Peirene Press is one of my favourite publishers. They specializes in high quality, short format (less than 200 pages), translated fiction, mostly from Europe. More importantly, I have found almost all of the ones I have read to be really good. They can be bleak, and frequently pushes me a bit outside of my reading comfort zone, but, thanks to their short lengths, it never gets too daunting.
Their latest title, The Pear Field by Nana Ekvtimishvili, is no exception. It centres around the children in the Residential School for Intellectually Disabled Children, basically an orphanage in the outskirts of Tbilisi. The main character is 18-year-old Lela who have stayed on after finishing the school and who acts kind of as a big sister to all the younger kids. While parts of the story are rather bleak, there is also a warmth in the relations between the children which lend some hope to it, and the writing is of the high quality I expect from a Peirene Press novel. Overall a good read, and probably my first one from Georgia.
Thank you Karen and Lizzy for hosting Reading Independent Publishers Month!
I read that in a book 
Thank you for taking part! I’ve only read a few Peirene Books but they’ve all been very impressive. Not always easy reads, as you say, but so good and so thought-provoking. Definitely an indie to watch!
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This was my eight read from Peirene and I have been impressed by all but one of them, so they are definitely one of my favourite publishers.
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I’ve got a couple of Peirene novels waiting for me but not this which I’ll add to my list, thanks!
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It was a good, if somewhat depressing, read. But of course that applies to most of Peirene’s books…
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