#chad post

12 Standout New Songs From February That May Have Gone Under Your Radar

We at TREMG love spotlighting rising and underappreciated talent to give underground creators a platform and the recognition they deserve. So many artists spent February offering fans new treats, releasing some of the best work of their career, and opening up in their lyrics like never before. Throughout February, we got to talk to incredible artists like Molly Moore, NandoInTheBando, and AVIV…

Another direction than yours, it’s:

One of the few options to have a non-crossclan next gen:

the weird second cousin who is equally terrifying-looking and yet equally loving:

“are there any cute boys my age in the clans” well. n:

this one is just shrek:

David Peace, Red Riding Quartet I started reading this well I was waiting for Red or Dead to come out, and was immediately hooked. It’s like a more literary, more expansive, book version of True Detective. Peace is one of the most experimental crime writers out there. 

Sergio de la Pava, A Naked Singularity Only took me four years to finally get around to reading this, and now I’m driving the bandwagon of De la Pava fans. Yes, this is very Gaddis-like, but it’s also much more contemporary, and a perfect mix of pure joy (this is probably the funniest book I’ve read all year) and social commentary (our criminal justice system is fucked). 

Valeria Luiselli, Sidewalks and Faces in the Crowd I really, really, really wanted Faces in the Crowd to win this year’s “World Cup of Literature”, but alas, Bolaño was just too much for this amazing new literary voice. Luiselli is at the start of a sure-to-be magical career, and everyone should read both of these books before Coffee House releases her new one next fall. Faces is an inventive novelists with multiple narrators and ghosts; the essays in Sidewalks remind me of the best of Dubravka Ugresic. 

Emmanuel Carrere, Limonov Carrere is another writer that I probably should’ve read years ago, but only got to for the first time in 2014. And I started with this book about the crazy Russian writer cum political activist, Eduard Limonov. Limonov’s life is absolutely fascinating—from punk down-and-out writer to fighting in the Serbian army to being hated by Putin to starting Russia’s most popular fascist political party—and Carrere follows his subject through all of this, conveying the interesting weirdness of Limonov in an incredibly smooth, captivating way. 

Juan Jose Saer, La Grande Saer is the quintessential Open Letter author, and I’m glad that I’m in a position to bring as many of his works to English readers as possible. Although this was his final book, it’s a great place for new readers to enter into Saer’s world, which is populated by writers, critics, wine sellers, beautiful adulterers, and journalists, all living in Rosario, Argentina. Also, this book has the best final sentence in literary history: “With the rain came the fall, and with the fall, the time of the wine.” 

Naja Marie Aidt, Baboon These stories are SO DARK! Naja is an amazing talent, finally making her way from Danish into English after a couple decades of publishing poetry and story collections. Open Letter is actually doing her first novel next fall, but in the meantime, this will definitely tide you over. Every story is like a brutal gem in which shit gets consistently fucked up. She’s the best. 

“I’ve made some coffee. You do drink coffee, don’t you?”

“No,” said Katri pleasantly. “I don’t drink coffee.”

Anna was taken aback, more astonished than hurt. Everyone drinks coffee if it’s offered. It’s only proper; you do it for the hostess’s sake. She said, “Tea, perhaps?”

“No thank you,” said Katri Kling.

—Tove Jansson, The True Deceiver, translated by Thomas Teal

(Chad Post of Three Percent recently picked The True Deceiver as one of the 20 Best Books in Translation You've Never Read.)

The place to see who's hot and who's not in literary translation publishing, in the U.S., at least. . . . The database shows what publishers of translation are actually buying and putting out there, what authors are trending among publishers, and who their translators are. 

It's also a good way to see if that novel or poetry collection that's grabbed your attention has already been taken or not. 

Open Letter started the Translation Database to track translated books published in the United States by year, author, translator, publisher, language, and country.

Editor Chad Post describes the mission: