Katarzyna (Kasia) Bartoszyńska is a former BTBA judge (2018 and 2017), a translator (from Polish to English), and an academic (at Monmouth College, and starting this Fall, at Ithaca College). She is currently translating two books, one by Zygmunt Bauman, and another by Dariusz Brzeziński, and recently completed her own book, on theories of the novel, to be published by Johns Hopkins UP.

��by Linda Boström Knausgård, translated from the Swedish by Martin Aitken (World Editions)

In a recent study of the novel as a genre, Wendy Anne Lee has argued that, rather than being obsessed with plumbing the depths of characters’ hearts and minds, the novel form is fascinated, and spurred into action, by insensible characters, people like Bartleby the Scrivener, who remain impassive, unfeeling, impenetrable. It is these characters, she says, who allow us to see that emotion is rooted in responsiveness, which in turn produces action: ‘moved’ bodies, moving. The insensible throws a wrench in the works, allowing us to see the animating mechanism: by refusing to engage, an unfeeling figure drives other characters to a frenzy, setting the story into motion.

Lee is writing about eighteenth-century fiction, but I thought about her argument often as I read Linda Boström Knausgård’s astonishingly absorbing Welcome to America, the story of an 11-year old girl who refuses to speak. One of the great satisfactions of this slender text is that it isn’t structured around the idea of this refusal as a problem: we are not seeking out the reason (though we get some hints along the way), or awaiting a resolution in the form of a return to communication. Rather, we witness the effects: the responses of her mother, brother, teachers, which delineate the delicate fault lines of power, loyalty, and love running through this family. Along the way, too, we hear about their past, noticing all that has been unsaid, the questions “hanging unuttered” — and unanswered (36). So the novel makes us think about what holds families together, and what breaks them apart, and the various forms of control we have over ourselves and others.

What was so consistently surprising to me, as I read, was that I couldn’t stop reading; that although this is a story with hardly any discernible plot, at least in the traditional sense of the word, it is absolutely riveting. Partly, of course, this is the power of the prose. Martin Aitken, who also translated that other Knausgård, does a wonderful job (though I was slightly distracted, at times, by what seemed like a clash of different Englishes, sometimes British, sometimes perhaps not – do Mum and bonkers belong to the same geographic register?). I especially loved the way he managed to retain a sentence structure and word order that are atypical of English, without ever making it seem awkward of confusing. But the book’s power also lies in the brilliant way that the story shifts and weaves, between past and present, action and reflection, following one thread for a few pages and then introducing an entirely new line of thought (what does it mean to grow up?) that both builds on and reconfigures everything you’d been tracking before, shining a new light.

It’s a quick read, but a fascinating one—richly deserving of the prize.

They also recommend two other titles: ��by Damon Krukowski and����by Jane Alison.

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There are simply too many good books this year, what is to be done? The longlist can only hold 25, which means that inevitably, some books that I loved will not find a place there. Here are some of my favorites, which might not make the cut:

by Dror Burstein, translated by Gabriel Levin. Some books are like planets, dense with place and time and meaning. Muck is an astonishing story, a retelling of the Book of Jeremiah, the ancient world colliding noisily with the contemporary in a shock of misery and humor. It is such a strange and unexpected book, surreal, exuberant, and woeful all at once. It’s the kind of novel that sucks you in so strongly that its world, bizarre though it be, comes to feel more real than your own.

by Vladimir Sharov, translated by Oliver Ready. I mentioned this one months ago, in my first post, and it did not disappoint. I was frankly astonished to read something so strongly reminiscent of Dostoevsky: a weighty, metaphysical, brooding story (and a deeply disturbing one). Rehearsals describes a director charged with putting on a play about the life of Christ in medieval Russia, casting a group of peasants who come to believe that they are no longer playing a role, but truly bringing about the return of the Messiah. It’s a horrifying look at the deep veins of anti-Semitism running through Christianity, but also an incredible meditation on faith and performance.

��by Amélie Nothomb, translated by Alison Anderson. I’ve been an Amélie Nothomb fan ever since I read Fear and Trembling. Her cruel wit and flat affect can be a bit much at times, if not properly leavened with a sense of human warmth, but this novel finds the balance more successfully than some of her other works. The story of a woman whose mother does not love her, who pursues an affair where she is similarly undervalued, it’s a surprisingly gripping account of jealousy and perseverance.

by Perumal Murugan, translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan. India was rocked by the scandal of this book, the story of a couple struggling to conceive, and the toll it takes on their relationship. I loved the novel’s subtle illumination of the myriad social pressures couples face to reproduce (many of which are just as strong in the US), and the way it took seriously the possibility that there are advantages to not doing so. And I relished the frank pleasure they took in each other, even as disappointment and frustration threatened to tear them apart. The struggle against a tradition experienced as oppressive can seem like a cliché of non-Western lit, but this novel renders it both compelling and deeply relatable.

��by Karl Ove Knausguaard, translated by Don Bartlett. Look, I get why people don’t like these books (full disclosure: I haven’t read 2-5). They are appallingly narcissistic (and sometimes just appalling); testaments to the hysterical masculinity (to borrow ) of a deeply insecure and utterly arrogant man. And yet . . . there is something absolutely magnetic about Knausgaard’s chronicling of the mundane quotidian; the way he vacillates between detailed ponderings on Paul Celan to descriptions of his interactions with the cashier selling him cigarettes, or conversations with his toddler. His enthralled awe at the wondrous world of ideas, and fumbling attempts to grapple with the immensity of history, coupled with his anguished reckonings of his own selfish cruelty, were deeply (troublingly) familiar to me, and I was absolutely mesmerized. This book is truly an incredible attempt to think life, fiction, realism, and relationships.

When was the last time a book really scared you?

Every October, my partner lines up a slate of scary movies for us to watch in preparation for Halloween. I am not a fan of horror—I enjoy the ritual of these yearly forays into fright cinema, but I don’t really like the movies that much. Most of them really aren’t scary: once established, the conceits rapidly grow stale, and the movies become a tedious process of getting to the inevitable conclusion. The ones that do work tend to be more upsetting than frightening—The Neighbors scared the shit out of me, but it wasn’t really a pleasurable fear; more like a mild trauma, which has left me with a flicker of nervousness every time the doorbell rings at night. There are exceptions—this last year, for instance, I loved The Babadook, which coupled suspense and startling gotcha! scenes with an underlying existential brooding over the terrors of maternal ambivalence and stress. But overall, I am just not that into horror flicks.

Thanks to BTBA, however, I have dipped my toes into the water of terrifying fiction, and it turns out that I love it. Fiction produces all kinds of emotions, but usually they are more of a slow burn—these books send your adrenaline soaring. You read with breath quickened and muscles tensed. Yet, neither of the two books that I want to tell you about feels gratuitous, or sensationalistic. They’re pure rush, but they earn their effects honestly.

Daniel Kehlmann’s You Should Have Left is a taut, thrilling little terror, part Shining, part House of Leaves. A man goes to the country with his wife and daughter to write, and strange things start happening. The language is straightforward, and the pacing is perfect. The story is creepy, but not upsetting—a purely pleasurable fear. It’s a novel you can burn through in one breathless sitting (it probably takes about the same amount of time as it would take to watch your average horror film!), best enjoyed in a quiet corner of the house on a dark evening or cloudy afternoon.

Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream, by contrast, is a deeply disturbing tale. The terrors it holds have the tinge of coercion: it’s a book you read with your heart in your throat, pushing on through its looser pacing, though you hardly dare to hope for a cheery resolution. The story is opaque: a woman and boy chat in a hospital, the boy pressing the woman to tell her story, seeking answers to his own mysterious condition. As the details are gradually revealed, a terrifying picture emerges through the haze, with the reader sharing the woman’s growing sense of panic. Although it is theoretically possible to read it in one sitting, I could not—I simply had to take a break. In contrast to Kehlmann’s delicious creepiness, Schweblin offers an anxious, gut-wrenching tale. It is just this side of pleasurable—in the midst of your queasiness you find yourself thinking—oh man, this is goooood—and it definitely leaves a mark that will linger long after reading.

If you tend, like me, toward the more intellectual, contemplative reads, check these two out, and remind yourself of fiction’s more visceral powers.