Luise lives in a small town in Germany with her parents, friends, and a grandmother who dreams of an okapi right before someone dies. There’s love and loss and scads of lessons that are human. It’s a tale of simple life, a view into Luise’s world as she grows up. We probably shouldn’t take it too seriously,” Selma said, but like a TV detective who is not taking an anonymous letter too seriously. Ludmila Ulitskaya’s Just the Plague is not, as its title might suggest, an early mover in the field of “corona-lit”. It refers instead to the little known and potentially disastrous outbreak of plague in Moscow in 1939, which was swiftly thwarted by the secret police. Written as a screenplay in the late 1980s, it was submitted by Ulitskaya, then an unknown, as part of a scriptwriting course application. It was rejected and buried among her discarded papers. “Thirty-two years have passed,” she writes in the epigraph, “and the script has now acquired a new significance.” Effervescent, tender, and realistically absurd--an utterly charming depiction of life, death, love, and the people who help us through it all. What You Can See from Here is exactly the kind of novel I am ever hoping to discover." In the early hours of 4 April 2015, Shiori Ito awoke in a Tokyo hotel room to find a man on top of her. The last thing she could remember was sharing a meal and drinks with him. When it the alleged sexual assault was over, and she had returned from the bathroom, distressed and in pain, the man asked if he could keep her underwear as a “souvenir”. Ito crumpled to the floor. Staring down at her, the man said: “Before, you seemed like a strong, capable woman, but now you’re like a troubled child. It’s adorable.”

A tale of life, loss, and the limitless joy of love. Above all else, this book manages to achieve that rarest of literary feats: it makes you happy . . . A gift to be savored.” On finishing What You Can See from Here, I was bereft. I dare you to try to read this book slowly. Central to the story is the idea of how much of the world to let into our lives, how much each of us can actually manage. Well, I implore you to let this book into your life. It’s a wonder you won’t forget.”Even from down there, a meter from her eyes, I could see that something sinister had played out behind Selma’s eyelids the night before. The story is told from the perspective of Luisa, Selma’s granddaughter. First as a 10 year old and then as a 24 year old, falling in love with a German Buddhist monk, visiting from Japan. Yes, it’s that kind of quirky. As the book went on, I started to appreciate and enjoy the characters - their love for each other, their sense of community. Maybe your father will be the one, I thought, but naturally didn’t say it out loud, because fathers aren’t supposed to die, no matter how bad they are. Martin put me down and exhaled. Fatima Daas is a pseudonym, chosen to match her central character. She began writing fiction aged 14, and her talent was spotted in high-school writing workshops. She later took a creative writing master’s degree.

Surprisingly, we had never noticed Selma’s perfect resemblance to the Dutch television host Rudi Carrell; it took someone from outside to come and point it out to us years later. But then the resemblance hit us with full force. Selma’s long, slender body, her posture, her eyes, her nose, her mouth and hair: from head to toe, Selma resembled Rudi Carrell so perfectly that, from then on, in our eyes, he was nothing more than a poor copy of Selma.Luisa, Selma’s ten-year-old granddaughter, looks on as the predictable characters of her small world begin acting strangely. Though they claim not to be superstitious, each of her neighbors newly grapples with buried secrets and deferred decisions that have become urgent in the face of death.

Tuomainen’s first five novels were more traditional Nordic noir. But around 2015, he started to introduce comedy, starting with The Man Who Died, in which a Finnish mushroom entrepreneur sets out to find out who has been slowly poisoning him. To date, he has been nominated for 12 awards, including the CWA International Dagger. His previous novel Little Siberia, in which a priest fends off attempts to steal a valuable meteorite from a museum, won him Best Scandinavian crime novel of the year at the Petrona awards. Kάθε φορά που βλέπει αυτό το όνειρο είναι σαν ένας οιωνός θανάτου για τους κατοίκους του χωριού, ενας οιωνός τον οποίο δε μπορούν να μην φοβούνται. Στο πρώτο μέρος λοιπόν του βιβλίου και προσωπικά αγαπημένο δικό μου κομμάτι, οι ήρωες φοβισμένοι από την «προφητεία» της Ζέλμα ξεκινούν να γράφουν γράμματα. Μέσα σε αυτά τα γράμματα υπάρχουν θαμμένα μυστικά, απόκρυυφες σκέψεις και επιθυμίες. Όταν τελικά ο θάνατος φτάνει η συγγραφέας με μια απίστευτη συγγραφική δεινότητα θα καταδείξει υπέροχα πως μια ολόκληρη κοινότητα επηρεάζεται από το γεγονός, πως διαχειρίζονται την απώλεια και πως δε μπορούν πολλές φορές να ξεφύγουν από πράγματα και καταστάσεις. Η απώλεια που θα συμβεί είναι μια απώλεια που δε θα ξεχαστεί, που είναι δύσκολο να τη διαχειριστούν οι ήρωες μας. Ωστόσο η ζωή συνεχίζεται. Στο δεύτερο μέρος η ιστορία κάνει ένα άλμα μερικών ετών μπροστά και βλέπουμε την εγγονή της Ζέλμα, Λουίζε να έχει πλέον ενηλικιωθεί, να έχει γνωρίσει τον έρωτα με έναν μοναχό. Για να είμαι απόλυτα ειλικρινής χωρίς σε καμιά περίπτωση να υποβιβάζω την αξία του βιβλίου το δεύτερο μέρος προσωπικά με κέντρισε λιγότερο. Εχοντας πλέον διαβάσει ολόκληρο το βιβλίο αντιλαμβάνομαι ότι ήταν περισσότερο ένα βιβλίο ενηλικίωσης της Λουίζε, εγγονής τη Ζέλμα όμως κατά κάποιο τρόπο ένιωσα μια μικρή αναγνωστική εξαπάτηση καθώς περιμένα ή λανθασμένα είχα φανταστεί ότι ήταν το βιβλίο της Ζέλμα. Σαν να έχασα λίγο από τον ενθουσιασμό μου. Παραλείποντας αυτή την καθαρά προσωπική διαπίστωση και με το τρίτο κεφάλαιο να μου αφήνει μια ευχάριστη επίγευση, μπορώ να πω ότι αδιαπραγμάτευτα το όνειρο της ζέλμα είναι ένα γλυκό και παραμυθένιο βιβλίο που σου ξυπνάει τις αισθήσεις. Είναι από εκείνα τα βιβλία που ζεσταίνουν την ψυχή σου, θα σε κάνει να κλαψεις, να γελάσεις και να θυμηθείς ότι στο τέλος της μέρας αυτό που πραγματικά είναι σημαντικό είναι να καταλαβούμε ότι η ζωή συμβαίνει γύρω μας και πρεπει να είμαστε παρόντες και να μην την αφήνουμε να μας προσπερνά. Η απώλεια, ο πόνος για την απώλεια είναι μέρος της αλυσίδας της ζωής και όσο και αν δε θέλουμε να την βιώσουμε αυτό είναι αναπόφευκτο και θα πρέπει να το αποδεχτούμε γιατί είναι και αυτή μέρος της ζωής μας. and for the rest of the story, I found myself glued to the book both anticipating and dreading the next death. There were a few more heart-wrenching sequences in store, that ended up being completely unimportant... for me, at least. I'm sure the characters will beg to differ. However the gist of the story is about love, and how it can sneak up on the most unsuspecting people in the most unlikely manner, and then refuse to let its 'victims' go, in spite of their best efforts.

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Our village was too small to have a train station. It was also too small to have a school. Every morning, Martin and I took the bus to the small station in the next village and then caught the local train to the county seat, where we went to school. Martin’s mouth was at the level of my belly button. “So is somebody going to die?” he asked into my sweater. What else would it have been?” Selma asked, adding that you can hardly mistake an okapi for another animal. The drama unfolds in a remote village, and the protagonist is a middle-aged woman, Selma, who has a special gift: she can foresee death. Each time an okapi appears in her dreams, a person in the village dies in the days that follow. Selma lives together with her granddaughter Luise, who has been hiding herself away since the untimely death of her childhood friend. It's only when a Buddhist monk comes to the village that she finds a way out of her grief and gives the power of love a chance. The film is also a portrait of rural life, a village and its unusual inhabitants. international title: Leky γράφει μαγικά. Δεν χρειάζεται φραμπαλάδες, αφήνει την ιστορία να ειπωθεί από ένα παιδί που μεγαλώνει διατηρώντας το καθαρό βλέμμα και τη φαντασία ενός μυαλού που δεν φοβάται τις αλήθειες σε μια γλώσσα παραμυθένια και γλυκιά. Όχι γλυκερή, το βιβλίο αυτό δεν σε λιγώνει, σε ζεσταίνει και σε παρηγορεί.

Populated by quirky characters who learn there is no way to truly prepare for death or grief, Leky's novel is for those who enjoy laconic, introspective reads.”

Luise, due to the rather unusual situation with her parents, is mostly raised by her grandmother, Selma. Selma has the rather strange strait of dreaming about Okapi, an animal that closely resembles a Zebra. When Selma has one of these dreams, it unfortunately signals pending death -within a 24 hour time span. As in life, What You Can See from Here reveals its significant players and their startling joys and losses, in patient, unexpected ways. The cumulative effect of this wise storytelling is colossal. A profound and beautiful novel.” In the beginning, Martin made careless mistakes. He would say “meadow” when we were actually passing a field or didn’t call out the landscape fast enough when the train accelerated in the middle of the stretch. But before long he got everything exactly right. He said “field” when I saw a field, he said “farm” when the farm rushed past. Neither of the two beasts turns out to be quite as terrifying as they sound. Wolfhound Alaska, the metaphorical pain, is miraculously immortal but also barely capable of a growl. And while Selma’s death-by-okapi dream is the Chekhovian gun that lends Leky’s eccentric tale constant tension – and a sudden and tragic twist – the big sleep harbingered by the giraffe-like animal can also be soft and agreeable.