Saturday, January 22, 2022

Hope Gained and Lost, in New Fiction From Around the World

 In the opening pages of the novel, a character called Gohtaro quotes Dostoyevsky: “The most difficult thing in life is to live and not lie.” The cafe gives him the chance not to lie, exactly, but to briefly inhabit an alternate truth — at least until the coffee he’s been poured cools. He can’t alter his fate, however; house rules.

Hope Gained and Lost, in New Fiction From Around the World