But for now, the only year end list I’ve checked out is this which is definitely my favorite, since it includes TWO Open Letter titles: by Kristin Omarsdottir, translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith and by Jerzy Pilch (Kirkus LOVES the Pilch), translated from the Polish by David Frick.

There are a number of interesting books on this list—Kingdom Come by J.G. Ballard, The Investigation by Philip Claudel, Arcadia by Lauren Groff, Lazarus Is Dead by Richard Beard, and Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye—but not many (any?) from small, nonprofit presses. YAY TO US FOR OVERACHIEVING!

I love both of these books, and you can buy them from your local independent bookstore, from Amazon, from B&N, or directly from us: click for Children, and for Suicide.

However you get them, I hope you do. And I want to take a second to give a special shout-out to Lytton Smith and David Frick for translating these. Both books set forth their own unique difficulties, and both translators totally nailed it. Congrats to both of you!

Back in the day, Jonas Wergeland was an inquisitive student, brilliant, capable of speculating that “Dante’s observations on the celestial spheres, based on Ptolemy’s theories, were at least as right or wrong as the theories about the universe with which he was confronted in his astrophysical studies.” Alas, it’s the here and now, and Jonas is a television personality, the most popular in all of Norway. The here and now doesn’t always agree with him; when we meet Wergeland, early in the pages of this sprawling postmodern whodunit, our hero, breast-obsessed (“it’s a long story altogether, that of men and breasts”) and bewildered, is being copiously sick, feeling “as if he were spewing over Oslo, over the whole of Norway, in fact.” Wergeland has reason to feel ill over the course of much of this novel, and it’s not just from all the aquavit; his wife, Margrete, has been shot dead in the first volume of the trilogy, The Seducer, and all fingers point at him. [. . .] Think of it as Kafka-meets-Billy Connolly, and you’re almost there.

In celebration of this, our first starred review, we’re giving away the five extra copies of the galley that we have here in the office. The book will officially release in February, with the third volume (more on that a little later) coming out in August. (And just to clarify a bit, these three books can be read in any order, independent of one another, but if you’re chronologically inclined, The Seducer is available in paperback from Overlook.)

This is a great wintry book that is ambitious in scope and incredibly compelling. Each chapter reads like a perfectly crafted short story, and taken as a whole, the novel is a stunning accomplishment. It’s no wonder Kjaerstad won the Nordic Prize for the third volume . . .

If you’d like to be entered in the drawing for one of these copies, simply e-mail me your mailing address at chad.post at rochester dot edu with “The Conqueror” in the subject line. Since the holidays are here and we’ll be slowing down next week, we’ll keep this contest open until the morning of the 29th.