Women in Translation Month 2022

Women in Translation Month 

To celebrate, here's a list of some of my favorite books by women translated into English from various languages. I will link to reviews where I can; here is the shopping list for this post on Bookshop.org. I receive a small commission on sales.

Nathacha Appanah writes in French and has had two books translated that I've loved, The Last Brother and Waiting for Tomorrow. Her books are searing and moving and challenging.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Therese Bohman writes in Swedish and her novels The Other Woman and Drowned are favorites of mine. The Other Woman is a low-key portrayal of a woman having an affair with a married man, and Drowned in a white-hot suspense read about another, less happy, love affair.

Sara Mesa's Four by Four is a bizarre and suspenseful story of shenanigans at a private school in Spain. (Bias alert: the translator, Katie Whittemore, was a classmate of mine at a Bread Loaf translator's workshop I attended.)

Norah Lange's Notes from Childhood is an interesting and compelling coming of age story set in Argentina. She wrote in Spanish.

Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk won me over with Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of Dead, an unusual crime novel. She writes in Polish and I can't wait to read more of her work.

Jenny Rogneby writes great crime novels in Swedish. I recommend By Any Means Necessary, starring her detective Leona Lindberg.

Natuso Kirino wrote the thrilling Out, a crime novel set in Japan that will keep you turning pages all day and all night. She writes in Japanese.

I loved Tamar Yellin's masterful Genizah at the House of Shepher, an Israeli novel about  a woman, a book and a mystery. She writes in Hebrew.

I wrote another post on Women in Translation month in 2015 with a completely different slate of authors; you can see that post here.