Elizabeth Tallent writes: "For the sake of perfection, I took a voice, my own, and twisted until mischance and error and experiment were wrung from it, and with them any chance of aliveness."

Chris McCormick's new novel layers the glitz and artifice of pro wrestling over a wrenching tale of two Armenian cousins whose involvement with a militant Armenian liberation group goes badly awry.

Nicole Krauss and Zeruya Shalev are friends — and authors whose work is deeply bound up in their Jewish and Israeli identities. But both struggle with the pressure to represent those identities.

The characters in Nona Fernández' new book are coming of age during Chile's brutal military dictatorship — and for them, video games are a useful framework for understanding the dangers all around.

The stand-up comic's essays have soft and lovely moments, steering readers toward finding their own vulnerabilities. But Slate is not as open to self-exposure on the page as she is on the stage.

Surrealist writer and poet Silvina Ocampo has been called "the best kept secret of Argentine letters," and two new translations have beautifully captured her evocative prose style for new readers.

Nell Zink is a very funny writer, but the comedy never quite works in her new novel, which follows two aging punks and their daughter, from the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the '80s to D.C. today.

Accomplished translator Jennifer Croft's first non-translated work is a hybrid, mixing photography and impressionistic autobiographical writing to tell the story of Croft's artistic coming of age.

In the new collection, Ann Patchett tells of her resemblance to her mother, Lizzie Skurnick and Mat Johnson offer thoughts on mothers with dementia, and John Freeman contemplates his father's legacy.

Fashion journalist Dana Thomas' book is a snappy, clear-minded attack on the fashion industry's rampant labor and environmental abuses — and also offers a path forward for consumers and the world.

Tash Aw's beautifully written new novel focuses on class issues in contemporary Malaysia, where his compelling protagonist is struggling to lead a quiet life after a long-ago murder conviction.

Téa Obreht's new novel is set against a familiar old West backdrop, but it tells a fresh story of two people, both haunted in their own ways — a tough frontier woman and an immigrant camel driver.

CJ Hauser's new novel centers on two estranged siblings trying to unravel their late father's work with a group of fringe biologists who believe evolution is running backward, away from millenials.

Former CNN journalist Isha Sesay argues that the Nigerian government, the media and the public have failed the 276 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by the terrorist group five years ago.

Bruce Holsinger's new novel — about overprivileged parents cheating to get their kids into a magnet school — is very topical, but the characters are too flat to hook readers' attention for long.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner's debut novel seems like a Portnoy-esque tale of a lovable lout, but halfway through, the story shakes itself up and reorients itself in a completely different direction.

Emiliano Monge's prose is brilliant, but that often obscures the moral questions around his protagonists, both human traffickers who transport their cargo while worrying about their relationship.

Newly reissued, the intellectual heft of Françoise Gilot's now classic memoir is in its art criticism, even as its emotional arc lies in Picasso and Gilot's unequal romance.

In her new autofictional novel, Spanish writer Gabriela Ybarra turns past tragedy — the murder of her grandfather by Basque separatists — into a seamless blend of art, politics and private life.

The late Uruguayan novelist Mario Levrero was known for his gleeful weirdness. Empty Words follows a writer who tries to cure his block by writing boring nothings — and it's anything but boring.