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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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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DAUGHTER OF SILENCE
Manuela Fingueret
Translated from the Spanish by Darrell B. Lockhart

A caste of murderers. The Nazis gassed, starved, humiliated. Here they insult, torture, rape. Caste of murderers….Am I here or there?
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Reviewed by Andy Barnes
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THE SOMETIMES LAKE
Sandy Bonny

The stories in The Sometimes Lake reflect Sandy Bonny's passion for science. Whether the character is a teacher working with disadvantaged indigenous children in Canada's far north…
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Reviewed by Joyce Nickel
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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
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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 UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY
Rachel Joyce

One day Harold Fry, a retiree getting on in years, sets off to post a letter of condolence to a former friend, Queenie Hennessey, who is dying of cancer. He hasn't seen her in twenty years and can manage only, "I'm sorry." At the first letter box, he decides …
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Reviewed by Tad Deffler


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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