In category: Review

Translated from German by Abigail Wender (The Bureau of Past Management) and Katy Derbyshire (Madgermanes), V&Q Books, 2021 The autumn V&Q offering includes two excellent books by women, one that deals with inherited guilt from the Nazi era and the other that explores the fate of Mozambican workers who emigrated to Germany in the late […]

Translated from Danish by Jennifer Russell (Lolli Editions, 2021) The Dolls is a collection of four stories, all populated with estranged or exiled characters navigating surreal situations. Each story invites us into an uncomfortable world and gives few clues about how to navigate it: things change inexplicably, personal philosophies are spat out like slogans, and […]

Translated from Swedish by Deborah Bragan-Turner (MacLehose Press, 2021) Buckle up and brace yourself, because The Antarctica of Love is an excellent book, but a devastating one. It is narrated by Inni, a woman who has been savagely murdered, and she is navigating the afterlife armed with a bagful of regrets, grudges and dark devotions […]

Les Fugitives, 2021 No. 91/92: notes on a Parisian commute is the first book Les Fugitives have released that wasn’t originally written in French. It is, though, steeped in both the language and the context: Lauren Elkin explores Paris in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks from her seat on a commuter bus, […]

August has come and gone, and with it another Women in Translation month. Instigated by Meytal Radzinski in 2014 to encourage more people to read women’s writing in translation, Women in Translation month has grown in both reach and momentum each year (and now has a brand new website!) I always enjoy looking through the […]

Translated from Spanish (Argentina) by Frances Riddle (Charco Press, 2021) This is the Charco book I was most looking forward to this year (and, if you know my love of Charco Press, you’ll know this is no idle hyperbole). Elena Knows is Charco’s first publication by Argentinian crime writer Claudia Piñeiro, and follows a single […]

Translated from French by Mark Hutchinson (Les Fugitives, 2021) After publishing the uniquely provocative exploration of unconventional sexuality The Governesses in 2019, Les Fugitives return with another collaboration between Anne Serre and Mark Hutchinson: The Fool and Other Moral Tales. The Fool in question is from a tarot pack, and this was my stumbling block: […]

Translated from Bengali by Nandana Dev Sen (Archipelago Books, 2021) Acrobat is a collection by Bengali poet Nabaneeta Dev Sen, some translated by the poet herself before her death, but mostly translated into English by her daughter Nandana Dev Sen as a poignant and passionate exchange between mother and daughter. As a collection, the poems […]

Europa Editions, 2021 First of all, subscribers might have noticed that the blog posts have been coming less frequently lately, and I’m sorry for this. As long-term readers will know from my open letter last year, I had hoped to carry on as normal during the pandemic, despite the added time restrictions that came with […]

Translated from Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd (Picador Books, 2021) Mieko Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs (also translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd and released in the UK by Picador Books) was one of my favourite releases of 2020; prior to that I had loved the offbeat humour of her novella Ms Ice […]