If, as Tolstoy wrote, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, then it might also be said that each member of a family is unhappy in their own way. This is made explicitly clear in The Family (Peirene, 252pp, £12.99) by Sara Mesa, translated from Spanish by Katie Whittemore, in which we gradually gain details about a family in which the father’s fiercely idealistic principles are filtered through his wife and four children, causing repulsion in some, defiant acceptance in others and self-preserving strategies in all. “Just watch and learn”, we are instructed. Our primary guide is Martina, an adopted relative who observes the family dynamics as both an insider and outsider, trying to interpret her place and the expectations placed on her by a man whose guiding principles are derived from Gandhi’s austere asceticism. While her new father believes sincerely in his ideals, his enforcement of those values is unyielding. As the novel proceeds, we learn a great deal about the adult lives of each family member and the diverse ways in which they negotiated the conflicted legacy of their childhood. This is all achieved with virtuosic ease and economy by Mesa, whose choice of what to reveal and when makes this an exceptionally engaging novel that finishes with an unanticipated insight into the father, which beautifully complicates our understanding of a misguided man.In Crazy Genie by Inès Cagnati, translated from French by Liesl Schillinger (NYRB, 152pp, £15.99), it is the mother of Marie, the first-person narrator, whose wilful ways must be negotiated. Genie and Marie live in rural France, experiencing none of the pleasures this might suggest. Genie works constantly in neighbouring farms, often exploited because of her apparent naivety and immense capacity for manual labour. Her usefulness to others never lessens, indeed increases, her poverty and ostracisation. It also leaves her without the energy to direct affection towards her daughter, leading Marie to form a deep friendship with a boy called Pierre, who, like much of the novel, is dreamlike in his incantatory repetitions of promises and plans.In its detached, childlike evocations and mythmaking language, the novel achieves a singularity of style reminiscent of Ágota Kristóf’s in her equally startling Notebook Trilogy. Schillinger’s translation is wonderfully well-judged, as is the author’s creation of a brutal, indifferent society. There isn’t one false note in this novel, and the shocks, when they arrive, are stark and devastating, without ever being sensational. First published in France in 1976, this is a unique novel with the cadence of a Grimm fairy tale.The setting of Bait by Eugenia Ladra, translated from Spanish by Miriam Tobin (Daunt Books, 194pp, £10.99), is a village called Paso Chico in Uruguay, but this too is a society of dissolute families, dehumanised by destitution and desolation. Into this stark, isolated community, a wretched young man called Recio arrives. The circumstances of his previous life are not disclosed, but if he is to remain, he must be beaten to a pulp by some local youths in a public ritual of acceptance. Having endured this, he is assigned the job of bringing a crudely carved statue of the Virgin Mary to a new house each week, staying in each home between visits. He is befriended by Marda, whose mother’s death while giving birth to her during a storm portends endless perdition in the villagers’ minds. The ostracism of the two young people is partial in a society lacking any sustaining coherence, in which adult lives are bolstered by alcohol and superstition. They also accept a horrible level of cruelty to animals and to each other. However forlorn the circumstances, the writing still manages an elegiac attentiveness: “the river and the sky and the air erupted in a thunderous boom, igniting the chorus of insects and birds as if turning on a radio”. Ladra also invents compound words, wittily translated by Tobin: “stubboroldgoat”; commingsandgoings”; “forawhile”. Throughout, it is the “groggy haze” that is superbly sustained; the sense that the oppressive humidity of this timeless, remote setting is slowly inducing a collective, catatonic insanity.The cruelty of a village in Belarus, recreated in What Now, Mr Wolf by Eva Vezhnavets, translated from Belarusian by Ella and Jim Dingley (Bullaun Press, 186pp, €12.99), is more ideologically driven during the hundred years covered by the novel. Here, too, it is because of superstition and knowledge of folk cures and poisonous concoctions that the women who are central to the novel can exercise a degree of autonomy and control over their lives. [ Translated fiction: Women in Ukraine; Jewish Guatemalans ready for war; an East German memoirOpens in new window ]Ryna, around whom the story enfolds, feels no fear wandering through treacherous marshes as she returns to the village called Nauhalnaye for her grandmother’s funeral, assisted as she is by the alcohol she has been drinking on the train. Her alcoholism has led to her being sacked from her job in Germany. Ryna returns to a house sundered into two halves: the black side and the white side. When she lived there, she was the go-between and conduit for disputatious relatives. That fractured home is symbolic of an endlessly divided country, fragmented within recent memory by revolution and war, as Bolsheviks and Nazis attempt to seize the land. Through the memories of Ryna’s two grannies, we learn a great deal of history, especially about the treatment of Jews. We sense the solidity of put-upon people who wish to live lives with ancient roots, in which every marsh or wood holds a multitude of stories and associations. Best of all is the braided story of Ryna and her friend from schooldays, Alounikau, which develops in several unanticipated directions. Throughout, the writing is strong and assured, guiding us with ease through settings and history that may be unfamiliar, but which quickly become spellbinding.There is also a deep engagement with history’s imprint in The Passage of Roses by Tie Ning, translated from Chinese by Hongling Zhang and Jason Sommer (Sinoist, 466pp, £16.99). Although the novel begins in the present time, it is the impact of the Cultural Revolution on the lives of the characters that provides the primary interest of the novel. The complexity of the characters is very well realised, especially that of Si Yiwen. In her youth, she fell in love with a young man who was in a pre-revolutionary rebel group. In reaction, her father arranged an ill-judged marriage for her. It is typical of this comprehensively achieved novel that while Si Yiwen demonstrates a formidable sense of self-possession in coping with the adversities of her life, she also emerges as a flawed individual whose duplicity leads her to be extra vigilant in conspicuously demonstrating her adherence to Maoism, knowing how her past could expose her. A despicable scene of cruelty to a cat by her neighbours stands in for the multitude of deaths occurring at this time. That the cat belonged to Aunt-Dad, Si Yiwen’s sister-in-law, who lived as a man and whose life was at one with the cat, leads to scenes of unbearable poignancy. Although the novel would have benefited from more rigorous editing, it remains, in its ambition, a deeply impressive accomplishment.A sense of bewildered compliance pervades The Pit, one of the best stories in the excellent collection, The Fallen Trees Are Also The Forest by Alejandra Kamiya, translated from Spanish by Daniel Hahn (Pushkin Press, 160pp, £12.99). In that story, a soldier is given vague instructions about digging a pit in an isolated area and then left alone, with enough rations for a few days. When several days have passed and he is still alone, he begins to consider every possible intention within the instructions he was given. He must also attempt to sustain a sense of purpose as all possible meaning is stripped from his work. The weight of perplexed perseverance evident in The Pit is present in all of Kamiya’s stories. She pays remarkable attention to how that weight is controlled and expressed, with consideration given to every word. The same is true of Daniel Hahn’s translation. There is variety in both the subject matter and register of these stories, which are infused with an affecting level of poignancy, as in Three Chairs, in which the narrator moves a chair in which her dead father used to sit. Having acknowledged her mistake, she realises that no matter how she tries to reposition the seat, its cherished resonance has been lost.Declan O’Driscoll is a freelance book reviewer