Bookplanet: Reading the world

I just checked into the Reading the World website, the move by 5 publishers to push selected works in translation with a 100 book sellers, where these works will be prominently displayed.
I found these books by Dalkey Archive Press particularly worth looking into:
Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich. "Voices from Chernobyl presents first-hand accounts of what happened to the people of Belarus and the fear, anger, and uncertainty that they lived through following the worst nuclear reactor accident in history. Svetlana Alexievich interviewed hundreds of people who had been affected by the meltdown, from innocent citizens to firefighters called in to clean up the disaster."
Chinese Letter by Svetislav Basara. "The narrator records the bizarre occurrences of his daily life: his absurd conversations with his mother who is abducted by slave traders, his visits to his friend who works in the hospital’s autopsy room, and his sister’s tumultuous marriage to the butcher’s son. In Serbia the term 'Basarian' has been coined to refer to his unique writing style, reminiscent of the best of Samuel Beckett for its directness and odd sense of humor."
Thank You for Not Reading by Dubravka Ugresic. "Ugresic dissects the contemporary book industry, which she argues is so infected with the need to promote literature that will appeal to the masses, that if Thomas Mann were writing nowadays, his books wouldn’t even be published in the U.S. because they’re not 'sexy' enough. She hits on all major aspects of publishing: agents, scouts, supermarket-like bookstores, Joan Collins, book fairs that have little to do with books, and authors promoted because of sex appeal instead of merit." Maud Newton says this book is hilarious.

Farrar Strauss Giroux pushes Solzhenitsyn, Lorca, Colette, and the Duino Elegies. Knopf pushes the new Murakami, Panuk (not that these two guys need special pushing), Satrapi's (Persepolis) new graphic novel, Embroideries, about the sex lives of Persian women (that's Iran), and Liquidation by Nobel winner Kertesz.

New Directions pushes Sebald and The Last Will & Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo by Germano Almeida, selected in the TLS as a 2004 Best Book, about a businessman whose last will reveals a touching web of elaborate selfdeceptions. He's Cape Verde’s greatest living writer. Also, A Heart So White by Javier Marías, about, fittingly enough, a translator who considers the past and begins to ponder what he doesn’t really want to know. It won the Dublin IMPAC Prize, which you get on your way to the Nobel.

Archipelago is pushing Bacacay, stories by Gombrowicz. Milan Kundera really loves this writer. "Often hilarious, with an undercurrent of moral horror when the respectable turns slowly but inexorably into the outrageous." Also, Selected Poems of João Cabral de Melo Neto, the most important 20th century Brazilian poet. And, A Dream in Polar Fog by Yuri Rytkheu. "A mythic journey of discovery, lyrical ethnographic fable, and human chronicle of the Chukchi people. The novel enters one Chukchi community (Siberia) that adopts a wounded stranger and teaches him to live as a 'true human being.' Highly acclaimed in Europe and Asia—the first publication of this major author in English." Sounds interesting. You'd rather take a flyer at this than Grisham, wouldn't you?