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Recommendations based on Mouthful of Birdsby Samanta Schweblin
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Silk
by Alessandro Baricco
Adventure of a 19th century French trader who travels to Japan to find rare silkworm eggs.
The novel tells the story of a French silkworm merchant-turned-smuggler named Hervé Joncour in 19th century France who travels to Japan for his town's supply of silkworms after a disease wipes out ... (Wikipedia)
Cronopios and Famas
by Julio Cortázar
A surrealist collection of short stories, exploring the absurdities of the world.
"The Instruction Manual," the first chapter, is an absurd assortment of tasks and items dissected in an instruction-manual format. "Unusual Occupations," the second chapter, describes the obsessions ... (Goodreads)
Fever Dream
by Samanta Schweblin
A woman's surreal, unsettling journey into the depths of her subconscious.
Waking up disoriented in a clinic, Amanda begins a conversation with a young boy named David. He urges Amanda to try to remember what happened before she came to the clinic. Through the constant ... (Wikipedia)
Things We Lost in the Fire
by Mariana Enríquez
A collection of horror stories, exploring society's dark and disturbing aspects.
In these wildly imaginative, devilishly daring tales of the macabre, internationally bestselling author Mariana Enriquez brings contemporary Argentina to vibrant life as a place where shocking ... (Goodreads)
Tender is the Flesh
by Agustina Bazterrica
In a dystopian world, humans are bred and raised for meat consumption. A man working in the industry faces a moral dilemma.
Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans —though no one calls them that anymore. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos ... (Goodreads)
Baltasar and Blimunda
by José Saramago
A forbidden love story set against the backdrop of 1700s Portugal and its Inquisition.
From the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, a “brilliant...enchanting novel” (New York Times Book Review) of romance, deceit, religion, and magic set in eighteenth-century Portugal at ... (Goodreads)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera
A story of love and loss in a politically turbulent Czechoslovakia.
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being , Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and ... (Goodreads)
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
by Raymond Carver
Exploration of relationships, revealing the complexities of love and its many forms.
Alternate-cover edition can be found, here, In his second collection, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated and beloved short-story writers in American literature—a haunting ... (Goodreads)
Sputnik Sweetheart
by Haruki Murakami
A surreal exploration of love and longing, as two people struggle to come to terms with their feelings.
Sumire is an aspiring writer who survives on a family stipend and the creative input of her only friend, the novel's male narrator and protagonist, known in the text only as 'K'. K is an elementary ... (Wikipedia)
Invisible Cities
by Italo Calvino
A fantastical exploration of the cities of the imagination and the possibilities of life.
"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young ... (Goodreads)
Signs Preceding the End of the World
by Yuri Herrera
A woman's journey crossing the Mexico-US border, reflecting on the power of language.
Winner of the 2016 Best Translated Book Award for Fiction Signs Preceding the End of the World is one of the most arresting novels to be published in Spanish in the last ten years. Yuri Herrera does ... (Goodreads)
Don Quixote
by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
An aging knight's adventures and misadventures, filled with chivalry, honor, and satire.
Don Quixote has become so entranced by reading chivalric romances that he determines to become a knight-errant himself. In the company of his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, his exploits blossom in ... (Goodreads)
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories
by Mariana Enríquez
A collection of haunting and macabre short stories exploring the darkness of human nature and society's ills.
Following the "propulsive and mesmerizing" (, ,, New York Times Book Review, , ,) , ,, Things We Lost in the Fire , ,, comes a new collection of singularly unsettling stories, by an Argentine author ... (Goodreads)
Ancillary Justice
by Ann Leckie
A sci-fi epic of revenge and redemption, exploring the far reaches of the galaxy.
On a remote, icy planet, the soldier known as Breq is drawing closer to completing her quest. Once, she was the Justice of Toren - a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking ... (Goodreads)
The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels
by Ágota Kristóf
A trio of novels exploring the effects of war, and the power of love in a family.
These three internationally acclaimed novels have confirmed Agota Kristof's reputation as one of the most provocative exponents of new-wave European fiction. With all the stark simplicity of a ... (Goodreads)
The Cement Garden
by Ian McEwan
A family of siblings grapple with the death of their parents and the secrets they keep.
In this tour de force of psychological unease - now a major motion picture starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Sinead Cusack - McEwan excavates the ruins of childhood and uncovers things that most ... (Goodreads)
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
by Yukio Mishima
A sailor and his forbidden relationship with a young boy, exploring the themes of aggression and loyalty.
Much of the story is told following the actions of Noboru Kuroda, an adolescent boy living in Yokohama, Japan. He and his group of friends are good students but they are secretly a gang. They believe ... (Wikipedia)
Daytripper
by Fábio Moon
Each chapter explores a different moment in the life of an obituary writer, Brás de Oliva Domingos, as he navigates love, loss, and the meaning of life.
What are the most important days of your life? Meet Brás de Oliva Domingos. The miracle child of a world-famous Brazilian writer, Brás spends his days penning other people's obituaries and his nights ... (Goodreads)
Strange Pilgrims
by Gabriel García Márquez
Collection of stories about Latin American travelers, exploring the depths of human experience.
In Barcelona, an aging Brazilian prostitute trains her dog to weep at the grave she has chosen for herself. In Vienna, a woman parlays her gift for seeing the future into a fortunetelling position ... (Goodreads)
A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories
by Lucia Berlin
An exploration of female experience, weaving together stories of love, loss, and resilience.
A Manual for Cleaning Women compiles the best work of the legendary short-story writer Lucia Berlin. With the grit of Raymond Carver, the humor of Grace Paley, and a blend of wit and melancholy all ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Scar
by China Miéville
A fantastical journey of survival in a dangerous, watery underworld.
The Scar opens with the journey of a small ship which has set out from the city New Crobuzon (the setting of Perdido Street Station ). It is heading to the city's new colony, Nova Esperium, which ... (Wikipedia)
The Girls
by Emma Cline
An exploration of the dark side of teenagehood, as a young girl is drawn into a cult.
Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their ... (Goodreads)
The Illustrated Man
by Ray Bradbury
A collection of short stories about the human condition and its connection to the universe.
That The Illustrated Man has remained in print since being published in 1951 is fair testimony to the universal appeal of Ray Bradbury's work. Only his second collection (the first was Dark Carnival ... (Goodreads)
The Vegetarian
by Han Kang
A woman's radical decision to pursue a vegetarian lifestyle, leading to unexpected and far-reaching consequences.
The Vegetarian tells the story of Yeong-hye, a home-maker who, one day, suddenly decides to stop eating meat after a series of dreams involving images of animal slaughter. This abstention leads her ... (Wikipedia)
Abaddon's Gate
by James S.A. Corey
A crew of space explorers venture through an alien structure in search of a new home.
Abaddon's Gate is the third book in the New York Times bestselling Expanse series. For generations, the solar system - Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt - was humanity's great frontier. Until now. ... (Goodreads)
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong
A letter from a son to his illiterate mother, exploring their family's history and his own coming-of-age as a gay Vietnamese-American.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began ... (Goodreads)
Cathedral
by Raymond Carver
An unexpected encounter changes a man's outlook on life and his relationships.
Raymond Carver’s third collection of stories, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, including the canonical titular story about blindness and learning to enter the very different world of another. These ... (Goodreads)
Orlando
by Virginia Woolf
A fantastical journey through history and gender, exploring the complexities of identity.
The eponymous hero is born as a male nobleman in England during the reign of Elizabeth I . He undergoes a mysterious change of sex at the age of about 30 and lives on for more than 300 years into ... (Wikipedia)
The Sympathizer
by Viet Thanh Nguyen
Vietnam War refugee returns to his homeland and struggles to reconcile conflicting loyalties.
It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be ... (Goodreads)
Laughable Loves
by Milan Kundera
Collection of interconnected stories exploring the complexities of love, relationships and life.
Laughable Loves is a collection of stories that first appeared in print in Prague before 1968, but was then was subsequently banned. The seven stories are all concerned with love, or rather with the ... (Goodreads)
