Author Archives: palquist

Moving Memoirs About the Pain and Pleasure of Motherhood

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“Why the obsession with motherhood?” writes author and journalist Gabriela Wiener in her book Nine Moons, translated by Jessica Powell. And it’s a question so many writers turn their minds to. It’s perhaps not surprising. Motherhood, in one way or another, affects us all—even the not having or the not doing can create tensions, pain, and societal implications that many have to grapple with. But perhaps more interestingly to writers and other creative minds, it overlaps with so many other significant subjects in our lives, like power and wealth; race, gender, and sexuality; language and culture; science and the environment, among others. Among the many books to choose from, I found that I was personally drawn to titles that were more international, translated from languages other than English. I’m grateful to the talented translators of these motherhood memoirs. Their work allows me to read more widely and think deeply and intentionally about what it means to be a mother all over the world.

Breathe by Imani Perry

In Breathe, author, critic, and historian Imani Perry writes movingly about what it means to raise Black sons in America. It is at once a letter to her sons, a memoir sifting through her life and her son’s formative years, and a resounding challenge to society to see her sons—and all Black children—as precious and deserving of humanity. At one point in the midst of Breathe, Perry writes, “I live for the life of the mind and heart.” It’s a simple statement in the midst of so much that’s insightful and profound in the collection but it struck me as a perfect capturing of the book. Breathe is a thoughtful and intimate glimpse into one of the brightest minds writing today but there is an equal amount of care and heart. It’s a special combination that I’ve treasured.

Nine Moons by Gabriela Wiener, translated by Jessica Powell

Gabriela Wiener is an award-winning Peruvian journalist and author who is known for her wild explorations of sex, identity, and gender. Her personal accounts in the book Sexographies, also translated by Jessica Powell, range from infiltrating the most dangerous Peruvian prison to detailed encounters at sex clubs and being whipped by a dominatrix in public. In Nine Moons, she approaches her pregnancy and motherhood in a similar full-bodied approach. One of my favorite early images in the book is her growing pile of books on motherhood next to her recent research on various sexual subcultures. Her work is fierce and funny and brilliant, and it’s a necessary and exhilarating addition to the genre as she discusses so much that is often left unsaid in other books about motherhood—like her abortions and her lust.

Linea Nigra: An Essay on Pregnancy and Earthquakes by Jazmina Barrera, translated by Christina MacSweeney

I loved Jazmina Barrera’s debut work of nonfiction, On Lighthouses, translated by the legend Christina MacSweeney, where she melds memoir and literary history while examining what lighthouses mean to her and more widely to us all through the works of Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allan Poe, Ingmar Bergman, and many others. So it’s no surprise that I would love her exploration of pregnancy, motherhood, and art. Like On Lighthouses, Linea Negra is a memoir and also so much more. Barrera chronicles her own pregnancy and early motherhood while also reflecting on representations of motherhood in art and literature. I was particularly struck by the collection of resources she presents at the back of the book—poems, short stories, interviews, and essays—that she read while breastfeeding, the act of the artist feeding herself as she feeds her child. This urgent and intimate book is one of the most stunning I’ve ever read.

In Vitro: On Longing and Transformation by Isabel Zapata, translated by Robin Myers

In Vitro overwhelmed me on my first reading. It is a stunning meditation on motherhood and in vitro fertilization and all that the procedure and many other fertility treatments encompass—bodies, science, humanity, patience, grief, and so much more. The book feels like both an essay and a diary and each entry is crushingly intimate and honest. It’s a realness that I crave when I read books on pregnancy and motherhood, and I found myself enthralled by the brevity and intensity of the writing and the white space on each page that speaks to longing and possibility. I was deeply moved by Robin Myers’s translator’s note where she writes that she felt “raw and porous” as she translated the text, saying “it wasn’t so much that I identified with the stories it tells as I felt instantly exposed to them, vulnerable to what they might stir up in me.”

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. Motherhood and Its Ghosts comes in the same vein as that fascinating and multilayered project. In this 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 the nature of motherhood. She muses on its many representations—the images, dreams, and ghosts of motherhood—using photographs, readings, and her own journal entries. The result is a searching, intimate, and captivating volume that deserves a place among the best writing and thinking about motherhood.

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

Sometimes classics are classics for a very good reason and such is the case with Maggie Nelson’s genre-bending memoir The Argonauts. Nelson writes of gender, sexuality, queer family-making, and motherhood as only she could, blending the words of theorists like Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick with her own personal story and sharp observations. It is somehow both raw and romantic and while many have focused on the radical and political nature of the book over the years, I find I’m often thinking about the intimate and tender moments of partnership and parenting in the book.

This post was originally published on Book Riot.

The Most Anticipated Books In Translation of 2025

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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.

Spring 2024 New Releases In Translation

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The days are getting longer and spring is in the air. New England is awash with light and flowers. Even the rainy days feel manageable because at least the sun isn’t setting at 4 p.m. And, of course, there are the spring 2024 new releases in translation to look forward to! I have pored over the catalogs and galleys and highlighted some of the best spring 2024 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 exciting debuts, thoughtful nonfiction, stunning poetry collections, and much more.

Readers will be particularly excited to see new titles from favorite authors like Bora Chung, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, and Iman Mersal and translators like Anton Hur, Roland Glasser, and Saskia Vogel. 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. As an added bonus, I’ve been looking forward to some new and upcoming novels written by two award-winning translators I deeply admire and recommend: The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft and Toward Eternity by Anton Hur.

The Villain’s Dance by Fiston Mwanza Mujila, translated by Roland Glasser

Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s debut, Tram 83, was a revelation. An overwhelming force of a novel that, in Roland Glasser’s translation, sparked with rhythm and life. It went on to win the Etisalat Prize for Literature and the German International Literature Award and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize and the Prix du Monde. The duo’s long-awaited follow-up, The Villain’s Dance, is a similar riot of color and music. Set during the Mobutu regime in late-1990s Zaire, the novel spins between a cast of vivid characters as they try to survive in the midst of political turbulence. Beneath its urgent examinations of power and humanity, there is an electric hum, a tension, that kept me transfixed.

And don’t miss The Understory by Saneh Sangsuk, translated by Mui Poopoksakul.

Traces of Enayat 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. So it was an immense joy to see The Threshold published last fall. It thoughtfully compiled work from Mersal’s first four collections, stretching over three decades, allowing readers to witness and experience the breadth of her immense talent. But I’ve long heard of her book Traces of Enayat, winner of the prestigious Sheikh Zayed Book Award—making Mersal the first woman to win in the literature category—and had hoped it would find its way into English translation. In this 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. It is a fascinating and multilayered project, intimate and complex, with captivating prose translated by Robin Moger, who I know from his jaw-droppingly beautiful translation of Slipping by Mohamed Kheir.

And don’t miss The Novices of Lerna by Ángel Bonomini, translated by Jordan Landsman.

The Singularity by Balsam Karam, translated by Saskia Vogel

Balsam Karam is of Kurdish ancestry and has lived in Sweden since she was a child. She is an author and librarian, and The Singularity is her second novel, published in Sweden in 2021, but her English-language debut. The novel is set in an unnamed coastal city and follows the lives of two refugee women as they make their way in an unwelcoming world. Karam writes intimately of the women’s lives in prose that is compelling and complex, bracingly honest and heartrending. It is a novel of displacement and migration, of motherhood and grief, and the intensity of the writing speaks to longing and possibility. 

Through the Night Like a Snake: Latin American Horror Stories by Mariana Enriquez, Mónica Ojeda & Others, translated by Megan McDowell, Sarah Booker & Others

I’ve loved the Calico series from Two Lines Press since its inception. The series presents vanguard works of translated literature in vibrant, strikingly designed editions. Each year, they publish two new titles in the Calico series, and each is as good, if not better than the last. Ranging from speculative Chinese fiction to Arabic poetry, Swahili fiction, and more, each book in the series is built around a theme and captures a thrilling and unique moment in international literature. Latin American horror is, in my mind, one of the most exciting literary movements happening today, and Through the Night Like a Snake brings together ten chilling stories in what feels like an ongoing series of nightmares. You can’t drag yourself away—nor do you want to. 

And don’t miss Woodworm by Layla Martínez, translated by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott, and Off-White by Astrid Roemer, translated by Lucy Scott and David McKay.

Your Utopia 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. This new collection is more firmly planted in the realm of science fiction, but like its beloved and award-winning predecessor, it contains multitudes. The stories are populated with robots, sentient vehicles, AI elevators, spaceships, and more, but are linked by Chung’s poignant meditations on loneliness, dystopia, surveillance, and the perils of technology. Acclaimed translator Anton Hur thoughtfully captures all of the collection’s dark humor and power with the immense artistry he’s become known for.

The Lantern and the Night Moths: Five Modern and Contemporary Chinese Poets in Translation by Yilin Wang

In this stunning new collection, Chinese diaspora poet-translator Yilin Wang has selected and translated poems by five Chinese poets, including Qiu Jin, Fei Ming, Dai Wangshu, Zhang Qiaohui, and Xiao Xi. While there’s an immense range in the poems themselves, themes of identity and longing/belonging emerge. Autumn moons and spring flowers abound, but also the power of language and poetry. I was deeply moved by Wang’s essays for each poet. “Poetry is one of my rare lifelines,” she writes in the epigraph of the book, and there is so much that is deeply personal in these essays. She includes thoughtful biographical information about the poets and discusses the fascinating art and craft of translation, but I was most struck by the way she reflects on how the poets speak to each other and speak to her.

Ǣdnan: An Epic by Linnea Axelsson, translated by Saskia Vogel

“We were to be driven from the forest fells and lakes . . . now each step homeward in autumn was a departure from our lives.” Ǣdnan is Sámi-Swedish author Linnea Axelsson’s haunting and powerful award-winning debut. It follows two Sámi families over the generations, grappling with the loss of their culture and identity—forced off their migration paths, placed in nomad schools, and countless other losses. Told in verse, the story feels mythic and fittingly epic. Reindeer stalk across the landscape and the ever-changing sea is always present in Axelsson’s subtle and spare language, captured in all of its piercing beauty by translator Saskia Vogel.

Portrait of a Body by Julie Delporte, translated by Helge Dascher and Karen Houle

Drawn & Quarterly has the most fantastic offerings of literature in translation, so I was thrilled to hear about this new title by Julie Delporte, whose previous book, This Woman’s Work, translated by Helge Dascher and Aleshia Jensen, I adored. In Portrait of A Body, she reflects on sexuality, identity, and healing. She blends autobiography, queer theory, and art criticism as artfully as she blends the colors in her illustrations. The colored pencil drawings are vulnerable and beautiful, both complimenting and contrasting with the strength of Delporte’s story to stunning effect.

This post was originally published on Book Riot.

Fall 2023 New Releases In Translation

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The mornings are crisp. The days are shorter. Apples, pumpkins, and changing leaves abound in New England, where I live. And the fall books are here! Autumn 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 poured over the catalogs and galleys and highlighted just some of the best fall 2023 new releases in translation, and because there’s just 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 novels you’ll want to sink into, excellent short story collections, and so much more.

This fall is especially stacked with big releases, and readers will be particularly excited to see new titles from favorite authors like Jhumpa Lahiri and Annie Ernaux and translators like Alison L. Strayer and Janet Hong. But don’t sleep on some of the exciting new voices on this list, too. 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.

My Work by Olga Ravn, translated by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell

The Employees by Olga Ravn and translated by Martin Aitken, was one of my favorite books of last year, so I was thrilled to hear about Ravn’s new novel about motherhood. In My Work, a young writer, Anna, writes a diary or journal of sorts about her pregnancy and mental health post-delivery. Blending prose, poetry, diary entries, medical notes, and script, among other forms, this genre-defying novel is a fascinating and ambitious exploration of pregnancy, motherhood, labor, and art. In the hands of translators Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell, this intimate masterpiece is a triumph.

And don’t miss Bathhouse and Other Tanka by Tatsuhiko Ishii, translated by Hiroaki Sato.

My Picture Diary by Fujiwara Maki, translated by Ryan Holmberg

Fujiwara Maki was a manga artist, a writer, and an avant-garde actress in the Japanese underground theatre scene. But her accomplishments are more often eclipsed by her position as the wife of legendary manga artist Tsuge Yoshiharu. My Picture Diary was published in Japan in 1982 and is now finally available in an English translation. The diary details a year in the life of Maki, her husband, and their young son. The diary entries portray both a simple story of family life—bike rides, back to school, and bath time—and a powerful critique of the patriarchal systems that Maki struggled against. Her struggles were both external, as a female artist in the male-dominated Japanese counterculture and alt-manga scenes, and internal, exhausted by the sole ownership of household chores and childcare. This important work of reclamation puts her own fascinating career and influence on display. I’m grateful to the award-winning translator and historian Ryan Holmberg and the publisher for bringing this book and their other recent offerings by women in translation, like Talk to My Back by Yamada Murasaki and The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud by Kuniko Tsurita, to readers.

And don’t miss Nejishiki by Yoshiharu Tsuge, translated by Ryan Holmberg.

The Young Man by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison L. Strayer

Annie Ernaux was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in literature for the “courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements, and collective restraints of personal memory.” Ernaux is the author of over 30 works of fiction and memoir and is considered by many to be one of France’s most important literary voices. Newly available in English in a stunning translation by Alison L. Strayer, The Young Man is an account of Ernaux’s love affair when she was in her 50s with a man 30 years her junior. Like in her novel Simple Passion and the nonfiction account Getting Lost, both where she details a different affair with a married Soviet diplomat, Ernaux’s brilliance is in her musings, and in The Young Man, she meditates on youth, desire, and time. As always, with Ernaux, there is an intense intimacy, a relentless honesty, that makes you feel alive.

Nefando by Mónica Ojeda, translated by Sarah Booker

Ecuadorian writer Mónica Ojeda was included on the Bógota39 list of the best 39 Latin American writers under 40 in 2017, and in 2019, she received the Prince Claus Next Generation Award. Her English-language debut, Jawbone, also translated brilliantly by Sarah Booker, was a chilling nightmare of girlhood and adolescence, full of body horror, pleasure, and pain, and went on to receive critical acclaim. In this follow-up, she brings her brand of intense psychological horror to the world of technology as the lives of six roommates revolve around a disturbing video game.

At Night He Lifts Weights: Stories by Kang Young-sook, translated by Janet Hong

Kang Young-sook is an award-winning author of many novels and short story collections and currently teaches creative writing at Korea National University of Arts. This short story collection is her first to be translated into English by none other than the brilliant Janet Hong. I’m a great admirer of Hong’s translations of the short stories of Ha Seong-Nan and numerous graphic novels by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, Yeong-Shin Ma, and Ancco, among others. Perceptive and subversive, the stories in At Night He Lifts Weights vary in tone and genre, but each is singularly captivating, swirling around themes of loss—ecological destruction, loneliness, and death. Each has a subtle illusion of calm that conceals what lies below in the unnerving depths.

The Owl Cries by Hye-Young Pyun, translated by Sora Kim-Russell

In this intense, psychological thriller, park ranger In-su Park decides to search for a missing man in the woods after a series of bizarre incidents, including discovering a mysterious note left on his desk that says, “The owl lives in the forest.” Just like in their Shirley Jackson Award–winning The Hole, Hye-Young Pyun and translator Sora Kim-Russell create a fast-paced and all-consuming story with an unusual narrator. In-su Park searches desperately for the missing man while also discovering more than he’d like in the forest, the people around him, and in himself. A novel of secrets, isolation, and pain, The Owl Cries is another tightly executed feat of writing.

Un Amor by Sara Mesa, translated by Katie Whittemore

I adored Sara Mesa’s sharply written and atmospheric novel of power, privilege, and violence, Four by Four—also translated by Katie Whittemore—and was interested to see this new novel explore many of the same themes. In Un Amor, a young woman arrives in a rural Spanish village to work on her first literary translation, but interactions with the locals quickly become complicated. There is a sustained tension in this atmospheric novel as Mesa explores language and power again but in a different, and maybe even more unsettling location than her last novel. It brings to mind the quiet horror of Marie NDiaye’s That Time of Year, translated by Jordan Stump, and so many other novels of the outsider. This bestselling novel has also just been turned into a film directed by Isabel Coixet.

Elektrik: Caribbean Writing by Marie-Célie Agnant, Kettly Mars & Others, translated by Danielle Legros Georges, Lucy Scott & Others

I’ve loved the Calico series from Two Lines Press since its inception. The series presents vanguard works of translated literature in vibrant, strikingly designed editions. Each year, they publish two new titles in the Calico series, and each is as good, if not better than the last. Ranging from speculative Chinese fiction to Arabic poetry, Swahili fiction, and more, each book in the series is built around a theme and captures a thrilling and unique moment in international literature. “The Caribbean echoes like a lost world,” writes Mireille Jean-Gilles in Eric Fishman’s translation as she and the other women writers in Elektrik write poignantly about their identity and the Caribbean—the memories, pleasures, traumas, and “lightning visions” of their home. I was especially enamored with the visceral poetry of Haitian writer Marie-Célie Agnant included in the collection, translated in all of its strength and haunting beauty by Danielle Legros Georges.

And don’t miss So Many People, Mariana by Maria Judite de Carvalho, translated by Margaret Jull Costa.

This post was originally published on Book Riot.

Hot Summer 2023 New Releases by Women in Translation 

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August is Women in Translation Month! Less than 31% of books published in English translation are written by women, according to numbers pulled from the translation database started by Three Percent and Open Letter and now hosted by Publishers Weekly. Founded by literary blogger Meytal Radzinski in 2014 and now in its ninth year, Women in Translation Month was started to promote women writers from around the world and combat this dreadfully low statistic. As summer rolls around each year, I go through catalogs and read a stack of galleys and pick out some of the titles I’m most excited about published in June, July, and August.

It’s a joy to see Women in Translation Month get bigger each year, with bookstore displays, literary events, excitement on social media, special sales, and all of the books published around this time of year, often by small independent publishers who make it a priority to include and increase the amount of books they publish by women in translation. This year’s list is a thrilling mixture, including English-language debuts, powerhouse novels from returning favorites like Guadalupe Nettel and Yu Miri and translators Rosalind Harvey and Morgan Giles, graphic novels, short story collections, and so much more. I encourage you to check out these hot summer 2023 new releases by women in translation!

Dogs of Summer by Andrea Abreu, translated by Julia Sanches

I love novels of summer. The kind that captures the sticky heat and restlessness that seeps into everything. Life is just a little more intense in the summer. The emotions are a little closer to the surface. It’s as if someone forgot to turn the volume down, even though the pace of the world has slowed. Set in a working-class neighborhood on the Canary Islands, near the volcano of northern Tenerife, Dogs of Summer is a perfect summer novel that follows two best friends as they come of age and their friendship begins to simmer with desire and violence. The writing is a crave-inducing mix of bachata lyrics, Canary dialect, and the language of girlhood—gritty, wild, poetic—an exquisite feat by debut author Andrea Abreu and renowned translator Julia Sanches.

The End of August by Yu Miri, translated by Morgan Giles

Like so many others, I was enamored with the elusive and devastating Tokyo Ueno Station, Yu Miri’s English-language debut brought into haunting prose by translator Morgan Giles which went on to win the National Book Award. To English-language readers, it will appear as if The End of August is a follow up, but it was actually published in Japan in 2004, years before the Japanese release of Tokyo Ueno Station. Nonetheless, both books have similar touchstones, including the Olympics, ghosts, and scathing critiques of imperialist systems. The End of August is epic in its scale, though: a masterful and sweeping novel of the Zainichi Korean experience that reckons with a history of violence and the people caught in its midst.

Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories by Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses

Agustina Bazterrica is an Argentinian novelist and short story writer, known for her compelling and provocative novel Tender Is the Flesh, which won the prestigious Premio Clarin Novela and many admirers in a thrilling English translation also by Sarah Moses. While not for the faint of heart, these subversive stories of misogyny, power, and violence are endlessly strange and surprising, dark and disturbing, and will be perfect for fans of Mariana Enríquez and Ha Seong-Nan.

Still Born by Guadalupe Nettel, translated by Rosalind Harvey

If you’ve been dying for more after reading the sharp and stunning After the Winter by Guadalupe Nettel and translated by acclaimed translator Rosalind Harvey, then you’re in luck. In Still Born, Nettel chronicles the lives of two young women in their 30s as they make the decision to have children. The two friends come to very different conclusions, altering the trajectory of their lives and friendship but they ultimately stay close. Nettel writes intimately of the women’s lives—their choices, their concerns, and ultimately their community—in prose that is compelling and complex, bracingly honest and yet heartrending in another thoughtful translation by Harvey.

Offshore Lightning by Saito Nazuna, translated by Alexa Frank

Drawn & Quarterly has the most fantastic offerings of literature in translation, so I was thrilled to hear about this new collection by Saito Nazuna. Offshore Lightning collects pieces from her decades-long career, both from the height of her career in the 1990s and her return to drawing in the 2010s, and introduces her work to a new audience with the inclusion of an essay by scholar Mitsuhiro Asakawa. Her pieces swirl around themes of family, memory, and aging in postwar Japan. They are grounded in reality and the every day, profound in their examination of the ordinary. Saito believed that “even supporting characters have their own lives” and that thread runs through this collection. I’m grateful to translator Alexa Frank and the publisher for bringing this book and their other offerings by women in translation like Talk to My Back by Yamada Murasaki and The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud by Kuniko Tsurita, both translated by Ryan Holmberg, to readers.

The Details by Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson

“After a few days of the virus in my body I come down with a fever, which is followed by an urge to return to a particular novel.” The Details was first described to me as a novel perfect for fans of Rachel Cusk, Lucia Berlin, and Annie Ernaux—nothing could make me move faster to get my hands on a copy. The novel won the August Prize for Best Fiction and the Aftonbladet Literary Prize in Sweden and is Ia Genberg’s first book to be translated into English. It follows an unnamed narrator bedridden with an ever-increasing fever, as she thinks about people from her past who made a profound impact on her life but are no longer in it. These four portraits are all about the details, exquisitely told. An intoxicating and imaginative novel of memory and humanity.

A Little Luck by Claudia Piñeiro, translated by Frances Riddle

Claudia Piñeiro is a critically acclaimed and bestselling crime writer in her native Argentina with a growing following internationally. Blending crime fiction with incisive political commentary and poignant personal narrative, she is the third most translated Argentinean author, after Borges and Cortázar. Notably, she was also an active figure in the legalization of abortion in Argentina, among other campaigns like the #NiUnaMenos movement against femicide. Her last novel Elena Knows was a finalist for the 2022 International Booker Prize. A Little Luck follows Mary Lohan as she travels to Buenos Aires, but two decades earlier she lived in Buenos Aires as María Elena. The details of her life and reinvention are revealed with all of the skill of a great crime writer. This is a story of secrets and loss, thoughtfully structured and thrillingly executed by acclaimed translator Frances Riddle.

To the Forest by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, translated by Rhonda Mullins

“I find a splinter under my skin. The memory of a forest.” In To the Forest, screenwriter, director, and novelist, Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette writes semi-autobiographically about the return of two families to an ancient country house at the beginning of the pandemic. It feels almost as if time and nature have taken over the home and their new lives. The novel is one of history and memory, of family and nature. Award-winning translator Rhonda Mullins brings all of the wild earthiness of the language to the page, fragmentary and poetic, a mixture of darkness and light. 

This post was originally published on Book Riot.