Yoga

"Early in the year, I fell hard for Emmanuel Carrère’s whirling, discombobulating work of autofiction, freshly translated into English by John Lambert. As I wrote back in spring , when my head was still spinning: We, in the Anglophone world, have not paid Carrère his dues. This latest work is a difficult book to sum up, but suffice to say, it begins in an easy, breezy style that feels almost free-associative, before it swirls ever faster down the plug hole. Disparate, discordant elements come into alignment, and soon Yoga reveals itself to have been entirely orchestrated from beginning to end. By the closing pages I wanted to give it a standing ovation. You’ll either love it or hate it; clearly, I’m in the former camp. This is a book that made me think: wow, I didn’t know we were allowed to do that. For all sorts of reasons— some moral —but many of them literary. Carrère takes pains to underline his personal weaknesses (“I am an eminently moral individual who distinguishes very clearly between good and evil, and places nothing higher than goodness,” he explains, “but alas, no, I am not good.”) but does not hesitate to put them on display—nay, to parade them, in this book. Yoga charts his mental breakdown, after several self-congratulatory years of career success and marital bliss. His dramatic self-destruction spools out in slow motion—but there is something liberating in that for the reader, to see a writer dissect their own inner workings so painstakingly and under such a clear, bright light."

"Carrère is, as Robert McCrum once described him , “the most important French writer you’ve never heard of.” We, in the Anglophone world, have not paid him his dues. This latest work is a difficult book to sum up, but suffice to say, it begins in an easy, breezy style that feels almost free-associative, before it swirls ever faster down the plug hole. Disparate, discordant elements come into alignment, and soon Yoga reveals itself to have been entirely orchestrated from beginning to end. By the closing pages I wanted to give it a standing ovation. You’ll either love it or hate it; clearly, I’m in the former camp. ( Yoga is out June 2 in the UK, August 2 in the US.) Also of note in translated fiction , the latest novel from Omani author Johka Alharthi: Bitter Orange Tree . Like Alharthi’s International Booker Prize-winning Celestial Bodies , Bitter Orange Tree has also been translated by the Oxford academic Marilyn Booth. And look out for Sayaka Murata’s collection of short fiction, Life Ceremony . There’s a steamy new novel from Nigerian author Akwaeke Emezi (best known for Freshwater and The Death of Vivek Oji ). Their new book, You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty , is the moving story of a Brooklyn-based artist who—five years on from the death of her husband—is ready to consider dating again. Vogue called it “this summer’s must-read love story,” although be warned, it’s darker than your average romance novel. Other books you might want to slip into your suitcase for an upcoming beach holiday include Taylor Jenkins Reid’s latest, Carrie Soto Is Back (out August 30), and Bolu Babalola’s debut romcom Honey & Spice (July 5). R. F. Kuang (author of the Hugo-, Nebula-, Locus-, and World Fantasy Award-nominated The Poppy War trilogy) returns with a new fantasy epic: Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution , which should appeal to fans of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell . And thriller lovers should look out for Upgrade by Blake Crouch, a follow-up to his mind-bending Recursion ."