Alexandra Schwartz | The Nation

Joan Didion’s Blue Nights, Peter Van Buren’s We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People.

In The Marriage Plot Jeffrey Eugenides can’t explain what happens to his characters without throwing in every last why.

Jean-Patrick Manchette’s Fatale, Binyavanga Wainaina’s One Day I Will Write About This Place, Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s The History of Costaguana

Daniel Orozco, Orientation and Other Stories; Mercè Rodoreda, The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda.

Nicole Krauss's Great House swings from the evocative to the overcharged.

For Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, the fantastical is always found in the startling, dark and unfathomable episodes of daily life.