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Review of 'Exquisite Cadavers' by Meena Kandasamy From the outset, Kandasamy expresses her intention to separate the biographical from fiction. Yet, the autobiographical elements that she registers on the text’s margins spill over into the “main” text, blurring the boundaries between personal and fictional. One may ask if Exquisite Cadavers can exist without its margins; however, such a question is predicated on the assumption that the margin is a separable entity that can somehow be extracted from the novel proper. The margins are not merely experimental additions; they drive the text, adding theoretical and political arguments informed by the author’s material and lived experiences. by Samriddhi Pandey 25 March 2025 Review of the Book Exquisite Cadavers by Meena Kandasamy Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais, the founders of the 1960s French literary movement “Oulipo”, believed in the generative potential of constraints, systematic rules, and self-restricting techniques to develop innovative literary texts. Inscribing herself into this trajectory, Meena Kandasamy, in the preface to Exquisite Cadavers , states her intention to write a novel based on the principles of Oulipo. The challenge she sets up for herself is to write a story as far removed from her life as possible. A masterful political novel is the result, with authorial decisions, inspirations, and plot points documented in the margins of the main body of the text. As part of documenting her reflections, Kandasamy, in the preface, exposes the racial bias behind even sympathetic reception of art from the so-called Global South and the exclusionary nature of the literary avant-garde. Exquisite Cadavers , she writes, was conceived as a response to the reception of her last novel, When I Hit You , based on her own experience of a violent, abusive marriage. By relegating the novel to the status of a memoir, the reviewers brushed past the formal and artistic aspects of the novel’s construction, reducing the artist to her experience as a rape victim. In Kandasamy’s words, “No one discusses process with us. No one discusses our work in the framework of the novel as an evolving form. No one treats us as writers, only as diarists who survived.” She argues that artists from marginalized groups are often seen as the imitators of the postmodern novel, while the genre itself is commonly viewed as developing through Western innovation. This idea is reinforced by the choice of epigraph from M. NourbeSe Philip: “The purpose of avant-garde writing for a writer of colour is to prove you are human.” In this context, experimental writing for marginalized groups becomes a means to claim kinship in the postmodern novel as a genre rich with artistic and political possibilities. The novel’s title derives its name from the French term cadavre exquis , a Surrealist technique of stringing together a set of words or images. The technique, in turn, is based on a French parlor game called Consequences, where each participant takes turns to draw on a piece of paper, fold it, and pass it along to the next, to eventually reveal a fragmented creature. Following this principle, the novel unfolds in two sections. On the right side is the love story of Karim and Maya. On the left, occupying a marginal space, and a smaller font are stories from Kandasamy’s life, her political influences, and explanations behind her creative choices. As these sections gradually unfold and intersect, the constructedness of the novel becomes apparent. It becomes politically necessary for Kandasamy to foreground her work’s artifice and align it explicitly with Oulipo and Surrealism in order to stake her claim over an intellectual tradition typically denied to writers like her. From the outset, as one of the self-imposed constraints of an Oulipo, Kandasamy expresses her intention to separate the biographical from fiction. Yet, the autobiographical elements that she registers on the text’s margins spill over into the “main” text, blurring the boundaries between personal and fictional. One may ask if Exquisite Cadavers can exist without its margins; however, such a question is predicated on the assumption that the margin is a separable entity that can somehow be extracted from the novel proper. The margins are not merely experimental additions; they drive the text, adding theoretical and political arguments informed by the author’s material and lived experiences. Posing an enigmatic question, “Have the margins always remained disciplined?” Kandasamy invites the reader to see for themselves if it is at all possible to separate fact and fiction, novel and autobiography, form and content. The reader is actively encouraged to engage with the novel, just like in the French parlor game that inspired the title, where players can shape a fragmented trajectory to create a narrative of their choice. The “main” text sets the scene of regular middle-class domesticity and tells the story of Karim, a Tunisian filmmaker, and Maya, his white-passing English wife of mixed-race origins. Their domestic idyll is tenuously constructed and the description carries the ominous hint of an impending collapse. The reader is led through the couple’s everyday struggles in a post-Brexit UK. Even as the novel speaks about the somewhat assimilatory process of homesteading and the coming together of a burgeoning interracial family, there are disruptive forces at work (casual racism, skyrocketing rents, intellectual dissatisfaction arising from creating art palatable to a White, middle-class audience), threatening to disrupt the façade of domesticity. There are layered dynamics at work in Maya and Karim’s relationship: Maya’s cosmopolitan upbringing is contrasted by Karim’s acute awareness of his race and the attendant pressures of keeping his artistic and political vision alive in an environment driving him to self-commodify his art as an Arab man. While Karim tends to view everything, including his wife, through a filmmaker’s lens, Maya sees herself in various characters in films they watch together. They balance each other out, with Maya keeping him in thrall with her unpredictability and Karim balancing out her volatility with his pacifying behavior. While their relationship is far from perfect and characterized by frequent arguments, they stand firmly by each other, especially in the face of the incessant scrutiny coming from the outside world. Maya sees Karim, his artistic vision, his struggles, and people’s racist attitude toward him and drops everything to follow him to Tunisia. In turn, Karim senses the discomfort of Maya’s British and White friends in various social situations, bears all the racist jokes, and, in fact, makes jokes at his own expense to dispel discomfort and cement their social standing. Exquisite Cadavers features relentless social commentary, uncovering exclusionary practices in life and art through juxtaposing fictional domestic struggles of the “main text” with the grim political realities of India, Kandasamy’s birthplace. The intertwining of the center and the margin creates a bricolage effect, reflected at multiple points throughout the novel. Karim’s film ideas, the novel’s cover art, fragments from dictionaries, statistics, news reports, movies, music, anthropology, and philosophy all contribute to creating a bricolage of a transnational milieu where multiple ethnicities, languages, and cultures come into contact. By detailing the violence of everyday racism both in the UK (her adopted country) and in India (her birthplace), Kandasamy crucially deconstructs the concept of home, emptying it of any easy romantic significances. If home is a place of refuge, is it still home when a right-wing state continues to kill, persecute, and arrest people who try to challenge its exclusionary narrative of Hindu homogeneity and Brahmin supremacy? Is home still a home if its very foundations lie in the coercive system of caste-based labor and discrimination? Is it still a home where every critical dissenting voice is silenced, censored, and discredited under manufactured charges of terrorism? It is up to the readers to decide. In one instant, Kandasamy derives her idea of home from Tamil poetics. The poetic formulation: Yaadum oore, yaavarum kelir (anywhere is home, everyone is kin) keeps her going as she packs up her life in India, meets new people, creates a budding family with her Belgian partner, and goes through the messy, transformative experience of giving birth, as described in the margins. The delicate cocoon of Maya and Karim’s domesticity breaks towards the end of the novel with the sudden arrest of Karim’s brother, Youssef, on the fabricated charges of terrorism, evoking the real-life arrest of Kandasamy’s human rights activist friend, Rona Wilson. The narrative’s ending remains uncertain, presenting not one but four different possibilities. It remains up to the reader to decide and take charge of the narrative, steering it like players in the game of consequences from which the novel derives its lifeblood and name.

Review of 'Rosso come una sposa' by Anilda Ibrahimi Ibrahimi writes in swift sentences that mirror the simple, yet tortured, living of her characters, whilst giving voice to the complexities of human relationships – a fine balancing act between the innocence of young voices and the weight of words passed down through bodies that carry their pasts. by Alice Flinta 4 April 2025 Review: Ibrahimi, Anilda. Rosso come una sposa. (Torino: Einaudi, 2008) What do we make of the memories and stories we gather throughout generations, passed down so many times that not only truth becomes undiscernible from the inevitable pepping up, but that the distinction itself loses importance? Well, a good pen weaves stories and opens portals onto lives that aren’t our own; a compelling pen crafts narratives that trap their readers in the weaving, and the lives that aren’t theirs, magically, could be so. Rosso come una sposa , meaning “Red as a Bride” or, I may suggest, “Bride Red”, is Albanian-born writer Anilda Ibrahimi’s debut novel. Originally published in Italian in 2008, the book is available in French (La mariée était en rouge , translated by Maïra Muchnik, 2013) and German (Rot wie eine Braut , translated by Franziska Kristen, 2011). It tells the story of an Albanian family through the lives of four generations of women, as narrated by the youngest, Dora, who is the amplifier for the polyphony of voices that came before her. The novel, chronologically set, is divided into two sections, and further into brief chapters: in the first part, narrated in the third person, we meet the older representatives of the family, Dora’s great-grandmother Meliha and grandmother Seba; while the second part is narrated in the first person and revolves around Klementina, the narrator’s mother, and Dora herself. The title refers to the novel’s opening sequence where a fourteen-year-old Seba is being helped dismounting a horse, wearing a red wedding dress, “come il sangue. Come un sacrificio umano dato in dono agli dèi per propiziare la pioggia. Come una sposa” [like blood. Like a human sacrifice to the gods for some rain. Like a bride].[1]In striking opposition, the second part opens with a much different wedding image: “il giorno del suo matrimonio mia madre indossava un tailleur beige dal taglio semplice e nei capelli non portava nessun velo” [the day of her wedding, my mother was wearing a simple-cut, beige suit, and no veil was covering her head].[2]It is through these parallelisms and a certain circularity in the book’s structure that the story is kept together and turned into a seamless fireside tale. Ibrahimi’s narrative weaving is itself a reflection of the weaving of lives the women of Kaltra, a village among the Albanian mountains, enact. Older women are here the weavers of destinies, entrusted with the task of marriage arrangement, that is the orchestration of the continuation of the family lineage, as well as with establishing and repairing, where necessary, fruitful relationships among the village’s families. This is seen as a true “potere che si acquisiva diventando suocere” [power one would acquire through becoming a mother-in-law] and therefore “spesso le donne passavano la vita aspettando con gioia di invecchiare” [women would often spend their lives excitedly waiting to get older].[3]This role would also give them authority over their daughters in law, and their journeys through motherhood. In the novel, women are presented first and foremost as mothers, a role that gives meaning to both their lives and their marriage: “Che felicità trova una donna dal marito se non i figli?” [What happiness can women get from their husbands, if not their children?]. Motherhood becomes not just a social imperative, but a defining characteristic of womanhood, in that “una donna senza prole è come un tronco senza rami” [a woman without children is like a tree without branches].[4]As mothers, women weave their children’s destinies not only by arranging their marriages, but also because tradition and popular belief sees them as bearers of their daughters’ moral rightfulness, passed down through generations: in fact, women’s actions and any morally reproachable act is believed to curse the daughters to come. For instance, when one of Seba’s sisters gets wrongfully accused of kurveria [adultery], the family gets concerned not only about their reputation, but also about the marriage possibilities of the daughters to come as kurveria , like a genetic predisposition, will run through their veins too. Gender has then an important, even deterministic, role since birth. As it is to be expected, the birth of a boy is collectively celebrated, whilst that of a girl is close to be seen as a tragedy: just like in Vergine giurata [Sworn Virgin , trans. Clarissa Botsford], a 2007 novel written in Italian by Swiss-Albanian author Elvira Dones, Ibrahimi reminds us of the tradition, upheld by Albanian villagers, of shooting in the air when a boy is born and of the almost mournful silence that follows the birth of a girl. The birth of a girl, in fact, stands not only for the continuation of the mother’s lineage, but also for all the sins and dooms that her body carries. Up until Dora’s times (1980s-1990s) it is believed that girls take their traits from their mothers, therefore the mothers and their bodies are solely responsible for the passing on of morals and vices. Women’s social role, however, is not exclusively to safeguard future generations, but also to ensure a continuation between the dead and the living: Meliha first and Saba after spend long afternoons in either cemeteries or burial places mourning, chanting, telling their ancestors about how life is unravelling, thus weaving life with the afterlife. Dora herself is brought into this ritual, as she will take over from her grandmother and continue her work. Similarly, on the metanarrative level, Dora’s enterprise of recounting the family narratives is an act of weaving of the oral histories that have been passed down onto her. Women’s bodies thus become bridges, through their voices, their chants, their mourning, and their writing. The undisputable protagonism of women should not, however, trick us into thinking that a society run by matriarchs would necessarily foster safe and enriching relationships among the women involved – rather the contrary, as Dora remarks: “le donne possono essere di grande aiuto nella scoperta del mondo dei grandi, ma possono anche rovinarti. Chi ha vissuto in grandi tribù di donne sicuramente sa di cosa parlo” [women can be of great help when it comes to exploring the world of the grownups, but they can also ruin you. Those of you who have been brought up in large women’s tribes will understand what I am talking about].[5]We are drawn into a narrative where even if the order may seem of matriarchal nature at first, it is soaked in patriarchal values. Ibrahimi shows us that patriarchy survives because it is all encompassing and all-invasive, to the point of absorbing women into self-annihilating hierarchical orders. These women cast their own needs and wills aside, conforming instead to a set of expectations and roles to ensure the continuation of the family, the tribe, the village, or the state. Allowed to leave their parental house only to join their husbands’, women are expected to comply to established roles and are strictly monitored. Entering the husband’s house also means being entrusted to the care of the mother in law, who not only arranges and orchestrates marriages, but also takes it to heart to ensure that the dignity and honour of the family are preserved: they intervene in their sons’ marital life, give them advice on how to gain and maintain respect and submission from their wives, and also keep an eye on whether the marriage is fruitful, and therefore the lineage continues. Yet, even if the setting of the novel is deeply patriarchal, in this novel men take the backseat, often portrayed as inept, incompetent, drunkards and violent with little possibility for redeption, but also lonely and emotionally stunted creatures, who represent the flipside of patriarchy. These are unstable, emotionally immature men, unable to fully express themselves in a social setting that requires them to comply to harsh standards of virility. Overall, they appear as peripheral, suggesting they had equally peripheral roles in the running of their very family and the public life of the village. Within this context, they are (too) often forgiven for their behaviours, for which women are made responsible: “si sa che gli uomini ci provano tutti, è dovere delle donne dire di no” [it’s renown that all men hit on women, so it is a woman’s duty to say no].[6]Within this women-run patriarchal order, the women must be tamed young so they do the taming of other women later on in their life. Along with the personal narratives, family- and village-centred, readers witness the development of yet another character that becomes more and more prominent – one might even say “invasive” – as we read on: Albania. The book opens in the immediate pre-World War II, with occasional flashbacks to the 1920s, and closes in post-communist and post-socialist times, when the country is just about to open up to the liberal freedom America was marketing as the staple of the “modern West” in 1992. The village of Kaltra is not spared the repercussions of national and international events – from soldiers’ recruitment and the arrival of the Germans during the war, to the process of urbanisation that sees villagers like Dora’s father moving to bigger cities like Valona or Tirana and setting up their families there, to the opening up of borders to both immigration and emigration. Following the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha (1946-1985), Albania sees, in fact, the coming of a global outlook, with the import of denim jeans, the arrival of migrant workers and an exodus towards other lands. Albania’s presence is ever so invasive during those sections of the novel that take place during communist times when, for the motherland’s sake, its citizens were allotted to different roles, often interfering with, and clashing against, their true ambitions and desires. Notable is the example of the narrator’s aunt Adelina, who is prevented from studying because the Party already agreed to her siblings going to university, and a family cannot serve the country when all its members “are sitting on their arses.”[7]Ibrahimi thus reproposes a larger-scale power dynamic evoking the first part of the novel where, within the small reality of the village, women were subjected to calculated marriage arrangements and roles to ensure the wellbeing of the families involved and the village at large. Ibrahimi writes in swift sentences that mirror the simple, yet tortured, living of her characters, whilst giving voice to the complexities of human relationships – a fine balancing act between the innocence of young voices and the weight of words passed down through bodies that carry their pasts. It is a story full of poetic glimpses and love, often contradictory and violent – such as when Seba gets punished by her mother Meliha, who after forgetting her outside hanging upside down from the branch of a tress in the cold, spends the night cuddling her daughter, cursing herself for being a terrible mother, and Seba wishes she could get punished more often, if it means it would be followed by such unequivocal outbursts of affection. These voices are also languages that we see failing from generation to generation, that produce mistranslations of love, and that make up for an extraordinary choral narrative, a work of true craft[wo]manship. [1] Anilda Ibrahimi, Rosso come una sposa (Torino: Einaudi, 2008), p.5, my translation. [2] Ibid., p.123. [3] Ibrahimi, Rosso come una sposa , p.42. [4] Ibid., p.58. [5] Ibrahimi, Rosso come una sposa , p.188. [6] Ibid., p.127. [7] Ibrahimi, Rosso come una sposa , p.169.

Evangeline Petra Scarpulla University of Bologna Doctoral Candidate Interested in speculative and imaginative genre criticism, contemporary feminist literary theory, and decolonizing the canon, Evangeline Scarpulla holds a BA in Comparative Literature with Honours from King’s College London and an MSc in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh. During her MSc she explored how contemporary fantasy writers are reimagining the conventions of the genre through her dissertation entitled ‘Folklore in Fantasy: Challenging the Western Conventions of the Genre through a Critical Comparison of Marlon James’s Black Leopard Red Wolf and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.’ Building off her previous explorations into broadening representation in imaginative genres and global literature, Evangeline’s PhD thesis will discuss how transnational feminist authors in Europe communicate narratives of resistance through ‘minor’ literary genres, including fantastic and speculative fiction, magical realism, and graphic novels. Investigating the close relationship between form and content, the thesis will discuss how many migrant female authors reach to border-defying and experimentative genres because their characteristics mirror their own liminal social positioning and hybrid identities. By challenging prevailing notions of fixed genres and truth vs. fantasy, these narratives overturn traditional binaries and ideas of nationalism, creating a unique transnational community of writers, readers, and thinkers. The research will be conducted in conversation with postcolonial and contemporary genre critics such as Homi K. Bhaba, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Nnedi Okorafor and Helen Young, contributing to efforts to expand the subjectivities represented in our ‘collective imagination.’ (Thomas, 2019). Contributions: Scarpulla, Evangeline. 2024. “Writing (a) Home in Times of Crisis: A Review of Scattered All Over the Earth (2018) by Yoko Tawada”. Satura 6 (December). Review: Haratischvili, Nino. The Eighth Life: (for Brilka). Translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin. (London: Scribe Publications, 2019).

Francesco Cattani University of Bologna Researcher Francesco Cattani is Adjunct Professor at the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the University of Bologna, where he teaches “Literatures of English Speaking Countries”. He also collaborates with the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree GEMMA, Women's and Gender Studies, for which he teaches "The Re-vision of the Body in Women's Literature" and "English Women's Literature". He is member of the Diversity Council of the UNA Europa European University Alliance and of the Working Group on Equity, Inclusion and Diversity of the University of Bologna. His research blends postcolonial and decolonial studies, gender studies, science fiction, dystopia, and the posthuman to tackle repetitive patterns in the construction of the non-human. Another area of interest is black British literature and visual culture. He has published essays on the deconstruction of European identity from a transnational perspective, Bernardine Evaristo, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jeanette Winterson, Ingrid Pollard, Hanif Kureishi. Publications: Cattani, F. (2024). "Transfigurazioni mostruose. Tra rabbia, disforia ed euforia". DIVE-IN , 4(1). Cattani, F. (2020). L'utopia ambigua dell'Australia: Picnic at Hanging Rock tra mito e futuro possibile. Canterano (RM): Aracne editrice.

Olga Fenoll Martínez Univeristy of Lodz Doctoral Candidate Olga Fenoll-Martínez holds a BA in Translation and Interpreting (University of Granada) and an MA in English Literature and Linguistics (University of Granada). She has been granted with different scholarships for early researchers provided by the Spanish Government and the University of Granada, and she has also engaged in R&D research projects. In her works, Olga has aimed to display a queer approach through different intra-actions such as contemporary queer poetry, translation studies or located audiovisual cultures from a feminist new-materialist lens. Olga’s PhD project aims to tackle located and nomadic transnational womxn’s art and writings as assemblages that are in-the-making by exploring the plastic potentiality of those works through a diffracted approach guided by onto-epistemological new materialist optics and interferenced logics.

Andrea Abreu's 'Dogs of Summer': An in-depth exploration of working-class adolescenthood Abreu's novel places provincial life at the center stage and transforms the ordinary experiences of two young adolescents into extraordinary. Also, the novel celebrates the Canarian Spanish dialect and language difference and invites the reader to experience the narrative through a descriptive narration and imagery. by María Auxiliadora Castillo Soto 10 March 2025 Review: Abreu, Andrea. Dogs of Summer: A Novel . Translated by Carolina Hoyos. (United States: Blackstone Publishing, 2023). Andrea Abreu has earned admiration and recognition as a novelist after her novel Perros de verano was translated from Spanish to German, French, Italian, and then into English as Dogs of Summer . Because of her success, Granta, an English publishing house and literary magazine, selected Abreu among their Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists in 2021 . Abreu’s pride for her family’s working-class background, the place where she comes from, Tenerife, and her Canarian Spanish dialect are perceptible throughout her novel. Although the island where the story takes place does not have a name, there are references to places in Tenerife, and there is a volcano overlooking the inhabitants’ neighborhood which could be an allusion to the Teide. The detailed description of places in the novel takes readers around varied sceneries and spaces that influence both the characters and the narrative itself. Dogs of Summer provides a sneak peek into common daily life affairs from a young adolescent’s perspective. It is also an ode to the Canarian Spanish dialect, and an invitation to explore realist narration through the senses. Dogs of Summer is a novel that invites readers to discover life in a touristic island far away from the all-inclusive hotels and one day tours. Abreu introduces two main characters: Shit, the first-person narrator, and her best friend Isora, the one who refers to her friend as Shit. There is no reference to the narrator’s real name. Both Shit’s and the island’s names are a mystery. The story takes place during a short, but exciting and adventurous summer that the two characters spend together. They are around 10 years old and on the verge of welcoming their teen years, and with them lively experiences with friendship, sexuality, boundaries (and lack of them), family, school, boys, authorities, and many other axes of teen life. Most of the story develops at a neighborhood where everyone knows each other well and experiences similar harsh economic situations. However, the two characters also move around in other neighborhoods, the beach, the fields, computer classes, fancy hotel areas, and other places around the island. Shit’s parents are working most of the time while Isora’s parents are out of the picture, her mother passed away and her dad is not mentioned, leaving both in the care of their grandmothers. This lack of constant supervision grants the girls the freedom they need to experience life on their own and forge their own luck. Isora is a wild and open-minded person. She speaks up her mind and earns older people’s trust easily. She is curious and adventurous, and she influences Shit to go along with her ideas. Shit, on the other hand, is more prone to thinking about the consequences of their actions even though, at the end of the day, she ends up doing what Isora says. Shit loves her friend, and the way she expresses herself about Isora signals that she is the most important person to her. There is no clear boundary between romantic love and friendship; and through Shit’s descriptions and narration, the reader empathizes with this confusion. Shit’s love for Isora is explicit, but also the anger and frustration toward Isora and her careless behavior. They spend most of their time together; and when they are not together, Shit is dreading each minute until they can reunite again. The reader is in for a treat while having access to Shit’s thoughts and experiences with her neighbors, family, and friends around the island. Through her perspective we are introduced to the inhabitants’ daily routines, such as going to the mini market, going to church, cooking, working, among other provincial activities. The readers are invited to all these places while the two main characters discover themselves through the island, which mostly offers a safe haven for them. To highlight the two characters’ daily lives, Abreu evokes pop culture through lyrics and references to specific brands and television shows that set a familiar tone in the novel. On the one hand, the author showcases the two characters’ routines. They visit their neighbors and eat their food, shave their genitals, masturbate, and play with other children. On the other hand, Abreu exposes societal topics and their influence on the two main characters. For instance, although the girls give little to no importance to societal constructions such as gender, those affect them, nonetheless. What for adults might be stereotypically masculine or feminine, for the girls does not carry such difference. For example, they talk about getting thinner and prettier through dieting, gastric balloons, and purging, but these ideas come from Isora’s grandmother who criticizes her granddaughter’s size and eating habits. Dogs of Summer is an in-depth exploration of working-class adolescenthood, but also is an ode to language variations, more specifically, the Canarian Spanish dialect. The novel’s English translation uses a mix of English and Spanish words, especially when it comes to pop culture references, while the Spanish version stays loyal to Abreu’s dialect “el Canario.” Abreu also plays with the rules of spelling and grammar and writes English words as they would sound phonetically for a Spanish speaker (forener, foc yu). She translates the orality of the language into her writing, making it possible for readers to grasp where she comes from, how her dialect is differentiated from Castilian Spanish, and how it is influential to the characters’ identity. Besides, Abreu challenges grammar rules by using constant word repetition and offering long paragraphs with no punctuation. The author revolutionizes the use of language to validate different ways of speaking and writing but she also plays with literary strategies to differentiate her novel from what is commonly accepted. For instance, there are not explicit dialogues in the novel, but she uses language in such a creative way that the different conversations camouflaged in the text are easy to follow and the character who is speaking easy to identify. Finally, Abreu’s explicit and detailed narration is an invitation to activate the senses, a creative writing device that authors use to connect the readers to the story. The emotional responses that these techniques awaken invite readers to take part in the plot through the description of vivid imagery. This connection is accomplished mostly by the description of sensations, tastes, smells, noises, and landscapes. As an outcome, the novel exhibits a strengthened presence of realism because of the way that it exalts the two characters’ adventures and dilemmas, transforming the ordinary to extraordinary. Beyond doubt, Dogs of Summer is an extravagant read, which I cordially invite readers to experience. If this review piqued your interest, you may read an excerpt from the novel here.

Dorota Golańska University of Lodz Principal Investigator Dorota Golańska is an associate professor (Cultural Studies and Religion) at the Department of Cultural Research, University of Lodz, Poland. She has degrees in Cultural Studies, Literary Studies and International Studies. Her research interests include feminist approaches to political violence and studies of collective memory, especially in relation to traumatic experiences and their representation in culture. She also works on such issues as creative strategies of resistance as well as intersections of memory, art and activism. Publications: Hamarowski, Bartosz, and Dorota Golańska. 2023. “A Wicked Vestal: Subverting the Androcentric Imaginaries of the Smart Home.” Australian Feminist Studies 38 (117): 267–86. Golańska, D., & Woźniak-Bobińska, M. (2023). Spaces of fluidity: articulating ‘politics of presence’ through place-based activism in Iqrit (Israel). Cultural Geographies, 31(1), 47-65.

Kris Országhová Central European University Project Administrator Kris Orszaghova (they/them) holds a Master’s in Artistic Research from Hogeschool Voor de Kunsten Utrecht and a PhD in Sociology from Charles University in Prague. Kris Orszaghova (they/them) holds a Master’s in Artistic Research from Hogeschool Voor de Kunsten Utrecht and a PhD in Sociology from Charles University in Prague. As an artist-athlete-scholar, they explore the intersections of art and social inquiry. Their research focuses on bodies moving and shifting, meandering and at times floating between the urban centres and peripheries, borders both real and imaginary, between hopes and disillusionments, despair and commitment, discipline and disobedience. Currently, Kris is a visiting faculty and coordinator at the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University and a junior coordinator for EUTERPE: European Literatures and Gender from a Transnational Perspective, a Marie Curie Doctoral Network. In addition to their research, Kris has participated in various exhibitions, including "To Seminar" at bak (basis voor actuale kunst) "Poetry & Performance: The Eastern European Perspective" at Nová synagóga in Žilina, or "Possibility of Preserving" at Kunsthalle Bratislava. Publications: "Turn the Volume Up! Boxing Hearts and Beats", featured in Boxing, Narrative and Culture (Routledge, 2023) "The Gender of Bruising: A Critical Literature Review on Gender in Boxing," published in Sociology Compass (2023).

Noemi Anna Kovacs Central European University European Cooperation Officer Noemi joined Central European University in 2009. Her professional career started when she graduated from Pázmány Péter Catholic University and completed her MA degree in Humanities and Liberal Arts with two specialisations, one in Romanic Studies/Italian Language, History and Literature and another in English and American Studies/English Language, History and Literature. During university, she worked as a language teacher and freelance translator. Later on, as a fresh graduate, a book publishing house hired her as the in-house editor. Before joining CEU, Noemi had been working on large EU- and state-funded research projects for an independent, interdisciplinary research institute, Collegium Budapest – Institute for Advanced Studies. At CEU, Noemi’s portfolio ranges from individual postdoctoral fellowships to large multi-beneficiary EU-funded research and educational projects. Her responsibilities include pre- and post-award management of such grants and projects, be it legal or financial matters or the development of dissemination, communication, and cooperation strategies.

Jaya Jacobo Coventry University Researcher Jaya Jacobo is a transfeminine thinker and artist based at Coventry University where she currently does work on trans feminist pedagogies in literature, art and performance. She has worked alongside travesti and transsexual women artists, scholars and community workers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as well as with trans, queer and nonbinary Filipina/x/o performers from the Philippines and Filipino diaspora abroad. Jacobo was a former Board Member of the Society of Trans Women of the Philippines (STRAP), a former President of the Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle (YCC) of the Philippines, a Founding Co-Editor of Queer Southeast Asia: A Transgressive Journal of Literary Art and Co-Editor of BKL: Bikol/Bakla, Anthology of Bikolnon Gay Trans Queer Writing . Jaya is the author of Arasahas , her debut volume of poetry in Filipino from Savage Mind Publishing House. Publications: Jacobo, Jaya. 2024. “A Love That Burns Hot Enough to Last: Scenes from Trans Tropical Love”. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics 23 (1):18-24. Adriany, V, Bong, SA, Curtin, B, Jacobo, J & Luther, JD. 2022. "Pedagogy of queer studies beyond empire." in S Tang & HY Wijaya (eds), Queer Southeast Asia. 1 edn, Taylor and Francis - Balkema, pp. 243-265.

Rita Monticelli University of Bologna Principal Investigator Rita Monticelli is a full professor of English at the University of Bologna; she teaches gender studies, feminists and cultural studies, and theories and history of culture in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Her research includes memory and trauma studies, the global novel, utopia and dystopia, travel literature, and memory and trauma studies in contemporary dystopian fiction and visual culture. She also works on issues connected to human rights and intercultural and interreligious dialogues. In these areas, she has published and co-edited volumes and essays. She is a member of international European research networks and PhD programs centred on gender studies and cultures of equality. She is part of the international councils on diversity and social Inclusion and projects on the New Humanities. She directs the Centre for Utopian Studies and coordinates the International Erasmus Mundus GEMMA (women's and gender studies) at the University of Bologna. She is the representative of the University of Bologna for the SSH Deans and the board of the Gender&Diversity group of the GUILD (European Research-Intensive Universities), a member of the governing Board of EASSH (European Alliance for Social Sciences and Humanities). She is currently a member of the City Council of Bologna and a delegate for human rights and interreligious and intercultural dialogue. Publications: Rita Monticelli, In sisterhood: leggere insieme Adrienne Rich , in: Adrienne Rich: passione e politica, Trieste, Vita Activa Nuova, 2024 Rita Monticelli, Raffaella Baccolini, Giuliana Benvenuti, Chiara Elefante, Transmedia Science Fiction and New Social Humanities , in: The Edinburgh Companion to the New European Humanities, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2024

Tamara Cvetković Central European University Doctoral Candidate Tamara Cvetković holds a master’s degree in Gender Studies from Central European University and bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Belgrade. Prior to her engagement as a Junior Visiting Researcher within the EUTERPE Project: European Literatures and Gender from a Transnational Perspective and the enrollment in Ph.D. Program in Comparative Gender Studies at CEU in 2023/2024, she spent several years working as a program manager in an NGO based in Serbia that dealt with migration issues, intercultural education, and interdisciplinary approaches to transcultural phenomena. Over this period, her main areas of interest were gender studies, transnational migration, postcolonialism/decolonial theory, Orientalism/Balkanism, feminist and critical pedagogy, use of literature and art in activism. Her research focuses on the literary production of transnational women-identified contemporary authors from the Balkans whose work thematize migration, identity, linguistic and cultural translation, as well as their complex relationships with literary ‘classics.’ Focusing mainly on the authors from the Western Balkans, she plans to analyze border-crossings and travelling though physical and imagined geographies, fictional worlds, literary traditions and genres, and cultural traditions with an aim to map their trajectories through the lens of feminist interpretation as well as to map cultural translations that are framing their works. In addition, her aim is to explore the ways in which they (re)use literary ‘classics’ in revolutionary ways (Standford Friedman, 2019) to create new works, and how these works continue their transnational circulation. Contributions: Review of Sexe et mensonges by Leïla Slimani