The two most important Portuguese newspapers have listed their Best Books of 2025 and the novel “The End of the United States of America. An Epic” by Gonçalo M. Tavares was ranked 1st place by Público and 2nd place by Expresso.

Both newspapers’ literary sections, Público Ípsilon and A Revista do Expresso, have published cover stories about Gonçalo M. Tavares in their latest issues, including interviews with the author.

The New York Times has published an extensive feature on Angolan author José Eduardo Agualusa, on occasion of Archipelago Books’ launching of The Living and the Rest in the USA on 27th May, in the English translation of the author’s longtime translator Daniel Hahn.

Agualusa states that his novel is “inspired by the real-life charms of Mozambique Island”, a small island on the northern coast of Mozambique which he has made his home almost ten years ago by marrying a local filmmaker.

Kenyan author Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor is convinced that “Agualusa is one of the prophets of our African ‘marvelous’ complexity”, a complexitiy which Agualusa himself likes to describe as “African realism”. According to Anderson Tepper, reading The Living and the Rest “you have entered Agualusa’s world, where the boundaries between the real and imaginary are porous, and dreams become their own reality.” And indeed, dreams are essential in Agualusa’s life and work. “We must start dreaming again, in a collective way. That’s the only way to transform the world: to dream together”, he says.

You can find the whole article here:

> New York Times Feature

We are delighted to share that Adriana Fernández‘s children’s book “Dear Giant” has been included in the list of ALIJA’s 2024 recommendations. ALIJA is the Argentinian Section of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY). IBBY is a non-profit organization which represents an international network of people from all over the world who are committed to bringing books and children together. It is based in Switzerland. Since its founding in 1953, IBBY has grown in the number of awards and projects it supports and in their geographical spread. All these awards and projects share the goal of encouraging quality children’s literature and upholding the right of every child to become a reader. Every year, ALIJA awards one of the most renowned prizes in Latin America: the ALIJA Highlights, for which a federal and multidisciplinary jury honours the best works for children and young people of the period.

> ALIJA 2024 Recommendations

We are excited to announce that our author Mia Couto will receive the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature at the 2025 PEN America Literary Awards.

At the award ceremony on May 8—called the “Oscars for books”— PEN America will confer the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature to Mozambican author Mia Couto for his body of work. The PEN/Nabokov jury cited him for probing his homeland’s fraught history “as well as essential riddles of identity and existence. Couto has held “a singular place in the landscape of both African and world literature,” the judges wrote.

The PEN America awards are juried by panels of esteemed, award-winning authors, editors, translators, and critics. These authors are committed to recognizing their contemporaries, from promising debut writers to those who have already had a continuous and lasting impact on the literary landscape.

> Press release for the 2025 PEN America Literary Awards

Our author Eugenia Almeida has been nominated for the Prix Violeta Negra Occitanie 2025 for her novel “Scrapyard”, published in French by Éditions Métailié.

The jury of the Prix Violeta Negra Occitanie consists of booksellers, librarians, journalists, and members of Toulouse Polars du Sud. This year it will be chaired by Gilles Souillés, journalist for La Dépêche du Midi, the regional newspaper of Toulouse. The winning novel will be announced during the 17th edition of the Toulouse Polars du Sud Festival, on Saturday 11th October 2025.

The winners of previous editions have been Claudio Fava (2024), Miguel Szymanski (2023), Carlo Lucarelli (2022), Alessandro Robecchi (2021) and Rosa Montero (2020).

> Toulouse Polars du Sud

We are proud to announce that Lídia Jorge was appointed Commandeure des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. With this distinction, Lídia Jorge joins a variety of famous names, such as Victoria Ocampo, Jorge Luis Borges, Salman Rushdie, Václav Hável, Maryse Condé, Julian Barnes and Ray Bradbury, as part of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, which honours outstanding contributions to the arts and literature. The distinction has been awarded yearly since 1957.

> Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres a Lidia Jorge

We are delighted to announce that the UK paperback edition of Patrícia Melo’s novel The Simple Art of Killing a Woman has been selected by Waterstones as part of their 25% off pre-order promotion campaign running from the 22nd to the 24th of February. The novel was translated into English by Sophie Lewis and published by The Indigo Press. Waterstones is the leading bookstore chain in the UK.

> https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-simple-art-of-killing-a-woman/patr-cia-melo/sophie-lewis/9781917378086

We are proud to announce that Agustín Fernández Mallo’s Atom Heart Mother has been included in more lists featuring the Best Books of 2024, among them La Razón, Ahora Qué Leo (La Sexta), Cadena Ser, Rockdelux and Uppers.

This is what critics had to say:

“One of the great names of our novel has reflected on the father in this book where memory intersects with the gears of the novel.”
La Razón

“This is a novel written, the way few novels are written: facing the loss and recounting it a posteriori but knowing that, by reliving it, it brings back a person who ended his days with a cognitive illness that often prevented him from knowing who he was.”
Ahora Qué Leo (La Sexta)

“The year has left us with good books, such as Atom Heart Mother by Agustín Fernández Mallo (…)”
Cadena Ser

Rockdelux has included Atom Heart Mother in its list of the 25 Best Books of 2024.

“The materials of Atom Heart Mother are those that almost all of us will have at hand at some point: objects, old papers, digital archives, stubbornly sentimental memorabilia. What Fernández Mallo does with them is both a personal homage as well as a portrait of a Spanish family straddling two centuries.”
Uppers, “Five Books of 2024 to Help You Face 2025”

We are excited to announce that Agustín Fernández Mallo’s  Atom Heart Mother was included in some of the top publications’ Best Books of 2024 list, among them Babelia (El País), Forbes, La Lectura, El Confidencial, Artículo 14, Infobae, El Cultural.

The selection is motivated as follows:

“There is something in intimate books that goes beyond prose and structure and points to tone, to a certain presence of truth. I found this same happy presence of truth in Atom Heart Mother (…)”
El Confidencial

“Out of the distress of his father’s death comes Atom Heart Mother, a novel of mourning and discovery that reflects on the purpose of death, what identity and memory are, and the inheritance we receive from our ancestors.”
La Lectura

“‘Memory is either literature, or it isn’t’, affirms the author. And this is it, a profound, beautiful, analytical biographical novel, full of details… Mallo uses memories of his father to craft a universal story that is near and true.”
Forbes

“With his unique style, Fernández Mallo converts this reflection on loss and discovery into a literary artefact that transcends genres, integrating science, emotion and philosophy in order to invite us to look beyond what is evident and understand better who we are.”
Artículo 14

“Atom Heart Mother is a novel in the form of a memoir in which he remembers his dead father, with whom he maintained a relationship that was as profound as it was distant.”
El Cultural

“It is an investigation of how we construct our identity through a memory that operates with both reminiscence and fiction.”
Babelia (El País)

“The novel (…) not only demonstrates the author’s ability to blur the boundaries between genres, it also shows his capacity to transform an intimate anecdote into a collective reflection about how we remember and reinterpret the past.”
Infobae

GQ Mexico’s “The Best Books of 2024, According to Experts”

W Magazine’s Ten books of 2024 that explore the richness of literary fusion to show the human condition

Furthermore, Fernández Mallo was included in the following list:

El País’s List of Eight Books to Reflect on Family Bonds