Glorious People by Sasha Salzmann, translated by Imogen Taylor (Pushkin, £16.99)
“Somehow we survived. Again and again,” says a woman in this novel about life in the former USSR. Growing up in the 1970s in what is now eastern Ukraine, Lena experienced the full range of Soviet delights, from trips to the technical museum to see steam boilers and gas turbines, to working holidays in Sochi spent shaking hazelnuts down from trees. Lena wants to be a doctor, but can’t decide on a specialism. “Do dermatology,” a friend tells her. “They treat STDs too. Everyone has syphilis these days. You’ll rake it in!” The book covers decades, but the sparky, succinct style means it never feels rushed. It does lose focus a little as it reaches the modern day, but compensates with a range of new characters. “Sometimes it’s easier to get over things if you don’t think about them,” says one. But where would literature be with that attitude?
Your Utopia by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur (Honford Star, £14.99)
Korean writer Chung’s previous book Cursed Bunny, which was shortlisted for the International Booker prize, took horror and fantasy as its inspiration; in this collection of stories the driver is science fiction, with a good dose of absurdity. An institute researching immortality celebrates its anniversary, but gets bogged down in the design of the invitations. A pandemic causes people to become cannibals, so a spaceship is sent away from Earth with uninfected people. “Do you know how to land this thing?” One story is narrated by an internet-connected lift, which can’t understand why humans don’t get their parts replaced as they age. Beneath the weirdness are serious points being made about acceptance of change and fear of obsolescence – as well as lots of entertainment. “The world is full of strange people,” opens the final story – and most of them are in here.
