A story collection by Fumio Yamamoto, a novel by Solvej Balle, short stories by Camille Bordas and Emma Cairns Watson, and a poem by D. Nurkse

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As it was my birthday, our table was covered with plates and glasses from the full-course meal and a bottle of wine we usually would never order. In the seven years we'd been together, we'd had our share of arguments, but this was the first time the atmosphere between us had become so charged and heavy.
—From The Dilemmas of Working Women, a collection of five stories by Fumio Yamamoto, translated from the Japanese by Brian Bergstrom (HarperVia, 2025). The book was originally published in Japanese as Planaria (Bungeishunju Ltd., 2000). Also, just a quick shoutout to the hardcover jacket designer, Sarah Kellogg, who used a photograph by Ulas & Merve (Merve Türkan and Ulaş Kesebir, a pair of London-based Turkish photographers who work together professionally). The cover is quite striking. Along with reading the print book, I listened to the audiobook, which was narrated by Yuriri Naka. I really like listening to her. She narrated a different book that I listened to in 2025: Hunchback, a short novel by Saou Ichikawa (Hogarth, 2025). The HarperCollins page for The Dilemmas of Working Women has a sample of the audiobook as well as a sample of the print book. The segment above is from the title story and appears on page 162 of the hardcover. 

It is the eighteenth of November. I have got used to that thought. I have got used to the sounds, to the gray morning light and to the rain that will soon start to fall in the garden.
—From On the Calculation of Volume I, a novel by Solvej Balle, translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland (New Directions, 2024). This is the first book in a series of seven and has been published by arrangement with Copenhagen Literary Agency. Originally published as Om udregning af rumfang I (Pelagraf, 2020).

Repatriation—there's such a ring to it, such drama. I imagined maimed bodies in dirty tents, nurses changing brown, bloodied gauze, bending over beds to tell the wounded, "The call came in—you're going home." Yet I worked in Special Consular Services at our Embassy in Paris. The Americans I helped repatriate mostly broke legs in Pigalle or crashed rental cars in Normandy. 
—From "Chicago on the Seine," a short story by Camille Bordas, The New Yorker (June 17, 2024), pp. 46-52. 

Nadine had selected this service in particular because it was the only one that did not require you to submit your name or photograph. All you had to do was provide your phone number and your answer to the question, "If you had the opportunity to dissect another person, who would it be, and which part of their insides would you be most interested in looking at?"
—From "The Dissection Question," a short story by Emma Cairns Watson, One Story, Issue 310 (February 29, 2024).

There was a protest outside Thomas Jefferson 
and children were lying down histrionically, . . . 
—From "The Age of Miracle Weapons," a poem by D. Nurkse, The New Yorker (June 10, 2024), p. 43.