from my email: CAT/Two Lines

SEPTEMBER

HAIR ON FIRE: Afghan Women Poets  by multiple authors, translated from Dari Persian and multiple translators with an introduction by Aria Aber (poetry) In this forthcoming Calico collection, there are “hypnotic, long beards” tangled with mass extinctions; hateful men burning grapevines; black blindfolds; jinn in chadors; and condoms advertised every eight minutes on TV. Interspersing these are tender moments: one poet describes brushing her daughter’s hair, while another imagines a tree growing at the center of a room, undisturbed by the bombs outside. In the wake of the Taliban’s escalating war on Afghan women’s rights, Hair on Fire is a blazing tribute to a group of exceptional poetesses and a reminder of what we lose when voices are silenced. Out September 2. GRACE PERIOD  by Maria Judite de Carvalho, translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa (fiction | novel) Mateo Silva is at a crossroads, but too paralyzed to change direction in a life that he no longer seems to control. After 25 years away, he has returned to sell his childhood home so he can send his longtime girlfriend—whom he now realizes he may have never loved—on a trip to the Acropolis before her cancer kills her. Mateo sells the home to the first bidder: his wealthy neighbor from childhood, whose wife, Graça, enchanted Mateo as a young man. It was Graça’s beauty, paired with his father’s unfaithfulness, that broke up his family. But the woman he sees now bears little resemblance to the one he remembers, and you can’t move forward by revisiting the past. Out September 16.

OCTOBER SEA NOW  by Eva Meijer, translated from Dutch by Anne Thompson Melo (fiction | novel) The catastrophe that everyone knew was coming has arrived—the dykes are breached, the tideline rises a kilometer a day, and the citizens of the Netherlands are forced into gyms and shelters in Germany and Belgium. The foxes and rabbits head inland across the dunes. The politicians make empty speeches and fret the optics. The Hague—“the center of peace and justice”—slips beneath the rising water. Online retailers do flash sale promotions on disaster kits. There is violence and looting, but some people are too tired to start over again and simply walk into the rising tide. Not willing to simply move on, three women get into a small boat and ride back out over the flooded cities, looking for loved ones they know are likely drowned. On the way, they witness a world retaken by seabirds, whales, and kelp forests. The sea has spoken, and there’s nothing left to do but listen. Philosopher and cross-species linguist Eva Meijer’s new novel redefines both nature writing and climate fiction by bringing the power and resilience of the natural world to the fore. Out October 14. NOVEMBER THE QUEEN OF SWORDS  by Jazmina Barrera, translated from Spanish by Christina MacSweeney (nonfiction | biography) In what was at first meant to be a short essay about the influential Mexican writer Elena Garro (1916–1988), Jazmina Barrera’s deep curiosity and exploration give us a singular portrait of a complex life. Sifting through the writer’s archives at Princeton, Barrera is repeatedly thwarted in her attempt to fully know her subject. Traditional means of research—the correspondence, photos, and books—serve only to complicate and cloud the woman and her work. Who was Elena Garro, really? She was a writer, a founder of magical realism, a dancer. A devotee to the tarot and the I Ching. A socialite and activist on behalf of indigenous Mexicans. She was a mother and a lover who repeatedly shook off (and cheated on) her manipulative husband, Nobel laureate Octavio Paz. And above all, she wrote with simmering anger and glittering imagination. The Queen of Swords is a portrait of a woman that also serves as an alternative history of Mexico City; a cry for justice; and an homage to the unknowable. It transcends mere biography, supplanting something tidy and authoritative for a sprawling experiment in understanding. Out November 11. THE WEEK OF COLORS  by Elena Garro, translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell (fiction | short stories) A woman flits between two realities centuries apart, as scenes from the violent conquest of Mexico bleed their way into her comfortable contemporary life. Two little girls visit the home of a sorcerer who tortures women named after the days of the week. Girls become dogs, a laborer hides human bones in bricks he’ll use to build a new development, and an old woman appears at an acquaintance’s door one night with a knife and a bone-chilling confession. With The Week of Colors, Elena Garro laid the groundwork for the literary movements that would shape the landscape of Latin American fiction and beyond. Here you’ll find the early roots of magical realism, feminist horror, and anticolonial speculative fiction. In The Week of Colors, Garro highlights the violence in our history, our homes, and our hearts, in vivid color. Out November 11.