The excellent books I’ve not been reading

As September began, with the prospect of a long-awaited trip looming, I had imagined I would have read and reviewed several new and recent releases before taking flight. Now it looks like these same books will be joining me on my way to India. I’d pictured myself only packing a few slender volumes so as to leave room to acquire more and still remain within the tighter weight restrictions of my internal flights. I should still be fine, of course, and I will still be able to fill up with even more books, so far as I can afford, before I head home from Bangalore. And, without even having to buy a second bag to get home as I have in the past.

It has been just shy of four full years since my last visit to India—in fact, since my last trip anywhere. I have spent hours sorting out flights, reserving hotels, making sure all my expenses at home are covered and making endless lists (which my toothless cat has mutilated on more than one occasion as he is inclined to do with my notebooks and sticky note reminders when I’ve recklessly left them unattended). I’ve also been invited to give a talk while I’m in India, so preparations for that have required my attention, as have an endless number of last minute errands. Considering how very busy I was prior to my last trip in 2019, it’s a wonder I got out of the door at all. Perhaps the enterprise of travel after the upheaval of the still-lingering pandemic is more precious and more precarious, and I don’t want to leave as much to chance as I did before.

Anyhow, the books I have been reading, each excellent in their own way, deserve a mention now should I not manage a proper review until I get back. I am not only a slow reader, but I’m an equally slow writer and I do hope to manage even a little personal writing while I’m away.

A Practical Guide to Levitation by José Eduardo Agualusa, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn (Archipelago) is a brilliantly fun collection of short stories set in Portugal, Brazil and Angola. For me, Agualusa’s eccentric characters and fondness for magical realism work so well in the short form.

The Box: A Novel by Bermudian writer Mandy-Suzanne Wong (Graywolf/House of Anansi Press) is a high-concept novel revolving around an enigmatic, unopenable box and the effect it has on those who come into contact with it. I’m only a couple of chapters in, but so far it makes me think of Czech writer Michal Ajvaz’s playful, intelligent postmodern fiction and I’m eager to see where it goes.

Finally, River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation, from the new Canadian publisher, trace press, is a collection of essays by poets, writers and translators from across the globe, edited by Nuzhat Abbas. These formally inventive pieces invite us, as the description advises, “to consider translation as a form of ethical and political love—one that requires attentive regard of the other—and a making an unmaking of self.” This project of decolonial feminism is a very important exploration of the intersection of language with questions of  identity, belonging, gender and sexuality, giving space to voices and perspectives that many of us might not hear or even consider otherwise. It is leading me to ask myself difficult questions about what my own interest in reading and promoting work in translation really means. And with many South Asian contributors I suspect this book would have landed in my travel bag anyhow—it seems only right.

Now, with only one day until I leave, I plan to continue to fuss over my packing, take a very long walk to celebrate the colours that will be gone by the time I get back and, with luck, get a little more reading done!

Author: roughghosts

Literary blog of Joseph Schreiber. Writer. Reader. Editor. Photographer. View all posts by roughghosts