November global fiction: Welcome winter with new reads from Haruki Murakami, Jon Fosse and other

Morning and Evening, Jon Fosse, translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls

A child who will be named Johannes is born. An old man named Johannes dies. Between these two points, Jon Fosse gives us the details of an entire life, starkly compressed. Beginning with Johannes’s father’s thoughts as his wife goes into labour, and ending with Johannes’s own thoughts as he embarks upon a day in his life when everything is exactly the same, yet totally different.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls, Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel

When a young man’s girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, he sets his heart on finding the imaginary city where her true self lives. His search will lead him to take a job in a remote library with mysteries of its own.

When he finally makes it to the walled city, a shadowless place of horned beasts and willow trees, he finds his beloved working in a different library – a dream library. But she has no memory of their life together in the other world and, as the lines between reality and fantasy start to blur, he must decide what he’s willing to lose.

A Bird in Winter, Louise Doughty

Bird is a woman on the run. One minute, she’s in a meeting in her office in Birmingham – the next, she’s walking out on her job, her home, her life. It’s a day she thought might come, one she’s prepared for. But nothing could prepare her for what will happen next.

As Bird tries to work out who exactly is on her trail, she must also decide who – if anyone – she can trust. Is her greatest fear that she will be hunted down, or that she will never be found?

City of Night Birds, Juhea Kim

On a White Night in 2019, prima ballerina Natalia Leonova returns to St Petersburg two years after a devastating accident that stalled her career. Once the most celebrated dancer of her generation, she now turns to pills and alcohol to numb the pain of her past.

She is unmoored in her old city as the ghosts of her former life begin to resurface: her loving but difficult mother, her absentee father, and the two gifted dancers who led to her downfall.

One of those dancers, Alexander, is the love of her life, who transformed both Natalia and her art. The other is Dmitri, a dark and treacherous genius. When the latter offers her a chance to return to the stage in her signature role, Natalia must decide whether she can again face the people responsible for both her soaring highs and darkest hours.

The Wood at Midwinter, Susanna Clarke

“A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really.”

Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scott is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees – and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods.

One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst – and the path of her life is changed forever.

The Bishop’s Villa, Sacha Naspini, translated from the Italian by Clarissa Botsford

Tuscany, November 1943. The village of Le Case is miles from any big city and appears rooted in an earlier century. Seen from there, even the war looks different – it is mostly a matter of waiting, praying, and mourning. As a fierce winter threatens, an order is issued by the local Fascist authorities: all Jews must be rounded up and detained in the bishop’s villa to await deportation.

Shy, solitary, and taciturn René is the town’s cobbler. His only friend is the widow Anna, a woman with whom he has been secretly in love for years. When Anna’s son joins the Resistance and is swiftly captured and shot by the Wehrmacht, the grieving woman vows to continue her son’s mission, and one evening, she disappears into the woods. René later learns that a group of Resistance fighters has been ambushed and the survivors are imprisoned in the bishop’s villa. A woman is among them, they say, a grieving mother and former inhabitant of Le Case.

René can no longer stand by and watch as his town, his country, and his one great love become victims of the Nazis and their Fascist enablers, and he decides to take action. Perhaps for the first time in his life.

Information sourced from publishers.