Translated from German by Tess LewisPublished by And Other Stories, 2023, 495 pages. Original version published in 2020. East Germany, November 1989. The Berlin Wall has fallen. Carl Bischoff, a student, is heading home, summoned by a telegram from his parents saying, “we need help please do come immediately your parents”. When Carl gets home, …
Category: Books in translation
The Eighth Life (for Brilka): Nino Haratischvili
Translated from German by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin.Published by Scribe, 2019, 934 pages. Original version published in 2014. “And I’m afraid of these stories. These stories that constantly run in parallel, chaotically; that appear in the foreground, conceal themselves, interrupt one another. Because they connect and break through each other, they betray and mislead, …
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The Fury and Cries of Women: Angèle Rawiri
Translated from French by Sara HanaburghPublished by University of Virginia Press, 2014, 223 pages. Original version published in 1989. This book by Angèle Rawiri, considered the first novelist from Gabon, is about the position of women in a society that has modernized without ridding itself of traditional roles. Emilienne, a woman in a fictional African …
The Remains: Margo Glantz
Translated from Spanish by Ellen JonesPublished by Charco Press, 2023, 134 pages. Original version published in 2002. “Life is an absurd wound”(from La Última Curda by Cátulo Castillo and Aníbal Triolo) Nora García, a cellist, drives to a village in Mexico for the funeral of her ex-husband Juan, a renowned composer and pianist. As she …
Perestroika—An Eye for an Eye, A Tooth for a Tooth: João Cerqueira
Translated from Portuguese by Garry Craig PowellPublished by 8th House Publishing, 2024, 394 pages. Original version published in 2024. This is the portrait of a dictatorship and its aftermath, told through the lives of ordinary people as well as those in power. Set in a fictional Eastern European country called Slavia, the first part of …
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Equator: Miguel Sousa Tavares
Translated from Portuguese by Peter BushPublished by Bloomsbury Press, 2008, 396 pages. Original version published in 2003. It is a rainy morning in December 1905, and Luís Bernardo Valença is on a train from Lisbon to Vila Viçosa: he has been summoned by the King of Portugal. He has no idea why the King wants …
A Musical Offering: Luis Sagasti
Translated from Spanish by Fionn PetchPublished by Charco Press, 2020, 111 pages. Original version published in 2017. “But have we not heard this in countless songs that begin all over again after a refrain? Or when the volume gradually fades, giving the impression that the band is disappearing into the distance and the song is …
A Shining: Jon Fosse
Translated from Norwegian by Damion SearlsPublished by Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2023, 46 pages. Original version published in 2023. A man drives without a destination, out of boredom. He continues driving until the road takes him into a forest, and his car gets stuck on the forest road. He gets out of the car and instead of …
The Hatter’s Ghosts: Georges Simenon
Translated from French by Howard CurtisPublished by Penguin, 2022, 196 pages. First translated into English in 1960. Original version published in 1949. “It was the third of December and still raining. ... In fact, for the last twenty days, it had been raining almost without interruption.” It started raining in the small French town of …
The Last Brother: Nathacha Appanah
Translated from French by Geoffrey StrachanPublished by Maclehose Press, 2010, 201 pages. Original version published in 2007. This is a story narrated by Raj, an old man looking back at a crucial period in his childhood, a time that changed his life forever. Raj grows up in Mapou, a village in the north of Mauritius, …
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