NIGHT OF A THOUSAND HELLS: A Novel, Indonesia's fascinating cultural mix made clearer than before

NIGHT OF A THOUSAND HELLS: A Novel
INTAN PARAMADITHA (tr. Stephen Epstein, Tiffany Tsao)
Europa Editions
$12.99 ebook, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction For the week ending October 20, 2026

On the 2026 Finalists for the National Book Award for Translated Literature.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A genre-defying feminist gothic novel blending Indonesian folklore, Islamic mysticism, horror, and political reckoning

International literary sensation Intan Paramaditha returns with her most ambitious and haunting work to date. The novel opens with a devastating the youngest of three sisters becomes a suicide bomber. In the aftermath, her surviving siblings are forced to confront the violent, buried truths of their family history. Their search leads them to long-concealed secrets, and to the prophecies of their grandmother, whose shadowy wisdom has shaped their fates.

Set across Indonesia, the United States, and Australia, the novel explores class divides, sisterhood, migration, shame, abandonment, and the politics of care—all through a ghostly, atmospheric lens that draws on Asian folktales and occult traditions.

With its blend of political urgency, mythic resonance, and psychological depth, Night of a Thousand Hells is a singular contribution to global feminist literature.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: After knocking around the publishing industry for a while, and after spending many decades thinking about stories and how they get made and sold, I've come to respond with knee-jerk skepticism to certain phrases. A particularly powerful example is "genre-defying." I read it, I hear the marketing department and the sales manager hollering "what the actual fuck IS this thing? what do we tell the Dubuque bus station kiosk owner to shelve it as?" with some poor editorial assistant saying back "it's beautiful writing!" because he has no idea what genre boxes are for yet.

It is indeed beautiful writing, Taylor or whatever, and you should be proud of your role in bringing it to market. Luckily the author and translators have track records of success because if this was a debut novel it would be on a *serious* uphill trajectory. Islam's long history in Indonesia, its region-specific folklore, and the US culture's present hostility to the mere mention of the religion is working against the country's readers finding a reason to read a book about a family's reactions to a young woman's suicide bombing done with her husband and one of her children...honestly, who would not find that a hard, hard topic to grapple with? Then we have the Indonesian cultural milieu separate from Islam, in the story they intersect of course, but the specific-to-Indonesia and its wide cultural diversity elements are not fully mappable onto religious strictures and shibboleths.

So there are a lot of issues to negotiate. Not gonna lie or frost your donut. The reason you should want to read the story anyway is the reason to read any story: It's as much fun as the effort you need to put into it. We're hearing from multiple people, most importantly the dead woman's sisters and their grandmother. We're given, at different times, words from the family's servant from days gone by; sober, factual news reports (as one might expect); phrases from the Qur’an, again expected given what's occurred; and sensational tabloid screaming, again expectedly. Maya, the sister who now lives across the globe in New York, is writing a novel, bits of which are included at emotionally relevant times. Mutiara the solid one, the one who does the maintenance on the family, and grandmother Victoria appear as very distictive voices. Annisa, the family's golden child who inexplicably did this awful thing, is met posthumously through diary entries.

It is here the fifth star sets under the horizon. As fascinating as the story is, Annisa appears to me the least-developed, thus least interesting to me, character. It was as though the author needed to tell us things to explain Annisa to us so we don't simply have a cipher dragging the story into ugly, sensationalist tabloid territory. I agree; I would've liked these diary entries to have emotional impact beyond purporting to be from a suicide bomber, and I did not get that. I got generic-feeling pronoucements and bland uninflected propaganda points.

This disappointment was clearly not fatal to my pleasure in the read as my rating should amply demonstrate. I found the cultural elucidation to be defy, not drawn out into sociology-text realms. I wasn't as immersed in the cultural exchange as a result, though it was a facet of the story it was never THE story. I might've liked that story as well, but it wasn't what I was told to expect so I didn't.

Patriarchy, religious as well as social, and its dark, evil use of secrecy to divide and conquer those it wishes to exploit and dominate comes in for a thorough drubbing. The way women in ordinary Indonesian Muslim families are indoctrinated in patriarchy's expectations, implying they are the immutable commands of God, is rotten. The isolation of these women from the outside world, and even from each other, is the tool used to psychologically warp and destroy them. Accustoming people to the horrific abusive realities of religious social control allows the religious leaders enormous leeway to foment violence as well as to commit it. No further text.

Part of the deeply unfamiliar cultural detail in this story comes from the QUILTBAG community's presence, never overstated, in these pages. It was fascinating and an enrichment of my delighted awareness of just how true "we're here, we're queer, we're not staying in your closet" needs to remain through action against high-control systems with delusions of global supremacy.

A story I'm going to think about, mull over, analyze for some time to come; and do all those things in an engaged, interested, involved way.

THE LOOM TREE, a title I enjoy more after the read than I did before the read

THE LOOM TREE
ANGELA MI YOUNG HUR
Erewhon Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$23.80 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Ninth House meets Babel for fans of myth and folklore in this contemporary fantasy about a Korean-American college student at a magical university where fairy tales intersect with family heritage to unleash powers beyond imagining.“

You always wanted magic to be real.”

Sharon and her daughter V’s points of origin hold common threads—both Korean American teenagers, raised by single mothers and searching for identity in the California suburbs. But during a Finals week celebration, high schooler V, compelled by strange impulses, crawls into a hollow tree trunk. That night in a fever haze, she sees gleaming strands of illegible text hovering over her body—flowing between her and her mother, leading to a long-forgotten diary.

With the aid of a luminous quill, a fountainhead of Sharon’s memories spill onto the faded pages. V witnesses her mother map out her past through drawings, diagrams, and reclaimed histories of her brief time at Alvsdahl, an exclusive East Coast college. Here, legacies and heiresses claimed descent from Bluebeard or Cinderella, grappling for control over family stories that could grant them terrifying abilities or burn them to ash. An Asian girl with an unknown inheritance was no one—until her discoveries cracked open Alvsdahl’s secrets.

Sharon’s rewritten narrative—of classroom rivalries, animal professors, debauchery in the woods, threatening Godmothers, and world-shattering powers—unfolds line by line as V desperately tries to help her mother, ultimately learning how to wield Sharon’s story to transform them both.

Lyrical and tender, Angela Mi Young Hur’s The Loom Tree is a magical campus novel centering two young women walking the thorny path toward adulthood, the fractures between parents and their children, and the global mythologies connecting us all.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Folklore, fairy tales, and fiction all contributed DNA to the central storytelling spine of Author Hur's tale told here. It was fascinating because the matter-of-fact presentation, and response within the story, to fantastical elements like erudite animal professors of magic thoroughly entertained me.

I was less sure of myself than I'm accustomed to being when it came to untranslated passages...I can get most European languages wrapped in my head but Korean's completely outside my familiarity zone. I had to work harder, and was not always in the mood to do so. Cultural blind spot detected! I realize how much of this story was context. I wouldn't give it to an average high-school kid because I wouldn't expect them to have enough familiarity with the fairy tales and folklore referenced just yet.

Plenty of adults who don't batten on story mechanics and cultural transmission of ideas are going to need Professor Wikipedia and Doctor Google as consultants, too. Which brings to mind a point I might be reading too much into: I enjoyed the inclusion of science in Author Hur's storytelling milieus. It's a very true observation, science is all about making data tell a story only it gets called a proof not a tale, theory not lore, and so on.

A fascinating way to make a novel. It resonated with me on most every level. I did not ever feel an emotional closeness to or connection with the characters; I believe that is Author Hur's design, as they're enmeshed in storytelling systems not simply responding to events messily and randomly as most people do. It's effective and, as soon as I clocked this explanation for why I felt...apart from...the characters I appreciated the subtlety of the effect. (Now, of course, someone will bring up a quote from Author Hur saying the opposite is true because that's how V and Angela both operate in this story!)

I enjoy dark academia stories. I thoroughly love school-set magical tales; I never left Roke Island after 1969. I think the truth of human intelligence being a function of pattern detection and creation is never more clear than in this area of storytelling. Even though I identified (or invented) why I felt distanced from the characters, I still can't offer that fifth star because that coldness, that remove from their inner workings, left me unmoored at key moments. It's not a fatal flaw, and it doesn't feel like an authorial oversight or a judgment error. It is always the case that the author writes the book they want to write not specifically the one I-the-reader want to read; but potential other readers should know where this specific reader found wants unmet in case they have similar storytelling needs.

Immersion into the systems of Story is as much fun as immersive storytelling, when one knows that's what's offered and is what one is in the mood for. A tale to enjoy, an experience of pleasure and satisfaction is within, so come and get it.

ELECTRIC SHAMANS AT THE FESTIVAL OF THE SUN, the most truth-telling title of 2026

ELECTRIC SHAMANS AT THE FESTIVAL OF THE SUN
MÓNICA OJEDA (tr. Sarah Booker)
Coffee House Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$20.00 paperback, preorder for delivery 12 May 2026

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: National Book Award finalist Mónica Ojeda returns with a blazing, psychedelic novel about girlhood, violence, and the loss of innocence.

In the near future, best friends Noa and Nicole flee their home in Guayaquil, Ecuador to attend the Solar Noise Festival, a week-long, retro-futuristic gathering at the foot of an active volcano. While Noa fully embraces the haze of narcotics and hedonism in an effort to obscure her true reason for attending, Nicole senses something darker at play behind the festival’s so-called “celebration of life.” Amid technoshamanic poetry, collective hallucinations, and ritualistic dances, each girl navigates her own path in an effort to escape her past and reclaim her right to a future.

Vivid, terrifying, and celebratory, Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sunblends the primal with the supernatural, solidifying Mónica Ojeda as one of the most singular and exciting voices in Latin American and world literature today.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Sarah Booker, the translator whose job it was to make this...tale...accessible to Anglophone audiences, has The Best Job Ever. She and the Coffee House Press acquisitions team get to read good stuff all the time, most of which will never see US publication for a variety of reasons, and we on the outside will never know even exist. Translator Booker has the hard, intense job of creating in English (a very slippery tool, English, full of landmines and tiger-traps for translators) a story told in Spanish that's already sui generis. (Read the Spanish-language reviews on Goodreads, most mention how poetic/beautiful the language is.)

Starting a story at a music festival (I recommend googling the names of the musicians throughout the book, it's most instructive) is quite a flex. It's a loud, raucous thing by design, so having your characters start our acquaintance in such an intense and auditorily overwhelming way is going to sort the audience into pro and con very quickly. I suspect most people who liked Jawbone and/or Nefando will be averse to this intense introduction to our PoV women. I don't know if enough people are already on the Ojeda/Booker train to make that a sizable market but I sure as hell hope so...I want more.

After the characters are charged with the passionate energy that a music festival imparts to those willing to receive it, they begin the Hero's Journey to that gorgeous and mystical place, the Andes Mountains, for shamanic enlightenment. If you have never been to Cuzco or Machu Picchu, please make at least those places destination priorities. I found the evocation of place in this part of the tale we're investing in to be stellar, even better than the more divisive music festival with its more chaotic and uncontrolled atmosphere.

The common element of both segments of the tale, musical and mystical, are overcoming the breakage that a brutal and uncaring world inflicts on us all, and submerging into an overwhelming Otherness to find the path through the noise and pain of Life. It's done in the musical mode of counterpoint, so it unites seemingly disparate modes by their very difference.

I'm really not sure how better to explain the affect of the read than to say it helps to think of the gestalt as an opera libretto, structured to an underlying music that never stops and always leads you forward. The effect of this use of a constant, if quiet, through line is to make the crescendos hit harder, feel louder, than you expect them to be. Invest in Noa and her dad, accept the antiphonal others, and this read will propel you into the shamanic journey's end-point you didn't necessarily see coming.

THE BOY FROM THE SEA, Irish fable-making for this century's needs

THE BOY FROM THE SEA
GARRETT CARR
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

NOMINATED for the 2026 Dublin Literary Award...a longlist of twenty will be announced in February 2026, the shortlist of six in April 2026, the winner(s) in May's festival.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: 'Compulsive reading. Compassionate, lyrical and full of devilment' Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses

1973. In a close-knit community on Ireland’s west coast, a baby is found abandoned on the beach. Named Brendan Bonnar by Ambrose, the fisherman who adopts him, Brendan will become a source of fascination and hope for a town caught in the storm of a rapidly changing world.

Ambrose, a man more comfortable at sea than on land, brings Brendan into his home out of love. But it’s a decision that will fracture his family and force him to try to understand himself and those he cares for.

Bookended by the arrival and departure of a single mesmerizing boy, Garrett Carr's The Boy From the Sea is an exploration of the ties that make us and bind us, as a family and community move irresistibly towards the future.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Funny thing how kindness skips a generation. Declan, the titular "Boy"'s older sibling, wouldn't know kindness if it fucked him. The elder Bonnar couple love their magical gift of a child..."Parents knew you can never tell how a child will turn out, naturally yours or not. They had learned, fundamentally, every child comes in from the sea, washes up against the ankles of their parents, arms outstretched, ready to be shaped by them but with some disposition already in place, deep-set and never quite knowable"...Brendan, named for the Navigator, that famously fostered child. The boy, like mythical Brendan, never has his own place to take root...thanks, Declan...but instead becomes a source of bemusement in the community.

The narrative is from a godlike omniscient third-person PoV...the godlike, or royal, "we." It's a choice that, while conferring the reader with the advantage of being privy to things a more limited PoV would make awkward to show, removes us from the action. Observing from a distance is always going to slow one down when reading about the intimate life of a community. It did here. There are so many small, mean-souled people in Brendan's world. It doesn't relent, either, when we see his "family"...mother Christine's horrifying sister and father, and unwilling sibling Declan...being so unreservedly awful to him. As though being abandoned in a Moses-like way was somehow his fault, or merited (like any infant deserves abandonment).

So quite a melancholy read for me. As I've come to expect from Irish writers, or the ones who get published in the US anyway, the prose has real lyricism. Unexpectedly it breaks into quotidian musings on things like the EU and its fishing quotas..."He still felt guilty about his comportment with Christine later, as he sat in his car outside the fisheries office. He’d never actually apologize but he’d be extra jovial in their next few encounters; this was how we indicated we were sorry for something we’d said or done: by acting oddly the next time we met you"...and the waning control of the church on peoples' inner lives..."A note on our use of the word ‘grand’ is here required. It might sound like a relative of good or great but in our usage it was something different. ‘Grand’ was how we acknowledged that something wasn’t good or great while also saying nothing could be done and there was no point going on about it"...and eldercare..."Eunan {Christine's ghastly father} was against anything without set purpose and complete predictability and a human tended to fail on these requirements. He was against surprises, he hadn’t allowed a telephone in the house for many years as you never knew when it might ring on you. He mocked anything frivolous: placemats, dessert, having a lie-in, suffering from your nerves. ‘Get away out of that!’ he’d shout at cream cakes and people with hay fever."

What you're getting in this story is not showy, or fast, or loud. It is just like the sea that dominates this Western Irish town. It is quiet and inner-directed, with wild outbursts of damage and trouble, followed by the calmer gift-giving phase again. It is a lovely, involving visit to a lifeway long since altered by the relentlessness of change grown from within anf imposed from without.

I very much enjoyed the story's two-decade time frame. They were the last years of an Ireland now so completely vanished that one would be hard pressed to see it in modern Ireland. An elegy, albeit an emotionally honest one, to the way the country once was, with characters standing in for ways old and new. A read I expect will launch the writer into world notice because it is so plangently plucking heartstrings all the way through.

I don't mean that as a diss, only a recognition. I'm hip to your tricks, Author Carr, and I see how well you're performing them. That earns you a respectful tip-of-the-cap four stars.