Books I Should’ve Written About in 2016

Unsurprisingly, there are considerably more books for which I didn’t write formal blurbs. This, however, does not mean that several did not merit it. On quite the contrary! Here is a list of a few books that came out in 2016 that I very highly suggest you check out, or perhaps give as a gift (if that is your wont this time, or any time, of year).

Poetry

** Daniel Borzutzky, The Performance of Being Human

** Tyehimba Jess, Olio

** Douglas Kearney, Buck Studies

** Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

** Solmaz Sharif, Look

** Ocean Vuong, Night Sky With Exit Wounds

 

 

Fiction

** László Krasznahorkai, The Last Wolf / Herman [trans by John Batki & George Szirtes]

** Halldor Laxness, Wayward Heroes [trans. by Phillip Roughton]

** Lina Meruane, Seeing Red [trans. by Megan McDowell]

** Daniel Saldaña Paris, Among Strange Victims [trans. by Christina Macsweeney]

** Max Porter, Grief Is the Thing With Feathers

**  Guillermo Saccomanno, Gesell Dome [trans. by Andrea G. Labinger]

 

Non-Fiction/Essays

** Brian Blanchfield, Proxies: Essays Near Knowing

** Renee Gladman, Calamities

** Lily Hoang, A Bestiary

** Óscar Martínez, A History of Violence: Living and Dying in Central America [trans. by John B. Washington]

**  Philippe Soupault, Lost Profiles: Memoirs of Cubism, Dada & Surrealism [trans. by Alan Bernheimer]

** Eliot Weinberger, The Ghosts of Birds