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.

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.