Our recommended books this week lean toward the multinational: a historical novel set on a Swedish island, a World War II account of American military pilots navigating a treacherous route over the Himalayas, a novel about migrants flooding into a small Sicilian town and Joseph O’Neill’s new novel, “Godwin,” about a Pittsburgh man on the hunt for a rumored soccer superstar in West Africa. Also up, we recommend Carvell Wallace’s moving, joyful memoir and Kimberly King Parsons’s novel about grief and desire. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles
GODWIN
Joseph O’Neill
This globe-trotting novel from the author of “Netherland” chronicles the quest of a man named Mark Wolfe to find a mysterious soccer prodigy in West Africa and the unraveling of his workplace back in Pittsburgh. Mark shares narratorial duties with his colleague Lakesha Williams, who speaks first in “Godwin” and also gets the last word.
Seventy-two migrants settle in a small Sicilian town in this polyphonic novel, which won France’s most prestigious literary prize in 2021 and is here translated into English by Alison Anderson. Sarr not only follows the newcomers, but also considers the inner lives of the villagers, whose reactions vary considerably.
Europa | Paperback, $18
After the loss of a land route through Burma in 1942, Allied forces had to fly supplies over a treacherous stretch of the Himalayas to support the Nationalist Chinese government in its war against Japan. Alexander’s vivid retelling of this aerial feat is matched only by her exquisite rendering of the pilots’ fear.
Reeling from the sudden death of her sister, a young Texas wife and mother lets her mind run freely to the siblings’ shared rebellious past — and her own present catalog of pansexual longings — in Parsons’s witty and profane debut novel, a tender, exuberant and often profoundly moving follow-up to her lauded 2019 story collection, “Black Light.”
Knopf | $28
Wallace, a gifted journalist and essayist who came to writing in midlife, explores what it means to be a Black man, partner and parent in the world. While he is unstinting on the tribulations of his unstable childhood, — a troubled single mother, intermittent homelessness and mental health struggles — the reflections here are threaded through with rare, soulful vulnerability and a persistent sense of joy.
MCDxFSG | $28
This haunting debut novel explores the sinister effects of a legacy of century-old witch hunts on a remote island in Sweden. At its center are a pair of sisters descended from one of the few women to be spared. Left to their own devices, Ulrika and Bea piece together their legacy and, over time, inflame their pastor father’s paranoia
