The Hindu on Books | The International Booker Prize 2024 longlist, the world of Theyyam, Palestinian poetry and more

Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. The others include feminist Argentinian writer Selva Almada’s Not a River, translated by Annie McDermott, a story from rural Argentina; the Venezuelan writer and editor Rodrigo Blanco Calderón’s Simpatía, translated by Noel Hernández González and Daniel Hahn, and set in the time of a mass exodus of intellectuals from the country who are leaving their pets behind; Brazilian writer Itamar Vieira Junior’s Crooked Plow, translated by Johnny Lorenz, a story about poor subsistence farmers in Brazil’s Bahia hinterland; Gabriela Weiner’s Undiscovered, translated from the Spanish by Julia Sanches, which tells the story of colonialism through the life of one Peruvian family. Also on the longlist are Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos, translated from the German by Michael Hofmann, Ia Genberg’s The Details, translated from the Swedish by Kira Osefsson, Polish writer Urszula Honek’s White Nights, 13 interconnected stories from a village on the margins, translated by Kate Webster, Andrey Kurkov’s The Silver Bone, translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk, Jente Posthuma’s What I’d Rather Not Think About, translated from the Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey. She also offers some beautiful lines on the region: “Malabar is a beautiful word, slipping off the tongue like a sighing whisper, murmuring of mystery and shadows, suggesting somewhere unknown and unreachable.” Her constant travels within Malabar, across Kozhikode, Kannur and Kasaragod districts, “throw up a macro-level analysis of diverse Theyyams, including a rare one in which a woman dons the attire and invokes the divine spirit.” In Never Out of Print: The Rupa Story, Rajen Mehra offers readers a ringside view of the making of one of India’s longest-running publishing houses, Rupa. And even if you aren’t you’ll find plenty to keep you happy here.” Since 1967, Israel has uprooted around a million olive trees in Palestinian areas, alongside an unprecedented number of human lives.