As beach season approaches, are all your friends reading the Da Vinci Code rather than Dubravka Ugresic? Tired of the same six titles on display at the store and want some recommendations on what to read next? Looking for a few, cool people to talk about the newest titles from the international scene? If so, join in the Words without Borders book clubs, coming this month to a computer near you at http://www.wordswithoutborders.org

Unfortunately, there won’t be any cocktails, or even book club cake and coffee (though we encourage you to hold your own launch parties!), but it’s free, almost everyone is invited, and we’ve got a great lineup of book critics to talk to, including editors and critics from The Paris Review, WBUR, The Believer, and the Complete Review. Let loose on your thoughts on everything from contemporary prose to the literary and political ambitions of current novelists. No abstruse theorizing allowed, but disputes on the role of the translator welcome.

Each forum will run for a month, so tune in any time and join the conversation. Easy to use, this is your chance to speak out about some great books, and international literature today.

Listed below is the current schedule, but keep checking back at Words Without Borders for updates and more information about how to participate.

Join us, then,

in May for a discussion of Dubravka Ugresic’s THE MINISTRY OF PAIN (translated by Michael Henry Heim), moderated by Chad Post of Dalkey Archive Press and the Reading the World campaign

in June for a discussion of Mati Untt’s THINGS IN THE NIGHT (translated by Eric Dickens), moderated by Radhika Jones of The Paris Review

in July for a discussion of Svetlana Alexeivich’s VOICES FROM CHERNOBYL (translated by Keith Gessen), moderated by Michael Orthofer of The Complete Review

in August, for a discussion moderated by Bill Marx of WBUR, Boston’s NPR News Station (book selection forthcoming)

in September, for a discussion of Ma Jian’s THE NOODLE MAKER (translated by by Flora Drew), moderated by Mickey Pearlman of The Boston Globe, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, and The Forward

in October, for a discussion of Etgar Keret’s THE NIMROD FLIPOUT, moderated by Meehan Crist of The Columbia Journal of Art and Literature and The Believer