Some kind of kismet continues to link Olga Tokarczuk and Peter Handke.
The authors belong to different generations, write in different languages and generate considerably different levels of controversy. But events unrelated to them conspired such that they learned of their Nobel Prize wins (Tokarczuk: 2018; Handke: 2019) on the same day and received those prizes at the same ceremony two months later.
Now here they are, unaccountably together again. House of Day, House of Night was one of Tokarczuk's first novels, published some 27 years ago in the original Polish. Meanwhile, The Ballad of the Last Guest is Handke's latest novel, its English translation coming just a couple of years after its publication in German. Yet both books share top billing on this week's publishing calendar.
The laureates lead a week that also includes a pair of novels out of independent presses and, um, another book which I'd rather not rehash twice. That one — included as an FYI, to be clear, not an endorsement — can be found at the bottom of this list, after which we can all agree never to speak of it again.
House of Day, House of Night, by Olga Tokarczuk and translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
First published in Polish in 1998, and in English in 2002, this dispatch from Tokarczuk's first decade as a novelist receives a reissued edition Tuesday. But calling the book a novel feels misleading. Its main character is not a person but a place: the Polish region perched on the country's border with Czechia. Tenuously strung from short portraits and vignettes, its plot doesn't arc so much as weave — like a master spinner, say, or a drunk gamely attempting to walk home. In this sense, it shares a clear lineage with another book of hers, Flights, which NPR's reviewer described variously as a "cabinet of curiosities" and a "journey without a destination."
The Ballad of the Last Guest, by Peter Handke and translated by Krishna Winston
"My essence is epic essence," the Austrian-born author said in a 2019 interview, tracing his literary lineage to Homer and Leo Tolstoy, writers of ambitiously vast scale. But Handke's latest novel — which was published in German in 2023 — directs his ambitions inward with this story of a man's quiet return home. Light on action, weighty with introspection, the book follows Gregor's slow, meandering course through complicated family dynamics.
The Aquatics, by Osvalde Lewat, and translated by Maren Baudet-Lackner
Lewat's work as an artist and journalist so far has found her primarily behind a camera. The Cameroonian filmmaker won a 2012 Peabody Award as part of a BBC documentary series on global poverty. Now, in her debut novel – which was published in its original French in 2021 – Lewat introduces readers to Zambuena, a fictional African country where a politician's wife finds herself caught between her ambitious husband and an artistic best friend, whose unorthodox life and political criticism place him squarely in the crosshairs of the ruling regime.
Casanova 20: Or, Hot World, by Davey Davis
Adrian, protagonist of Casanova 20, is beautiful beyond compare, a worthy heir to the legendary lothario namechecked in the novel's title. But, nice as it feels to be wanted, it's not always so easy — or safe — being the object of someone's desire. Still less being the object of many people's desires. And what happens when that beauty inevitably, even suddenly, goes away? The book is Davis' first since 2022's X, which NPR's reviewer described at the time as a "dizzying, beautiful novel."
American Canto, by Olivia Nuzzi
OK, a disclaimer: If you're not familiar yet with the soapy drama surrounding the high-profile political reporter Olivia Nuzzi, I refuse to be the first person to sully that pristine ignorance. But if it's too late for you, and you've already fallen down the rabbit hole of alleged lies, liaisons and outrageous breaches of journalistic ethics (not to mention the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of it all), here's something with which to dig yourself deeper. Nuzzi's book touches on her past in journalism, President Trump and, yes, that affair with a politician she vaguebookingly leaves unnamed here. (But come on.)
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