White Moss by Anna Nerkagi, translated by Irina Sadovina (Pushkin, £12.99)
“You, too, need a woman!” Alyoshka’s mother tells him. “Even a plain one, as long as her hands and legs aren’t crooked.” And Alyoshka, part of the nomadic Nenets people in the Russian Arctic, does find a wife, but can’t consummate their marriage: he’s still in love with a girl who left for the city years ago. This novel takes us around the camp, from Alyoshka’s family to Petko and his friend Vanu discussing old age to a new arrival who shares his tragic story of alcohol addiction: “The devil had entered my soul, and it was fun to be with him.” Meanwhile, Soviet representatives, intended to support the Nenets people, come and go: “They didn’t stick, because strictly speaking there was nothing to stick to.” This story of a solid community where people stick instead with one another is a perfect warming tale for winter.
The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Dusapin, translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins (Daunt, £14.99)
Agathe, a 30-year-old French woman living in New York, is so estranged from her sister Véra that when she receives a text message saying “Papa’s dead”, she replies: “Who is this?” Now she returns to the family home in the Dordogne to help clear out his things. “If we set fire to the books, there’d be nothing left.” Relations remain difficult: Véra communicates only by text message; she hasn’t spoken since the age of six. This is a book of absence and silence – village shops are closed, streets deserted, Agathe’s husband in the US doesn’t reply to her – and written with apt spareness. “I’m following the advice of decluttering influencers,” Agathe tells us, but it’s her past that she needs to offload, and slowly we learn the history of the family breakup. The balance between revelation and continued mystery makes this book both tantalising and satisfying.
The Roof Beneath Their Feet by Geetanjali Shree, translated by Rahul Soni (And Other Stories, £14.99)
In an Indian neighbourhood, people use their connected roofs as an alternative living, sleeping and hiding place: “not a roof but a sea”. One is narrator Bitva, a man mourning the death of Chachcho, who was a mother figure to him. He resents Chachcho’s friend Lalna hanging around, interrupting his mourning. “You are driving Chachcho away by staying here.” We learn the characters’ stories: the rich uncle from Hong Kong; how Chachcho’s husband treated her; sexist rumours about Lalna’s promiscuity. “Advice flew around: take care of your sons!” Then a sudden switch, and we get Lalna’s own story, which changes things. The fluid structure can make it hard to follow – “my memories,” says Lalna, “always start somewhere in the middle” – but this novel, although on a much smaller scale than Shree’s International Booker winner Tomb of Sand, is just as full of exuberance and inventiveness.
Berlin Shuffle by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, translated by Philip Boehm (Pushkin, £18.99)
Boschwitz, whose novel The Passenger was a rediscovered hit recently, wrote two books before his death in 1942 at the age of 27. Berlin Shuffle was his debut: a cynical, funny account of down-and-out Berlin in the 1920s, where men and women are “caught under the wheels of life”. There’s greengrocer Schreiber, who lets out his basement to a trio of “tramps”, including Tönnchen, whose childhood hunger has made him food-obsessed; Grissmann, who lost his job to mechanisation (“machines made all problems seem splendidly solvable”); and petty criminal turned pimp Wilhelm. “At first he found the idea of living off prostitutes disgusting. But with time and money, he came round to the idea.” Despite the characters’ grim circumstances, this is a lively book, light on its feet if rougher round the edges than The Passenger, and with a fittingly explosive conclusion.
