Writing about topics as diverse as race, sexual assault, Hurricane Harvey, and art history, Lacy M. Johnson's essays are together a philosophy in disguise — equal parts memoir, criticism, and ethics.

Argentine writer María Sonia Cristoff wants to be honest: She won't shape her subjects' narratives or take control of another person's story. This is both the book's great strength and great weakness.

Olivia Laing's first novel is semi-autobiographical, but written in the voice of the late literary provocateur Kathy Acker. There's no reason for the choice — but the result is breathlessly gripping.

Juan Gabriel Vásquez's new novel is packed with history, alternate history and conspiracies — though ultimately it's about neither history nor politics, but how they combine to shape one man.

Frances de Pontes Peebles' new novel about two women in Brazil — and later Hollywood — who take the music world by storm can sometimes slip into corniness, but it's a genuinely exciting read.

Laura Van Den Berg's new novel follows a woman who runs into her ostensibly-dead husband at a Cuban film festival. It operates in symbols and layers, leaving readers disoriented, but fascinated.

Deborah Levy's brilliant new memoir opens at a time of great change in her life — divorce, deaths, moving house — and it's full of the feeling of travel and movement, but preoccupied with home.

Lydia Millet's latest is a novel about death, disguised as a short story collection about real estate, alternately wrenching and hilarious, and full of joys on every scale.

Lara Feigel's new book is a combination memoir and celebration of the writer Doris Lessing — whose famous distaste for convention led her to exclaim "Oh, Christ," upon winning the Nobel Prize.

Brazilian modernist Clarice Lispector's second novel, written when she was 26, is an essentially story-free story, fragmentary and obsessed with the nature of thought — but it will carry you away.

Rebecca Kauffman's new novel centers on a group of friends who reunite after a funeral, and spend an evening together. It's a deceptively simple story with a powerful message: Accept your feelings.

The title piece in Mexican master Juan Rulfo's The Golden Cockerel is a good story with a simple point: Life is short and then you die. It's the sketches and fragments that come after that amaze.

Samanta Schweblin's debut novel starts as a warped child's game, and evolves into a terrifyingly toxic eco-horror tale in the vein of short-but-creepy Latin American classics like Pedro Páramo.

Juan Pablo Villalobos' third novel is his least absurd (but funniest) yet; this tale of a failed dog taco vender-turned-aspiring author is a reminder that art comes from real people.