Translated from Japanese by Jay Rubin and Philip GabrielPublished by Vintage Prepare to walk into Haruki Murakami’s strange world. You can slip through the thin barrier between this world and an alternate one simply by taking an emergency exit off a highway or ghost-writing a particular book. Things are just a bit off in this …
Category: Books in translation
Flights: Olga Tokarczuk
Translated from Polish by Jennifer CroftPublished by Fitzcarraldo Editions “Clearly I did not inherit whatever gene it is that makes it so that when you linger in a place you start to put down roots. I’ve tried, a number of times but my roots have always been shallow; the littlest breeze could always blow me …
Lifting the Veil: Selected Writings of Ismat Chugtai
Selected and translated by M. Asaduddin with additional translations by Ralph RussellPublished by Penguin “In my stories, I’ve put down everything with objectivity. Now, if people find them obscene, let them go to hell. It’s my belief that experiences can never be obscene if they are based on authentic realities of life.”[1] Ismat Chugtai is …
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Black Water Lilies: Michel Bussi
Translated from French by Shaun WhitesidePublished by W&N Giverny: a beautiful, picturesque village in France, known for its most famous resident, the impressionist painter Claude Monet, who is famous for his paintings of water lilies. Artists and tourists flock to the village to see the beautiful gardens that Monet painted. But death appears in even …
Tyll: Daniel Kehlmann
Translated from German by Ross BenjaminPublished by riverrun The jester or trickster is a ubiquitous figure, popping up in mythologies, literature, street theatre, and in playing cards and tarot. He (it’s almost always a man) is an entertainer, mentally and physically agile, and able to speak truth to power. He lives by his wits and …
Please Look After Mom: Kyong-Sook Shin
Review by Susanne Karine GjønnesTranslated from Korean by Chi-young KimPublished by W&N South Korea has gone through an unprecedented journey from a developing country to one of the world's largest economies in only a few decades. This transformation has led to generations growing up and living completely different realities and lives. Please Look After Mom …
The Desert and the Drum: Mbarek Ould Beyrouk
Translated from French by Rachel McGill “There was no moon, no stars. The light has been drained away, the sky left mute. I could distinguish neither colours nor shapes. Dunes and trees had been engulfed by the universe, sucked into its sidereal blackness. … I welcomed the obscurity; a gift from nature. It would make …
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Dissipatio H.G.—The Vanishing: Guido Morselli
Translated from Italian by Frederika Randall What would happen to the planet if the entire human race was to disappear? In this novella, Guido Morselli imagines a world empty of people. The book is narrated by the one man who seems to have been spared. The unnamed narrator lives near a mountain village in an …
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The Baltimore Boys: Joël Dicker
Translated from French by Alison Anderson Marcus Goldman is a successful writer who has moved to Florida to write his next book. But he is haunted by his past: his point of reference is a “tragedy”, and he measures time from the event. Ever since he can remember, Marcus has looked up to the Baltimore …
The Shape of the Ruins: Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Translated from Spanish by Anne McLean "There are truths that don’t happen in those places, truths that nobody writes down because they’re invisible. There are millions of things that happen in special places… they are places that are not within the reach of historians or journalists. They are not invented places… they are not fictions, …
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