The 2022 CAT Holiday Gift Guide
In the spirit of the season and of celebration, we offer this: a gift guide from all of us here at the Center. Happy holidays and even happier reading!
It’s that time of year! Our annual Holiday Gift Guide has returned, featuring personal book recommendations from the CAT staff. This guide includes new and backlist titles from Two Lines Press, and a range of fiction and poetry, mostly in translation, from other small presses. Throughout this list, you’ll see links to independent booksellers. We encourage you to support them this season and year-round by buying your books from indie booksellers online and in person.
Thank you, as ever, for reading along with us! Take your pick from the books below (or any of our other titles here), and have a happy season of reading, gift-giving, and holiday celebration. See you in 2023!
Michael Holtmann, Executive Director & Publisher
On Lighthouses by Jazmina Barrera, translated from Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
It’s the gift-giving season, and I’ve been thinking a lot about collections. Not necessarily collections of stories or poems, though those are certainly close at hand, but collections of things: the trinkets and tchotchkes and memorabilia that people acquire either intentionally or because objects pile up. I’m interested in the things people are drawn to, and, well, I endeavor to be an attentive giver of gifts. I’m also mesmerized by my aging mother’s many collections, one of which happens to be a shelf full of tiny lighthouses. Jazmina Barrera’s On Lighthouses, translated by Christina MacSweeney, is no doubt a stirring book about lighthouses, but it’s also a story about obsession on par with Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. All of which is to say: it’s the perfect gift book, small in size, rich in feeling, a treasured addition to any collection (or collection-to-be).
Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems by Dionne Brand
Speaking of collections—the other type of collections—Dionne Brand’s Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems is one of my recent favorites. Have you read Dionne Brand? You should read Dionne Brand. As the 2022 National Book Award-winning poet John Keene put it, “Dionne Brand is without question one of the major living poets in the English language.” This expansive collection brings together eight books of poetry written over four decades. It’s a gripping catalogue of witness and a call to imagine a better world.
CJ Evans, Editor-in-Chief
Trysting by Emmanuel Pagano, translated from French by Jennifer Higgins & Sophie Lewis
It feels like a good winter to revisit connections, and Trysting is a novel of love told through snippets of relationships, straight and queer, old and young, simple and complicated, beginning or ending or suddenly punctuated. It’s a book to dip into while sitting together with family, chosen or not, and to be reminded of the many shapes of these relationships we form together.
Bloom and Other Poems by Xi Chuan, translated from Chinese by Lucas Klein
Lucas Klein’s translations of Xi Chuan’s poems are stunning. They are stylistic and nod to a formal respect of language but they also seem so “free” in their expansiveness in a way that I really love. These poems are focused and specific, but they are about absolutely everything it means to be a human in this moment. It’s rare to desribe a book of poems as a page-turner, but this is a book that’ll sweep you up.
Sarah Coolidge, Editor
Hugs and Cuddles by João Gilberto Noll, translated from Portuguese by Edgar Garbelotto
The wildest Noll book we’ve published, Hugs and Cuddles (tr. Edgar Garbelotto) is also my favorite, a boldly erotic novel that you probably don’t want to discuss with your relatives over Christmas. Or maybe your family is amazing and you do! Noll refuses to sanitize his exploration of gender, sexuality, and politics, making him a necessary read for fans of Herve Guibert and Lou Sullivan. Noll underpins this orgiastic fable with precise and poetic language that proves his mastery of the craft. The result feels like a premonition from the future of queer literature.
Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda, translated from Spanish by Sarah Booker
Sarah Booker has translated a couple of my favorite books of the past few years: first Cristina Rivera Garza’s The Iliac Crest, and now Mónica Ojeda’s Jawbone. From its explosive beginning—a student from an elite Ecuadorian private school has been kidnapped by her teacher—I was hooked. But it’s so much more than it appears from its premise. It’s an exploration of female sexuality, friendships, and the weird world that is adolescence. I’ve never read a book quite like this one.
Erin Branagan, Communications & Development Director
The Boys by Toni Sala, translated from Catalán by Mara Faye Lethem
Going way back to the early days of Two Lines Press, Toni Sala’s The Boys, translated by Mara Faye Lethem, tells the story of the aftermath of a tragic car accident in small town Catalonia from multiple characters’ points of view. Sala beautifully captures his characters’ distinct voices and the dark mood of post 2008 recession-era Spain. Sala manages to explore a range of issues, from the breakdown of small communities to online hookups to economic devastation.
Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman, translated from Russian by Robert Chandler & Elizabeth Chandler
Part 1 of Vasily Grossman’s mammoth two-volume masterpiece that includes the better-known Life and Fate and is considered “the 20th century War and Peace,” Stalingrad follows a cast of characters as they live through the first months of the siege of Stalingrad during World War II. The translation by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler captures Grossman’s humor and masterful hand at dialogue: his background as a war correspondent shines through and he manages to humanize a historical moment that still looms large.
Chad Felix, Sales & Marketing Manager
Visible: Text + Image
Visible presents fresh translations from Verónica Gerber Bicecci, Marie NDiaye, Yi SangWoo, and others for a collection that specifically investigates the relationships between images and text in uncommon, eye-opening ways. A dream impulse buy, Visible is required reading for painters, photographers, illustrators, designers, and writers alike. Don’t expect a user’s manual of how-tos and step-by-steps, though. Instead, prepare to ponder the many questions posed by this sustained literary meditation on our image-drenched age.
Forever Valley by Marie Redonnet, translated from French by Jordan Stump
In Jordan Stump’s translation of Marie Redonnet’s Forever Valley, the French writer’s sixteen-year-old protagonist understands the existential power of having a “personal project.” When she isn’t dancing or doing sex work at the nearby dancehall (one of the few reliable paychecks left in a dreary crumbling town) she’s out digging ditches, looking for the dead she suspects are buried in the garden of the church rectory where she lives. Every moment of her search is laced with ambient doom and Stump’s translation imparts it all with an affected flatness, a terrifying naivete, that brings a near-magical shimmer to this world in total decay.
Karen Gu, Publicist
The Employees by Olga Ravn, translated from Norwegian by Martin Aitken
Olga Ravn’s The Employees (translated by Martin Aitken) is a sci-fi workplace novel written in a series of interviews conducted on a spaceship with both human and humanoid crew members. The texture of contemporary human life, defined by the cycles of capitalistic work and consumerism, is examined from the distant future, through both human and programmed perspectives. In eerie and unsettling language, The Employees explores the boundaries between person and worker; human and humanoid.
Sophie Levy, Communications Assistant
Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season: Selected Poems by Forough Farrokhzad, translated from Persian by Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr.
This slim (and inadvertently seasonally appropriate) collection of poems by the modern Iranian poet and filmmaker Forough Farrokhzad was one of my favorite reads this year. It was refreshing to encounter a new interpretative reflection of Forough’s poetry in Elizabeth T. Gray’s translation, which felt distinct from others I’ve read in how delicate and meticulous its language is. Forough’s radical honesty with respect to gender and sexuality, her inventive approach to structure, her clever use of vernacular imagery and grammar, and the ceaseless depth of feeling found in her poems make this book a resonant, grounding companion for the cold winter months ahead.
Kelsey McFaul, Research & Special Projects Coordinator
Days Come and Go by Hemley Boum, translated from French by Nchanji Njamnsi
A warm and expansive novel of contemporary Cameroon, Days Come and Go is at its heart a novel of mothers and daughters— ancestral, biological, and chosen— and the ways that women find themselves and their stories through their relationships with one another, even in the midst of vast social change. The empowering hope and comfort of that story, alongside Hemley Boum’s epic historical scope, is a pleasure to read, as is Nchanji Njamnsi’s translation, the first time a writer from Cameroon has been translated by a fellow Cameroonian.
1,000 Coils of Fear by Olivia Wenzel, translated from German by Priscilla Layne
Playwright Olivia Wenzel’s debut novel is a dialogue between a Black East German woman who may or may not be the writer, and a second character who may or may not be her alter ego. Both are wickedly smart and more than a little guarded, but as their conversations turn from vending machines on train platforms to punk mothers and quietly racist grandmothers, from encountering four neo-Naxis at a lake outside Berlin to mourning the death of a twin brother, a courageous, fragmented, sensitive character study emerges. One of the best books I read this year, in Priscilla Layne’s excellent translation.
Stephanie Nisbet, Production Manager
On a Woman’s Madness by Astrid Roemer, translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott
Coming soon to a bookstore near you! Astrid Roemer’s On a Woman’s Madness, translated from Dutch, tells the story of a young woman named Noenka in 1980s Suriname as she navigates family, feminism, and sexuality. The prose is carefully crafted, each word chosen with precision. Filled to the brim with emotion and symbolism, this book is a must read for anyone looking for something that will stick with them long after the final page has been turned.
Radhika Prasad, 2022-23 Public Fellow
That We May Live
One of Two Lines’ early Calico publications, That We May Live brings together short stories originally written in Chinese, which narrate, among other things, urban loneliness, the mystery of a vanished elephant, and dwellings with lives of their own. My favorite, “Flourishing Beasts”, is a haunting story about creatures that look and act just like humans, if not for a few queer characteristics such as marks on their bodies. Nonetheless, they are “beasts” with bodily and psychical afflictions that, while they resemble those of humans, that take stranger forms.
A Kitchen in the Corner of the House by Ambai, translated from Tamil by Lakshmi Holmström
Ambai’s Tamil short stories brings forth an array of sights, sounds, smells, textures and tastes that come together to create a vivid experience of a world lived through the body. Lakshmi Holmstrom’s translations beautifully capture the delicate relationships between Ambai’s characters, constructed through a language that is both evocative and loving in its colloquialisms.
Winona Wagner, Operations Director
Linea Nigra by Jazmina Barrera, translated from Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
What started as a pregnancy journal has blossomed into this gorgeous and radical meditation on the meaning of motherhood. Jazmina’s gorgeous prose and throughtful musings on the body, art, and earthquakes are brought into Englsh by Christina MacSweeney. A beautiful and necessary book.
The Tree and the Vine by Dola de Jong, translated from Dutch by Kristen Gehrman
A deliciously sparse novel about the unspoken love between two young women. The yearning and denial in this book drive the story of Bea and Erica, who share a flat in Amsterdam in the years just before Nazi occupation. A groundbreaking novel during its publication in 1954, this book is an engrossing tale of queer love and longing.
Leslie-Ann Woofter, Event Manager
At the Edge of the Woods by Masatsugu Ono, translated from Japanese by Juliet Winters Carpenter
Written in haunting vignettes, Masatsugo Ono’s At The Edge of the Woods, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, is a story about a father and son left alone in a house at the edge of the woods in a foreign place and the breakdown of communication and reality that follows. This novel has been called “an allegory of climate apocalypse and unnatural nature” but to me, it brilliantly captures the alienation of early fatherhood.
A Postcard for Annie by Ida Jenssen, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken
Exquisitely translated from Danish by Martin Aitkin, Ida Jessen’s collection of stories convey the inherent loneliness of heterosexual relationships and the quiet subversive joy of female friendship in graceful, simmering prose.
