[troutman]

“Not Even the Dead,” a novel by Juan Gómez Bárcena, is a transhistorical epic with echoes of Cormac McCarthy and Joseph Conrad. Very much like “Heart of Darkness” in the beginning - later it becomes a more metaphorical look at the progress of Mexico. A dense book with long paragraphs and little dialogue, but very impressive.

“American War” is the first novel by the Egyptian-Canadian journalist Omar El Akkad. It is set in the United States in the near future, ravaged by climate change and disease, in which the Second Civil War has broken out over the use of fossil fuels.

“The Buried Giant” is a fantasy novel by the Nobel Prize–winning British writer Kazuo Ishiguro, published in March 2015. Halfway through this book, and could be my favorite book read this year.