Global & Literary

GLOBAL VOICES, BOLD VISIONS: 10 MUST-READ BOOKS FOR EARLY 2025

(Eris White)

Start the first quarter of 2025 with a journey through the vibrant landscape of global literature. This month brings an exciting array of voices from across the world – Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Greece, Italy, China, Sweden, Germany, Chile, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. From a newly translated Greek classic that gazes at the stars, to bold surrealist tales from Italy to the long-lost Chilean novel capturing queer love and revolution – The quarter’s offerings promise both discovery and depth. Among these pages, you’ll find urgent poetry from Palestine, experimental narratives from China, and unforgettable stories that span continents and histories. Here are ten standout titles to kick off your reading year with wonder, challenge, and connection.

ONE/

The Ways of Paradise: Notes from a Lost Manuscript, by Peter Cornell, translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel, Fitzcarraldo, 2025 The Ways of Paradise is a richly enigmatic, genre-defying work that reads like a hall of mirrors—one that endlessly refracts history, myth, philosophy, and personal obsession. Styled as the editorial recovery of a mysterious, unnamed manuscript discovered in Stockholm’s Royal Library, the book assembles 199 fragmentary reflections that spiral through themes as diverse as medieval pilgrimage, Surrealist automatism, queer identity in 1950s Sweden, and labyrinthine symbolism in art and literature. With the spirit of Mallarmé’s unfinished Livre haunting every page, Peter Cornell (or perhaps just his persona) serves less as an author than a medium channelling thoughts from a lost consciousness. Translated with clarity and restraint by Saskia Vogel, the text resists narrative and linearity, instead inviting readers to wander—through ideas, images, and historical echoes. Each passage seems to hint at a larger, missing whole, creating a shimmering ambiguity between authorship and anonymity, myth and document, critique and reverie. As intellectually dense as it is hypnotically readable, The Ways of Paradise is not just a book—it is an experience of losing and re-finding oneself in the shadows of meaning.

TWO/

The Sky Is Our Song: The “Phaenomena” of Aratus, translated from the Greek by Stanley Lombardo, The University of Chicago Press, 2025: The Sky Is Our Song offers a fresh and engaging modern translation of Aratus’s Phaenomena, a foundational astronomical poem from ancient Greece. First composed around 270 BCE, this poetic text served as a celestial map for generations, guiding readers through the constellations, weather signs, and rhythms of the sky. Translator Stanley Lombardo brings new life to the work in clear, contemporary English verse, supported by an insightful introduction and detailed astronomical illustrations. The edition emphasizes the poetic and scientific brilliance of Aratus’s vision, making the stars accessible not only to scholars, but to any curious reader. Enhanced by visual aids that reflect the constellations as described in the text, this new version reconnects us with the wonder early stargazers must have felt. With its careful balance of art, myth, and astronomy, The Sky Is Our Song invites modern audiences to rediscover an ancient love for the heavens.

THREE/

Arabic, Between Love and War, edited by Norah Alkharashi and Yasmine Haj, Trace Press, 2025: Arabic, between Love and War is a powerful anthology that explores the fragile yet potent space between two words separated by a single Arabic letter: love (حب) and war (حرب). This collection gathers the voices of poets and translators who engage in the intimate and often precarious act of translation—moving between Arabic and English, and across boundaries of language, identity, and history. The poems resonate with the complexities of displacement, memory, and resilience, refusing to simplify or exoticize suffering. Instead, they offer tender and fierce reflections on what it means to inhabit multiple worlds at once. Through this collaborative and community-rooted work, Arabic, between Love and War becomes both a testament to survival and a celebration of the enduring power of poetry to connect, translate, and transform.

FOUR/

Sumūd: A New Palestinian Reader, edited by Malu Halasa and Jordan Elgrably, Seven Stories Press, 2025 Sumūd: A New Palestinian Reader is a powerful expression of the enduring strength of Palestinian identity in the face of occupation and erasure. Edited by Malu Halasa and Jordan Elgrably, the anthology weaves together a wide range of genres – memoir, short fiction, poetry, essays, personal narratives, and visual art – offering an expansive portrait of cultural resistance. At its heart is the concept of sumūd, a deeply rooted Palestinian value of resilience and steadfastness, which resonates through every contribution. Spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, and especially highlighting voices from 2021 to 2024, the collection features urgent dispatches from Gaza, speculative fiction, political analysis, and lyrical tributes by emerging poets. Through 58 pieces and 25 illustrations by Palestinian artists, the book asserts the necessity of culture as both a refuge and a force of defiance in the face of ongoing violence and displacement. Sumūd is not just a reader – it is a declaration of survival, self-determination, and hope carried through language and art.

FIVE/

A Bird Called Elaeus: Poems for Here and Now from The Greek Anthology, translated from the Greek by David Constantine, Bloodaxe Books, 2025: In A Bird Called Elaeus, David Constantine draws from the vast depths of The Greek Anthology to craft a resonant, contemporary echo of voices from the ancient world. With characteristic sensitivity and poetic precision, Constantine selects and translates poems that speak not only of love and mortality, but of our fraught relationship with nature, labour, and the divine. His versions don’t merely preserve – they reawaken. Some poems are lovingly expanded, reimagined, or gently stitched together, while others remain faithful to their Greek origins, each one vibrating with urgency and timeless insight. Constantine’s translations serve as both homage and warning: the ancient world knew transgression against the Earth as sacrilege, and the consequences were never taken lightly. In today’s ecological crisis, these ancient voices feel startlingly present. A Bird Called Elaeus is more than a translation – it is a dialogue across millennia, urgent and elegiac, warning and wonder all at once.

SIX/

The Bewitched Bourgeois: Fifty Stories, by Dino Buzzati, translated from the Italian by Lawrence Venuti, New York Review Books, 2025: The Bewitched Bourgeois presents a compelling selection of Dino Buzzati’s short stories, translated by Lawrence Venuti. This anthology captures the full range of Buzzati’s work, from his earliest pieces to those penned in the final months of his life. Known for blending Kafkaesque absurdity with eerie horror, Buzzati’s tales often explore the darkest sides of human nature, bureaucracy, and existential dread. In stories like “Seven Floors,” where a patient is trapped in an absurd and fatal hospital hierarchy, or “Panic at La Scala,” where the Milanese elite are imprisoned by their own fears of revolution, Buzzati offers unsettling commentary on the absurdities of modern life. The collection also includes “Appointment with Einstein,” where the celebrated physicist meets the Angel of Death at a gas station, showcasing Buzzati’s flair for mixing the mundane with the supernatural. With Venuti’s precise translations, some of which appear in English for the first time, The Bewitched Bourgeois is a perfect introduction to Buzzati’s visionary storytelling, capturing the absurd, the terrifying, and the strangely beautiful in equal measure.

SEVEN/

My Tender Matador by Pedro Lemebel, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver, Pushkin Press, 2025: My Tender Matador is a groundbreaking and beautifully written queer novel by Pedro Lemebel, rediscovered as a classic in the world of transgressive literature. Set against the backdrop of 1986 Santiago, Chile, during the intense protests against dictator Augusto Pinochet, the novel centres around the Queen of the Corner, an ageing trans woman who lives a life of quiet rebellion. Her days are spent embroidering linen for the wealthy and dreaming of romance while the world outside erupts in violence. Her life takes a surprising turn when she meets Carlos, a young, handsome revolutionary who enlists her help with his clandestine activities. As their bond grows, they find their lives intertwined with the fate of the dictator himself. Lemebel’s lush prose weaves together the erotic and the political, blending romantic longing with militant resistance. My Tender Matador is a tender and transgressive tale of desire, love, and revolution, offering a unique exploration of identity, power, and the complexities of queer relationships in a repressive society. Translated by Katherine Silver, this novel further cements Lemebel’s place as a major figure in Latin American queer literature. His work continues to resonate, capturing the revolutionary spirit and the struggles of marginalized individuals during a tumultuous period in Chile’s history.

EIGHT/

Dealing with the Dead, by Alain Mabanckou, translated from the French by Helen Stevenson, Serpent’s Tail, 2025: Dealing with the Dead by Alain Mabanckou is a gripping, genre-defying novel that blends magic realism, political satire, and dark humour into a tale of life, death, and corruption. Set in the port city of Pointe-Noire, Congo, the story follows Liwa, a young orphan who, after dying mysteriously at 24, awakens in the Frère-Lachaise cemetery. There, he encounters a community of ghosts, each sharing their tragic stories of death, injustice, and power. Through surreal vignettes, Mabanckou explores Liwa’s past in the impoverished Trois-Cents neighbourhood, weaving a narrative that mixes personal grief with biting critiques of the Congolese government’s kleptocracy. As Liwa revisits the night of his death, the novel shifts from whimsical to somber, revealing the dark undercurrents of political corruption and personal loss. With references to classic literature and sharp satire, Mabanckou creates a compelling, multifaceted story that is at once eerie, poignant, and a profound commentary on the intersections of power, memory, and history.

NINE/

 Bad Sheep by Katja Lange-Müller, translated from the German by Simon Pare, Seagull Books, 2025: Set in the fractured heart of 1980s West Berlin, Katja Lange-Müller’s novel tells the tender, melancholic story of Soja, a warm-hearted East German refugee and typesetter who temporarily works as a florist. Her life is quietly upended when she meets Harry – a tall, gentle, yet troubled man whose past is marred by prison time, broken therapy, and the shadow of relapse. Their brief but profound connection, chronicled only through Harry’s voice in a notebook of eighty-nine anonymous entries, lingers in Soja’s memory long after he disappears from her life. Years later, Soja, missing from Harry’s pages, embarks on a deeply personal journey to piece together their story and reclaim her place within it. With subtle humour, sorrow, and deep emotional resonance, Lange-Müller captures the essence of a love that is as ephemeral as it is transformative, set against a backdrop of political stagnation and emotional isolation. This quiet, powerful novel becomes a moving exploration of remembrance, longing, and the bittersweet endurance of love.

TEN/

Mother River by Can Xue, translated from Chinese by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping, Open Letter, 2025: In Mother River, Can Xue submerges us in a realm where the surreal mingles with the everyday, and the river remembers more than the people who live beside it. These thirteen enigmatic stories drift through foggy villages, shadowed psyches, and metaphysical currents, where ears float under mosquito nets and snakes slip through silence. Characters encounter shifting realities—golden peacocks, blooming roses with ominous beauty, and creatures that may or may not be real—all crafted with Can Xue’s distinct dream logic and sly humour. As strange as they are meditative, these tales resist linear understanding, urging the reader to feel rather than interpret, to surrender rather than analyse. With translation guided by Karen Gernant and the late Chen Zeping, this is Can Xue at her most daring—playful, unsettling, and transcendent. Winner of the Best Translated Book Award (2015) and praised by luminaries from Sontag to Coover, Can Xue continues to be a luminous force in global literature. Mother River is not just a book—it’s an atmosphere, a whispered myth, a place where fiction becomes fluid.

WHAT WE HAVE LEARNT: As the first quarter of 2025 unfolds, Global Voices, Bold Visions offers a vibrant, genre-defying glimpse into the literary pulse of our times. These ten books span continents and centuries, weaving stories of resilience, desire, identity, and memory through powerful language and daring imagination. Whether it’s rediscovered queer narratives from Chile, mythic reflections from ancient Greece, or poetic dispatches from Palestine and Sudan, each work challenges borders – of genre, geography, and thought. Together, they remind us that literature is not just a mirror to the world, but a means of reshaping it. This is reading as resistance, discovery, and deep connection – an invitation to listen closely to the boldest voices of our global present.Edit