It’s the last installment of our anticipated reads list for 2024, and we’re ending things with overseas literature from Buenos Aires to Palestine to Namibia to Venezuela, exciting returns from alt-lit icons, and non-fiction that pulls from past poems to speculative gazes at the future. Turn the heat up, take your picks, and we’ll see you in 2025!
A Century of Tomorrows: How Imagining the Future Shapes the Present, Glenn Adamson (December 3)
A Century of Tomorrows: How Imagining the Future Shapes the PresentReferencing speculators like Octavia Butler, Ursula K. LeGuin and Timothy Leary, the historian Glenn Adamson traces how futuristic thinking went right, wrong, or at least managed to change the confines of today. Humans make bold claims when we think about the future, something we’re uniquely capable of, and the rise of prediction comes with a slew of issues, advantages, and self-fulfilling prophecies.
Private Rites, Julia Armfield (December 3)
Private RitesJulia Armfield’s debut novel Our Wives Under the Sea was one of the most haunting and mesmerizing reads of 2022, so it makes sense her follow-up, Private Rites, is equally as enthralling. A master of atmosphere, it’s a queer reimagining of King Lear, where the rain pours down on three sisters: Isla, Irene, and Agnes, whose lives are shattered after the death of their father, and the story of their fates unfolding bizarrely and at times horrifically.
Woo Woo, Ella Baxter (December 3)
Woo WooElla Baxter follows up the gritty New Animal with Woo Woo, a winking and very funny satire on the interpretation of art. Sabine is a provocative conceptual artist disillusioned by her colleagues’ constant over-analyzing and successful creations, tied down by her increasingly skeptical husband and doting fans she interacts with live on TikTok. While preparing for her new exhibition (Fuck You, Pay Me), she can’t escape two figures: the ghost of an artist past named Carolee Schneemann, and an unidentified stalker pulled from real experiences in Baxter’s life.
Sand-Catcher, Omar Khalifah, translated by Barbara Romaine (December 3)
Sand-CatcherA biting version of Citizen Kane, four Palestinian journalists are tasked with telling the story of the 1948 Nabka through one of the last remaining sources, an elderly man. He’s reclusive and unwilling to go through his memories, however, much to the chagrin of the writers, and the history they’re withholding from the people who need to learn about the history of the nation. Omar Khalifah’s satirical debut Sand-Catcher asks questions about journalism, memory, and who gets to tell one’s own story.
Berlin Atomized, Julia Kornberg, translated by Jack Rockwell (December 3)
Berlin AtomizedA slyly adventurous book with markings of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad, Julia Kornberg’s debut follows the lives of the three Goldstein siblings, growing up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, eventually migrating around the globe to Berlin, Brussels, Tokyo, Jerusalem, and Uruguay. Nina, Mateo, and Jeremías — whose escapades range from darkly-lit parties, joining the IDF, and getting enfolded into futuristic environmental protests — have common problems like roommates and dating, unfurling under extraordinary circumstances where Kornberg imagines a fractured, eerie future. Berlin Atomized constantly surprises and charms.
Only Stars Know the Meaning of Space, Rémy Ngamije (December 3)
Only Stars Know the Meaning of SpaceBilled as a ‘literary mixtape,’ the second book from Rémy Ngamije, the founder of Namibia’s first literary magazine Doek!, is a mix of autofiction, memoir, and short stories. Imaginative and immersive, Ngamije tells stories through poetry and shopping lists, complete with a B-side like a true tracklist. A student of music and fiction, Ngamije’s Only Stars Know the Meaning of Space is a modern treat.
What In Me Is Dark: The Revolutionary Afterlife of Paradise Lost, Orlando Reade (December 10)
What In Me Is Dark: The Revolutionary Afterlife of Paradise LostIt’s rare a poem can come to enchant — or haunt — four centuries-worth of thinkers, writers, and fans, but John Milton’s ten-book epic Paradise Lost continues to perplex. Going through notable figures like Virginia Woolf, Hannah Arendt and Malcolm X, English Literature PhD Orlando Reade analyzes and traces the ever-changing story of a story in What In Me Is Dark and how it fits through the mold of time.
No Place to Bury the Dead, Karina Sainz Borgo, translated by Elizabeth Bryer (December 10)
No Place to Bury the DeadA mysterious plague spreads in an unnamed Latin American country which immediately erases the memory of anyone afflicted. Angustias Romero tries to escape, but she loses both of her children and ends up in the liminal town of Mezquite, overrun by gangs and tricky storytellers alike. She has some relief honoring her children at The Third Cemetery, but is subsumed in a power struggle with its landowner, who stands to block Angustias from fully realizing her history and family.
The Champ Is Here, Nathan Dragon (December 12)
The Champ Is HereNathan Dragon’s surreal, bombastic (very) short stories often explode on impact, casting portraits of dreamers, small town dwellers, and husbands, showing a stranger and more complex side of contemporary American masculinity. There’s plenty to recognize in Dragon’s existential and bizarre narrators, whether it be yourself, a friend, or a thought pattern down which you thought no one else went.
