Books published by Restless Books

2020 Foreword INDIES Gold Winner for Multicultural Fiction2020 Mass Book Awards Must Read FictionAn inspired and urgent prose retelling of the Maya myth of creation by acclaimed Latin American author and scholar Ilan Stavans, gorgeously illustrated by Salvadoran folk artist Gabriela Larios and introduced by renowned author, diplomat, and environmental activist Homero Aridjis.

Award-winning journalist Javier Sinay investigates a series of murders from the nineteenth century, unearthing the complex history and legacy of Moisés Ville, the ¿Jerusalem of South America,¿ and his personal connection to a defining period of Jewish history in Argentina.When Argentine journalist Javier Sinay discovers an article from 1947 by his great-grandfather detailing twenty-two murders that had occurred in Moisés Ville at the end of the nineteenth century, he launches into his own investigation that soon turns into something deeper: an exploration of the history of Moisés Ville, one of the first Jewish agricultural communities in Argentina, and Sinay¿s own connection to this historically thriving Jewish epicenter. Seeking refuge from the pogroms of Czarist Russia, a group of Jewish immigrants founded Moisés Ville in the late 1880s. Like their town¿s prophetic namesake, these immigrants fled one form of persecution only to encounter a different set of hardships: exploitative land prices, starvation, illness, language barriers, and a series of murders perpetrated by roving gauchos who preyed upon their vulnerability. Sinay, though a descendant of these immigrants, is unfamiliar with this turbulent history, and his research into the spate of violence plunges him into his family¿s past and their link to Moisés Ville. He combs through libraries and archives in search of documents about the murders and hires a book detective to track down issues of Der Viderkol, the first Yiddish newspaper in Argentina started by his great-grandfather. He even enrolls in Yiddish classes so he can read the newspaper and other contemporaneous records for himself. Through interviews with his family members, current residents of Moisés Ville, historians, and archivists, Sinay compiles moving portraits of the victims of these heinous murders and reveals the fascinating and complex history of the town once known as the ¿Jerusalem of South America.¿¿Sinay acknowledges the impossibility of fully separating legends from facts. . . but his diligence has produced as definitive an account as possible of what actually happened during this bloody period. This nuanced search for truth should have broad appeal.¿¿Publishers Weekly, starred review"I greatly admire Javier Sinay's enlightening and humane account of his sleuthing¿the disinterment of a violent episode of buried history¿now no longer forgotten. Its implications resonate far beyond the borders of Argentina."¿Paul Theroux, author of The Mosquito Coast and Under the Wave at Waimea"Part detective story, part family history, The Murders of Moisés Ville: The Rise and Fall of the Jerusalem of South America ¿ by Buenos Aires journalist Javier Sinay¿ offers a compelling path to learn more."¿Howard Freedman, Jewish News of Northern California¿In the pursuit to understand his own past, while unraveling the mysteries surrounding Moisés Ville, Javier Sinay has created an unflinching portrait of the first Jewish community in Argentina, who, despite enormous challenges, life-threatening privations, and demeaning persecution, endured to pave the way for others seeking a new life in ArgentinäSinay has demonstrated once again, that history must be preserved no matter the cost ¿ for ourselves, as well as for future generations.¿¿Stephen Newton, Litro Magazine¿ What begins as an exercise in historical sleuthing evolves into a more ambitious exploration of Argentine Jewish history and identity¿Sinay doesn¿t need to create a direct connection to this tragic present. It is more than enough that he refuses to flatten the Moisés Ville murders to fit a totalizing narrative of antisemitic violence in Argentina. In so doing, he not only rejects facile conceptions of Jewish victimhood, but also defies the Zionist idea that, by virtue of having suffered in one country, Jews are automatically entitled to land in another.¿¿Lily Meyer, Jewish Currents

A touching and profound tale of friendship, differences, and acceptance from renowned Estonian children¿s author and illustrator Piret Raud. World Literature Today's 75 Notable Translation of 2020

A hilarious, darkly comic graphic retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet in radically condensed prose by legendary Swedish children's author Lindgren and illustrator Hsglund. Bold and brilliant, irreverent and humane, this is the perfect irreverent gift for Shakespeare readers of all ages.ages.

Diabolically funny and subversively philosophical, Italian novelist Giacomo Sartori's I am God is the diary of the Almighty's existential crisis that ensues when he falls in love with a human.I am God. Have been forever, will be forever. Forever, mind you, with the razor-sharp glint of a diamond, and without any counterpart in the languages of men. So begins God's diary of the existential crisis that ensues when, inexplicably, he falls in love with a human. And not just any human, but a geneticist and fanatical atheist who's certain she can improve upon the magnificent creation she doesn't even give him the credit for. It's frustrating, for a god. God has infinitely bigger things to occupy his celestial attentions. Yet he can't tear his eyes (so to speak) from the geneticist who's unsettlingly avid when it comes to science, sex, and Sicilian cannoli. Whatever happens, he must safeguard his transcendental dignity. So he watches-disinterestedly, of course-as the handsome climatologist who has his sights set on her keeps having strange accidents. And as the lanky geneticist becomes hell-bent on infiltrating the Vatican's secret files, for reasons of her own.... A sly critique of the hypocrisy and hubris that underlie faith in religion, science, and macho careerism, I Am God takes us on a hilarious and provocative romp through the Big Questions with the universe's supreme storyteller.

Restless Classics presents the ninetieth anniversary edition of an undersung gem of the Harlem Renaissance: Nella Larsen's Passing, a captivating and prescient exploration of identity, sexuality, self-invention, class, and race set amidst the pealing boisterousness of the Jazz Age.When childhood friends Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry cross paths at a whites-only restaurant, it's been decades since they last met. Married to a bigoted white man who has no idea that she is African American, Clare has fully embraced her ability to "pass" as a white woman. Irene, also light-skinned and living in Harlem, is shocked by Clare's rejection of her heritage, though she too passes when it suits her needs. This encounter sparks an intense relationship between the two women who, as acclaimed critic and novelist Darryl Pinckney writes in his insightful introduction, reflect Larsen's own experience of being "between black and white, and culturally at home nowhere."In a culture intent on setting boundaries, Clare and Irene refuse to adhere to expectations of gender, race, or class, culminating in a tragic clash of identities, as their relationship swings between emotional hostility and intense attraction.

From ¿one of Iran's most important living fiction writers¿ (The Guardian) comes a fantastically imaginative story of love and war narrated by two angel scribes perched on the shoulders of a shell-shocked Iranian soldier whös searching for the mysterious woman haunting his dreams.Before he enlisted as a soldier in the Iran¿Iraq war and disappeared, Amir Yamini was a carefree playboy whose only concerns were seducing women and riling his religious family. Five years later, his mother and sister Reyhaneh find him in a mental hospital for shell-shocked soldiers, his left arm and most of his memory lost. Amir is haunted by the vision of a mysterious woman whose face he cannot see¿the crescent moon on her forehead shines too brightly. He names her Moon Brow. Back home in Tehran, the prodigal son is both hailed as a living martyr to the cause of Ayatollah Khomeini¿s Revolution and confined as a dangerous madman. His sense of humor, if not his sanity, intact, Amir cajoles Reyhaneh into helping him escape the garden walls to search for Moon Brow. Piecing together the puzzle of his past, Amir decides there¿s only one solution: he must return to the battlefield and find the remains of his severed arm¿and discover its secret. All the while, to angels sit on our herös shoulders and inscribe the story in enthrallingly distinctive prose. Wildly inventive and radically empathetic, steeped in Persian folklore and contemporary Middle East history, Moon Brow is the great Iranian novelist Shahriar Mandanipour¿s unforgettable epic of love, war, morality, faith, and family.

Restless Classics presents The Souls of Black Folk: W. E. B. Du Bois¿s seminal work of sociology, with searing insights into our complex, corrosive relationship with race and the African-American consciousness. Reconsidered for the era of Obama, Trump, and Black Lives Matter, the new edition includes an incisive introduction from rising cultural critic Vann R. Newkirk II and stunning illustrations by the artist Steve Prince. Published in 1903, exactly forty years after the Emancipation Proclamation, W.E.B. Du Bois¿s The Souls of Black Folk fell into the hands of an American nation that had still not yet found ¿peace from its sins.¿ With such deep disappointment among African-Americans still awaiting full emancipation, Du Bois believed that the moderate and conciliatory efforts of civil-rights leader Booker T. Washington could only go so far. Taking to the page, Du Bois produced a resounding declaration on the rights of the American man and laid out an agenda that was at the time radical but has since proven prophetic. In fourteen chapters that move fluidly between historical and sociological essays, song and poetry, personal recollection and fiction, The Souls of Black Folk frames ¿the color line¿ as the central problem of the twentieth century and tries to answer the question, ¿Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?¿ Striking in his psychological precision as well as his political foresight, Du Bois advanced ithe influential ideas of ¿double-consciousness¿¿an inner conflict created by the seemingly irreconcilable ¿black¿ and ¿American¿ identities¿and ¿the veil,¿ through which African-Americans must see a spectrum of economic, social, and political opportunities entirely differently from their white counterparts¿.Now, over fifty years after Du Bois¿s death and the Civil Rights Act, we need this seminal work more urgently than ever. Long overdue for reconsideration, it is the latest installment of Restless Classics, featuring illustrations by master printmaker Steve Prince and a new introduction by Atlantic staff writer Vann R. Newkirk II.

In this deadly-funny debut novel by renowned Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres, five macho friends in Rio’s Copacabana reflect on their hedonistic glory days—now supplanted by the indignities of aging—in what turn out to be their final moments.With uncanny insight into the less virtuous corners of the male psyche, Fernanda Torres brings us five friends who once milked the high life of Rio’s Bossa Nova age and are now left with memories—parties, marriages, divorces, fixations, inhibitions, bad decisions—and the grim realities of getting old. Álvaro lives alone and bemoans the evils of his ex-wife. Sílvio can’t give up the excesses of sex and drugs. Ribeiro is a vain, Viagra-abusing beach bum. Neto is the square, a faithful husband until the end. Ciro is the Don Juan envied by all—but the first to die. Cutting in on these swan songs are the testimonies of those the men seduced, cheated, loved, and abandoned: their wives and children. Edgy, funny, and wise, The End is a candid tropical tragicomedy and an epitaph for a lost generation of machos.