Restless Books Rights Catalog 2020 Restless Books Mission

Restless Books is an independent, nonprofit publisher devoted to championing essen- tial voices from around the world whose stories speak to us across linguistic and cultural borders. We seek extraordinary international literature for adults and young readers that feeds our restlessness: our hunger for new perspectives, passion for other cultures and languages, and eagerness to explore beyond the confines of the familiar. Through cultural programming, we aim to celebrate immigrant writing and bring literature to underserved communities. We believe that immigrant stories are a vital component of our cultural consciousness; they help to ensure awareness of our communities, build empathy for our neighbors, and strengthen our democracy.

https://restlessbooks.org/mission Fiction Highlights 4 The City of Good Death by Priyanka Champaneri Red Dust by Yoss, translated from the Spanish by David Frye A Planet for Rent by Yoss, translated from the Spanish by David Frye Super Extra Grande by Yoss, translated from the Spanish by David Frye Condomnauts by Yoss, translated from the Spanish by David Frye I Am God by Giacomo Sartori, translated from the Italian by Frederika Randall Temporary People by Deepak Unnikrishnan Beyond the Rice Fields by Naivo, translated from the French by Allison Charette Nonfiction Highlights 12

How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish edited by Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert Nine Moons by Gabriela Wiener, translated from the Spanish by Jessica Powell Sexographies by Gabriela Wiener, translated from the Spanish by Lucy Greaves and Jennifer Adcock The Body Papers by Grace Talusan The Face: A Time Code by Ruth Ozeki God Is Round by Juan Villoro, translated from the Spanish by Thomas Bunstead Young Readers Highlights 18

Rat Rule 79 by Rivka Galchen, illustrations by Elena Megalos Daniel and Ismail by Juan Pablo Iglesias, illustrations by Alex Peris Ramayana: An Illustrated Retelling by Arshia Sattar, illustrations by Sonali Zohra The Wild Book by Juan Villoro, translated from the Spanish by Lawrence Schimel

The Casket of Time by Andri Snær Magnason, translated from the Icelandic by Björg Arnadóttir and Andrew Cauthery Run For Your Life by Silvana Gandolfi, translated from the Italian by Lynne Sharon Schawrz

Backlist Highlights 24 The City of Good Death by Priyanka Champaneri Winner of the 2018 Prize for New Immigrant Writing

Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Priyanka Champaneri’s transcendent debut novel brings us inside India’s holy city of Banaras, where the manager of a death hostel shepherds the dying who seek the release of a good death, while his own past refu- ses to let him go.

Banaras, Varanasi, Kashi: India’s holy city on the banks of the Ganges has many names but holds one ultimate promise for Hindus. It is the place where pilgrims come for a good death, to be released from the cycle of reincarnation by purifying fire. As the dutiful manager of a death hostel in Kashi, Pramesh welcomes the dying and assists families bound for the funeral pyres that burn constantly on the ghats. The soul is gone, the body is burnt, the time is past, he tells them. Detach. After ten years in the timeless city, Pramesh can nearly persuade himself that here, there is no past or future. He lives contentedly at the death hostel with his wife, Shobha, their young daughter, Rani, the hostel priests, his hapless but winning assistant, and the cons- tant flow of families with their dying kin. But one day the past arri- US Publication June 2020 ves in the lifeless form of a man pulled from the river—a man with 9781632062529 • $27 • 6” x 9” • Fiction—India / an uncanny resemblance to Pramesh. Family Saga Called “twins” in their childhood village, he and his cousin Sagar Rights Held: World, Audio are inseparable until Pramesh leaves to see the outside world and Sagar stays to tend the land. After Pramesh marries Shobha, • WINNER OF THE RESTLESS BOOKS defying his family’s wishes, a rift opens up between the cousins that he has long since tried to forget. Do not look back. Detach. But PRIZE FOR NEW IMMIGRANT for Shobha, Sagar’s reemergence casts a shadow over the life she’s WRITING built for her family. Soon, an unwelcome guest takes up residence • AN EXPANSIVE FAMILY SAGA IN THE in the death hostel, the dying mysteriously continue to live, and Pramesh is forced to confront his own ideas about death, rebirth, TRADITION OF GREAT INDIAN and redemption. NOVELS Told in lush, vivid detail and with an unforgettable cast of charac- • AN EXPLORATION OF DEATH, ters, The City of Good Death is a remarkable debut novel of family and love, memory and ritual, and the ways in which we honor the REBIRTH, AND REDEMPTION living and the dead. • DEBUT NOVEL FROM AN EXCITING NEW VOICE IN FICTION

Priyanka Champaneri received her MFA in creative writing from George Mason University and has been a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts numerous times. She received the 2018 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing for The City of Good Death, her first novel.

4 Red Dust by Yoss Translated from the Spanish by David Frye

From beloved Cuban science fiction author Yoss comes a bitingly funny space-opera homage to Raymond Chandler, about a positronic robot detective on the hunt for some extra-dangerous extraterrestrial criminals.

On the intergalactic trading station William S. Burroughs, profit is king and aliens are the kingmakers. Earthlings have bowed to their superior power and weaponry, though the aliens—praying mantis-like Grodos with pheromonal speech and gargantuan Collosaurs with a limited sense of humor—kindly allow them to do business through properly controlled channels. That’s where our hero comes in, name of Raymond. As part of the android police force, this positronic robot detective navigates both worlds, human and alien, keeping order and evaporating wrong- doers. But nothing in his centuries of experience prepares him for Makrow 34, a fugitive Cetian perp with psi powers. Meaning he can alter the shape of the Gaussian bell curve of statistical probabi- lity—making it rain indoors, say, or causing a would-be captor to shoot himself in the face. Raymond will need all his training—and US Publication July 2020 all his careful study of Chandler’s hardbitten cops—to outmaneu- 9781632062468 • $17 • 5.5” x 8.25” • 208 pages ver his quarry. Science Fiction—Cuban / Space Opera / As he did in his brilliantly funny and sharp science-fiction sati- Detective res A Planet for Rent, Super Extra Grande, and Condomnauts, Yoss Rights Held: World, Film, Audio makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar in Red Dust, giving us an unforgettable half-human hero and a richly imagined universe where the bad guys are above the laws of physics. • A BELOVED HOUSE AUTHOR • YOSS: A (LITERAL) ROCK STAR AUTHOR • A SPACE-OPERA HOMAGE TO RAYMOND CHANDLER • CROSSOVER APPEAL • REVITALIZED INTEREST IN CUBA

Born José Miguel Sánchez Gómez in Havana, Cuba, in 1969, Yoss assumed his pen name in 1988, when he won the Premio David in the science-fiction category forTimshel . Since then, he has gone on to become one of Cuba’s most iconic literary figures—as the author of more than twenty acclaimed books, as a champion of science fiction through his workshops in Cuba and around the world, and as the lead singer of the heavy metal band Tenaz. 5 A Planet for Rent by Yoss Translated from the Spanish by David Frye

Out of the modern-day dystopia of Cuba comes an instant classic from the island’s most celebrated science fiction author: a raucous tale of a future in which a failing Earth is at the mercy of powerful capitalist alien colonizers. In A Planet for Rent, Yoss critiques life under Castro in the ‘90s by drawing parallels with a possible Earth of the not-so-distant future. Wracked by economic and environmental problems, the desperate planet is rescued, for better or worse, by alien colonizers, who remake the planet as a tourist destination. Ruled over by a brutal interstellar bureaucracy, dispossessed humans seek better lives via the few routes available—working for the colonial police; eking out a living as black marketeers, drug dealers, or artists; pros- tituting themselves to exploitative extraterrestrial visitors—or they face the cold void of space in rickety illegal ships.

Praise for A Planet for Rent

“A Planet for Rent is the English-language debut of Yoss, one of Cuba’s most lauded writers of science fiction. Translated by David US Publication June 2015 Frye, these linked stories craft a picture of a dystopian future: Aliens 9781632060365 • $15.99 • 5.5” x 8.25” • 272 pages called xenoids have invaded planet Earth, and people are looking Science Fiction: Comedic / Dystopia / Cuba to flee the economically and socially bankrupt remains of human Rights Held: World, Film, Audio civilization. Yoss’ smart and entertaining novel tackles themes like Rights Sold: prostitution, immigration and political corruption. Ultimately, it Audio: Audible serves as an empathetic yet impassioned metaphor for modern-day Cuba, where the struggle for power has complicated every facet of society.” • THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE DEBUT OF —Juan Vidal, NPR, Best Books of 2015 AN ASTONISHINGLY BRAVE AND IMAGINATIVE LATIN AMERICAN “Some of the best sci-fi written anywhere since the 1970s.…A Planet for Rent, like its author, a bandana-wearing, muscly roquero, is VOICE completely sui generis: riotously funny, scathing, perceptive, and yet • SATIRICAL EXPLORATION OF also heart-wrenchingly compassionate.… Instantly appealing.” CORRUPTION AND —André Naffis-Sahely,The Nation COLONIALIZATION

Born José Miguel Sánchez Gómez in Havana, Cuba, in 1969, Yoss assumed his pen name in 1988, when he won the Premio David in the science-fiction category forTimshel . Since then, he has gone on to become one of Cuba’s most iconic literary figures—as the author of more than twenty acclaimed books, as a champion of science fiction through his workshops in Cuba and around the world, and as the lead singer of the heavy metal band Tenaz. 6 Super Extra Grande by Yoss Translated from the Spanish by David Frye

With the playfulness and ingenuity of Douglas Adams, the Cuban science-fiction master Yoss delivers a space opera of intergalactic proportions with Super Extra Grande, the winner of the twentieth annual UPC Science Fiction Award in 2011. In a distant future in which Latin Americans have pioneered faster-than-light space travel, Dr. Jan Amos Sangan Dongo has a job with large and unusual responsibilities: he’s a veterinarian who specializes in treating enormous alien animals. Mountain-sized amoebas, multisex species with bizarre reproductive proces- ses, razor-nailed, carnivorous humanoid hunters: Dr. Sangan has seen it all. When a colonial conflict threatens the fragile peace between the galaxy’s seven intelligent species, he must embark on a daring mission through the insides of a gigantic creature and find two swallowed ambassadors—who also happen to be his compe- ting love interests.

Praise for Super Extra Grande

“Intergalactic space travel meets outrageous, biting satire in Super Extra Grande…. Its author [Yoss] is one of the most celebrated — US Publication June 2016 and controversial — Cuban writers of science fiction…. Reminiscent 9781632060563 • $15.99 • 5.5” x 8.25” • 156 pages of Douglas Adams — but even more so, the satire of Rabelais and Science Fiction: Cuba / Comedic / Space Opera Swift.” Rights Held: World, Film, Audio —Nancy Hightower, The Washington Post Rights Sold: Audio: Audible “A lighthearted space-opera adventure by Cuban author Yoss…. This China: Tianjing Dangdang Kewen E-Commerce Co., Ltd. novel’s madcap tone is very similar to Douglas Adams’—so much so that it’s almost impossible to avoid drawing such comparisons.… An • A RARE SPECIMEN IN THE RICHLY exceptionally enjoyable comic tale set in a fully realized, firmly science-fictional universe.” PARODIC TRADITION OF CUBAN —Kirkus, Starred Review SCIENCE FICTION • AN IMAGINATIVE AND PLAYFUL SA- This is a narrative in which anything is possible, love and desire are thrown into the tumultuous new territory of interspecies rela- TIRE OF COLONIALISM FEATURING tionships, and Spanglish is the unifying language of the galaxy. In THE HEAVY USE OF SPANGLISH AS AN other words, this is science fiction at its best: wildly imaginative, OFFICIAL INTERGALACTIC DIALECT revolutionary, full of strange creatures, and a lot of fun to read.” —Gabino Iglesias, PANK Magazine

Born José Miguel Sánchez Gómez in Havana, Cuba, in 1969, Yoss assumed his pen name in 1988, when he won the Premio David in the science-fiction category forTimshel . Since then, he has gone on to become one of Cuba’s most iconic literary figures—as the author of more than twenty acclaimed books, as a champion of science fiction through his workshops in Cuba and around the world, and as the lead singer of the heavy metal band Tenaz. 7 Condomnauts by Yoss Translated from the Spanish by David Frye

In the 24th century, Josué Valdés’ rise from an orphan in the slums of Rubble City, Cuba to one of the galaxy’s most accomplished explorers was nothing short of meteoric. Josué used to race cockroaches for cash on the streets until he discovered his true- -calling: as a sexual ambassador for humanity and the Nu Barsa colony. Every so-called “condomnaut” knows that trade deals in the galactic community depend on sexual pacts, which makes every encounter a close encounter. While some condomnauts have been trained and genetically enhanced to meet the needs of any tenta- cled insectoid in the galaxy, Josué is a natural whose ego could eclipse the big dipper. Josué and his fellow intrepid condomnauts travel light years across the galaxy and discover that old rivalries— and prejudices—are never far behind. When the first extragalac- tic beings arrive in the Milky Way, and with them the potential to negotiate for extraordinary new technologies, Josué must call upon every ounce of his talent to seal the deal for his colony and all of humanity.

Praise for Condomnauts US Publication July 2018 99781632061867 • $16.99 • 5.5” x 8.25” • “Yoss (Super Extra Grande) is an eminent Cuban SF writer who also 208 pages • Science Fiction—Cuba / Comedic / fronts a heavy metal band; his iconoclastic spirit and rock-and-roll Space Opera aesthetic are on full ingenious display in this daring, rollicking, and Rights Held: World, Film, Audio joyous novel…. This extended dirty joke is also an impressive science fiction novel with much to say about sex, culture, and what it means to be alien.” • AN INCREASINGLY BELOVED HOUSE —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review AUTHOR. “Yoss (A Planet for Rent, Super Extra Grande) is Cuba’s most cele- • A RAUCOUS JOURNEY THROUGH brated contemporary science fiction author, and we’re delighted INTERPLANETARY CLOSE another one of his gonzo works has been translated into English.” ENCOUNTERS —Jeff Somers, Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog • RESTLESS’S CUBAN SCIENCE “This wacky tone and eccentric approach to science fiction is a hall- FICTION SERIES CONTINUES mark of Yoss, whose previous two novels, Planet for Rent (Restless, • A FUN SUMMER READ AND 2015) and Super Extra Grande (Restless, 2016), announced him as an offbeat, satirical master of the genre.” SPARKS-INDUCING BOOK CLUB PICK —Sean Guynes-Vishniac, World Literature Today

Born José Miguel Sánchez Gómez in Havana, Cuba, in 1969, Yoss assumed his pen name in 1988, when he won the Premio David in the science-fiction category forTimshel . Since then, he has gone on to become one of Cuba’s most iconic literary figures—as the author of more than twenty acclaimed books, as a champion of science fiction through his workshops in Cuba and around the world, and as the lead singer of the heavy metal band Tenaz. 8 I Am God by Giacomo Sartori Translated from the Italian by Frederika Randall

Diabolically funny and subversively philosophical, Italian novelist Giacomo Sartori’s I Am God is the diary of the Almighty’s existential crisis that erupts when he falls in love with a human.

Praise for I Am God

“I Am God is like a mirthful dream made real by the ingenuity of Sartori’s prose and Randall’s splendidly pointed and sly translation.” —Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen

“In this riotous philosophical romp, Sartori has invented an omniscient narrator like no other and an identity crisis with truly cosmic implications. Poignant, hilarious, and serious by turns, this is a jeu d’esprit with both heart and mind.” —Eva Hoffman, author ofLost in Translation

“Sartori has bestowed on us a narrative that is both comforting and discon- certing. His main character is preposterous and genuine, a supremely confi- US Publication February 2019 dent supreme being discovering the immensity of human insignificance, 9781632062147 • $17.99 • 5” x 7.125” • 224 pages • the wonders of confusion and vulnerability, the limitless frustrations of Fiction—Religious Satire / Italian language and love and, of course, sex…. He’s large, he contains multitudes, Rights Held: World English, Film, Audio and he is the ultimate unreliable narrator.” —Cathleen Schine, New York Review of Book • A FEARLESS YET BIG-HEARTED “The narrator of Sartori’s hilarious, insightful novel, his first to be published SATIRE OF RELIGION in English, is none other than God, a proper monotheistic deity stirred in a • SARTORI JOINS THE RANKS OF THE very human way by one of his own creations.... On page after laugh-out-loud page, this articulate God—and author—cover just about every cynical and WORLD’S BEST HUMORISTS lofty concept concerning one’s own existence that humans ever pondered. • A POIGNANT CRITIQUE OF This is an immensely satisfying feat of imagination.” ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review AND RAMPANT CAPITALISM “A playful, exciting, mockingly modern voice, translated, what’s more, by one • A SUBTLE TAKE-DOWN OF TOXIC of the few translators who can really make the Italian vernacular sing truly MASCULINITY and fluently in English.” —Tim Parks, author of Italian Ways and Italian Neighbors • A STRONG FEMALE LEAD

The novelist, poet and dramatist Giacomo Sartori was born in 1958 in Trento in the Alpine northeast of Italy near the Austrian border. An agronomist, he is a soil specialist whose unusual day job (unusual for a writer) has shaped a distinctive concrete and poetic literary style.

9 Temporary People by Deepak Unnikrishnan Winner of the Inaugural Prize for New Immigrant Writing

Praise for Temporary People

“The author’s crisp, imaginative prose packs a punch, and his whimsical depiction of characters who oscillate between two lands on either side of the Arabian Sea unspools the kind of immigrant narratives that are rarely told. An enchanting, unparalleled anthem of displacement and repatriation.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Temporary People is a robust… entry into the nascent portrayal of migrant labor in the Gulf.… Mingling English, Malayalam and Arabic in a series of Kafkaesque parables, Unnikrishnan’s book features a lot of action and even some humor” —Shaj Mathew, The New York Times Book Review

“Temporary People has won the inaugural Restless Books prize for writing by a first-generation immigrant to America. Its patchwork of chapters elicits the vertigo of Joseph Heller and the disoriented human hopelessness of Milan Kundera.… Mr. Unnikrishnan’s world could be written off as dystopian, were it not rooted so firmly in current reality.… Taken together this discor- dant polyphony of stories is the full-throated roar of an entire people.… His language is now solid, alive and dangerous.… This is not an easy book; in US Publication March 2017 fact it is eviscerating. But in Temporary People the Restless Books prize has 9781632061423 • $17.99 • 5.5” x 8.25” • 256 pages rewarded an urgent voice worth attending to, even if it is hard to hear.” Fiction: Middle East—United Arab Emirates / —The Economist Immigration / Globalism / Literary Rights Held: World, Film, Audio “Inventive, vigorously empathetic, and brimming with a sparkling, mordant Rights Sold: humor, Deepak Unnikrishnan has written a book of Ovidian metamorphoses Australia and New Zealand: University of Western Australia for our precarious time. These absurdist fables, fluent in the language of Press exile, immigration, and bureaucracy, will remind you of the raw pleasure of India: Penguin Random House India storytelling and the unsettling nearness of the future.” Malayalam: DC Books —Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine • TIMELY FOCUS ON IMMIGRATION “Through a series of almost 30 loosely linked sections, grouped into three parts, we are thrust into a narrative alternating between visceral realism and ISSUES fantastic satire.... The alternation between satirical fantasy, depicting such • A SPOTLIGHT ON AN OVERLOOKED things as intelligent cockroaches and evil elevators, and poignant realism, HUMANITARIAN CRISIS with regards to necessarily illicit sexuality, forms a contrast that gives rise to a broad critique of the plight of those known euphemistically as “guest • A BRILLIANTLY IMAGINATIVE workers.” WRITER IN THE VEIN OF SALMAN —Henry Bankhead, Library Journal, Starred Review RUSHDIE AND GEORGE SAUNDERS

Deepak Unnikrishnan is a writer and taleteller from Abu Dhabi (and now, Chicago). He has studied and taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and presently teaches at New York Univer- sity Abu Dhabi. Temporary People, his first book, was the inaugural winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.

10 Beyond the Rice Fields by Naivo Translated from the French by Allison Charette

The first novel from Madagascar ever to be translated into English, Naivo’s magisterial Beyond the Rice Fields delves into the upheavals of the nation’s past as it confronted Christianity and modernity, through the twin narratives of a slave and his master’s daughter.

Fara and her father’s slave, Tsito, have been close since her father bought the boy after his forest village was destroyed. Now in Saha- soa, amongst the cattle and rice fields, everything is new for Tsito, and Fara at last has a companion. But as Tsito looks forward to the bright promise of freedom and Fara, backward to a dark, long-de- nied family history, a rift opens between them just as British Chris- tian missionaries and French industrialists arrive and violence erupts across the country. Love and innocence fall away, and Tsito and Fara’s world becomes enveloped by tyranny, superstition, and fear. With captivating lyricism, propulsive urgency, and two unforgettable characters at the story’s core, Naivo unflinchingly delves into the brutal history of nineteenth-century Madagascar. Beyond the Rice Fields is a tour de force that has much to teach us about US Publication October 2017 human bondage and the stories we tell to face—and hide from— 9781632061317 • $19.99 • 5.5” x 8.25” • 368 pages ourselves, each other, our pasts, and our destinies. • Fiction: Historical / Africa / 19th Century Rights Held: World (excluding Malagasy), Audio Praise for Beyond the Rice Fields

“Naivo gives dramatic intensity to the time of the Imerina monarchs, • THE FIRST-EVER TRANSLATION OF beginning in 1785 with the reign of Nampiona, a reformer king who A NOVEL FROM MADAGASCAR INTO declared, “the seas are the limits of my rice fields,” and ending in 1849, when the persecution of Christians and sympathizers reaches ENGLISH its peak under Queen Mavo. Translated from the French by Allison • THE WINNER OF A PEN/HEIM M Charette, this is a fascinating window into Malagasy history.” TRANSLATION FUND GRANT —Jane Ciabattari, BBC Culture • AN IMPECCABLY RESEARCHED “Naivo has created a sharp and memorable tale of young lives HISTORICAL NOVEL WITH A caught in the crossfire of seismic events, and a significant novel that POSTCOLONIAL LENS deservedly shines light on a little-known chapter of world history.” • AN UNFLINCHING LOOK AT SLAVERY —Poornima Apte, Booklist • AN UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIP ACROSS SOCIAL DIVIDES, A LA THE KITE RUNNER Naivoharisoa Patrick Ramamonjisoa, who goes by the pen name Nai- vo, has worked as a journalist in his home country of Madagascar and as a teacher in Paris. His first novel,Beyond the Rice Fields, was published in its French original version in March 2012 by Éditions Sépia in Paris

11 How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish Edited by Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert

A momentous and diverse anthology of the influences and inspirations of Yiddish voices in America—radical, dangerous, and seductive, but also sweet, generous, and full of life—edited by award-winning authors and scholars Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert.

Is it possible to conceive of the American diet without bagels? Or Star Trek without Mr. Spock? Are the creatures in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are based on Holocaust survivors? And how has Yiddish, a language without a country, influenced Hollywood? These and other questions are explored in this stunning and rich anthology of the interplay of Yiddish and American culture, edited by award-winning authors and scholars Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert. Readers will laugh and cry as they delve into personal stories of assimilation and learn about people from a diverse variety of back- grounds, Jewish and not, who have made the language their own. The Yiddish saying states: Der mentsh trakht un got lakht. Man plans and God laughs. How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish illustrates how those plans are full of zest, dignity, and tremendous humanity. Most of all, the book shows us that Yiddish, far from being an endangered language, is more vibrant US Publication January 2020 than ever. 9781632062628 • $29.99 • 6” x 9” • 512 pages • Praise for How Yiddish Changed America and General Trade • Cultural History—Jewish / How America Changed Yiddish Yiddish / Anthology

“For many people, this will be a poignant, surprising, and engrossing Rights Held: World + Audio introduction to the epic survival story of a singular culture, requiring no foreknowledge of Yiddish, by two of the field’s luminaries. For those of • A LANDMARK CELEBRATION OF ONE us whose grandparents spoke and understood, and whose parents only OF AMERICA’S FOUNDATIONAL understood—no need to explain that we do neither—this book is the way back to a language that once meant everything.” IMMIGRANT CULTURES —Boris Fishman, author of A Replacement Life and Savage Feast • AN AVID AUDIENCE • A HIGH-OCTANE, ONE-OF-A-KIND “A wide-ranging, eclectic anthology of work by Yiddish writers. Stavans and Yiddish Book Center academic director Lambert have assemb- ANTHOLOGY OF YIDDISH led an impressive collection of essays, fiction, drama, memoir, poetry, • THE LEADING LIGHTS OF YIDDISH cartoons, and interviews, all showing how ‘Yiddish is so deeply woven ART CONVERGE into the fabric of the United States that it can sometimes be difficult to recognize how much it has transformed the world we live in today.’... • EDITED BY TWO LEADING SCHOLARS For readers unfamiliar with Yiddish writing, a revelation; for readers and OF YIDDISH aficionados of the language, a treasure.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review Ilan Stavans is the Publisher of Restless Books and the Lewis-Se- bring Professor of Humanities, Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. Josh Lambert is the academic director of the Yiddish Book Center and visiting assistant professor of English at the University of Massa- chusetts Amherst.

12 Nine Moons by Gabriela Wiener Translated from the Spanish by Jessica Powell

From the daring Peruvian essayist and provocateur behind Sexographies comes a fierce and funny exploration of sex, pregnancy, and motherhood that delves headlong into our fraught fascination with human reproduction.

Gabriela Wiener is not one to shy away from unpleasant truths or to balk at a challenge. So at 30, when she gets unexpectedly pregnant, she looks forward to the experience the way a mountain clim- ber approaches a precipitous peak. With a scientist’s curiosity and a libertine’s unbridled imagination, Wiener hungrily devours every scrap of information and misinformation she encounters during the nine months of her pregnancy. She ponders how pleasure and pain always have something to do with things entering or exiting your body. She laments that manuals for pregnant women don’t prepare you for ambushes of lust or that morning sickness is like waking up with a hangover and a guilty conscience all at once. And she tries to navigate the infinity of choices and contradictory demands a pregnant woman confronts, each one amplified to a life-and-death decision. US Publication May 2020 While pregnant women are still placed on pedestals, or used 9781632062239 • $22• 5” x 7.125” • 224 pages as political battlegrounds, or made into passive objects of study, Memoir—Motherhood / Childbirth / Women / Gabriela Wiener defies definition. With unguarded humor and Feminism breathtaking directness, Nine Moons questions the dogmas, upends Rights Held: World English the stereotypes, and embraces all the terror, beauty, and paradoxes of the propagation of the species. • NEW NONFICTION FROM THE Praise for Gabriela Wiener ACCLAIMED AUTHOR OF

“Reading Gabriela Wiener is a joy. Over the years, her work has made me SEXOGRAPHIES cry, laugh, hurt, and most importantly, dream. Her essays are daring, inti- • A BOLD, UNFLINCHING, HILARIOUS mate, and honest, containing the self-awareness of a poet and the sharp TAKE ON MOTHERHOOD focus of a marksman. I’d follow her anywhere.” —Daniel Alarcón, author of At Night We Walk in Circles • A FERTILE MARKET

“One of the most interesting writers of this generation is Gabriela Wiener, a Peruvian journalist best known for her high-spirited explorations of female sexuality.... Wiener is witty and fast-paced; many of her experiences, sexual and otherwise, are hard-won, territories explored and sometimes conquered, despite her neurotic misgivings, with courage and aplomb.” —Lisa Fetchko, Los Angeles Review of Books Gabriela Wiener (Lima, 1975) is the acclaimed author six collections of crónicas, including Sexographies (2018), her first to be translated into English. She writes regularly for the newspapers El País (Spain), La República (Peru), and others in the US and Europe. In Madrid, she worked as editor of the Spanish edition of Marie Claire. She lives in Madrid.

13 Sexographies by Gabriela Wiener Translated from the Spanish by Lucy Greaves and Jennifer Adcock

In fierce and sumptuous first-person accounts, renowned Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener records infiltrating the most dangerous Peruvian prison, participating in sexual exchanges in swin- gers clubs, traveling the dark paths of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris in the company of transvestites and prostitutes, undergoing a complicated process of egg donation, and participating in a ritual of ayahuasca ingestion in the Amazon jungle—all while taking us on inward journeys that explore immigration, maternity, fear of death, ugliness, and threesomes. Fortunately, our eagle-eyed voyeur emerges from her narrative forays unscathed and ready to take on the kinks, obsessions, and messiness of our lives. Sexogra- phies is an eye-opening, kamikaze journey across the contours of the human body and mind. Praise for Sexographies “No other writer in the Spanish-speaking world is as fiercely independent and thoroughly irreverent as Gabriela Wiener. Constantly testing the limits of genre and gender, Wiener´s work as a cronista (which roughly transla- tes, but is by no means a direct synonym, of nonfiction writer) has bravely unveiled truths some may prefer remain concealed about a range of topics, from the daily life of polymorphous desire to the tiring labor of maternity.” —Cristina Rivera Garza, author of The Iliac Crest US Publication May 2018 9781632061591 • $17.99 • 5.5” x 8.25” • 240 pages “This collection of essays [opens] on the outskirts of Lima, jumps to a swin- Personal Essays: Sex / Latino Culture ger’s party in Barcelona, and next a squirt expert’s apartment. This book can Rights Held: World English feel psychologically hazardous to read; it pushes you to answer the questions Wiener asks herself: Would I? Could I? Will I?” —Angela Ledgerwood, Esquire Best Books of 2018 • A VITAL CONTEMPLATION OF THE FEMALE BODY “These are essays of unabashed honesty and uncommon freedom of mind, • AN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE DEBUT BY bravely reported and beautifully composed. I hadn’t known how hungry I’d been for this book, how I’d needed it and wanted other books to be it. Sexo- ONE OF THE FOREMOST EXPONENTS graphies is an antidote and a revelation, and Gabriela Wiener is a brilliant OF “NEW LATIN AMERICAN documenter of sex and life as they really are.” JOURNALISM” —Kristin Dombek, author of The Selfishness of Others • AN IMMERSIVE ANTHROPOLOGICAL “Reading her, one has the feeling of an unexpected closeness, able to go at JOURNEY THROUGH SEXUAL DESIRE the speed of heart rate. Gabriela Wiener doesn’t seem to have any taboos or issues in revealing to us her own sexuality, her own suffering, her curiosity or her morbid fascination, and this sincerity makes her prose admirable, a bravery not so common in our times.” —Guadalupe Nettel Gabriela Wiener (Lima, 1975) is the acclaimed author six collections of crónicas, including Sexographies (2018), her first to be translated into English. She writes regularly for the newspapers El País (Spain), La República (Peru), and others in the US and Europe. In Madrid, she worked as editor of the Spanish edition of Marie Claire. She lives in Madrid.

14 The Body Papers by Grace Talusan Winner of the 2017 Prize for New Immigrant Writing

Grace Talusan’s critically acclaimed memoir The Body Papers, a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, powerfully explores the fraught contours of her own life as a Filipino immigrant and survivor of cancer and childhood abuse.

Praise for The Body Papers

“Grace Talusan writes eloquently about the most unsayable things: the deep gravitational pull of family, the complexity of navigating identity as an immigrant, and the ways we move forward even as we carry our traumas with us. Equal parts compassion and confession, The Body Papers is a stunning work by a powerful new writer who— like the best memoirists—transcends the personal to speak on a universal level.” —Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere

“[A] precise, delicately constructed memoir-in-essays…. The Body US Publication April 2019 Papers doesn’t track a one-way march to triumph from adversity; 9781632061836 • $22.99 • 5” x 7.125” • Talusan’s essays loop in on themselves, as she retrieves old memo- Nonfiction: Memoir—Family / Trauma / ries and finds unexpected points of connection…. Talusan descri- Immigration / Filipino Culture / Survival Stories bes such experiences with unadorned prose that conveys a startling Rights Held: World, Film, Audio specificity…. Such commentary, while righteous and earned, is not Rights Sold: the point of this indelible book. Talusan has the instincts of a story- Audio: Tantor Media teller, teasing out her narrative through images and allusion.” —Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • A TIMELY EXPLORATION OF “Moving and eloquent, Talusan’s book is a testament not only to one IMMIGRATION AND IDENTITY woman’s fierce will to live, but also to the healing power of speaking • AN EXCITING DEBUT FROM THE the unspeakable. A candidly courageous memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews WINNER OF THE 2017 PRIZE FOR NEW IMMIGRANT WRITING “Grace Talusan makes use of immigration papers, legal certificates, • A SURE-FIRE BOOK CLUB PICK and medical test results in her memoir about immigration, trauma, and illness. The winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immi- • THE BODY PAPERS JOINS THE RANKS grant Writing for Nonfiction,The Body Papers is timely and OF ICONIC TRAUMA MEMOIRS compelling.” • AN UNFLINCHING LOOK AT THE —R. O. Kwon, Electric Literature EFFECTS OF TRAUMA Grace Talusan was born in the Philippines and raised in New En- gland. A graduate of Tufts University and the MFA Program in Writ- ing at UC Irvine, she is the recipient of a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to the Philippines and an Artist Fellowship Award from the Massachu- setts Cultural Council. She is the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University for 2019–2021.

15 The Face: A Time Code by Ruth Ozeki

What did your face look like before your parents were born? In The Face: A Time Code, bestselling author and Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki recounts, in moment-to-moment detail, a profound encounter with memory and the mirror. According to ancient Zen tradition, “your face before your parents were born” is your true face. Who are you? What is your true self? What is your identity before or beyond the dualistic distinctions, like father/mother and good/ evil, that define us? With these questions in mind, Ozeki challenges herself to spend three hours gazing into her own reflection, recording her thou- ghts, and noticing every possible detail. Those solitary hours open up a lifetime’s worth of meditations on race, aging, family, death, the body, self doubt, and, finally, acceptance. In this lyrical short memoir, Ozeki calls on her experience of growing up in the wake of World War II as a half-Japanese, half-Caucasian American; of having a public face as an author; of studying the intricate art of the Japanese Noh mask; of being ordained as a Zen Buddhist priest; and of her own and her parents’ aging, to paint a rich and utterly unique portrait of a life as told through a face.

Praise for A Time Code

“This long essay, like the experiment it describes, is strange in the US Publication March 2016 best sense, plus funny, moving and deeply wise.” 9781632060525 • $12.99 • 4.5” x 6” • 144 pages —Porter Shreve, San Francisco Chronicle Memoir / Personal Essay: Race and Diversity / Asian American / Zen Buddhism “Ruth Ozeki, a Zen Buddhist priest, sets herself the task of staring Rights Held: World, Audio, Film at her face in a mirror for three full, uninterrupted hours; her rumi- nations ripple out from personal and familial memories to wise and honest meditations on families and aging, race and the body.” • A FASCINATING MEMOIR THAT —Patricia Hagen, Minneapolis Star Tribune EXPLORES RACE, POLITICS, AND “One of the most compelling through-lines is not surprisingly the AGING problematics of a mixed race upbringing...It is fascinating to hear • A PROLIFIC, AWARD-WINNING about Ozeki’s life....Ozeki squarely considers the thorny politics AUTHOR around aging and questions of beauty. Here, Ozeki ponders the kinds of decisions that go into things like plastic surgery and an • A UNIQUE MEDITATION ON THE author’s publicity photo. As always, Ozeki injects humor into her PASSAGE OF TIME FROM A ZEN prose, a characteristic of all of her earlier publications, making this BUDDHIST PRIEST reading experience undoubtedly captivating.” —Stephen Hong Sohn, Asian American Literature Fans

Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. Her first two novels,My Year of Meats (1998) and All Over Creation (2003), have been translated into 11 languages and published in fourteen countries. Her most recent work, A Tale for the Time-Being (2013), was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and has been published in over thirty countries. She lives in British Columbia and New York City. 16 God is Round by Juan Villoro Translated from the Spanish by Thomas Bunstead

A brilliant, kaleidoscopic exploration of soccer—and the passion, hopes, rivalries, superstitions, and global solidarity it inspires—from Juan Villoro, “Mexico’s top fútbol expert” (NBC News).

On a planet where FIFA has more members than the United Nations and the World Cup is watched by more than three billion people, football is more than just a game. As revered author Juan Villoro argues in this passionate and compulsively readable tribute to the world’s favorite sport, football may be the most effective catalyst for panglobal unity at the time when we need it most. (Following global consensus, Villoro uses “football” rather than “soccer” in the book.) What was the greatest goal of all time? Why do the Hungarians have a more philosophical sense of defeat than the Mexicans? Do the dead play football? In essays ranging from incisive and irreverent portraits of Maradona, Messi, Ronaldo, Pelé, Zidane, and many more giants of the game to entertaining explorations of left- -footedness and the number 10, Juan Villoro dissects the pleasure US Publication April 2016 and pain of football fandom. God Is Round is a book for both fana- 9781632060587 • $16.99 • 5.5” x 8.25” • 256 pages tics and neophytes who long to feel the delirium of the faithful. Sports: Soccer / Essays / Mexican literature Rights Held: World, Film, Audio Praise for God Is Round Rights Sold:

Arabic: Al Arabi Publishing “Juan Villoro’s God Is Round takes an all-encompassing approach, finding a welcome overlap between writing about soccer as metaphor and writing about soccer for the sake of writing about soccer.… • A SOCCER BOOK UNLIKE ANY OTHER [A] timeless set of observations about the sport.” • A THRIVING MARKET —Michael J. Agovino, Los Angeles Review of Books • MEXICO’S MOST PROLIFIC, “A lyrical exploration of the global game of soccer.... For millions PRIZE-WINNING JOURNALIST AND around the world, soccer is not just a game, but rather life itself AUTHOR and, as Villoro ably reveals, very much worth pursuing to the final whistle.” • THE WORLD’S LEADING SOCCER —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review EXPERT

“If you want to talk about soccer, go talk to Juan Villoro.” —Carlos Fuentes

Juan Villoro is Mexico’s most prolific, prize-winning author, play- wright, journalist, and screenwriter. His books have been translated into multiple languages. Several of his books have appeared in English, including his celebrated 2016 essay collection on soccer brought out by Restless Books, God Is Round. Villoro lives in Mexico City and is a visiting lecturer at Yale and Princeton universities.

17 Rat Rule 79 by Rivka Galchen Illustrations by Elena Megalos From the New Yorker “20 Under 40” author of Atmos- pheric Disturbances comes a brain-twisting adventure story of a girl named Fred on a quest through a world of fantastical creatures, strange logic, and a powerful prejudice against growing up.

Fred and her math-teacher mom are always on the move, and Fred is getting sick of it. She’s about to have yet another birthday in a new place without friends. On the eve of turning thirteen, Fred sees something strange in the living room: her mother, dressed for a party, standing in front of an enormous paper lantern—which she steps into and disappears. Fred follows her and finds herself in the Land of Impossibili- ty—a loopily illogical place where time is outlawed, words carry dire consequences, and her unlikely allies are a depressed white elephant and a pugnacious mongoose mother of seventeen. With her new friends, Fred sets off in search of her mom, braving dungeons, Insult Fish, Fearsome Ferlings, and a mad Rat Queen. To succeed, the trio must find the solution to an ageless riddle. Gorgeously illustrated and reminiscent of The Phantom Tollbooth and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Rivka Galchen’s Rat Rule 79 is an instant classic for curious readers of all ages. US Publication September 2019 Praise for Rat Rule 79 9781632060990 • $19.99 • 5.5” x 8.25” • 256 pages Middle Grade Fiction / Fantasy / Adventure / “Rat Rule 79 is the adventure I didn’t know I wanted until it started, Coming of Age just like it’s the book you don’t yet know you’re going to love. We Rights Held: North America + Audio have been waiting for this book our entire lives.” —Lemony Snicket • THE FIRST BOOK FOR YOUNG “Rat Rule 79 is an impossibly perfect book: a Mobius strip where the READERS BY LITERARY STAR RIVKA love loops continuously between mothers’ daughters and daughters’ mothers, law and disorder, the lost and the found.... Rat Rule GALCHEN 79 belongs on a shelf of classics with The Phantom Tollbooth, Mrs. • A TIMELESS, BRAIN-TWISTING TALE Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and The Last Unicorn.” IN THE VEIN OF THE PHANTOM —Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia TOLLBOOTH AND ALICE IN “Lewis Carroll, Norton Juster, Tove Jansson, Russell Hoban; like WONDERLAND them, Rivka Galchen has written a book for children and adults that • A MEMORABLE MOTHER-DAUGHTER occupies its own delightful and preposterous space. Rat Rule 79 feels like it has simply been waiting to fall into our laps.” COMING-OF-AGE STORY —Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn and • A GREAT GIFT BOOK Chronic City Rivka Galchen is an award winning fiction writer and journalist who loves noodles and numbers and modest-sized towns where her dad might have worked. Her work appears often in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The London Review of Books and The New York Times. She is the author of three books: Atmospheric Disturbances (Novel, FSG, 2008), American Innovations (Short Stories, FSG 2014) and Little Labors (Essays, New Directions, 2016). Rat Rule 79 is her first book for young readers. 18 Daniel and Ismail by Juan Pablo Iglesias and Alex Peris Translated from the Spanish by Ilan Stavans • Translated into Hebrew by Eliezer Nowodworski and Frieda Press-Danieli • Translated into Arabic by Randa Sayegh

A one-of-a-kind, uplifting picture book about a Jewish boy and a Palestinian boy who bond on the soccer field— translated into English, Hebrew, and Arabic.

Daniel and Ismail, one Jewish and the other Palestinian, don’t know each other yet, but they have more in common than they know. They live in the same city and have the same birthday, and this year they get the same presents: a traditional scarf—for Daniel a tallit and for Ismail a keffiyeh—and a soccer ball. Taking their gifts out for a spin, they meet by chance on a soccer field, and they soon begin to play together and show off the tricks they can do. Daniel and Ismail is a remarkable multilingual picture book that confronts the very adult conflicts that kids around the world US Publication August 2019 face, and shows us that different cultures, religions, societies, and 9781632061560 • $19.99 • 8.5” x 8.5” • 40 pages languages can all share the same page. Children’s Picture Book: Chilean / Hebrew / Arabic / Diversity / Cultural Acceptance / Soccer Rights Held: World English, Hebrew, and Arabic

Praise for Daniel and Ismail • A ONE-OF-A-KIND MULTILINGUAL “Peris renders both boys in black-and-white against a colorful background, PICTURE BOOK IN ENGLISH, quietly emphasizing their similarities and evoking the constraints of their HEBREW, AND ARABIC communities. The story’s gentle emphasis on the power of play to bridge difference is relatable and persuasive.” • A UNIQUE READING EXPERIENCE —Publishers Weekly • A BOOK ABOUT HOPE, SUITED FOR OUR TIMES “...[A]n alternative fable, one where the joy of friendship and the comfort ing dreams of their interior lives allows Daniel and Ismail to ignore the hatred • A FRANK RECKONING WITH which threatens them…. The book’s ending is reassuring, although not with CONFLICT out a touch of sadness. Jewish and Palestinian children play together, both • A GREAT GIFT FOR SOCCER FANS on the field and in their dreams of the future. There is no mention of the adults who reacted with horror at the spontaneous companionship of two boys with a soccer ball on a beautiful day. Daniel and Ismail is highly recom mended for children and will also be of interest to adults who are hopeful about the future.” —Emily Schneider, Jewish Book Council

Juan Pablo Iglesias is a commercial and civil engineer, working in medical technology innovation. His first book,Iguales a 1 (Daniel and Ismail), won the emerging author prize for children’s literature from the Chilean National Council for Arts and Culture. He lives in Santiago, Chile. Alex Peris, graphic designer and illustrator, lives in Santiago, Chile. He has worked for newspapers, magazines, and has illustrated children’s books. He is currently preparing his first animated short film based on the Selknam people of Chilean Patagonia. 19 Ramayana: An Illustrated Retelling by Arshia Sattar

Illustrated by Sonali Zohra

One of the world’s oldest and best-loved tales, now retold and illustrated in thrilling detail for readers of all ages.

Ramayana—an unforgettable tale of love, adventure, flying monkeys and god acting in the world of humans—has been treasu- red by readers around the world for thousands of years. Now in an authoritative, gripping retelling by the renowned Ramayana scho- lar Arshia Sattar, readers have a new chance to explore this classic’s riches. Rama is a brave young prince who is forced into exile. His brother Lakshmana and his wife, the beautiful princess Sita, loyally follow him into the depths of the mysterious forest, where they encounter US Publication May 2018 strange and dangerous creatures. None is as terrifying as Ravana, 9781632061775 • $22.99 • 7.125” x 7.125” • Young the ten-headed demon king who kidnaps Sita and takes her to a Adult Fiction: Classics / Hindu Epics fortified city in the middle of the ocean. To rescue her, Rama enlists Rights Held: World (excluding India), Film, the help of hundreds of thousands of magical monkeys and bears to fight the demon army and win her back. Even the gods gather Audio Rights Sold: to witness the harrowing battle. Will Rama and his friends prevail, and will Sita return to him? Only these captivating pages will tell…. China: Hunan Literature & Art Publishing House Co., Ltd.

Praise for Ramayana: An Illustrated Retelling • A PERFECT DISTILLATION OF A WORLD CLASSIC BY THE LEADING “[Vibrant, detailed, and mystical illustrations showing ferocious rakshasas (demons) and graceful heroes enhance the text.... The AUTHORITY fluid and evocative prose and nonstop action are sure to draw in • ONE OF THE MOST THRILLING those who already know and love this classic as well as providing an STORIES EVER TOLD accessible introduction to readers unfamiliar with the story. Striking illustrations and a compelling narrative bring an important Indian • EYE-POPPING ILLUSTRATIONS tale of good and evil to young readers.” • A THOUGHT-PROVOKING BUT —Kirkus Reviews DIGESTIBLE RETELLING OF A “Sattar captures a number of the epic’s moral lessons, presenting COMPLEX CLASSIC characters as avatars of courage, faithfulness, cruelty, and various • INDIA’S OLDEST AND BEST-LOVED kinds of fallibility. She doesn’t gloss over the complexities of the STORY human condition and the contradictions of character that can make life so difficult… Zohra’s magnificent batik-like illustrations marry description and fancy.” —Jon Sobel, Blogcritics Arshia Sattar has a PhD in classical Indian literatures from the University of Chicago. Her translations from Sanskrit, The Ramayana of Valmiki and Tales from the Kathasaritsagara, have been published as Penguin Classics. She has also written books for children, including Adventures With Hanuman and Ramayana: An Illustrated Retelling.

20 The Wild Book by Juan Villoro Translated from the Spanish by Lawrence Schimel

From one of Mexico’s foremost authors comes a wondrous adventure story of a boy who goes to live with his kooky, book-obsessed uncle in a library where books have super- natural powers.

Thirteen-year-old Juan’s summer is off to a terrible start. First, his parents separate. Then, almost as bad, Juan is sent away to his strange Uncle Tito’s house for the entire break! Who wants to live with an oddball recluse who has zigzag eyebrows, drinks fifteen cups of smoky tea a day, and lives inside a huge, mysterious library? As Juan adjusts to his new life among teetering, dusty shelves, he notices something odd: the books move on their own! He rushes to tell Uncle Tito, who lets his nephew in on a secret: Juan is a Prin- ceps Reader, which means books respond magically to him, and he’s the only one who can find the elusive, never-before-read Wild Book. But will Juan and his new friend Catalina get to The Wild Book before the wicked, story-stealing Pirate Book does? An unforgettable adventure story about books, libraries, and the power of reading, The Wild Book is the young readers’ debut by US Publication November 2017 beloved, prize-winning Mexican author Juan Villoro. It has sold 9781632061478 • $17.99 • 5.5” x 8.25” • 240 pages over one million copies in Spanish. • Middle Grade Fiction: Books & Libraries • Ages: 10–14 Praise for The Wild Book Rights Held: World (excluding Mexico), Film,

“Deserving a place beside classics like The Phantom Tollbooth and Audio Territories sold: Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Half-Magic, The Wild Book is a timeless celebration of reading.” —Claire Foster, Foreword Reviews, Five-Heart Review Turkey, UK • A CELEBRATION OF READING AND “The novel is transfixing and emotional, and, for booklovers, it reads PREP FOR THE CLASSICS like the memoir of your imagined other self.” —Rivka Galchen, Words Without Borders • A GLORIOUS HOMAGE TO LIBRARIES • AN INTRODUCTION TO IMPORTANT “Villoro’s novel illuminates why YA literature has such a large adult ISSUES OF DIVORCE AND DISABILITY readership. Even as we age, or perhaps especially then, our purpose is not to tame our life stories — but rather to allow them their wild • STRIKING ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE lives.” ARTIST EKO —Kristin Van Tassel, Los Angeles Review of Books

21 The Casket of Time by Andri Snaer Magnason Translated from the Icelandic by Björg Arnadóttir and Andrew Cauthery

“A rose can rest in the casket for a thousand years without fading. An egg can remain there for centuries without going bad. A person could lie there for a hundred years, a thousand years, ten thousand years, completely protected from time.”

What happens when the world starts to fall apart, and no one will take responsibility for mending it? Sigrun’s family, along with everyone else, finds refuge from the crisis in a new technology called TimeBox®, which lets you hibernate until the world’s problems solve themselves. But Sigrun’s TimeBox® opens early, and she wakes to a city in chaos, overrun by nature. Sigrun joins a roving band of kids and a wise researcher named Grace, who tells them of the ancient kingdom of Pangea, and the greedy king who wanted to protect his daughter Obsidiana from pain, gloomy days, and growing older by putting her in a silken casket that time could not penetrate. But Obsidiana learns that sabotaging time is a dangerous business, with effects that ripple outward even to the present day. Sigrun realizes it’s up to her and her friends to face the crisis, break the curse, and fix the world US Publication April 2019 before it’s too late! 9781632062055 • $17.99 • 5.5” x 8.25” • 240 pages Middle Grade Fiction: Adventure / Fairy Tale / Science Fiction / Mythology / Environmentalism Ages: 12 - 18 Praise for The Casket of Time Rights Held: World English, Film, Audio

“[A] beautiful and haunting Snow White–inspired tale…. Magnason, a celebrated writer and the second runner-up in Iceland’s 2016 presi- • AN ICELANDIC YOUNG PEOPLE’S dential election, has woven a literary fantasy with environmentalist LITERATURE SENSATION themes that will find fans among thoughtful young readers.” • A WELL-CONNECTED AUTHOR WITH —Eleanor Roth, Booklist EVENT POTENTIAL “The power of story animates a tale that communicates—but is not • SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY overpowered by—urgent messages.” CROSSOVER —Kirkus Reviews • RICH FODDER FOR CLASSROOM “This is a book I would put on a shelf with The Hobbit, Alice in DISCUSSIONS Wonderland and The Little Prince. A children’s story but it would be very good for adults to read it as well.” —Eric Lorberer of Rain Taxi Review Andri Snær Magnason is an award-winning Icelandic writer of novels, poetry, plays and films. His work has been published in 35 languages. His novel LoveStar received a Philip K. Dick Award special citation and won the Grand prix de l’Imaginaire in France.

22 Run for Your Life by Silvana Gandolfi Translated from the Italian by Lynne Sharon Schwartz A 2019 Batchelder Honor Book

From one of Italy’s favorite authors of young adult literature comes a gripping, true-to-life thriller of a Sici- lian boy’s fight to survive after his family is torn apart by the Mafia.

A talented young runner, Santino lives in Palermo, Sicily—a beautiful region of Italy that’s dominated by the Mafia. With Santino’s first communion approaching, his father and grandfather carry out a theft to pay for the party—but they steal from the wrong people. A young, cocky Mafioso summons them to a meeting, and they bring the boy. Santino hears shots and runs back to see two armed men and his father and grandfather slumped over in the car. Now, he’s left with a choice: cooperate with police and be a “rat,” or maintain Omertà: the code of silence. Twelve-year-old Lucio lives in the northern Italian city of Livorno and dreams of sailing when not taking care of his his young sister, Ilaria, and his sick mother, who is convinced that a witch has cursed her. One day, Lucio’s mother goes missing and he receives a mysterious text: “Come to Palermo. Mamma is dying.” Panicked, US Publication June 2018 Lucio grabs Ilaria and rushes to Sicily, where Lucio’s and Santino’s 9781632061652 • $15.99 • 5.5” x 8.25” • 288 pages stories converge with explosive results. Young Adult Fiction:Thriller / Mafia • Ages: 12-18 Rights Held: World English Praise for Run For Your Life • A THRILLING TALE OF ONE BOY’S “This novel engages readers by combining suspense with an unusual FIGHT TO SURVIVE THE MAFIA format where the stories and voices of two boys converge halfway through the book …. The book is a fast-paced mystery with a twist • A REALISTIC, UNROMANTIC that will surprise and engage readers.” PORTRAYAL OF THE “COSA NOSTRA” — Kathy Short, 2019 Batchelder Awards Citation • A SURPRISING PLOT TWIST

“The novel is a compelling one, which, in its second half, becomes a • A LESSON IN MORAL fast-paced story of suspense that vividly demonstrates the inextri- RESPONSIBILITY AND JUSTICE cable links between the Mafia and Sicilian life. Schwartz’s translation • A RECKONING WITH VIOLENCE nicely captures the story’s spirit.” —Michael Cart, Booklist

Silvana Gandolfi has written many books for young people and is one of Italy’s most widely translated authors. Among her numerous awards is the Andersen Prize, Italy’s most important prize for children’s literature. She lives in Rome.

23 Restless Classics

A beautifully packaged, newly introduced and illustrated series of great books from the past that still speak to our time, our place, and, especially, our restlessness.

Don Quixote Frankenstein The Souls of Black Chekhov: Stories for Miguel de Cervantes Mary Shelley Folk Our Time Introduction by Ilan Introduction by Francine W. E. B. Du Bois Anton Chekhov Stavans Prose Introduction by Vann R. Introduction by Boris Illustrations by Eko Illustrations by Eko Newkirk III Fishman 9781632060754 • $22.99 9781632060785 • $19.99 Illustrations by Steve Prince Illustrations by Matt Mc- 9781632060976 • $19.99 Cann 9781632061805 • $22.99

Passing Night and Day Robinson Crusoe Nella Larsen Virginia Woolf Daniel Defoe Introduction by Darryl Introduction by Lauren Introduction by Jamaica Pinckney Groff Kincaid Illustrations by Maggie Lily Illustrations by Kristen Illustrations by Eko 9781632062024 • $22.99 Radtke 9781632061195 • $19.99 9781632060327 • $22.99

24 Look Hamlet by Barbro Lindgren Illustrations by Anna Höglund Translated from the Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles

A hilarious, darkly comic graphic retelling of Shakes- peare’s Hamlet in radically condensed prose by legendary Swedish children’s author Barbro Lindgren and illustrator Anna Höglund.

Look Hamlet. Hamlet not happy. Hamlet’s mommy dumb. Hamlet’s daddy dead.

So begins this wonderfully strange, dark, and hilarious picture book version of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy boiled down to its smallest possible size: 100 words, give or take, and fifteen etchings that look like the lovechild of Beatrix Potter and Edward Gorey. In our despondent antihero, a lop-eared bunny Hamlet with US Publication October 2019 handbag in tow, is somehow embodied all the tremendous pathos 9781632062598 • $17.99 • 5.875” x 7.125” • 32 of Shakespeare’s Danish Prince. And in legendary Swedish chil- pages • Humor—Satire / Classics / Shakespeare / dren’s author Barbro Lindgren’s pithy prose resides the poetry of the original, reworked for the era of memes and short attention Illustrated / Adaptations / Black Humor / Hamlet spans. Rights Held: World English Bold and brilliant, irreverent and humane, Look Hamlet is the perfect gift for Shakespeare readers of all ages. As the Bard himself • THE PERFECT GIFT FOR LOVERS wrote: “Brevity is the soul of wit.” (AND HATERS) OF SHAKESPEARE • A LEGENDARY INTERNATIONAL CHILDREN’S AUTHOR • TAPPING INTO THE SHAKESPEARE MARKET • A SLY CRITIQUE OF THE ERA OF MEMES AND SHORT ATTENTION SPANS

Barbro Lindgren, born in 1937, is a Swedish author of innovative and multifac- eted works for children of all ages. Since her debut as an author in 1965, she has published over a hundred titles, and her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. Starting out as a poor painter, artist Anna Höglund believed making picture books would put more solid food on the table for her family. It didn’t really. But she discovered the possibilities of the medium, which today she still considers the ultimate: the crossbreeding of text and picture suits her perfectly. 25 The Boy by Marcus Malte Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan and Tom Roberge Winner of the Prix Femina

Winner of the prestigious Prix Femina, The Boy is an expansive and entrancing historical novel that follows a nearly feral child from the French countryside as he joins society and plunges into the torrid events of the first half of the 20th century.

The boy does not speak. The boy has no name. The boy, raised half-wild in the forests of southern France, sets out alone into the wilderness and the greater world beyond. Having never encoun- tered another person aside from his mother, the boy must learn what it is to be human, to exist among people, and to live beyond simple survival. As this wild and naive child attempts to join civilization, he encounters earthquakes and car crashes, ogres and artists, and, eventually, all-encompassing love and an inescapable war. His adventures take him around the world and through history on a mesmerizing journey, rich with unforgettable characters. A hamlet of farmers fears he’s a werewolf, but eventually raises him as one of their own. A circus performer who toured the world as a sideshow introduces the boy to showmanship and sanitation. And a chance US Publication March 2019 encounter with an older woman exposes him to music and the 9781632061713 • $22.99 • 6” x 9” • 480 pages sensuous pleasures of life. The boy becomes a guide whose inno- Fiction: Historical—early 20th Century / cence exposes society’s wonder, brutality, absurdity, and magic. Coming of Age / War Novel / Love Story / France Rights Held: World English Praise for The Boy

“The book you’re about to read shines a fierce and necessary light • A PRIZE-WINNING BESTSELLER IN on our world. Read it patiently, if you can—a challenge at times, FRANCE considering the wild and unexpected turns it takes, and the pleasures that lie around every corner—and discover, or re-discover, what • A CROWD-PLEASING HISTORICAL it means to be a member of the human tribe.” NOVEL —Julie Orringer, author of The Invisible Bridge and The Flight • AN UP-AND-COMING LITERARY Portfolio, from the Preface ROCKSTAR “With its stunning array of characters and meditations on the meaning of life’s travails, the boy’s story poignantly raises the ques- tion of what, exactly, it means to be civilized.” —Bridget Thoreson, Booklist

Marcus Malte was born in 1967 in La Seyne-sur-Mer, a small har- bor city in the south of France. His fiction includesGarden of Love (rewarded with a dozen literary prizes, including the Grand prix des lectrices de Elle, crime fiction, 2008);Les Harmoniques (Prix Mystère de la Critique, 2012); and more recently Le Garçon (The Boy) for which he received the famous Prix Femina (2016). The Boy is his first novel to be translated into English. 26 Silence of the Chagos by Shenaz Patel Translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman

A story of hope and perseverance in the face of seemin- gly insurmountable injustice, Shenaz Patel draws on the lives of expelled Chagossians in this timely examination of political oppression.

Every afternoon a woman in a red headscarf walks to the end of the quay and looks out over the water, fix- ing her gaze “back there”— to Diego Garcia, one of the small islands forming the Chagos Archi- pelago in the Indian Ocean. With no explanation, no warning, and only an hour to pack their belongings, the Chagossians were forced on a boat headed to Mauritius. Government officials tell Charle- sia that the island is “closed”— there is no going back for any of them. Charlesia longs for life on Diego Garcia, where the days were spent working on a coconut plantation, the nights dancing to sega music. As she strug- gles to come to terms with her new reality, Charlesia crosses paths with Désiré, a young man born on the one-way journey to Mauritius. Désiré has never set foot on Diego Garcia, but as Charlesia unfolds the dramatic story of their people, US Publication November 2019 he learns of the home he never knew and of the life he might have 9781632062345 • $17.99 • 5” x 7.125” • 178 pages had. Fiction—Mauritian / geopolitics / indigenous Praise for Silence of the Chagos peoples / family / immigration / activist

Rights Held: World English “A young man’s journey of self-discovery illuminates the heart-wren- ching history of the Chagos Archipelago.... Patel, a Mauritian journalist, uses her cast of characters to narrate a keenly observed story, • AN UNFOLDING STORY OF translated from French, about displacement…. A fierce and evoca- INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE tive telling of the strangled arc of a peace-loving people.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review • A POWERFUL EXPLORATION OF IDENTITY AND RESILIENCE “Forced expulsions have long been part of man’s history, motivated • A PERSONAL AND TIMELY by politics, prejudice, geography, human-made disasters, and natural forces. Virtually unknown is the full-scale eviction of the Chagos- EXAMINATION OF GLOBAL POLITICS sians, a Creole-speaking native ethnic group with African and Asian • ENGLISH-LANGUAGE DEBUT OF AN ancestry, from Diego Garcia, the largest island in the Indian Ocean’s INTERNATIONAL RISING STAR Chagos archipelago…. Patel seeks to right wrongs and secure over- due justice.” —Terry Hong, Booklist

Shenaz Patel is a journalist and writer from the island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean. She is the author of several novels, plays, short stories, and children’s books. She was an IWP (International Writers Program) Honorary Fellow in the U.S. in 2016, and was a fellow at the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at the Hutchins Center at Har- vard University in 2018.

27 My Part of Her by Javad Djavahery Preface by Dina Nayeri Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan

In exiled Iranian author Javad Djavahery’s captivating English debut, a youthful betrayal during a summer on the Caspian sea has far-reaching consequences for a group of friends as their lives are irrevocably altered by the Revolution.

For our unnamed confessor, the summer months spent on the Caspian Sea during the 1970s are a magically transformative experience. There, he is not the “poor relative from the North,” but a welcome guest at his wealthy cousin Nilou’s home and the gatekee- per of her affections. He revels in the power of orchestrating the attentions of her many admirers, granting and denying access to her would-be lovers. But in a moment of jealousy and youthful bravado, he betrays and humiliates an unlikely suitor, setting into motion a series of events that will have drastic repercussions for all of them as the country is forever transformed by the Iranian Revo- lution a few short years later. Over the next twenty years, the lingering effects of that betrayal set the friends on radically different paths in the wake of political, religious, and cultural upheaval. Their surprising final reunion US Publication February 2020 reveals the consequences of revenge and self-preservation as they 9781632062437 • $17.99 • 5” x 7.125” • 256 pages each must decide whether and how to forget the past. Urgent and Fiction—Iranian Revolution / Coming of Age / gorgeously written, My Part of Her captures the innocence of youth, Friendship the folly of love, and the capriciousness of fate as these friends find Rights Held: World English themselves on opposing sides of the seismic rifts of history. • ENGLISH-LANGUAGE DEBUT OF AN Praise for My Part of Her ACCLAIMED IRANIAN AUTHOR IN EXILE “A searing novel, by Iranian exile Djavahery, of love and betrayal in a time of revolution…. Djavahery’s novel is an aching evocation of paradise lost, one • A GREAT BOOK CLUB PICK—A STORY that is impossible to regain, even in our narrator’s searching dreams. Vivid, OF LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, AND shattering, and utterly memorable.” BETRAYAL —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review • AN INTIMATE LOOK AT IRANIAN LIFE “Djavahery’s mesmerizing English-language debut illustrates how betrayal • WITH AN INCISIVE INTRODUCTION can have far-reaching ramifications…. Driven by the narrator’s regretful FROM IRANIAN AUTHOR DINA voice, Djavahery’s excellent, gripping tale depicts misplaced, youthful ambition and the conflicts of changing social norms.” NAYERI —Publishers Weekly • FRENCH CULTURAL EMBASSY TRAVEL GRANT Javad Djavahery was forced to leave Iran at the age of twenty, es- caping to France as a political refugee. He has never returned to Iran and now lives in Paris. In addition to writing screenplays and produc- ing films, he has written two short-story collections in Persian and two novels in French. My Part of Her is his English-language debut.

28 Moon Brow by Shahriar Mandanipour Translated from the Persian by Sara Khalili

From “one of Iran’s most important living fiction writers” (The Guardian) comes a fantastically imaginative story of love and war narrated by two angel scribes perched on the shoulders of a shell-shocked Iranian soldier who’s searching for the mysterious woman haunting his dreams.

Praise for Moon Brow

“Mandanipour, an Iranian writer whose first novel in English,Censoring an Iranian Love Story (2009), elicited allusions to M.C. Escher and Rubik’s Cube, does not do things simply here in his second, either.... The prose also reveals a writer in total control, easily moving from the banter of youth to lyrical or sensual flights befitting Amir’s former liking for poetry and seduc- tion, to Persian folktales or hallucinatory fever dreams from a brain unhin- ged by battle, medication, and remorse. A remarkable vision of the elusive- ness of redemption and love.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

“In dazzling flashbacks, Amir gradually pieces together the narrative of his US Publication April 2018 past as a womanizing Casanova and a soldier who sees the horrific casual- 9781632061287 • $21.99 • 6” x 9” • 464 pages ties of war up close. Mandanipour uses this love story, ably translated by Fiction: Iranian / Literary / War Sara Khalili, as the canvas for a larger picture of a country routinely disrup- Rights Held: World English ted by revolution and war. In a sense, Amir’s fractured mind might just as well be a stand-in for Iran’s own fragile history…. [A] dazzling mosaic of a troubled young man and a troubled yet gloriously rich nation.” • THE TRIUMPHANT RETURN OF ONE — Poornima Apte, Booklist, Starred Review OF IRAN’S GREATEST NOVELISTS

“Written in the heightened language of dreams, if dreams were always so • A WINDOW ONTO IRANIAN AND dark, this long-anticipated work from exiled Iranian award winner Manda- ISLAMIC CULTURE AND HISTORY nipour (Censoring an Iranian Love Story) features Amir Yamini, a young • RICH FODDER FOR BOOK CLUBS wastrel given to drinking, womanizing, and blasphemy, who shames his devout Iranian family and is finally carted off and flogged by the Revolutio- • COURSE ADOPTION OPPORTUNITIES nary Guards…. These scenes are ingeniously imparted by two scribes: Amir’s • AN IRANIAN CINDERELLA STORY more manageable self, reputedly perched on his right shoulder, and a demo- nically angry self perched on his left, mirroring his split soul and that of his country. VERDICT: Highly recommended for literary lovers.” —Barbara Hoffert,Library Journal, Starred Review

Shahriar Mandanipour is one of Iran’s most accomplished writers, the author of nine volumes of fiction, one nonfiction book, and more than 100 critical essays. Born in 1957 in Shiraz, Iran, he studied political science at Tehran University and bore witness to the 1979 revolution. His works were banned between 1992 and 1997. In 2006, he moved to the United States and has held fellowships at Brown, Harvard, and Boston College. 29 The End by Fernanda Torres Translated from the Portuguese by Alison Entrekin Winner of the Jabuti Prize for Best Brazilian Book Published Abroad

In this deadly-funny debut novel by renowned Brazi- lian actress Fernanda Torres, five macho friends in Rio’s Copacabana reflect on their hedonistic glory days—now supplanted by the indignities of aging—in what turn out to be their final moments.

Praise for The End

“The End, a riotous, sex-stuffed novel by Torres, which takes Techni- color pleasure in detailing the deaths of five incorrigible old beach bums of the Bossa Nova generation…. With America undergoing a mass reckoning with male sexuality, a novel like this feels both taboo and gleeful, a guilty kind of reprieve.” —Hermione Hoby, The New Yorker

“[An] energetic, impressive debut from acclaimed Brazilian actress Torres.... Torres paints a sharp, intimate portrait of male sexuality US Publication July 2017 and psychology.” 9781632061218 • $16.99 • 5” x 7.125” • 256 pages —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review Fiction: Brazilian / Black Comedy / Literary

Rights Held: World English “Set in Rio de Janeiro, this fine literary debut from one of Brazil’s most distinguished actors tells the stories of five men as they approach their inevitable (and in some cases premature) ends. By • THE FIRST NOVEL BY A RENOWNED turns tragic and hilarious, the novel is about friendship, betrayal and STAR OF CINEMA excess, and about male fury against the ravages of old age.” —Angel Gurría-Quintana, Financial Times • A BRAZILIAN BESTSELLER • A BOLD TAKE ON AGING AND “Torres’s darkly humorous first novel conjures a unique time in RELATIONSHIPS Brazilian history through a clever narrative conceit and vividly portrayed characters.” • THE TRUTH ABOUT MEN FROM A —Cortney Ophoff,Booklist WOMAN’S PERSPECTIVE • RIO ON THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE

Fernanda Torres was born in 1965 in Rio de Janeiro. She has built a solid career as an actress and dedicated herself equally to film, theater, and TV since she was 13 years old, and has received many awards, including Best Actress at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival. Her debut novel, The End, sold more than 200,000 copies in Brazil and was translated for publication in several countries.

30 Glory and its Litany of Horrors by Fernanda Torres Translated from the Portuguese by Eric M. B. Becker

From Fernanda Torres, the celebrated Brazilian actress and bestselling author of The End, comes a riotous tragi- comedy of a famed actor’s path from national sex symbol to cult icon to raving madman after a disastrous performance as King Lear.

Mario Cardoso’s meteoric rise to fame begins in the early sixties, when the promise of sex and revolution permeates the Rio air. But as he conquers the stage, arthouse cinema, and prime- time TV, the fever and the decadence of stardom take their toll, and middle-aged Mario finds himself with an ebbing reputa- tion, hairline, and bank account. He needs a royal comeback. Enter King Lear. Mario’s turn as Shakespeare’s mad monarch goes well until he’s overtaken by a fit of laughter that gets more demented with each performance. Forced to cancel the show, he’s confronted with his mother’s unstaged madness—she’s now convinced that Mario is in fact her long-departed husband. Broke and desperate, Mario signs on for an evangelical network produc- tion: Sodoma. Yet, as low as he’s fallen, Mario’s final set is one he never imagined. Fernanda Torres’s Glory and its Litany of Horrors is a razor-sharp US Publication July 2019 take on the uneasy marriage of Art and the marketplace, and on the 9781632061126 • $17.99 • 5” x 7.125” • 240 pages profession of acting in all its horror and glory. Fiction: Brazilian / Humorous / Literary Rights Held: World English Praise for Glory and its Litany of Horrors • AN INSIDER’S VIEW INTO THE “Brazilian actress Torres follows the frenetic collapse of an actor’s career WONDER AND HORROR OF THE and his masculine bluster with piercing humor in her latest (after The End).... Torres’s zippy momentum still leaves space for an emotional coda, ACTING WORLD and she has an impressive knack for showing Mario’s vulnerability. This reso- • A CAPTIVATING LOOK INSIDE nant story of an actor’s accelerating decline will charm readers who enjoy BRAZILIAN CULTURE madcap farce.” —Publishers Weekly, Pick of the Week • PERFECT FOR THEATER FANS

“This clever novel probes the conflict between business and artistry by chronicling the troubles of Mario Cardoso, a famous Brazilian actor past his prime.... Throughout, Cardoso’s voice remains a blend of cynicism and delu- sion, with the occasional insight: ‘What I lacked was the dignity to wear a crown, none of us have it.’” —The New Yorker Fernanda Torres was born in 1965 in Rio de Janeiro. She has built a solid career as an actress and dedicated herself equally to film, theater, and TV since she was 13 years old, and has received many awards, including Best Actress at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival. Her debut novel, The End, sold more than 200,000 copies in Brazil and was translated for publication in several countries.