Everything dieth, everying blossometh forth again

Thus spake Nietzche, and this spring does blossom forth with major fiction.

Over at Critical Mass, they've been asking various authors which titles they're looking forward to in the next few months. I think this may have been prompted by something of a reviewers' nightmare and car wreck coming up in April/May/June. There are so many significant authors with novels coming out in the space of about 9 weeks that when I proposed reviewing Don DeLillo's post-9/11 novel, Falling Man, to one editor, I was told there was already too many fiction reviews booked for May through June. When DeLillo can't catch a break, you know it's crunch time.

To give you an idea, this is just the prelude, but Robert Bolano's The Savage Detectives, Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, Arthur Phillips' Angelica and Mosil Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist are all released tomorrow.

Here are some of the other notable novels coming out as the summer solstice approacheth:
Nathan Englander's The Ministry of Special Cases (April 24)
Thomas Mallon's Fellow Travelers (April 24)
Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union (May 1) -- won't somebody send me a galley?
Haruki Mirakami's After Dark (May 8)
Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero (May 29)

And let's not forget Elmore Leonard's Up in Honey's Room (May 8), Peter Temple's The Broken Shore (May 29) and the always-welcome Arkady Renko, returning in Martin Cruz Smith's Stalin's Ghost (June 12).

And that's just fiction ...