledge that she cannot want her own child when his existence requires her to suppress her own dreams. Ishwari and Roo wander the streets at night, looking for a place to stay, until an elderly caretaker takes pity on them and offers them an empty room on the terrace of a guest house. Ishwari gets work as a caregiver to the handsome gentleman who lives next door, while Roo, who is lame, spends all day locked up in the room on the roof. Pulsating with raw energy, Abandon gives voice to the perpetual conflict between life and art.

In the city of Yong'an, a fiction writer and amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These creatures, with their greenish stomachs or gills or strange birthmarks, live alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness, some with ancient forbears, others engineered as artificial breeds. Guided - and often misguided - by her elusive university professor and his scrappy sidekick-student Zhong Liang, our narrator finds herself on a mission to track down each species. And as she blunders from one implausible situation to the next, she comes one step closer to revealing her own multifaceted beastliness... Part detective story, part metaphysical enquiry, Strange Beasts of China addresses existential questions of identity, being, love and morality with whimsy and grace.

An unforgettable book, A Life in Trans Activism will leave the reader questioning the 'safe' and 'comfortable' binaries of male/female that so many of us take for granted.' - Feminism in India. Born in Southern India to a conservative family of modest means, it wasn't long before Revathi noticed she wasn't comfortable participating in life as a man. This realisation set her on a long and winding search for survival and for a life on her terms. From the supportive yet strict -- and at times exploitative -- hijra communities to non-profit spaces rife with other forms of discrimination, Revathi made a name for herself as a fearless advocate for sexual minorities and Dalit rights. In an intimate, months-long conversation with Nandini Murali, Revathi speaks not only about her own journey but also about the obstacles and challenges faced by another, oft-overlooked part of Indian society: trans men. The result is a free-flowing and brutal account of life on the margins that is also shot through with the bright lights of friendship, determination, and solidarity.

A Vietnamese woman living in Paris travels back to Sai Gon for her estranged mother's funeral. Her brother had recently built a new house and staged a grotesquely lavish ceremony for their mother to inaugurate what was rumoured to be the first elevator in a private home in the country. But shortly after the ceremony, in the middle of the night, their mother dies after mysteriously falling down the elevator shaft. Following the funeral, the daughter becomes increasingly fascinated with her family's history, and begins to investigate and track an enigmatic figure, Paul Polotsky, who emerges from her mother's notebook. Like an amateur sleuth, she trails Polotsky through the streets of Paris, sneaking behind him as he goes about his usual routines. Meanwhile, she researches her mother's past - zigzagging across France and Vietnam - trying to find clues to the spiralling, deepening questions her mother left behind unanswered - and perhaps unanswerable.

Roemer makes her English-language debut with this classic of queer Black literature... As Roemer pushes at the boundaries of the senses, she melds biting postcolonial social commentary with a lush dreamscape. Scott's translation is a gift to English-language readers.' -- Publishers Weekly. On a Woman's Madness tells the story of Noenka, a courageous Black woman trying to live a life of her own choosing. When her abusive husband of just nine days refuses her request for divorce, Noenka flees her hometown in Suriname, on South America's tropical northeastern coast, for the capital city of Paramaribo. Unsettled and unsupported, her life in this new place is illuminated by romance and new freedoms, but also forever haunted by her past and society's expectations. Strikingly translated by Lucy Scott, Astrid Roemer's classic queer novel is a tentpole of European and post-colonial literature. And amid tales of plantation-dwelling snakes, rare orchids, and star-crossed lovers, it is also a blistering meditation on the cruelties we inflict on those who disobey. Roemer, the first Surinamese winner of the prestigious Dutch Literature Prize, carves out postcolonial Suriname in barbed, resonant fragments. Who is Noenka? Roemer asks us. 'I'm Noenka,' she responds resolutely, 'which means Never Again.'