Belletrista - A site promoting translated women authored literature from around the world
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Roma Tearne: Weaving the Political and the Personal. Joyce Nickel gives us an in-depth look at the Sri Lankan author and her work.

Julie Wakeman-Linn: Kathleen Ambrogi reviews her novel Chasing the Leopard Finding the Lion, and talks with the author.

Sefi Atta's bold new novel is about more than African identity. . . Read chapter one of A Bit of Difference.

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Reviews
Click on 'Reviews' to see the full list of this issue's reviews...
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NEW ISLANDS AND OTHER STORIES
María Luisa Bombal
Translated from the Spanish by Richard and Lucia Cunningham

There is consensus that María Luisa Bombal is amongst the Latin American literary stars. Says Jorge Luis Borges in the preface to this slim volume of short stories: "…In Santiago, Chile, Buenos Aires, in Caracas or Lima, when they name the best names, María Luisa Bombal is never missing from the list."
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Reviewed by Akeela Gaibie-Dawood
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THE FORRESTS
Emily Perkins

Frank and Lee move their family of four children from New York to Auckland. Frank is an unrecognized artist from a background of wealth and entitlement, but in New Zealand the family is barely surviving.
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Reviewed by Judy Lim
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IN THE SHADOW OF THE BANYAN
Vaddey Ratner

Imagine that you are a five-year-old princess of the Cambodian monarchy, living a life of luxury, surrounded by love and a large family. Then imagine that one day your family is violently jettisoned into the countryside with the rest of the urban population, and everything you know is destroyed.
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Reviewed by Lisa Sanders
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THE ART FORGER
B. A. Shapiro

I am sometimes masochistic in my reading choices. I chain myself to complex literary tomes through which I may trudge dutifully but not always joyfully. Those books pay a great dividend, so I don't regret my efforts, but there are …
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Reviewed by Kathleen Ambrogi
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PEDRA CANGA
Tereza Albues
Translated from the Portuguese by Clifford E. Landers

Pedra Canga, the eponymous fictional village, lies in a remote part of Brazil. It is dominated by the Mangueiral, a stone estate separated from the village by walls topped with barbed wire and broken glass on three sides, and the Saranzal River full of snakes and alligators on the fourth.
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Reviewed by Jean Hughes Raber
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MASTER OF THE GRASS
Nina Gabrielyan
Translated from the Russian by Kathleen Cook et al

Master of the Grass is a well-translated collection of one eponymous novella and six short stories by Nina Gabrielyan, a Russian writer of Armenian descent. Motifs of mirrors and dreams run through these stories, and the narratives themselves are more or less dream-like, the boundary between the sleeping and the waking world kept close and permeable…
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Reviewed by Tim Jones


Angélica Gorodischer Book Cover
The noted and versatile Argentinian author has a newly translated novel forthcoming in February. Read an excerpt of Trafalgar.
Uzma Aslam Khan Book Cover
A tribute to the nomadic peoples in the mountains of Pakistan and its border neighbors, Uzma's new novel Thinner Than Skin is also a love story. Read an excerpt.
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