Intimate and raw, tender and diamond-sharp - in both observation and style - this novel is about the intersection of two life phases and a reminder that the past lingers in the present, whether we want it to or not:⁠ ⁠ Asta is invited to a memorial. It’s been ten years since her university friend August died. The invitation disrupts everything – the novel she is working on and her friendship with Mai and her two-year-old son – reanimating longings, doubts, and the ghosts of parties past. Soon a new story begins to take shape. Not of the obscure Polish sculptor Asta wanted to write about, but of what really happened the night of August’s death, and in the stolen, exuberant days leading up to it. The story she has never dared reveal to Mai.⁠ ⁠ Moving between Asta’s past and present, Memorial, 29 June is a novel about who we really are, and who we thought we would become. It’s a novel about the intensity with which we experience the world in our twenties, and how our ambitions, anxieties, and memories from that time never relinquish their grasp on how we encounter our future.⁠ ⁠ In prose that shimmers like poetry, masterfully translated by Misha Hoekstra, Memorial, 29 June is an urgent yet tender reminder that sometimes pain is where the love is, and that grief, however thorny, should never go unspoken. Buy

Black German-language fiction has a long tradition that has come alive in many movements. From early works of fiction, such as the first novel by Black author Dualla Misipo at the end of the Weimar Republic, to current titles.⁠ ⁠ With "Resonanzen - Schwarzes Literaturfestival", a three-day festival took place in May 2022 that provided impulses for rethinking, reimagining and further developing perspectives and experiences within the German-language literary scene. The publication accompanying the festival presents the short stories of the six invited authors, traces the discussions of the jury and shows the diverse traditions, influences and references of authors of the African diaspora in Germany.⁠ Buy

In South Korea, you can go to "prison" to relax. Sounds strange? Well, it is. You can get locked up in solitary confinement in a wellness centre designed like a prison. You lock out responsibilities, work, stress and emails and focus on your inner self. At least that's the concept. "The true prison is the world outside," says the founder of the jail-themed retreat.⁠ ⁠ For this weirdly fantastic book we want to present here, artist Tyler Coburn commissioned ten creatives to spend time in five square metres of solitude in this wellness centre - and write. They handed in their phones, exchanged their clothes for a uniform, took their rice porridge meals through a door slot and slept on the floor. ⁠ ⁠ During their time in this mock prison, they were guided in their writing by certain questions: How can the relaxation promised by Happitory be reconciled with the way solitary confinement works in real prisons? What kinds of thinking and writing are made possible by the restrictions - no books, no internet, only writing materials? How might the writing here relate to other texts produced in prison, such as those by Oscar Wilde, Antonio Gramsci, Kim Dae-jung, Shin Young-bok?⁠ ⁠ In its entirety, 'Solitary' is unique in that it is both a collection of texts and a collective artwork: an experiment in site-specific writing.⁠ Buy

Replacement, one could say, is at odds with individualism. If something is irreplaceable, then theoretically it has more value than something that can be easily replaced. So who wants to be replaceable? Amber Husain does! Disillusioned by her first real job, the kind that brings you a pay check that sustains a life, she realises that a permanent job is not automatically a guarantee for permanent relevancy. On the contrary, it "felt causally connected to my growing doubt about the beauty and meaningfulness of life."⁠ ⁠ Fun enough humans continue to build machines that replaces human labour. Starting with the washing machine. But instead of leaning back and enjoying all that free time, we compete with robots and create useless jobs are suppose to make us feel important and needed. ⁠ ⁠ Replace Me is a celebration of the possibilities for political transformation inherent in the act of embracing one's own replaceability.⁠ Buy

This book by Simone de Beauvoir was deemed too intimate to release during her lifetime and then has been lost. Luckily it was found and published now so that we can indulge in this tender and at the same time revolutionary story.⁠ ⁠ The Inseparables is based on Beauvoir's childhood friendship with Élisabeth Lacoin even though the two main characters carry other names- Sylvie and André. The two girls, that meet at school, share for that time revolutionary and feminist thoughts. “They teach you in catechism to respect your body. So selling your body in marriage must be as bad as selling it on the street,” Andrée says. Sylvie is bored and intellectually lonely, so meeting this clever, irreverent girl changes her life. Sylvie falls in love with André's mind. But there is much that society will throw at Andrée to intimidate and flatten her, not least religion and the desire not to disappoint her controlling, conservative mother. Buy

The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death.⁠ Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr Rieux, resist the terror.⁠ Sounds familiar? It is no surprise that The Plague by Albert Camus got a "second wave" in Covid-19 times. However the deadly plague in this story is an allegory of France’s suffering under the Nazi occupation. But with the uprising of fascist voices all over the world also this aspect of the novel from 1947 couldn't be more current. Unfortunately for this kind of plague we will be waiting long for a vaccine.⁠ Buy

The Witch is dead. After a group of children playing near the irrigation canals discover her decomposing corpse, the village of La Matosa is rife with rumours about how and why this murder occurred. As the novel unfolds in a dazzling linguistic torrent, Fernanda Melchor paints a moving portrait of lives governed by poverty and violence, machismo and misogyny, superstition and prejudice. Written with an infernal lyricism that is as affecting as it is enthralling, Hurricane Season, Melchor’s first novel to appear in English, is a formidable portrait of Mexico and its demons, brilliantly translated by Sophie Hughes.⁠ Buy