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Reverse-Gentrification of the Literary World

Akashic Books

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Tag: translation

Ivan Sršen’s Introduction to Zagreb Noir

To celebrate the release of Zagreb Noir, the latest in Akashic’s Noir Series, we’re pleased to give you a look at Zagreb’s dark history with editor Ivan Sršen’s introduction, “Surviving to Tell the Story.”

“Dead Picture Brides” by Kurt McGill

Night must fall in the Tolerance Zone, the same way it does everywhere. Tonight it fell hard. I watched the shipping crate in the bed of the Escalade pickup parked behind the cantina, the crate filled with the ripe kumquats—three snuffed picture brides—that Yee Chung Toy had tried to smuggle from Fujian Province to Veracruz, and then across Mexico, through Ensenada, and into San Francisco . . .

“Sugartime” by Erik Arneson

I was running a dust cloth across the top of the glass display case housing my most prized first editions—Hammett’s The Dain Curse and Christie’s Perilat End House among them—when the bell above the door jingled and a middle-aged man stepped into my used bookshop in Philadelphia’s Spring Garden neighborhood. His cashmere trench coat made me hopeful for a big sale, but the ratty Yankees cap and knockoff sunglasses he didn’t remove gave me pause . . .