Isabel Harlaar tipt 'Territory of Light' van Yuko Tsushima. Territory of Light is the radiant story of a young woman, living alone in Tokyo with her two-year-old daughter. Its twelve chapters follow the first year of the narrator's separation from her husband. The novel is full of light, sometimes comforting and sometimes dangerous: sunlight streaming through windows, dappled light in the park, distant fireworks, dazzling floodwater, de-saturated streetlamps and mysterious explosions. The delicate prose is beautifully patterned: the cumulative effect is disarmingly powerful and bright after-images remain in your mind for a long time.

Hoe komt het dat de visioenen van iemand uit de eerste eeuw van onze jaartelling ons nog steeds achtervolgen? Is mythologie iets uit een ver verleden, of hebben wij onze eigen mythen? Wat is het nut van goden en welke rol spelen ze eigenlijk in de geschiedenis van het vertellen? En is een 'identiteitsprobleem' eigenlijk wel een probleem? In dit boek zoekt Piet Meeuse naar het nieuwe in het oude, en naar het oude in het nieuwe: hij schrijft over mythologie en over oude boeken, maar ook over een recente film, over zijn passie voor de Tour de France en over de verbazingwekkende wereld van de droom. Rode draad in al deze essays is de vraag wat geloof, magie en verbeelding met elkaar te maken hebben, en welke geheimen er schuilgaan in typisch menselijke bezigheden als vertellen en lezen.

In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.

Why, when we are desperately in love, do we endlessly block union with our love object? Why do we often destroy what we love most? Why do we search out the impossible object? Is it that we desire things because they are unavailable, and therefore, to keep desire alive, we need to prevent its fulfillment? Renata Salecl explores the distributing and complex relationships between love and hate, violence and admiration, libidinal and destructive drives. (Per)Versions of Love and Hate presents a unique and timely intervention in contemporary debates by questioning the legitimacy of the calls for tolerance and respect by multiculturalism and exploring practices such as body-mutilation as symptoms of the radical change that has affected subjectivity in contemporary society.

Vivek's debut collection of poetry is a bold and timely interrogation of skin: its origins, functions, and limitations. Poems that range in style from starkly concrete to limber break down the barriers that prevent understanding of what it means to be racialized. Shraya paints the face of everyday racism with words, rendering it visible, tangible, and undeniable.