World Literature Today – July 01, 2019

SUMMER READS

AMINE LIT A CIGARETTE. He watched
people walking across the street in the haze
he’d made, in the haze they were within.
He turned to his left as the boy at the table
stirred a cube of sugar into his shot of
espresso. He dropped another cube in and
continued to stir. He took a sip and added
another cube and stirred. He took another
sip. To Amine, he looked as if he were
getting smaller with each sip, with each
cube of sugar dissolving into the black.
The waiter brought him a cup of tea with
a short sprig of mint. The tea was brown
and sweet and the glass was also short. He
sipped it as the waiter came by again and
stopped. “Oman?”
“No,” Amine said before taking anoth-
er sip.
“Egypt?”
Amine shook his head, no.
“Jordan?”
Amine chuckled. “No, America.”
“Really?”
“Yes, but by way of Morocco.”
“Oh, I see. Morocco is a beautiful coun-
try, no revolution there.”
“Not like here,” Amine said. The waiter
left. Amine watched the boy stirring the
thick liquid. The boy seemed then too
small for the chair and finally left it, fell
from it and the thick sludge the coffee had
become. Amine put out his cigarette in the
ashtray, appreciating the gray of the day,
its calm. He slowly walked back to the car
where Ahmad waited.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Amine said, getting into the car.
“Is it okay if a policeman I know travels
with us to the roundabout where I got the
ticket? Because he’s a policeman, he can
negotiate a lower fee.”
“Fee?”
“For the ticket I got, the revolution
ticket?”
“Oh, it’s fine,” he said.
The officer sat in the back seat. He was
young, in his late twenties as was the driver.
“What do you think of the revolution?”
Amine asked.

Michelle Johnson’s Summer Reads

With a two-week driving vacation ahead of her this summer, Managing and Culture

Editor Michelle Johnson is already setting aside books for the trip—plus a few to read

poolside when she returns.

Igiaba Scego

Beyond Babylon

Trans. Aaron Robertson

Two Lines Press

Even without the promise of an all-encompassing, kaleido-

scopic novel of deep questions spreading across Argentina,

Somalia, and Italy, the opening sentence alone would have

hooked me: “I’ve always pitied Spain.” And then there’s

Jhumpa Lahiri’s introduction, describing the novel as a lit-

erary quest—the quest here particularly for the color red. I already dread this read’s

inevitable ending.

Malin Persson Giolito

Beyond All Reasonable Doubt

Trans. Rachel Willson-Broyles

Other Press

As a lawyer who has taught a law-and-literature course,

I like to occasionally read a law-and-lit book from some-

place outside the US. Malin Persson Giolito’s Quicksand,

an earlier novel also now a Netflix series, was well

reviewed, so when an advance copy of her new novel

landed on my desk promising a story of “one woman’s

conflicted efforts to overturn what may be a wrongful conviction,” I decided to

read it.

Rebecca Makkai

The Borrower

Vintage

After recently reading Rebecca Makkai’s The Great

Believers—easily one of my favorite novels—I’ve searched

bookstores weekly for her earlier novels. A few days ago

I found a hardback copy of The Borrower, a road-trip

novel with a librarian narrator. I’m planning to read this

book aloud to my husband, Mark, who likes to do all of

the driving. Lucy’s road trip will no doubt pair nicely

with our own.

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