Five Books Old and New to See in the New Season

Five books in translation describing far-away places and experiences to make back-to-school and back to work a little less daunting.

LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR, Pirkko Saisio

Penguin Books, pp. 288

Written in a distinctive staccato prose which toggles between persons as well as time periods, Lowest Common Denominator tells the story of the author, one of Finland’s preeminent novelists, as she lives through her childhood growing up as a queer child of communist parents in 1950s Finland, all the while mixing these memories with impressions of her father who has recently passed away.

Given the subject matter, as well as the fact that it’s the first instalment in a trilogy, one might be tempted to compare it to Tove Ditlevsen’s The Copenhagen Trilogy or Annie Ernaux—but the book feels completely original not only in its special construction but also in the way it looks at things from a slightly odd, distorting angle, as if through a fisheye. 

Translated from French by Mia Spangenberg.

ARTURO’S ISLAND, Elsa Morante

Pushkin Press, pp. 384

Before Natalia Ginzburg, Goliarda Sapienza, and Alba de Céspedes, all authors who went through a rediscovery in recent years thanks to the blockbuster success of Elena Ferrante—there was Elsa Morante, the novelist who together with husband Alberto Moravia formed the original power couple of Italian letters.

First published in 1957, but just reissued by Pushkin Press, Arturo’s Island is her most famous work, a classic tale of lost innocence and coming-of-age rife bubbling with unexpressed Oedipal energy set on the Neapolitan island of Procida in the lead-up to the Second World War. If you ever wanted to know where Ferrante gets some of her themes, as well as its pseudonym, this is the author for you. 

Translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein.

THE OUTERMOST HOUSE, Henry Beston 

Pushkin Press, pp. 224

First published in 1928, The Outermost House tells of a year in the life of author of Henry Beston who came to spend a couple of weeks in his newly built cottage on the outer beach of Cape Cod and found himself so transfixed by the nature he found there that he decided to spend there the time it takes for a whole rotation of the earth around the sun. 

It is not the first time I feature a tale of retreat in the wilderness in this column—I guess there is a theme there, or material for the analyst. However, the book in question, Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman by Patrick Hutchison, had a healthy dose of humour in it (as per title). By contrast, Benson’s classic is nature writing at its most luxuriant and sublime. 

SYMPATHY TOWER TOKYO, Rie Qudan 

Penguin Books, pp. 144

Set in a near-future Tokyo in which sympathy has reached so far that even criminals should have a right to luxury living, Sympathy Tower Tokyo follows protagonist Sara Machina, the architect who has been tasked with designing such a building but who has qualms about the whole enterprise and, increasingly unsure, starts to seek advice from an AI chatbot. 

Inspired by real “conversations” the author entertained with an artificial intelligence, it caused a bit of a sensation in Japan where it won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, the equivalent of the English Booker, and became a sensation in 2024. 

Translated from Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood.

GOOD AND EVIL AND OTHER STORIES, Samantha Schweblin

Picador, pp. 192

The author of by now classic novella Fever Dream, which takes as its point of departure the massive spreading of glyphosate in the Argentinian pampas as a result of soy monoculture—Samantha Schweblin is, together with Mariana Enriquez, Argentina’s best-known author as well as the best interpreter of literatura fantástica, that genre which finds the uncanny in the everyday, a mode first popularised by Julio Cortázar. Written in English, Good and Evil and Other Stories is a good addition to her body of work as well as the canon of this quintessentially Latin American genre.

Bartolomeo Sala is a writer and reader based in London. His writing has appeared in Frieze, Vittles, and The Brooklyn Rail. You can find all of Bart’s writing for Something Curated here.

Header photo: Taken from Pirkko Saisio’s Lowest Common Denominator, courtesy Penguin Books.