Face

Cecile Pineda. Penguin Books, $6.95 (194pp) ISBN 978-0-14-007600-4

Nominated for a 1985 American Book Award, this first novel centers on a Brazilian man whose face is horribly disfigured in an accident. Helio Cara loses his job, his mistress, his friends, and then seeks to create a new visage through a grisly form of self-surgery. PW called Pineda's theme of identity ""compelling.'' (May)

Featured Fiction Reviews

Alba de Cespedes

This deeply intelligent 1938 novel from de Céspedes (1911–1997), crisply translated by Goldstein, matches the bravery of the author’s The Forbidden Notebook in its Continue reading »

Margie Sarsfield

Sarsfield’s ambitious and delightfully bizarre debut portrays the yearning and misfortunes of a white 20-something migrant worker in the Midwest. In September 2014, Elise Continue reading »

Abdellah Taia

An illiterate woman from the Moroccan countryside recounts her life in Taia’s hypnotic and masterful latest (after A Country for Dying). The novel opens in the 1950s with the Continue reading »

Joseph O'Connor

The pulse-pounding second volume in O’Connor’s Roman Escape Line trilogy (after My Father’s House) follows Vatican monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty and his co-conspirators, known as Continue reading »