Posts filed under 'climate fiction'

Grief and Knowledge in a Dying World: A Review of Inn of the Survivors by Maico Morellini

September 11, 2025  |  in Reviews  |  by Oonagh Stransky

Stability and instability. Throughout Inn of the Survivors, the theme of balance comes up time and again—literally and metaphorically.

Inn of the Survivors by Maico Morellini, translated from the Italian by Rose Facchini, Snuggly Books, 2025

Inn of the Survivors is Italian writer Maico Morellini’s debut in the English language, a haunting and eerily familiar work from a sophisticated voice in speculative fiction, arriving in Rose Facchini’s translation. Set in a dystopian future after an unspecified climate disaster, the novella tells the story of a seventeen-year-old girl’s arrival at the titular Inn of the Survivors, a haven on the Adriatic coast. Having taken off from her remote home in the mountains overlooking the Po River Valley, and following a three-year trek through Bologna, Forlì, and Cesena, she finally reaches the Inn and encounters others like her: people who have been on the run, trying to survive, living with trauma, grief, or shame. The price of staying? You must tell your story.

Lest you think my use of the second person is casual, it should be said that except for the backstory—which appears in the latter half—the novella is written entirely in the second person. While this narrative device appears often enough in English, it is far less common in Italian, with only two novels coming easily to mind: Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore by Italo Calvino, and the most recent Strega Prize winner Come d’aria by Ada d’Adamo. This is likely due to the Italian third person impersonal (si + verb), which can mean anything from “you,” to the more formal-sounding “one,” to the most passive of voices. As such, choosing to write this tale in the second person was a bold and effective choice on the part of the author, with the new text sounding entirely natural (the ideal result for a work of cli-fi). Yet, thanks to specific geographic locations that are an integral part of the story and the protagonist’s desire to understand her country, it still retains a quality we can call “Italian.” READ MORE…

Announcing Our May Book Club Selection: Eternal Summer by Franziska Gänsler

May 29, 2025  |  in Book Club, Reviews  |  by Rachel Stanyon

Gänsler compellingly blurs the lines between heroine and villain, as well as between compassion and self-preservation. . .

The still-young genre of climate fiction—or ‘cli-fi’—dreams of inspiring change, yet critics have pointed out that its overwhelmingly dystopian narratives are more likely to trigger paralysis or apathy; if we’re doomed, what’s the point? Within this contemporary affliction of passivity, Franziska Gänsler’s Eternal Summer juxtaposes its burning world with a potent human story of choice, stasis, and compassions, cementing its varied cast in an unmistakably contemporary mode, yet with the same ethical conundrums that have confounded us since time immemorial. The sheer breadth of our current problems can wither us into an insular complacency, but Gänsler powerfully points us towards the matter of our freedom. We’re delighted to present this timely novel as our Book Club selection for the month of May—it’s a hot one.

The Asymptote Book Club aspires to bring the best in translated fiction every month to readers around the world. You can sign up to receive next month’s selection on our website for as little as USD20 per book; once you’re a member, join our Facebook group for exclusive book club discussions and receive invitations to our members-only Zoom interviews with the author or the translator of each title.   

Eternal Summer by Franziska Gänsler, translated from the German by Imogen Taylor, Other Press, 2025

Once upon a time, the promise of an eternal summer may have seemed idyllic. In the popular imagination, the season has so often signified carefree vacations, sandy shores and glittering waters, balmy nights and languid mornings, the well-deserved time-out from a life of hard work or study. But it’s 2025. Summers have become increasingly hot. And long. And dry. I can vividly remember the eerie smog and the smell of smoke in the air as the 2019-20 bushfires raged across the southeast of Australia; even though I was hundreds of kilometres from any active fires, I had my first, pre-COVID experience of donning a mask for daily activities. Holidays were cancelled. New Year’s celebrations abandoned. Beach towns evacuated. This is the summer of our times—and sometimes even winter, too; just this January, southern California saw wildfires spreading into urban areas, decimating homes and taking lives and livelihoods, while less well-publicised infernos have also blazed through parts of South Korea and South Africa.

Somewhere in what seems to be Bavaria, Franziska Gänsler’s Eternal Summer is sweltering a few years from now, in a future where the climate target of a 1.5°C threshold is no longer a goal even for activists. It’s October, and an empty spa resort is being threatened by the fires raging through the nearby conifer forests for the fifth or sixth year in a row. It all seems hard to keep track for Iris, who is living out her own lonely summer days in this hotel that she inherited, sunbathing and checking the latest weather warnings—but only when the situation isn’t so dire that they’re played over roaming loudspeakers: ‘Stay home, wear face masks, keep doors and windows shut. Stay home, wear face masks, keep doors and windows shut. Stay home.’ Although she’s aware of the danger and trusts the climate science, her physical and economic precarity—hotel bookings are no longer allowed, even if anyone actually wanted to take the waters in this water-restricted spa town—are not enough for Iris to leave. She has no one and nowhere to go to. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: An Excerpt from Aruanda by Virgília Ferrão

July 2, 2024  |  in Translations  |  by Beth Hickling-Moore

“Witchcraft?” Pedro Lucas’ almost guttural voice catches in his throat in confusion.

This Translation Tuesday, we are honored to share with you an excerpt from the latest novel by the first woman to win Mozambique’s Prémio Literário 10 de Novembro literary prize. Here to tell you about this riveting tale of parallel love stories that traverse centuries is translator Beth Hickling-Moore herself: “Aruanda fluctuates between two stories, the first set in the 19th Century and the other in the 21st. In each story, prejudice, conflict and environmental destruction are destined to repeat themselves. In 1890, black servant Carina de Sousa is accused of witchcraft by the plantation overlord, along with her mother, Lina. What nobody knows is that Carina is in a secret and forbidden relationship with Pedro Lucas, the son of Carina’s boss, the captain. A scuffle ensues and Pedro Lucas is killed, leaving Carina pregnant with his mestizo child. The story then jumps back and forth between Carina’s story and the present day, in which professor Daniel de Barros —along with student Maria Cristina—embarks on a restoration project in the Aruanda region. As both stories develop in tandem, we discover that Daniel and Maria Cristina are in fact reincarnations of Pedro Lucas and Carina. As the professor and his students fight to save the Aruanda region from property developers who are destroying the landscapes just as the plantations did centuries before, we realise that Daniel and Maria’s love is similarly ill-fated. While Aruanda reflects on the country’s issues of prejudice, conflict and environmental destruction past and present, the novel does not feature the word ‘Mozambique’ at all: much like Isabel Allende’s Casa de los Espiritus is an allegory of national history without ever naming names, Aruanda takes place in fictional Aruanda, named after the Afro-Brazilian spiritual citadel of the same name, and considers whether postcolonial, post civil-war Mozambique is indeed a version of this utopia, or whether it is controlled by the same forces as it always has been. Aruanda will be of interest to a contemporary readership because it falls within the spheres of climate fiction, science fiction and race writing. Recent big-budget film and TV adaptations of novels such as The End We Start From and Leave the World Behind demonstrate the popularity of such genres, but very little climate fiction is published from the African continent, one of the regions most affected by the climate crisis. The book is also reminiscent of Octavia Butler’s classic, Kindred, in its historical episodes and supernatural elements.”

Aruanda is silent. Its solitude has risen, its melancholy dripping into the sea. I’ve never been to the Indian Ocean, but this is how I picture it: deep and still like the tombs of my ancestors who traversed its waters. Its quietude stretches right up to the large house belonging to the Prazo overlords: Captain Major Bento Noronha and his wife, Dona Luísa.

The dinner table is laid just so, just how Dona Luísa likes it. Tonight we are hosting young Doctor Fernando, the family physician. After coming to see Sargeant Pedro Lucas, he has been invited to stay for dinner.

Captain Bento and Doctor Fernando’s conversation lingers on banalities as the sweet scent of lilies tickles my nostrils. I inhale deeply and see Dona Luísa descending the granite steps, carrying a glass vase holding the flowers.

“It’s a pleasure to have you here, Doctor Fernando.”

“An absolute honour, Madam,” he responds politely, nodding in reverence to his hostess.

READ MORE…