2025 was an astonishingly good year for literature in translation, and after poring over catalogs and galleys, I’m thrilled to say that it’s only going to continue in 2026. In a year of uncertainty and challenge, I’ll take that small silver lining. I’ve highlighted some of the best 2026 new releases in translation, and because there is so much to choose from, I’ve added notes for others you should seek out as well! This list is just a taste of all that’s coming up. I’ve focused on the first half of the year, because galleys, covers, and publication dates are more readily available, but I’m already hearing that we’ll have new books by Leila Slimani and Mircea Cărtărescu later in the year!

This season, readers will be particularly excited to see new titles from returning favorite authors like Mieko Kawakami, Maria Stepanova, and Mónica Ojeda, and translators like Megan McDowell, Sasha Dugdale, and Sarah Booker—but I’ve included some authors new to English-language audiences as well. It seems like every year, the new titles in translation become more diverse and wide-ranging, especially when it comes to country of origin and language, and it’s a joy—and increasingly a wonderful challenge—to pick from them.

Everyday Movement by Gigi L. Leung, translated by Jennifer Feeley

Set in Hong Kong during the protests of 2019, Everyday Movement follows two college roommates, Ah Lei and Panda, as they live their lives in the midst of a defining and dangerous political moment. In scenes that feel both painfully specific to this moment in recent history and yet uncannily timely and universal, the roommates participate in increasingly dangerous protests, wash their helmets and goggles in their shared student bathroom, and feel the growing anxiety and trauma of the violence around them—while still going to work and brunch and on dates. Hong Kong writer Gigi L. Leung began writing the book during the 2019 protests and masterfully captures this complicated reality that political violence upends daily life, and yet in many ways, daily life still continues, and the surreal quality of that. That is, until the violence escalates to life-shattering levels. Leung’s stunning prose has been perfectly paired with translator Jennifer Feeley, known for her work translating renowned Hong Kong writers such as Xi Xi and Lau Yee-Wa. The novel has been banned at the Hong Kong Book Fair but celebrated in Taiwan, where Leung now lives. It was a finalist for the Taipei Literary Award and won Taiwan’s highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award, in 2024. And don’t miss Now I Surrender by Álvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer.

The Disappearing Act by Maria Stepanova, translated by Sasha Dugdale

From the author and translator of the acclaimed In Memory of Memory comes a timely and achingly beautiful novella about identity, exile, art, and language. The Disappearing Act is Maria Stepanova’s first work written since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and her subsequent exile from Russia. As the founder and editor-in-chief of the online independent journal Colta.ru, Stepanova was forced to flee when all dissenting media outlets were shuttered in the wake of the invasion and her own status as a prominent critic of Putin and the invasion put her life in danger. Her books are now also banned in Russia. The novella follows a writer living in exile ever since her unnamed nation, often referred to as “the beast,” declared war on a neighboring country. In exile, she travels to a literary festival in another unnamed country and is stranded in a small town where she reflects on her life and wonders if she can escape her nationality and identity and transform herself into something new. This is an intimate and profound study of liminality and identity from one of the most important writers of our time. And don’t miss The Dog Meows, The Cat Barks by Eka Kurniawan, translated by Annie Tucker.

Modern Woman by Edith Södergran, translated by CD Eskilson

“I am not a woman. I am neutrois./I am a child, a tomboy, a bold decision,/I am a laughing streak of scarlet sun . . .” Edith Södergran was a Swedish-speaking Finnish poet widely credited with introducing modernism to Swedish poetry and inspiring generations of poets after her. And yet in her lifetime, her work was not well-received, with critics’ responses ranging from confusion to outright ridicule. But she continued to write and released four collections before dying of chronic tuberculosis at the age of 31. This debut collection introduces English-language readers to her fearless and subversive work that explores women’s sexuality, gender roles, mortality, and isolation through “enigmatic, often androgynous speakers.” I’m grateful for the bold and thoughtful work of translator CD Eskilson in bringing Södergran to new readers in all of her complexity. In their introduction in particular, Eskilson helps ground Södergran’s legacy as one of the most influential modern poets in Nordic literature. And don’t miss Renaissance by Haris Vlavianos, translated by Patricia Felisa Barbeito and with a foreword by Margaret Atwood.

Eating Ashes by Brenda Navarro, translated by Megan McDowell

In its original Spanish, Eating Ashes by Brenda Navarro won the Premio Cálamo Best Book of the Year and the CEGAL Gremio de Libros of Spain, given by the Spanish Confederation of Booksellers’ Association, and was shortlisted for the prestigious Mario Vargas Llosa Prize. Now, in a brilliant pairing with acclaimed translator Megan McDowell, Navarro is bursting onto the English-language scene. In the novel, an unnamed narrator travels from Madrid back to Mexico with her teenage brother’s ashes. She and her brother, Diego, lived in Mexico with their grandparents while their mother worked in Spain. In arresting flashbacks, the narrator looks back on their lives as she grieves her brother. The novel is unapologetically political, and Navarro writes powerfully about xenophobia and the exploitation of immigrant and migrant workers, especially women. At its heart, though, this is an intimate story of love and loss. It was also just announced this month that actor and director Diego Luna is directing a film adaptation of the novel, set to release in the fall of 2026.

Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio

Mieko Kawakami’s English debut, the internationally best-selling Breasts and Eggs, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of Time’s Best 10 Books of 2020. It also won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in its original Japanese. It was hailed as a “feminist masterwork,” and Kawakami went on to publish many more titles, now translated into over forty languages. Sisters in Yellow is her latest, and it’s been described as a Japanese Breaking Bad. Most of the novel is set in a dark, gritty 1990s Tokyo, and it follows fifteen-year-old Hana as she desperately tries to put together a better life for herself. This is an intimate and striking novel of poverty and loneliness that follows Hana and her “sisters in yellow” as they determine their futures. And don’t miss The Witch by Marie NDiaye, translated by Jordan Stump.

Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun by Mónica Ojeda, translated by Sarah Booker

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’ll follow translator Sarah Booker to any (and all) of her projects. I’m grateful that led me to the work of Ecuadorian writer Mónica Ojeda years back when her English-language debut Jawbone came onto the scene and claimed a space for Ojeda as one of the most singular and fascinating writers to watch. Fernanda Melchor herself calls Ojeda, “a dazzling black sun in the astral chart of contemporary horror.” Jawbone was a chilling nightmare of girlhood and adolescence, full of body horror, pleasure, and pain, and it went on to receive wide critical acclaim, most notably as a finalist for the National Book Award. Her next novel, Nefando, was an intense psychological horror novel that revolved around a disturbing video game. Now, she’s back with another novel of girlhood. In Electric Shamans, best friends Noa and Nicole attend the Solar Noise Festival, a drug-laden, hedonistic, “technoshamanic” gathering held at the base of an active volcano. But the festival is not all it seems, and neither are the girls.

This post was originally published on Book Riot.

The fall is always a busy time of year for books, with publishers releasing their big titles in the hope of capturing the interest of readers shopping for the holidays or looking to curl up with a blanket and a good book as the temperatures drop. I’ve pored over catalogs and galleys to highlight some of the best fall 2025 new releases in translation! There’s something for everyone this season, with new novels, gorgeous poetry, fascinating short story collections, and much more.

Readers will be particularly excited to see new titles from returning favorite authors like Olga Tokarczuk, Samanta Schweblin, and Bora Chung, and translators like Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Megan McDowell, and Anton Hur, but I’ve included some authors new to English-language audiences as well. It seems like every year, the new titles in translation become more diverse and wide-ranging, especially when it comes to country of origin and language, and it’s a joy—and increasingly a wonderful challenge—to pick from them.

House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

House of Day, House of Night by Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk was first published in 1998 in its original Polish. The novel went on to bring Tokarczuk wide attention across Europe, but it took longer for her work to be widely available in English. This reissued novel, translated by the great Antonia Lloyd-Jones, who translated Tokarczuk’s popular and much-lauded Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, is another important and ambitious work, masterfully told in striking short pieces in the “constellation” novel structure of her Booker International Prize-winning book Flights, translated by renowned translator and author Jennifer Croft. House of Day is set in Silesia in southwest Poland near the Czech border. It was once German territory and is now being actively resettled by Polish people, including our narrator and her husband. Our narrator settles into her new home, where stories abound of mushrooms and monsters. A brilliant novel of borders, stories, and dreams.

Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur

Bora Chung’s first book published in English, Cursed Bunny, was a genre-defying collection that pulled from horror, science fiction, and fantasy with a powerful feminist and anti-capitalist lens. Her new novel-in-ghost-stories, Midnight Timetable, builds on its beloved and award-winning predecessor in fascinating and eerily delightful ways. Set in a research institute for cursed objects, the novel follows a new employee as they learn about the items stored in the mysterious facility and the encounters other employees have had while working there. The stories are stalked by cursed sheep, a haunted handkerchief, and a cat you won’t soon forget, but are linked by Chung’s sharp critiques of societal abuses of power toward vulnerable communities, including stories about conversion therapy, animal testing, domestic abuse, and more. And yet again, acclaimed translator Anton Hur thoughtfully captures all of the book’s intense beauty and power with the artistry he’s known for. You’ll find yourself thinking of these hallways long after you’ve finished the book. In fact, you might not be able to find your way out. Just remember to never look back.

Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell

Samanta Schweblin, author of the literary sensation Fever Dream and the unforgettable Little Eyes, returns with her third short story collection, translated into English by acclaimed translator Megan McDowell. Like her previous collections, Mouthful of Birds and Seven Empty Houses, which won the National Book Award for Translated Literature, I was struck by her stories’ elusive and evocative nature. In Good and Evil, Schweblin focuses on families and relationships and often on moments in our lives that change us forever. A tension and dread permeate each tale, but also a beautiful and uncanny insight into what makes us human. Strange and spare, the stories are sure to please fans of Schweblin’s uniquely unsettling style.

The Woman Dies by Aoko Matsuda, translated by Polly Barton

I adored Aoko Matsuda’s previous collection, Where the Wild Ladies Are, also lovingly brought into English by the marvelous translator and author Polly Barton. And I certainly wasn’t alone, as it went on to receive acclaim from the BBC, Guardian, New York Times, and New Yorker, and was selected as one of the 10 Best Fiction Books of the year by TIME. That collection drew inspiration from traditional Japanese ghost and yōkai tales to create strange and poignant feminist retellings. In The Woman Dies, Matsuda writes about women’s everyday experiences with the same biting wit and surprising humor, addressing sexism, discrimination, gender roles, violence against women, and capitalism. The collection is comprised of both short stories and pieces of flash fiction. I particularly loved the titular story, a whip-smart and darkly funny critique of women’s life experiences as plot devices in storytelling. “The woman dies. She dies to provide a plot twist. She dies to develop the narrative. She dies for cathartic effect. She dies because no one could think of what else to do with her.”

Playing Wolf by Zuzana Říhová, translated by Alex Zucker

Few things catch my interest as quickly as a book being described as a “distinctly poetic and disturbingly elegant horror novel for fans of Midsommar and The Witch.” Playing Wolf is Zuzana Říhová’s gripping and cinematic English-language debut that blends elements of folk horror, psychological thrillers, and the story of Little Red Riding Hood to stunning effect. The story follows husband and wife Bohumil and Bohumila and their unnamed son. They have just moved from Prague to a village in the countryside. It’s supposed to be a fresh start for the family, but they don’t feel welcome in the village. When their son disappears, they come face to face with the wolves. Říhová is also a poet, and it shows in the lyrical and atmospheric language of the novel, impressively translated by Alex Zucker. It is a dark beauty, a brutal and violent novel, but one that ensnares.

Say Fire by Selma Asotić, translated by the poet

“Instead of comfort/let me say fire. Instead of forgive/let me say fire. Instead of October/let me say light is the color of a bullet. Look at the air, mother. The air is full of it.” Bosnian poet Selma Asotić’s first collection of poetry was published in 2022 in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. It went on to receive two prestigious awards in the region. Translated by the poet herself into English, the collection swirls around thoughts of war, violence, memory, and home as she maps out her family’s history and her own searching present. It’s an intimate and visceral collection. This is decidedly not a thought exercise—although it is brilliant—but a collection that lives in the body. A fire that starts from the very core of a being. A staggering achievement.

This post was originally published on Book Riot.

Last year was an astonishingly good year for literature in translation, and after poring over catalogs and galleys, I’m thrilled to say that it’s only going to continue in 2025. In a year of uncertainty, I’ll take that small silver lining. I’ve highlighted some of the best 2025 new releases in translation, and because there is so much to choose from, I’ve added notes for others you should seek out as well! There’s something for everyone this season, with new novels, thoughtful nonfiction, stunning short story collections, and much more.

Readers will be particularly excited to see new titles from returning favorite authors like Han Kang, Can Xue, Iman Mersal, and Hanne Ørstavik and translators Martin Aitken, e. yaewon, Paige Aniyah Morris, and Maureen Freely, but I’ve included some authors new to English-language audiences as well. It seems like every year, the new titles in translation become more diverse and wide-ranging, especially when it comes to country of origin and language, and it’s a joy—and increasingly a wonderful challenge—to pick from them.

stay with me by Hanne Ørstavik, translated by Martin Aitken

Hanne Ørstavik’s books Love, Ti Amo, and The Pastor have made her one of the most celebrated contemporary Scandinavian writers. She is a master at precision and tension, and her spare writing has always been stunningly captured by her longtime English translator Martin Aitken. In stay with me, Ørstavik’s narrator begins an affair with a younger man after the death of her husband. The younger man’s anger problems remind the narrator of her childhood and the troubled relationship she has with her own father. Fear and vulnerability alter Ørstavik’s prose and this novel’s style is more breathless and urgent. “Writing is a process of accessing a truth that only the writing can realize,” she has said, and the truths she grapples with while writing this novel are raw and profound. stay with me reflects on fear, violence, and love to devastating effect.

We Do Not Part by Han Kang, translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris

I’ve long adored Han Kang’s sharp and stunning novels, including the Man Booker International Prize winner The Vegetarian, as well as Human Acts and The White Book, all translated by Deborah Smith, and her most recent novel, Greek Lessons, translated by Smith and Emily Yae Won—so I was eagerly anticipating this new book. And then Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature! She is the first Asian woman and first Korean citizen to win the award in literature. In their citation, the Nobel Committee for Literature awarded Han Kang the award “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” We Do Not Part fits seamlessly into her body of work as she continues to think about trauma, history, and human connection—this time through a beautifully rendered story of friendship.

Journey to the Edge of Life by Tezer Özlü, translated by Maureen Freely

When I picked up Tezer Özlü’s first book translated into English by Maureen Freely, Cold Nights of Childhood, I was immediately struck by a line in the author’s bio: “Tezer Özlü claimed her place in Turkish letters by breaking every rule imposed on her.” She is now one of Turkey’s most beloved writers and has inspired a new generation of feminist writers, as is beautifully described in Aysegül Savas’s introduction to that book. In Journey to the Edge of Life, an unnamed writer travels across Europe to visit the final resting places of her literary idols Cesare Pavese, Italo Svevo, Franz Kafka. She reflects on life and art in her own roving way.

Covert Joy: Selected Stories by Clarice Lispector, translated by Katrina Dodson

Clarice Lispector is an internationally-acclaimed author widely considered to be Brazil’s greatest modern writer and called the most important Jewish writer since Kafka. She was born in 1920 to a Jewish family in Ukraine, and as a result of anti-Semitic violence, her family fled to Brazil when she was still an infant. At the age of 23, she burst onto the literary scene with the publication of Near to the Wild Heart. She is as much legend as she is fact—dark, dazzling, intense, glamorous, “the sphinx of Rio de Janeiro,” “a female Chekhov on the beaches of Guanabara.” Covert Joy is a selection of her stories from the beloved behemoth that is her Complete Stories, gathered from the nine collections published during her lifetime. The stories, written during her adolescence all the way up until her death, are inventive and haunting, often about interesting and complex women at various stages of their lives. With a new foreword by Rachel Kushner, this selection is the perfect push for anyone who has been hovering on the edge of the abyss.

Mother River by Can Xue, translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping

Can Xue is the pseudonym of the award-winning Chinese experimental writer Deng Xiaohua. She is the author of The Last Lover, Vertical Motion, Frontier, and Love in the New Millennium, among many others. She has a cult following and her name is often at the top of the Nobel Prize for Literature betting odds list. Even Susan Sontag has said, “If China has one possibility of a Nobel laureate it is Can Xue.” In Mother River, Xue spins surreal tales of time, nature, and identity. Like its titular river, this collection feels ever-changing and moving with an immense depth that lures you in.

And don’t miss Open Letter’s other work out this year, like Berlin by Andris Kuprišs and translated by Ian Gwin, Birthday by Jana Egle and translated by Uldis Balodis, and The River by Laura Vinogradova and translated by Kaija Straumanis, the newest offering in Open Letter’s translator triptych series where a translator presents a curated collection of writers from a specific language. This year’s offering is a collection of authors writing in Latvian, curated by Kaija Straumanis.

Unusual Fragments: Japanese Stories by Taeko Kono, Nobuko Takagi & Others, translated by Lucy North, Margaret Mitsutani & Others

I’ve loved the Calico series from Two Lines Press since its inception. Ranging from speculative Chinese fiction to Arabic poetry and Latin American horror, among others, each book in the series is built around a theme and captures a thrilling and unique moment in international literature. Series editor Sarah Coolidge’s finger is always on the pulse of some of the most exciting literary movements happening today. Unusual Fragments fits perfectly into the current popularity of Japanese literature and thoughtfully presents five award-winning but relatively unknown Japanese authors from the past century—authors that “inspired the current generation of Japanese writers we’ve all come to love,” as Coolidge writes in her preface. The stories themselves—all previously untranslated and brought into English by a stunning array of some of the best translators working today—are strange and beguiling, fixating often on desire and power and the anxieties of modern life. They are indeed “rare and unusual fragments.”

Also from Two Lines, don’t miss Mending Bodies by Hon Lai Chu, translated by Jacqueline Leung.

Motherhood and Its Ghosts by Iman Mersal, translated by Robin Moger

Iman Mersal is considered by many to be Egypt’s premier poet, and I’d argue she’s one of the world’s foremost poets. She is also the author of Traces of Enayat, winner of the prestigious Sheikh Zayed Book Award—making Mersal the first woman to win in the literature category. In that remarkable work of creative nonfiction, Mersal retraces the mysterious life and loss of Egyptian writer Enayat al-Zayyat, who took her life in 1963, at the age of 27, four years before the publication of her novel Love and Silence. Motherhood and Its Ghosts comes in the same vein as that fascinating and multilayered project. In her new book, Mersal writes about her own mother, who died giving birth at age 27. Mersal has only one photo of her mother, and years later, when Mersal becomes a mother herself, she begins to think about motherhood itself. She muses on its many representations—the images, dreams, and ghosts of motherhood—using photographs, readings, and her own journal entries. This is a searching, intimate, and captivating volume that deserves a place among the best writing and thinking about motherhood.

Bread and Milk by Karolina Ramqvist, translated by Saskia Vogel

“Food is love. People say so all the time. I hear it ever more often nowadays, and I know this to be true. But to me this also meant that love was food.” Beloved Swedish author Karolina Ramqvist reflects on her life through memories of food in this striking memoir translated by Saskia Vogel. (I read everything Saskia Vogel touches.) The brightness of a tangerine in the depths of winter. The creamy comfort of rice pudding made by loving hands. Ramqvist reflects on love and family as she pulls forth memories of her girlhood and her mother and grandmother and their—sometimes fraught—relationships to food. There is physical hunger and then there is the hunger for something more; Ramqvist writes viscerally and vulnerably about her own disordered eating amidst loss and wanting. Her story is one that will never leave me.

This post was originally published on Book Riot.