Denise Newman

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A provocative and unsettling view of relationships

BaboonThere’s nothing terribly likeable about the characters in Baboon, Naja Marie Aidt’s collection of short stories. Relationships are at the core of the stories but the situations Aidt explores in each of the 15 tales is often unpleasant; child abuse, the breakdown of a marriage, sexual assault, discordant siblings, mental and physical illness. Yet there is something disconcertingly fascinating about the bleak snapshots. A reader’s guilty voyeurism.

In The Interruption, for example, a stranger forces her way into a young man’s apartment and refuses to leave. In Candy a man launches a wild and ultimately humiliating tirade in a shop after his wife is arrested for shoplifting. In The Green Darkness of the Big Trees a man crushed by depression finds relief by looking up at the thick woodland canopy.

Aidt’s writing is angular and spare. Often she uses a chronological, sometimes almost minute by minute recounting that gives you the feeling of being a bystander trying not to

Longlist for 2015 Best Translated Fiction Book Award announced

France and Argentina dominate the Long list for the 2015 Best Translated 
Fiction Book Award which has just been announced with four nominations each.  Spain has three and the Czech Republic and China two each. In all, 14 countries including Rwanda, Brazil and Angola are included. The shortlist will be announced on 5 May with the winner being revealed on 27 May.

The full list is:

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