El complot de los Románticos by Carmen Boullosa is one of the And Other Stories reading group books for our winter 2011-12 Spanish-language group. She is a Mexican novelist, poet and playwright whose writing has been praised by writers including Carlos Fuentes, Elena Poniatowska and Roberto Bolaño.

Sylwia Chutnik’s Cwaniary (Hustlers) is featured in our Polish Reading Group Winter-Spring 2013.

At quite an early age, I gave in to the irresistible urge not to forget anything because everything that we cannot remember may be lost forever. If we know nothing of yesterday, yesterday never was, neither was Bohemia, and neither …

Chi Wei-Jan, born in 1954, is a Taiwanese essayist and playwright. Private Eyes is his first novel. His plays include MIT: Mad in Taiwan (2008), The Mahjong Game Trilogy (1997-2007), and One Bed, Four Players (1999). He is a university professor …

Andrey Baldin was born on 21 January 1958 in Moscow. An architect and a book designer, Baldin has published a number of non-fiction books, including Moscow. The City Painted in Proverbs (1997), Moscow Idle Days (2010) and Point Extended, the …

Maria Velho da Costa is a Portuguese writer, the author of more than a dozen books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Born in Lisbon in 1938, she became infamous in 1972 with the publication of Nova cartas portuguesas (New Portuguese …

Pavlos Matesis was born in 1933 in the Peloponnesian village of Divri and lived in numerous provincial towns until he was 19. He studied acting, violin and foreign languages (English, French and Spanish). He taught theatre at the Stavrakou School …

El navegante dormido by Abilio Estevez is one of the And Other Stories reading group books for our winter 2011-12 Spanish-language group. He is a prize-winning Cuban writer living in exile in Barcelona.

The author of no fewer than 18 novels, Vasco Pratolini is regarded as one of Italy’s greatest 20th-century novelists. He was also a successful literary translator, journalist, and film screenwriter. His first novel, Il tappeto verde (The Green Carpet), was …

Elena Simonovna Chizhova, born in Leningrad in 1957, has established herself as one of Russia’s leading modern writers. Over the last decade, all her novels have received prestigious awards and recognition, culminating in the Russian Booker Prize 2009 for her latest work, A Time of Women.

Born 17 May, 1961 in Nanjing. Han Dong’s parents were banished to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, taking him with them. When the Cultural Revolution ended, he studied philosophy at Shandong University, graduating in 1982. After teaching in Xi’an …

Mia Couto was born of Portuguese parents in Beira, Mozambique, in 1955. In 1974, he went to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) to study medicine, but became involved in nationalist politics immediately before and after the coup in Lisbon, which brought …

Vasia Tzanakari was born in Serres, Greece, in 1980. She studied English Language & Literature at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki and is finishing her MA in Translation & Translation Studies at the university of Athens. She’s had two books …

Born in Bogotá is 1974, Antonio Ungar has published six books, incl. Tres ataúdes blancos (Three White Coffins), which was awarded the Premio Herralde in 2010. He was also included in the Bogotá 39. Ungar professes to be a nomad with no specific national identity.

Aleksey Slapovsky was born in 1957 in the region of Saratov, Russia. He started his literary career in the 80′s as a dramatist; his first significant work is called ‘Sincere Artist, Unwritten Novel’ (1990). He made his name with the novel ‘It’s Not Me’ (Russian title «Я НЕ Я») which was short-listed for the prestigious national Booker Prize.

Lu Nei, one of the summer 2012 Chinese reading group authors, was born in 1973. He’s been a worker, a salesman, a warehouse manager, a radio broadcaster and a creative director for an advertising agency.

Rui Cardoso Martins is a Portuguese writer whose works include long and short fiction, screenplays, TV comedy shows (including a popular puppetry series of political satire) and award-winning journalism. Born in Portalegre in 1967, he published his first novel in …

In Italy Carola Susani is hailed as “the worthy heir of Elsa Morante”, and as one of the strongest writers of her generation. She was born in Marostica (Vicenza) in 1965. Susani is being read in our 2012 Italian reading group.

Katharina Faber was born in 1952. Strange Signals, her second novel, was published in 2008. It is in its fourth German printing, has been translated into Chinese, and was adapted for theatre by the North by North West Kulturprojekte. Featured …

João Ricardo Pedro was born in 1973 in Reboleira, Amadora. Curious about the Lorentz force, he went on to study electrotechnical engineering at the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon. For more than ten years João worked in telecommunications, never having to …

One fine day a solar system which is no longer in motion was formed – no longer because its motion is settled. In order for it to go into motion again, there’s a need for something that demolishes. This is …

Sandro Veronesi is a novelist, journalist and essayist. He graduated in Architecture from the University of Florence, the city where he was born in 1959. His novel La forza del passato (The Force of The Past) won the Campiello and …

Described by Spanish newspaper ABC as ‘the new sensation in Hispanic literature’, Pola Oloixarac was born in 1977 in Buenos Aires. She claims to have started writing at the age of seven and finished her first novel aged eight.

Nino Haratischwili was born in Tiflis, Georgia in 1983. She is an award-winning novelist, playwright and theatre director and has been writing in Georgian and German since the age of twelve. Her debut novel Juja was longlisted for the German …

Piotr Paziński (b. 1973) journalist, essayist, literary critic and translator, belongs to the “third post-Holocaust generation” . He studied philosophy at Warsaw University, and then wrote a thesis on James Joyce’ Ulysses. From 1992-97 he was a journalist working for Gazeta …

Born in 1966, Johannes Jansen grew up in Freiburg, Leipzig and East Berlin. In the 1980s he became part of the avant-garde literary movement in East Berlin.

Gonçalo M. Tavares is widely hailed as one of the leading lights of modern Portuguese literature. He was born in Luanda, Angola in 1970 where his parents were teaching at the time, but grew up in Portugal. His work has …

I intend to die as I lived, a free man. – Gabrielle Wittkop Gabrielle Wittkop (née Menardeau) was born in Nantes in 1920. She taught herself to read by the age of four – “I got the feeling of absolute power” – and …

Silke Scheuermann, born 1973, first gained acclaim for her poetry. Educated in Frankfurt am Main, Leipzig, and Paris, she studied literature and theatre studies. She is the author of three novels, of which The Hour Between Dog and Wolf was …

At a time of limitless supply and a surplus of intellectual products I do not seek to be heard (urbi et orbi) by a yogi or dervish, to be understood by a Papuan, Geisha or some illiterate. Here, and not …

Angelika Klüssendorf was born in 1958 in Ahrensburg, in the former East Germany. She lived in Leipzig from 1961 to 1985, when she moved to West Germany. Today she lives in Berlin. She has written three novels, three collections of …

José Eduardo Agualusa began his writing career as a poet and has since written some eighteen novels, four of which have been translated into English by Daniel Hahn, with The Book of Chameleons winning the 2007 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Deborah Levy writes fiction, plays and poetry. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and she is the author of highly praised books including Beautiful Mutants, Swallowing Geography (both Jonathan Cape) and Billy and Girl (Bloomsbury).

José Cardoso Pires is an author featured in the winter 2012 And Other Stories’ Portuguese reading group.

The sacred is in everyday life, in the falling of a handkerchief …  It is strange to have to use words to say that they shouldn’t exist … Our language allows us to lie to ourselves, to run away from …

Kathrin Röggla is an Austrian author and playwright, as well as a prolific writer of radio plays. She is a member of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin. Her work, which is often political in tone and critical of the …

I love gossip. And who doesn’t? Perhaps you don’t? Well, in that case you’re an exception; the rest of us really love it. Gossip is the stuff(ing) of life. Isn’t it a pleasure, for example, to find out from the …

Considered by many to be the enfant terrible of Portuguese literature, Miguel Esteves Cardoso was born in Lisbon in 1955 to a Portuguese father and English mother. A writer, journalist, radio broadcaster, and music critic, among many other things, MEC …

José Luandino Vieira is a central figure in the establishment of a distinctively Angolan literary movement. Born in Portugal in 1935, he grew up in Luanda, where his family lived in the poor suburbs, the musseques, in which so many of his short stories and novels are set. He was awarded, but declined for personal reasons, the Prémio Camões, the most prestigious international award for literature in the Portuguese language.

Ricardo Menéndez Salmón was born in Gijón, Asturias in 1971 and has been hailed as one of the most interesting and profound writers of contemporary Spanish fiction. He writes for newspapers such as El País and a range of literary …

I like words to be incandescent and books to be infernos – Linda Lê Relatively unknown to the general public yet critically highly-acclaimed, Linda Lê was born to a Vietnamese father and French mother in Dalat in 1963. Her family …

Antje Rávic Strubel lives in Potsdam, just outside of Berlin. She trained as a bookseller and then studied German and American Literature and Psychology in Potsdam and New York. The name Rávic is entirely invented to describe a separate identity …

Sergio Olguín was born in Buenos Aires in 1967 and grew up in the Lanús neighbourhood where many of his novels are set. The first of these he penned aged nine. Entitled Lobo, Mi buen amigo (My good friend Wolf), …

Ondjaki was born in 1977 – two years after the country gained its independence from Portugal – and grew up in a country at war. Now living in Rio de Janeiro, he has over a dozen books published, including collections of poetry,children’s stories and novels.

Lucía Etxebarria was born in Valencia in 1966 and has a daughter, a dog, three tattoos and innumerable scars of both the visible and invisible variety. She has been awarded an honorary degree from the University of Aberdeen and her …

Rui Zink was born in Lisbon in 1961. He is a writer, university lecturer and cultural commentator. He has published eight novels including his debut Hotel Lusitano (1987, re-released in 2011), Os Surfistas (The Surfers, 2001), Dádiva divina (Gift from God, which won the 2005 Portuguese …

Joanna Bator’s Ciemno, prawie noc (Dark, Almost Night) is featured in our Polish Reading Group Winter-Spring 2013.

Félix Bruzzone spends most of his time beside the swimming pool. That’s not to say he lives a charmed life but rather that despite being one of Argentina’s most celebrated young novelists, Bruzzone has to earn a living. And Bruzzone …

Francisco José Viegas (b. 1962) is a Portuguese writer of novels, poetry, and travel books who has also worked as a journalist and in publishing. In 2011, he was elected to the Portuguese parliament, the Assembly,  and became the Culture Secretary …

Born in Saint-Brieuc in 1965, Fabienne Juhel is a professor of modern letters in the Côtes-d’Armor region of Brittany. Her first novel, La Verticale de la lune, was published by Zulma in 2005. Her subsequent novels – Les bois dormants (2007), À l’angle du …

Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel is an Equatorial Guinean writer of fiction and poetry. He has several books to his name, including the novel Ladrón De Cerdos,  Avión de Ricos (The Pig Thief And The Rich Man’s Aeroplane), and the collection …

In his own words from the author’s biography in Gin and Tonic Tales: ‘Mário-Henrique Leiria was born in Lisbon in 1923. He went to the Escola de Belas Artes, and left rather hastily. Between 1949 and 1951 he was part of …

Michał Witkowski’s Drwal (The Lumberjack) is featured in our Polish Reading Group Winter-Spring 2013.

In our time I can only conceive of realism in an expanded form, absorbing innumerable imaginary elements. Today it is impossible to be a realist without acknowledging the interference of technological fictions in daily life. For the contemporary writer the …

José Luis Peixoto was born in 1974 in a small village in the Alentejo region. He has written over ten works of literature – fiction, poetry and plays – as well as writing literary journalism and song lyrics for bands. In 2001, …

Traveller, acclaimed writer and grand reporteur, Jean Rolin (b. 1949) is one of France’s best-known writers, with a long backlist establishing his distinctive ‘Rolinian’ territory: ‘psychogeography,’ real-life journeying and self-mapping; a fictionalised blend of memoir and classic travel writing; ruthless …

Thanasis Triaridis (Thessaloniki, 1970) is considered to be one of the most unconventional and important contemporary Greek authors. From 2000 to date he has published, in various forms, 30 books of narratives and essays, while in 2004 he started his …

Ana Teresa Pereira was born in Funchal, on the island of Madeira, where she still lives and writes. In 1989 she published her first novel, Matar a Imagem (Killing the Image), which won the Caminho Crime Writing Prize. Over two decades and more …

Wojciech Kuczok’s Gnój (Muck) is featured in our Polish Reading Group Winter-Spring 2013

Marc Biancarelli, a high school teacher of the Corsican language, is also an accomplished writer in both French and Corsican. Biancarelli’s latest novel Murtoriu recounts the events leading up to the murder of the taciturn Mansuetu, one of the last Corsicans still …

Poetry was Olga Teixeira Gonçalves’ first love and she published half-a-dozen collections in the decade from 1973. A Floresta em Bremerhaven (The Forest in Bremerhaven, 1975) was her first novel on emigration, which was reprinted four times and won her …

Nicos Panayotopoulos was born in Athens in 1963. He studied engineering, but at the same time took drama courses at the Hellenic-American Union. Initially, he worked as an arts journalist for newspapers, magazines and television. Since 1992 he makes a …