| Programming note: we’ll be attending TLA next Thursday, so look for the Communiqué back in your inbox on April 25. Thanks! —Jordan
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Hot News This Week
April 11, 2024
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| “Unsurprisingly, given that it culminated in both his masterpiece and his death, [George] Orwell’s time on the island has been picked over by biographers, but Orwell’s Island: George, Jura and 1984, by Les Wilson, treats it as a subject worthy of stand-alone attention.”
An essay in The Atlantic’s May issue discusses how Orwell’s Island (Saraband) complicates “our sense of Orwell as an intrepid journalist.” Read the piece here.
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“The art in this book immediately caught my eye. It’s sharp; it doesn’t mimic the style found in so many children’s books right now. . . . I love this book’s personality: it’s exploding with imagination and originality, just like the garden at its center.” — Miriam, Three Lives & Company (New York, NY)
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| International Booker Finalists and PEN Award Longlisters
We’re thrilled to see a number of Consortium titles up for two major prizes; congrats, all!
On April 8, PEN America announced the longlists for their 2024 Literary Awards, including eight CBSD titles:
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 Click here for more top titles publishing next Tuesday, April 16.
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★ “This has the feel of an instant classic. . . . García Elizondo pays homage to Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Paramo in his stunning English-language debut about a heroin addict who arrives in a near-deserted Mexican village to die there.” — Publishers Weekly
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| | Fugitive/Refuge
by Philip Metres
Copper Canyon Press • April 2024 • 9781556596698
★ “The powerful sixth book from Metres, who is of Lebanese descent, confronts the trials of the present moment—including forced migration, climate change, and nationalism—through his family’s migration story.” — Publishers Weekly
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| | The Field
by Dave Lapp
Conundrum Press • May 2024 • 9781772620948
★ “Reminiscent of Chester Brown, with the slightest shades of Edward Gorey . . . Lapp’s sensitive yet unsentimental portrait of fading innocence is an exceptional achievement.” — Publishers Weekly
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| | American Abductions
by Mauro Javier Cárdenas
Deep Vellum / Dalkey Archive Press • May 2024 • 9781628975185
★ “Ecuadorian writer Cárdenas contemplates a dystopian future for Latin Americans in the US. . . . A dark, original work.” — Kirkus Reviews
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★ “The bright and speculative latest from CAConrad delivers poems whose forms reflect their interest in organic processes. . . . As the climate crisis intensifies, these affecting and imaginative poems offer readers a space to reflect on what still remains.” — Publishers Weekly
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“This collection feels like a leap forward. . . . Dutton’s greatest powers are her immense skill with language; her exacting attention to image, sound, phrase; her commitment to creating strangeness and newness.” — The Believer
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“This stylish compendium is packed with facts about insect attributes, diets, life cycles and habitats. For each species she describes, Ms. Voisard identifies one with similar looks (‘Not to be confused with . . . ’), so as to keep the budding field scientist from being misled.” — Wall Street Journal
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| | The Hebrew Teacher
by Maya Arad, trans. Jessica Cohen
New Vessel Press • March 2024 • 9781954404236
“A poignant, almost elegiac feeling imbues each of Arad’s novellas. . . . The particulars of language and culture and place set Arad’s work apart.” — Jewish Review of Books
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| New Digital Review Copies
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“Regardless of where they are reading from, readers will be able to understand this subject with a fresh appreciation of how global struggles past, present, and future are linked by the making and unmaking of cities.” — Ayesha A. Siddiqi
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