These sorts of events are only as good as their participants, and this is one hell of a line-up:

Edwidge Danticat—author of Breath, Eyes, Memory and several other books;

Mitchell Kaplan—owner of Books & Books;

Walter K. Lew—English prof and translator of Korean poetry;

R. Zamora Linmark—author of Rolling the Rs and two collections of poetry;

Becka Mara McKay—translator from Hebrew of Suzane Adam’s Laundry and Alex Epstein’s Blue Has No South;

and Pamela Thompson—director and co-founder of Clockroot Books.

So if you’re in the area, this is definitely worth checking out. It takes place from 4:30-6:30 at the Wesley House (1210 Stanford Drive, Coral Gables).

Jenna is an intern with Open Letter, a former intern for literary agent Meredith Bernstein, and an incredibly good proofreader.

Her review opens:

Suzane Adam is an renowned author in Israel and received the Kugel Prize in 2006 for her novel, Janis’s Mother. Adam’s first novel, Laundry, her first novel to be translated from Hebrew into English, is a novel that captivates from the first page with a mysterious narrator and even more elusive plot.

The novel begins en media res with a narrative that hints towards a tragic event that has occurred and the confusion and concern that it has caused to those observing its aftermath. The structure of the novel progresses into a story told from the beginning, a story that will explain the recent tragic event, which is both the novel’s opening and its conclusion, but begins when the main character is a five-year-old with curious violet eyes. The narrative itself is clear and seems almost effortless in its moving pace and mesmerizing plot, a seamlessness which the reader may contribute to both Adam and her translator, Becka Mara McKay.

Click here for the rest.

This month we’re reporting on the war at home, with international dispatches on domestic conflicts. Here homeland security is both threatened and maintained, as couples tie the knot but long to cut the cord, and double lives are singled out. From Norwegian train stations to Greek port towns, in Armenian saga and Mayan myth, households are besieged but also defended as the family turns on its nuclear power. Kjell Askildsen, Constance Delaunay, Juan Forn, Espido Freire, Lena Kitsopoulou, Hagop Oshagan, Miguel Angel Oxlaj Cúmez, Mercè Rodoreda, Astrid Roemer, and Olga Tokarczuk keep the home fires burning (or burning down the house).

As usual, there are a number of great pieces included, such as the Rodoreda stories ( and ) and which was translated by Becka Mara McKay and published by Autumn Hill Books.