The staff of Chapter One Book Store share books we love, books that bent our minds, books that illuminated our souls and the books that kept us up at night.
Our Favorite International Reads of 2020 (and What We’ll Be Reading in 2021)
Editor
This year, I m keeping my recommendations to the Southern Cone, perhaps out of the wistful recollection that as we face gray, blustery afternoons here in New York, warmer climes hold elsewhere.
Daniel Tunnard s
Escapes(Unnamed Press), set in a world in which competitive Scrabble is a globally televised craze under the thumb of the Scrafia (yes, a Scrabble mafia), is an uproarious novel staked on the final encounter between former world champs Florence Satine and Buenaventura Escobar in Argentina s Tigre Delta. Told from the alternating viewpoints of Satine and Escobar as they seek to flee the Scrafia s long arm, this clever novel reads something like the imagined result had Piglia turned his attentions to competitive board games. Tunnard s book is a satisfying read that takes Alfred Mosher Butt s tame pastime and turns it into a brisk, riveting jaunt across languages, crime scenes, and