The Flowers of Buffoonery
A novel by Osamu Dazai (translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett)
“‘What’s with the pose, Hida?’
“‘You’re the one posing, idiot. Look at your hands!’
“The three young men burst out laughing, but all at once they snuck a look at the other balconies down the wing. The patients from Rooms 5 and 6 were out, too, sunbathing on their daybeds, and laughing so hard at what the guys were up to they were red in the face.”
A self-critical narrator tells the story of Yozo Oba, a Marxist painter who, after emerging as the lone survivor of a joint suicide attempt undertaken with his lover, is brought to Blue Pines Manor, a seaside sanitarium in late 1920s Japan. The friends and family members who visit him there are determinedly jocular, avoiding conflict even as they try to make sense of Yozo’s emotions and thoughts. To be published by New Directions on March 7.
Birnam Wood
A novel by Eleanor Catton
“‘You’re not going to tell him?’
“He was about to reply, and then seemed to change his mind.
“‘Now really,’ he said, after a long pause, ‘where would be the fun in that?’
“He went to put the window up.
“‘Wait,’ Mira said again. But she had detained him before she had a question ready. He was looking at her expectantly, and so she said the first thing that came into her head: ‘What’s the code for the front gate?’”
Mira Bunting, the founder of Birnam Wood — a guerrilla gardening collective with a Shakespearean name — has her sights set on a remote swath of farmland in New Zealand, but she’s not the only one to have noticed it. While surveying the property, she encounters an American billionaire who has decided it will do nicely as the site of an elaborate bolt-hole, should some impending force threaten his comfort. To be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on March 7.
A Spell of Good Things
A novel by Ayòbámi Adébáyò
“Five knocks and a pause.
“Òtúnba shut the book he was reading and leaned back in his chair. ‘I didn’t lock it this time. Come on in.’
“Wúràolá walked in.
“‘You finally decided to come make sure your old people are still alive.’
“‘Ahn ahn. But I still came home a few weeks ago. Good evening, sir.’
“‘You lost my number between then and now?’
“‘I’ve just been so busy.’ Wúràolá winked. ‘I’m trying to be rich like you.’”
In modern Nigeria, Eniolá does odd jobs for a tailor to pay for school — where he’s harassed by teachers and fellow students alike — and to help his family make rent. In a different part of town, Wúràolá, who’s lived a charmed life, works long shifts as a young doctor at a public hospital. But unrest isn’t always mindful of social divisions and, when violence strikes at a birthday party during election season, it connects these two characters from disparate worlds. Published by Knopf on Feb. 7.
Künstlers in Paradise
A novel by Cathleen Schine
“She took off her jacket. She would try to help the bird, wrap it in her jacket and carry it to safety. She did not know what safety for an injured bird was, but she knew she had to try.
“Just as she was about to spread her jacket over the struggling gull, suddenly, very suddenly, the big bird stopped struggling. It was still. Very still.”
Mamie Künstler was 11 when, in 1939, her mother’s job at a film studio allowed her family to trade their home in a Vienna increasingly hostile to its Jewish residents for the comparatively strange city of Los Angeles. Decades later, her grandson arrives for a visit, hoping to make inroads in the movie industry, but gets waylaid by the pandemic and is instead treated by Mamie to a trove of family and Hollywood lore. To be published by Henry Holt on March 14.
About the artist: Caleb Hahne Quintana tends to paint his friends and family members, often setting his vibrantly rendered scenes in Colorado, where his great-grandfather put down roots after moving to the United States from Mexico in the 1930s. “Genesis of Arcadia” (2022), a work of Hahne Quintana’s depicting three horses and riders in a snowy mountain valley, was recently acquired by the Denver Art Museum, where it’s currently part of the group show “Who Tells a Tale Adds a Tail: Latin America and Contemporary Art,” on view through March 5. He’s also been exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami, the Anat Ebgi gallery in Los Angeles and PM/AM gallery in London, among other venues. Hahne Quintana studied at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in Colorado and is based in Brooklyn.
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