French literature
Helen Constantine’s new translation of Balzac’s “The Wild Ass’s Skin” serves this wonderful and weird book well. It is one of the great, black comic fables in world literature, a dazzlingly demented exploration of a society’s lack of imagination.
In the heartrending “Three Strong Women,” award-winning novelist Marie NDiaye infuses her Senegalese women characters with a personal sense of dignity and a strong belief in self.
Perhaps the novel is not the most original read, but AN ACCIDENT IN AUGUST contributes to the growing number of literary meditations on the evolving pathology of celebrity,
Book Commentary: Why University Presses Matter in New England