Munson follows up The November Criminals, a thriller set in his hometown of D.C., with this darkly comic and surreal novel. The narrative follows the endearing Boris Leonidovich, an American academic specializing in the history of prison architecture, as he arrives in Buenos Aires for a conference. In addition to presenting a paper on Moscow's Butyrka prison, his agenda includes a reunion with his beloved, Ana. But the two miss each other. Then Boris locks himself out of his room. He gets lost, and with night coming on, feels increasingly disoriented and threatened.

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Lara Vergnaud with Ahmed Bouanani’s The Hospital

Ahmed Bouanani (1938-2011) was a Moroccan writer, poet, illustrator, and film director, best known for the 1979 film The Mirage. He wrote this hallucinatory novel in 1989, but it lapsed into obscurity until it was republished in France in 2012. Now considered a modern Moroccan classic, the book blends history, Islamic folklore, and nightmare for a Kafkaesque portrayal of a tubercular ward. It’s available in English for the first time, translated by D.C.-based Lara Vergnaud, whose English rendition of Zahia Rahmani's France, Story of a Childhood, was nominated for the 2017 National Translation Award.