Lists
by Powell's Staff, June 28, 2023 8:56 AM
We are so pleased to present to you this jam-packed collection of some of our favorite books in translation published over the past couple months. The selection includes an “epic historical novel of medieval Cairo” translated from the original Arabic; a Japanese novel filled with a vague, uneasy déjà vu; a Korean novel shortlisted for the International Booker Prize; “a brief, meandering account of the several rounds of IVF therapy” from an author based in Mexico City; a hybrid novel out of Switzerland; a visceral and grotesque novel from a prolific Argentinian novelist; a French author’s “spellbinding autofiction” about how the Holocaust affected one family; a “tropical gothic” from Ecuador; a German graphic novel that explores queerness in post-WWII Germany; an Italian novel about a sentient beech marten; a “meditation on suppressed guilt and entrenched prejudice” translated from the Hebrew; a modern gothic horror from a Bolivian novelist; and, so, so many more. This list of new titles in translation is full-to-bursting with incredible books that we're sure you’ll love.
by Reem Bassiouney (tr. Roger Allen)
Translated from the Arabic
Love and politics are inextricably entwined in this epic historical novel of medieval Cairo, involving levels of intrigue, passion, and violence that recall A Thousand and One Nights and Game of Thrones. The romance of Maisoon, a judge's daughter, with Anas, a fisherman-turned-bookseller, is anything but straightforward due to her complicated character and his thirst for vengeance over his father's murder by a powerful tax collector who is also in love with Maisoon. If this makes Maisoon seem like a typical pawn in a larger story, a love object only, not so — I don't think I've encountered such a clever, passionate, willful heroine as this since reading Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.
As the couple battles with the powers that be in Egypt, they come into the orbit of an up-and-coming Egyptian ruler, Ahmad Ibn Tulun, who wants to do things differently. Ibn Tulun actually ruled Egypt from 868 to 884 AD and left behind a famous mosque and a legend. As the story unfolds, though he amasses power for himself so that he can administer Egypt for the caliph in Damascus like his predecessors, he has an actual love for the country and spends its treasure on building hospitals and regulating the flow of the Nile to more equally distribute water and grow food for the populace. This makes him enemies abroad, however, and intrigues and battles ensue, many involving Anas and Maisoon.
In the last third of this fascinating book, Ibn Tulun's daughter, Aisha, takes center stage as she navigates the devolution of the kingdom her father built and brokers power with the Banu Salim tribesmen and women. Bassiouney is a great storyteller, and now I want to catch up and read all of her previous works. — Jennifer K.
by Mieko Kanai (tr. Polly Barton)
Translated from the Japanese
The slice-of-life within Mild Vertigo offers the reader a startlingly similar reality to their own. A calm surface, only just barely disturbed by the creeping sensation of having been here before, done all of this before — not in a dramatic, Groundhog Day sense, but in the sense of looking at your grocery list and realizing it's an exact copy of the one before, and the one before, and the one before. The way Natsumi's stream of consciousness highlights the burden of preserving identity and selfhood within motherhood and late stage-capitalism is painfully relatable and flawlessly done. — Charlotte S.
by Cheon Myeong-Kwan (tr. Chi-Young Kim)
Translated from the Korean
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, Whale is an astounding epic: part multigenerational epic, part mother-daughter saga, imbued with magical realism and a satirical lens on the post-Korean War years. Using a panoply of characters and fantastical elements, Myeong-Kwan explores love and loss, politics and class, desire and family. This book is big, in so many senses of the word. — Kelsey F.
by Isabel Zapata (tr. Robin Myers)
Translated from the Spanish
Isabel Zapata is a writer, editor, and translator born and based in Mexico City. In Vitro: On Longing and Transformation (Coffee House Press) is her latest book to appear in English: a brief, meandering account of the several rounds of IVF therapy that delivered, at no small expense, a baby girl.
For my part, I read In Vitro over the length of an inextinguishable summer evening, sparse text stamping wide-open pages mired in thought, disappointment, possibility. Expectant and endless.
At base, the book witnesses the complications of submitting female biology to the scalpels of an inherently, flagrantly sexist institution. Following their early failures to conceive, for example, Zapata's doctor neglects even to consider the possibility that her (male) partner may be infertile.
Most powerfully, the book traces the shape between orphan- and motherhood: through injections, chemicals, measurements, tests, waiting, bruising, longing, Zapata relives her mother's slow illness and disappearance, troubling and eroding the lines between three generations of women.
Zapata belongs to the tradition of Rachel Cusk, Sarah Manguso, their colleagues — to whom In Vitro speaks directly — part and parcel of a larger canon excavating the body as a site of cultural, historical inscription. — Annabel J.
by Sabda Armandio (tr. Lara Norgaard)
Translated from the Indonesian
In this incredible twist of genres, Armandio combines futuristic science fiction, crime thrillers, and surreal fiction. In the distant future, Indonesia’s crowded capital city is underwater and a novelist searches the remains of the vast city for the story of an old, infamous crime. Hunting for any trace at all of Gaspar, a private eye turned criminal mastermind, plans a seemingly simple robbery of a jewelry store; however, the heist reveals a series of interlinking conflicts that have haunted Gaspar since childhood. The book’s eclectic blend of narrative strategies paints a fresh, post-modern Jakarta and opens the road to a whole new world of literary crime fiction. This book is fascinating, funny, and nearly impossible to put down. A perfect summer read for any vacations or stay-cations you have planned. — Aster H.
by Dorothee Elmiger (tr. Megan Ewing)
Translated from the German
When I saw that Out of the Sugar Factory was being billed as a combination of Agatha Christie and W. G. Sebald from the Swiss author, Dorothee Elmer, I knew the book would be an immediate win for me, and boy was I right. Discursive and pleasingly hybrid (somehow both fiction and research project), this book covers everything from the sugar industry and colonialism to Emma Bovary and Chantal Akerman to anorexia and obsession. Out of the Sugar Factory is deeply researched and beautifully written — a stunner. — Kelsey F.
by Aurora Venturini (tr. Kit Maude)
Translated from the Spanish
Visceral and grotesque, unnerving and messy, Cousins, from the prolific Argentinian author, Aurora Venturini, follows a family of women as they face abuses and indignities forced on them by a cruel, misogynistic world. If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is — this is not a book for the faint of heart — but the brutality of the world in Cousins is rendered honestly and plainly and when I say it is well worth your while, I really, really mean it. — Kelsey F.
by Anne Berest (tr. Tina Kover)
Translated from the French
The Postcard by Anne Berest, the French writer and actress, has won multiple prizes, including the Choix Goncourt Prize, and may be the best book you'll read all year. It's a spellbinding autofiction in which Anne, the narrator, is present in 2003 when an anonymous postcard is sent to her mother's home, containing only the names of four family members killed at concentration camps during World War II. It's such a shocking bolt from the blue that no one can bear to follow it up until sixteen years later, when Anne begins asking her mother questions about the people on the postcard so that she can find out who might have sent it and why. The stories that emerge from her detective work are riveting and affecting, and I loved how complete a picture I had of these individuals and of others who helped and hindered them in their lives until they died at the hands of the Nazis.
As much as The Postcard is about the stories of Anne's family members who didn't survive the Holocaust, though, it is just as much about those who did, especially Anne's grandmother, Myriam, who worked in the French resistance after her narrow escape from the Germans, but who suffered in silence with survivor's guilt much of her life. This silence affects her descendants in various ways, and Berest is eloquent in her thoughtful exploration of what it's like to be Jewish in contemporary society and what it's like to carry around the ghosts of the past. This is a profound, even life-changing, book that I can't recommend enough. — Jennifer K.
by María Fernanda Ampuero (tr. Frances Riddle)
Translated from the Spanish
Ampuero's writing is hauntingly beautiful, even as her work centers itself in the midst of violent situations. Human Sacrifices is aptly labeled "tropical gothic," as it truly highlights the inevitable decay and tension between nature and humanity. The way the plot and settings of each story intertwine culminates in an increasingly powerful narrative. This slim short story collection is the perfect read for days spent in the brutal summer heat. — Charlotte S.
by Philippe Delerm (tr. Jody Gladding)
Translated from the French
There's a special magic that can only be found in the profoundly mundane moments of life, and Delerm's Second Star manages to capture that essence perfectly. In a world constantly demanding our most productive selves, allowing space for simple enjoyment is an act of resistance. Afraid you don't remember how? Allow this beautiful English translation to act as your guide and reminder to slow down and savor life. “Washing the Windows” is lovely in its simplicity and the subtle way it reminds me of Mierle Laderman Ukeles' Manifesto for Maintenance Art. I couldn't help but fall in love with the passage on “A Summer Evening”: "The end of June. We're going to have dinner in the garden. We set out candles almost everywhere, on the windowsills, in the branches of the old quince and apple trees. At the stroke of ten we pull on sweaters, but it's not cold and everyone wants to stay longer..." — Charlotte S.
by Augusto Higa Oshiro (tr. Jennifer Shyue)
Translated from the Spanish
While reading The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu, I found myself thinking most about the connection between mental illness and society. A clinical definition of mental illness often centers around mental illness as an impairment of 'normal functioning,' but what happens when a person's 'function' in society is taken away from them?
Such is the case for Katzuo Nakamatsu in this highly existential novel. Katzuo's forced retirement from his position as a professor of literature is the catalyst for a decline in his mental health. He is haunted by the looming shadow of death. He begins to have vivid hallucinations of the jungles of Peruvian Amazonia as he sits alone in his apartment. By conventional definitions of mental health, his 'normal functioning' is impaired. And yet the novel and Katzuo himself present his madness and existential dread as the very cause of his titular enlightenment. As he is consigned to seeming irrelevance, he seeks the company of his fellow rejects of society, and he embraces his madness as a new way of living. — Alyssa C.
by Norman Erikson Pasaribu (tr. Tiffany Tsao)
Translated from the Indonesian
Happy Stories, Mostly is an intimate, searing debut collection from Indonesian poet, Norman Erikson Pasaribu, filled with stories that looks at the queer experience — the good, the bad, the happy (mostly). There’s a story about a mom who travels to Vietnam to grieve the loss of her son, only to realize she may have been the cause of his unhappiness; a story about an Alarm Man whose oversleeping costs him true love; and stories that question what’s expected of us, what we need in order to find happiness, and the acceptance queer people are so often deprived of. — Kelsey F.
by Mohamed Leftah (tr. Lara Vergnaud)
Translated from the French
Originally published in 1992, this is Moroccan author Mohamed Leftah’s debut novel, set in the world of sex work in 1990s Morocco. The women that make up the cast of the book are at the receiving end of prejudice and attacks from their pimps, from their customers, and from the society that looks down on them. An exacting but sharp and beautifully written book, it’s clear why this debut marked Leftah as an important Moroccan author. — Lucinda G.
by Dorothy Tse (tr. Natascha Bruce)
Translated from the Chinese
This is an absolutely beguiling, parable-esque debut from Chinese author Dorothy Tse, set in the city of Nevers (modeled after a contemporary Hong Kong). There’s a failed love affair between a professor and an animatronic, life-size ballerina doll; there is snake soup and athlete’s foot, mid-life crises and the ravages of colonialism. This is a kaleidoscopic book that’s occasionally difficult to get a handle on, but is so worth the work it demands of the reader. — Kelsey F.
by Jenny Erpenbeck (tr. Michael Hofmann)
Translated from the German
Love and political idealism segue insidiously into gaslighting and state repression in this powerful novel by Jenny Erpenbeck, an opera director and the acclaimed author of Go, Went, Gone and The End of Days. Katharina and Hans meet-cute in transit in East Berlin in July 1986, except that he's married with a child and Katharina is only 19 and a whopping 34 years younger than him. I love that women are beginning to fill in the gaps left by some male authors who have written about May–December romances. There's a lot more to be explored about the gulf in understanding and self-possession between partners who are decades apart in age, as well as how this plays out over time, as the younger partner acquires more life experience and the power dynamics shift.
What makes Kairos especially thrilling, though, is that Erpenbeck has woven the lovers' story into the fabric of the last five years of East German life and the beginning of its reunification with West Germany. What wasn't talked about until much later is how different the two countries had become and how the enthusiasm on both sides for tearing down the Berlin Wall and reunifying turned into a devaluation of all things socialist in East Germany, including their robust, state-owned arts programs. Katharina's experience of East German life is of a very different character than Hans's, not least since he was born the year Hitler came to power and enrolled in the Hitler Youth before he was of the age to understand what he was part of. The flexibility of her youth gives Katharina a decisive advantage that carries her past the damage he tries to inflict upon her as his world begins to crumble in tandem with the state. Superbly written in a way that deeply involves the reader in the thoughts of its two main characters, this is also a coup of translation on Michael Hofmann's part. — Jennifer R.
by Matthias Lehmann (tr. Ivanka Hahnenberger)
Translated from the German
Matthias Lehmann's graphic novel Parallel, though it is a work of fiction, fits in alongside the autobiographical Fun Home by Alison Bechdel as a realistic depiction of life as a queer person in times before a wider acceptance of queerness. Parallel captures in heartbreaking realism the experience of Karl Kling, a gay man in post-WWII Germany, as he struggles to live authentically when it's against the law to express his true desires, and when he has been made to feel like his desires are a shameful compulsion, even by those closest to him. The brush-pen art style highlights the sense of fluidity and uncertainty Karl feels as he vacillates between two challenging modes of living: fulfilling society’s expectations that he have a wife and family, or acting on his attraction to men. Parallel is an especially pertinent read this month as we all celebrate how far society has come in its embrace of queerness and how much we still must fight for further inclusion in the times ahead. — Alyssa C.
by Bernardo Zannoni (tr. Alex Andriesse)
Translated from the Italian
Archy is a beech marten, born into poverty, maimed by an accident, and sold into servitude by his mother. His master Solomon, a pawn-broking fox, teaches him to read and write based on knowledge he got after a bible fell on his head while he was distracted feeding on a hanged man. Unable to forget what he now knows about God, life, and death, Archy feels torn between intellect and instinct, despite desperately longing to be a “real animal.”
This book is just amazingly well done: each and every character you meet is complete with their own personality and struggles and flaws. Every page you read just makes you want to read another. The tone of this book is both dark and funny; tends to make you laugh when you think maybe you shouldn’t. The way this book talks about poverty, religion, and isolation are deeply real and at times a little bit heartbreaking. Zannoni has a wonderful way of both explaining and simultaneously questioning religion. These bits of uncertainty and indecision, particularly from Archy, in combination with Zannoni’s imaginative style, really make this book the amazing work that it is. — Aster H.
by Aharon Appelfeld (tr. Stuart Schoffman)
Translated from the Hebrew
A trip to the land of Yaakov's forebears becomes an investigation into the heart of antisemitism. Carl Sandburg famously wrote that the grass covers all; in Poland, A Green Land, one character notes that Poland is a plowed-over cemetery. The very green of it is disorienting, an affront to the memory of Jews murdered there, but also strangely bewitching as Yaakov leaves behind his life as a prosperous shopkeeper in Tel Aviv to reconnect with the land of his ancestors. Though his late parents had yearned for their old homeland, they never had the time or heart to return to the place in which their relatives were murdered at the behest of Nazi invaders. This unspeakable family history became a thick silence that formed an impenetrable barrier between the generations that Yaakov would like to help dissolve. He, himself, turned away from his Jewish faith as a teen, and so it is doubly strange for him to encounter the still-entrenched stereotypes of the people of Szydowce, sixty-some years after the war. What does one really have to say to the descendants of people who murdered one's ancestors and now live as if this has nothing to do with them, though they live on stolen lands and properties? This is a fascinating and beautifully rendered meditation on suppressed guilt and entrenched prejudice. — Jennifer R.
by Giovanna Rivero (tr. Isabel Adey)
Translated from the Spanish
Fresh Dirt from the Grave by Giovanna Rivero is a collection of strange tales of modern gothic horror. Frequently grotesque, yet more often fascinating, Rivero’s use of the imagery of dirt, decay, and death highlight the human as animal, as destined to become a corpse. I particularly enjoyed two stories: "Fish, Turtle, Vulture," in which a man recounts his time stranded at sea for days on end with only fish, birds, and the dead body of his young crew mate for company; and "Donkey Skin," in which a woman about to undergo brain surgery gives her life story as testimony to the power of song, to protest violence and to stave off deadly tumors in the pineal gland. Each story has a unique power to drag us from the lofty sky of our ideals and back to the earth, the dirt, and our kindred animals. — Alyssa C.
by Agustina Bazterrica (tr. Sarah Moses)
Translated from the Spanish
This collection of nineteen short stories is exactly what you would expect frm the author of Tender is the Flesh, and I mean that in the best way. Once again, Bazterrica drags our darkest fears to light with tales of dystopia, alienation, and violence, but in her vivid and clever style also manages to make you laugh. This collection is witty, disturbing, and an absolute must read. In many ways, reading these stories gave me that same gut punch of dread that I felt as a child when I first picked up Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz and I loved every minute of it. It doesn’t matter if you love slashers or prefer your scares in small doses — there is something in here for everyone. — Aster H.
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For more literature in translation, check out our recommendations from April 2023.
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