GJAK by Dimosthenis Papamarkos (Peirene £12.99, 160pp)
Hailed as an instant classic of Greek fiction upon its publication in 2020, this thunderbolt of a novel arrives in English courtesy of the translator Siân Valvis, who read it in lockdown and was desperate to share it with friends who don’t speak Greek, as her foreword explains.
Its title means ‘blood’ (in the sense of ‘kin’ and ‘violence’ as well as what’s in your veins), and it’s styled as a collection of oral testimony from Greek-Albanian soldiers returning in 1922 to southern Greece after defeat in the three-year Greco-Turkish War.
Their pungent memories of carnage blow the reader away in a vernacular whirlwind that evidently drew deeply on Valvis’s lexical ingenuity; Greek isn’t the only language she’s translating since the book’s speakers also use an Albanian dialect, Arvanitic.
A novel that can be read in an afternoon yet lingers much longer.
PARADISE BURNS by Pol Guasch (Peninsula Press £12.99, 144pp)
Catalan poet Guasch’s celebrated first novel, Napalm In The Heart, followed a band of outcasts in a conflict-ravaged wasteland. His second continues the dystopian theme, unfolding in an eerily militarised mining town known only as the Colony, home to twentysomething pals Rita and LÃton and beset by wildfires and plague.
The desolation in which they live emerges obliquely in a narrative that toggles playfully between different storytelling styles.
As we wind back through LÃton’s friendship with Rita, the austerity of the stealthily unspecific setting is lit up by flashes of tenderness as well as sexual release, rendered perilous by a deadly virus.
An allegorical requiem for lives lost to Aids, as well as a troublingly resonant sci-fi about Gen Z hopes in a ruined world – like a post-apocalyptic Conversations With Friends for an era of perma-crisis.
AFTER CARE by Divya Maniar (Verve £10.99, 288pp)
Maniar, a Singaporean writer based in the UK, plumbs the depths of modern-day celebrity for this punchy debut about a former dating show contestant plunged into depression by post-fame anonymity.
Her trouble really starts when she’s thrust back into the spotlight after the suicide of another ex-contestant, her on-screen nemesis. As she’s castigated by fans online, the turn of events gives her cause to be careful what she wishes for, not least when she gets the chance to appear on a new, even more manipulative reality show.
Maniar revels in her subject’s potential for satire, yet her concerns – about truth and ethics – are serious, even earnest. But you feel the book’s questions are settled from the start: the undeniable allure of the world on display never gets a chance to shine against its dark side.
