Secret Agent for the win!

‘Effingers’ Review: Days and Nights in Berlin A 1951 novel traces a German-Jewish family and its fortunes through the generations.

Pleased that my review of Gabriele Tergit’s masterpiece Effingers ran in this weekend’s @wsj.com

www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

Mostly blue checks! 😆

En serio? Que bien! Es buenísima.

I blocked everyone on Twitter who didn’t like The Longcut by Emily Hall lol

The impulse sentences: Mauro Javier Cárdenas in conversation with Jonathan Moreland Since 2016, Mauro Javier Cárdenas, an Ecuadorian author based in the United States, has been experimenting with the most primary unit of linguistic discourse: the sentence. Across three novels, he ...

Jonathan Moreland has been writing an amazing book on the long sentence in contemporary fiction, with chapters on Krasznahorkai, Ellman, Fosse, and my novels.

Here’s a Q&A we did recently for Global South Literary Studies. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/IUZYK...

Moresco on his œuvre — now @minorliteratures.bsky.social

minorliteratures.com/2026/01/07/i...

Afinidades electivas.

Testing / testing

Posting some books I enjoyed in 2025 to see if anyone’s here

American Abductions by @ineluctablequak.bsky.social published by the good folks at @dalkeyarchive.bsky.social

Join us for a discussion of Michael Lentz's 1001 page novel Schattenfroh with translator Max Lawton and author Mauro Javier Cardenas

Date and time

Thursday, October 30 · 7 - 9pm PDT

www.eventbrite.com/e/schattenfr...

Here

Cover of American Abductions, the third novel by Mauro Javier Cardenas, with a reproduction of Leonora Carrington's "Labyrinth" in the bottom half of the design. The painting shows a labyrinth of hedges with figures making their way through. Some are white, some black, some red. A red bird figure at the entrance looks like Max Ernst's totem. A prominent black horse with a large, wide-open, staring golden eye has a white acrobat in red socks doing a headstand on its back. Farther along are more horses, people following a pair of oxen, more Ernst-like bird figures, people bearing branches, and towards the center of the labyrinth, what looks like a white figure receiving a blessing from a black figure.

Finally read _American Abductions_ by @ineluctablequak.bsky.social while I'm down with covid. No disappointment. Haven't seen any blurbs mention Dostoevsky yet, but I'm ready to call it _The Sisters Brzeszczykowski_. @dalkeyarchive.bsky.social

Two books I’ve been reading excitedly this week:

Atusparia by Gabriela Wiener & the new essay collection by Yoko Tawada

Wondering what big outlet will pay me to do a small press books roundup every month or two because it seems like this is more necessary now than ever

Emocionado hasta la médula @ineluctablequak.bsky.social

Like I keep saying: It's all very American Abductions x Mauro Javier Cárdenas

Absolutely. More recent but also very excellent -and terrifying-American Abductions by Mauro Javier Cárdenas.

Blurbs from Lemony Snicket, Joanna Ruocco, Brian Evenson, Brandon Shimoda, & Carol Guess

🤯🥺😭

www.neonpajamas.com/pizama-press...

Hey look there’s a project on the influence of Thomas Bernhard on contemporary literature 💕

amazing book mail from two great used book shops on Instagram, Apport Used Books and Barbed Wyre Books. Also two new releases from @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social and an order from a recent sale at @versobooks.bsky.social, excited to get to these books✨📚

Next up is American Abductions by Mauro Javier Cárdenas—been looking forward to this one since it came out

That’s a good one!

MADNESS A postman was suspended in Lend because for years he had not delivered any letter that he thought contained sad news or, in the nature of things, any of the cards announcing a death that came his way, but had burned them all in his own home. The post office finally had him committed to the lunatic asylum in Scherrnberg, where he goes around in a postman's uniform and continually delivers letters that are deposited by the asylum's administration in a letter box specially built into one of the walls of the asylum and that are addressed to his fellow patients. According to reports, the postman asked for his uniform as soon as he was committed to the lunatic asylum in Scherrnberg so as not to be driven mad.

so as not to be driven mad

Thomas Bernhard, ‘Madness’, in ‘The Voice Imitator’, tr Kenneth J. Northcott

haha I’m so fucking scared for the future

Actually Pretty Good: American Abductions On Mauro Javier Cárdenas's dispatch from the future of the deportation machine

Fantastic close reading by @evand.bsky.social of AMERICAN ABDUCTIONS, my 3rd novel.

“It is also a book filled with humor and hard-earned joy, suffused with a rare philosophical intelligence that saves it from any hint of mawkishness.”

evanreads.substack.com/p/actually-p...

Start your 2025 off right by tuning into the mind of the Collective! go.bsky.app/UrzZa6j

I started my own press!! Piżama (Polish for 'pajamas') is dedicated to showcasing the strange & the surreal. The weirder, the better.

Our first book is DISINTEGRATION MADE PLAIN AND EASY, the debut poetry collection by Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi.

neonpajamas.com/pizamapress

Fantastic book pile