This summer, the Loyola Libraries are excited to bring you the World Cup of Books, an interactive program to encouraging reading books from other countries. Show your support for your favorite team by reading books from and about their country!
Today’s match-ups include Denmark v France, Australia v Peru, Nigeria v Argentina, and Iceland v Croatia
Denmark:
Baboon by Naja Marie Aidt, translated by Denise Newman
It takes some courage to open a book with a description of “an astonishing landscape,” but Aidt begins with this implicit boast, confident that her work can take readers to places they’ve never been. Capturing the importance in banality is Aidt’s laudable aim here, and many of these stories demonstrate a poet’s interest in turning a moment over and looking at it from all sides. –Kirkus Review
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France:
The complete poetry of Aimé Césaire by Aimé Césaire, translated by A. James Arnold and Clayton Eshleman
The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire gathers all of Cesaire’s celebrated verse into one bilingual edition. To prepare the English translations, the translators started afresh from this French edition. Included here are translations of first editions of the poet’s early work, prior to political interventions in the texts after 1955, revealing a new understanding of Cesaire’s aesthetic and political trajectory. This book provides a new cornerstone for readers and scholars in 20th century poetry, African diasporic literature, and postcolonial studies. -Amazon
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Australia:
Woman of the Inner Sea by Thomas Keneally 
The latest effort from Booker Prize-winning Australian author Keneally is one of his best. He sets it on native turf and uses glimpses of his homeland’s history, folkore and natural wonders to lift intriguing events to the level of riveting, sophisticated thriller. And as he brilliantly illustrates how the best-laid plans can go awry, he demonstrates that the true test of people is in how they cope with life’s major and minor catastrophes. –Publisher’s Weekly
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Peru:
Lessons for a child who arrives late by Carlos Yushimito, translated by Valerie Miles
A mascot for an electronics store dreams of making it in the drug world of Rio de Janeiro. A tin man ponders the mysteries of death as a heart starts to take charge of his limbs, while in a place not so far away a boy tries to play the piano like Margarita, the teacher’s cruel and beautiful niece. In stories filled with violence and tenderness, love and disconnection, Carlos Yushimito’s long-anticipated debut explores the subtle space of estrangement –Transit Books
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Nigeria:
Tina shot me between the eyes : and other stories by Antoinette Tidjani Alou 
A grandmother with a food-induced encounter, an ecclesial romance with a tomcat set in the throes of uncertain times, eating and drinking for freedom, wife battery under the watchful eyes of communal love, desperately seeking lovers burdened by violent pasts, and a woman taking liberty after nine children with nine husbands are some of the characters and stories in Antoinette Tidjani Alou’s debut fiction collection. In fifteen formidable lyrical prose, Tina Shot Me Between the Eyes explores how the self is shaped and transformed by the knots we yearn to tie around ourselves: familial, spousal, parental, and societal. –Amalion Publishing
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Argentina:
A beautiful young woman: a novel by Julián López, translated by Samuel Rutter
The “disappeared”—those deemed left-wing enemies of the vicious military dictatorship that ruled Argentina during the 1970s and early ’80s—still haunt the country’s collective memory, especially the surviving family members who don’t know what happened to their absent loved ones. This first novel by López, a poet, actor, and director of the literary group Ciclo Carne Argentina, paints an intensely evocative portrait of one such missing person: a woman whose name is one of the few things her son doesn’t disclose about her from the memories he carries from childhood. It’s been said that memory is a poet—if so, this novel represents some of its most gorgeous and incandescent work. – Kirkus Review
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Iceland:
The Blue Fox by Sjon, translated by Victoria Cribb 
Set against the stark backdrop of the Icelandic winter, an elusive, enigmatic fox leads a hunter on a transformative quest. At the edge of the hunter’s territory, a naturalist struggles to build a life for his charge, a young woman with Down syndrome whom he had rescued from a shipwreck years before. By the end of Sjón’s slender, spellbinding fable of a novel, none of their lives will be the same. The Blue Fox is part mystery, part fairy tale, and the perfect introduction to a mind-bending, world-class literary talent. -Amazon
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Croatia:
Hotel Tito by Ivana Simić Bodrožic, translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać
Drawing on her own family’s experiences during Yugoslavia’s struggle for independence in the 1990s, poet and fiction writer Bodrožic creates a captivating tale that earned acclaim and literary awards when it was published in Europe. The story begins when the slyly observant narrator is suddenly is sent, with her older brother, from their home in Vukovar, on the Croatian-Serbian border, to the seashore. A few weeks later, the children’s mother arrives, but their father remains in Vukovar to defend Croatia against the Serbs, a long siege that ends in the imprisonment—and, the family later learns, the murder—of 400 men, her father among them. The remaining family members become refugees, housed in one shabby room at the former Political School in Kumrovec, which they sardonically dub the Hotel Tito. Tragic history conveyed with honesty and candor. –Kirkus Review
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Have you read any of these books, or a book from another country participating in the 2018 World Cup? Add a review of a book from a participating nation to our bracket here! You can also fill out our quick form here, and we’ll add your review to the bracket board. Your review may appear in a future blog post!
