Troll: A Love Story by Johanna Sinisalo, translated by Herbert Lomas (Pushkin, £9.99)
Outside his apartment block, behind the bins, a young man known as Angel finds a sick, abandoned troll cub. Seized by the desire to raise it as his pet, he smuggles it indoors and sets out to learn all he can about trolls. In the world of this prize-winning Finnish novel, trolls are not creatures of legend but a rare species, the result of convergent evolution. Keeping such a dangerous animal is illegal, and Angel doesn’t know what to feed it or how to cure it. He turns to the clientele of his local gay bar for help: lying, breaking hearts, seducing a veterinarian in order to steal his drugs. For such a short novel, Troll covers a lot of ground; it’s told through various viewpoints, and bolstered by invented sources ranging from folk tales to scientific papers. As well as a queer love story, it’s a reflection on the distance between man and animal, and modern city life versus nature. Published in English 20 years ago as Not Before Sundown, this new edition is sure to thrill another generation of readers.
How To Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later by by Philip K Dick (Isolarii, £14.95)
In 1978, still struggling to make sense of a religious experience from 1974 and to start an overdue novel, Dick produced this essay, which includes reflections on writing science fiction, Christianity and his two great obsessions: what is reality, and what does it mean to be human. Written as a speech that he probably never gave and first published in a posthumous collection in 1985, it offers a fascinating glimpse into the mind of one of the most influential American writers of the late 20th century. His warning that “we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated mechanisms” feels increasingly urgent today. Published as a miniature pocketbook, it’s provocative, funny, scary and thought-provoking – essential reading.
