Dry Season by Gabriela Babnik, translated by Rawley Grau

Dry Season
Gabriela Babnik
Translated by Rawley Grau (Slovene)
Originally 2012, I read 2015 translation (ebook review copy)
Literary fiction

Many thanks to Istros Books for providing a review copy of this novel! 

Ana, a 62-year-old graphic designer from Slovenia, has run away to a completely foreign place – Burkina Faso. There she meets Ismael, a 27-year-old former street kid with a history of abuse, and they begin a relationship despite – or perhaps because of - their differences. As Ana and Ismael take turns telling us, the readers, about their complex and pain-filled lives, we wander with them further into the dream captivating them.

This novel plays with the stereotypes of the old white woman in Africa as a tourist and the street kid with a history of abuse. Ana and Ismael both are and are not prime examples of their stereotype. Underneath his rough exterior, Ismael thinks deeply and is widely read. He can engage intellectually with the world around him. He isn’t really the fighting, drug dealing street kid that the stereotype would lead you to expect – although he does get involved with those kinds of activities sometimes.

Ana tells us that she chose Burkina Faso because of its complete dissimilarity to where she came from. But the longer she stays, the more she realizes that this new place is not all that foreign after all; she has had similar affairs in the past (with dark-skinned, younger men) and this seems like a repeat all over again. Or did those other affairs actually happen?

Read the rest of my review at Shiny New Books.

Further Reading: 

"Gabriela Babnik" from the European Union Prize for Literature

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Till Kingdom Come by Andrej Nikolaidis, translated by Will Firth

Till Kingdom Come
Andrej Nikolaidis
Translated by Will Firth (from Montenegrin)
2015, I read ARC ebook
125 pages, black humor, satire, mystery

Many thanks to Istros Books for providing a review copy of this book. 

Strange things are happening to our narrator, a local newspaper reporter living in the seaside town of Ulcinj, Montenegro – an ancient seaport notorious for being the pirate capital of the Adriatic Sea for centuries. First, after a long drinking session with his friends (including his love interest Maria), he wakes up as a teenage boy in Sarajevo, where he as never been before, walking drunk through the city in the middle of the night; this “episode” continues until the following morning, when he suddenly realizes that he is standing on the balcony of his house in Ulcinj.

Then, when his life is already falling apart because of these “episodes” (which take him into a different place or person every time), he is summoned to the capital by a high-ranking government official, who wants him to quit his job writing conspiracy theories for the newspaper and work for him.

Then, a man appears in his house claiming to be his great-uncle – but, at the same time, stating that the narrator’s grandmother, who raised him, wasn’t actually a blood relative. After the demise of this claimed relative, the narrator begins to search for the truth of his own origins. Or would, if the “episodes” and his own innate apathy didn’t get in the way.

Read the rest of my review in Issue 7 of Shiny New Books! 

Till Kingdom Come is available in the US from Amazon, and in the UK from Hive and Amazon.