Review: The Rainbow by Yasunari Kawabata (translated by Haydn Trowell)

Everything in flux.

Review: Beloved by Toni Morrison

The power of words.

Review: The Wife by Sigrid Undset (translated by Tiina Nunnally)

Biting marital drama.

Review: The Years by Annie Ernaux

A generational reckoning.

Review: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

A compelling depiction of yearning.

Review: Winepress by Gabriela Mistral (translated by Ursula K. Le Guin)

Poetry that is elemental, grief-stricken, unearthly.

Review: The Wild Iris by Louise Glück

Poetry that forces clarity upon you about the cruelty and wonder of being alive.

Review: The Garlic Ballads by Mo Yan (translated by Howard Goldblatt)

A potent depiction of a time and a place, and seething critique of corruption.

Review: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Grapes Of Wrath remains a bracingly strange novel about ecological crisis eight decades after it was published.

Review: The Plague by Albert Camus

The Plague is understandably back on best-seller lists: the parallels with our current situation are striking.