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Book releases typically pick up in the fall, and this September is no exception. Whether you are looking for something deeply educational or thrillingly entertaining, this month there are plenty of books to look forward to. New publications include a maximalist thriller set in Jamaica, another entry from horror phenom Tananarive Due, and a memoir from former ICE detainee Mahmoud Khalil.
‘Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature’ by Emily Wilson
Drawing on decades of experience as a scholar, Emily Wilson, the celebrated translator of Homer’s “Odyssey” and “Iliad,” is exploring how translation shapes our understanding of the ancient world. Her new book is a series of essays on the “challenges of translation” and the “pleasures and insights to be gained from reading the classics,” The Guardian.
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In one essay, she “probes the bawdier side of classics” and “connects the ‘lyrical flow’ of Aristophanes to Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B,” said Kirkus Reviews. It is a “lively exploration of ancient literature.” (out now, $19, W.W. Norton, Amazon)
‘The Disappearers’ by Marlon James
Marlon James, who previously won the Booker Prize for his 2015 novel, “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” has also made the longlist for this year’s prize with “The Disappearers.” The novel is set in 1988, opening with a group of “eight gay men commencing rehearsals for a play” in Kingston, Jamaica, said Harper’s Bazaar.
When a “violent, homophobic mob descends on the group,” leaving one of them dead, the survivors deal with the fallout of the attack in their own ways, said Harper’s Bazaar. Going against the minimalist trend, the Jamaican writer’s new novel, at more than 600 pages, is “instead a maximalist’s banquet,” said The New York Times. It is “humane, blood-flecked, disturbing and sustaining.” (out now, $32, Penguin Random House, Amazon)
‘Exit Party’ by Emily St. John Mandel
Emily St. John Mandel’s dystopian novel is a “futuristic, fluctuating tale of doubleness and disaster,” said LitHub. The story kicks off in California in 2031, a year “disturbingly close to our present,” where a party is thrown and the “United States government has fallen.”
It’s a story of “shifting structure and ephemeral sturdiness,” said LitHub, where meanings falter, while “glimmers of truth and resolution sparkle in the distance.” There is no one who can “write a surrealist and apocalyptic universe so firmly, and horrifyingly, rooted in reality.” (Sep. 15, $32, Penguin Random House, Amazon)
‘Mazywood’ by Tananarive Due
Tananarive Due’s reputation as a master of the horror genre became clear after the highly acclaimed “The Reformatory.” Her follow-up, “Mazywood,” is a haunting tale of how an errant wish shaped the lives of one family from the era of Old Hollywood to today.
Due crafts “memorable and deeply human characters, good and bad alike,” and provides a “searing, incisive take on the politics of Black performance past and present,” said Publishers Weekly. Add “nail-biting chase scenes” and a “blistering final twist,” and this “heart-pounding horror story further cements Due as one of the greats.” (Sep. 22, $32, Simon & Schuster, Amazon)
‘No Land to Stand On: Notes from Detention’ by Mahmoud Khalil
Mahmoud Khalil became a household name last year when ICE “apprehended him without a warrant, separated him from his pregnant wife and New York City community, and detained him under the threat of deportation,” said Harper’s Bazaar. Based on notes from his prison diary, this memoir “unflinchingly shows the cruelty of ICE detention” while also telling the story of his “family’s expulsion from Palestine and his activism in the face of Israel’s assault on Gaza.” (Sep. 29, $28, Macmillan, Amazon)
