Well, August is over and summer is coming to a close. This August was the most exciting Women in Translation Month yet and I wanted to share one of my favorite reads of the month: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Teal. In The Summer Book, celebrated artist and author Tove Jansson “distills the essence of the summer—its sunlight and storms—into twenty-two crystalline vignettes.” The vignettes follow six-year-old Sophia and her grandmother and their adventures on a remote island in the gulf of Finland. This is my first time reading what many consider a modern classic and I couldn’t agree more—The Summer Book is utterly perfect. It’s quiet and subtle, warm and wise, but with one single striking and devastating sentence Jansson changes your reading and understanding of the whole book.  I read it on my vacation on Cape Cod and it was such a special reading experience.

But you should read Women in Translation all year long! I wrote up this list of 50 Must-Read Books by Women in Translation on Book Riot—give it a look!