The Fierce Voice of Nature: Three Astonishing New Novels from Around the World

From Japan, Norway and Spain come authors whose conjurings of flora and fauna, mountain and sea, shimmer on the page so powerfully that nature is the most powerful character of all–for good or ill. Catalan novelist Irene Solà’s debut, When I Sing, Mountains Dance, has received breathless word-of-mouth from booksellers. It’s about the ghosts of seventeenth-century chanterelle-gathering witches in the Pyrenees, includes lightning bolts and deer as narrators, and is as bizarrely beautiful as it sounds. Masatsugu Ono, one of Japan’s most lauded authors, has written a surreal short novel, At the Edge of the Woods, which The Millions raved about as “an eerie allegory of climate apocalypse and unnatural nature…full of dark laughter, figures that appear and disappear, sounds of violence and gnashing teeth”–one of their “most anticipated novels” of 2022. Maja Lunde, the celebrated Norwegian author, playwright, and screenwriter, reveals the third novel in her Climate Quartet: The Last Wild Horses takes us on an untamed ride from 1881 St. Petersburg to 1992 Mongolia to Norway in 2064 to outrun the extinction of a famed species of horse. Be prepared to get swept away. Moderated by Marie Mockett.

Book signing information: East Wind Books Tent at the Bookstore Blv (corner of Allston & Milvia in the Outdoor Fair) at in the park, 1:45 pm.

With the support of the Norway House Foundation and NORLA – Norwegian Literature Abroad.