August Staff Picks: Women in Translation
We’re highlighting women in translation for our August staff picks in celebration of Women in Translation Month. To see more of each staff member’s staff picks click their name! Find them all here.
Chirri & Chirra, Under the Sea by Kaya Doi
Translated from the Japanese by David Boyd
Kaya Doi's Chirri & Chirra series is a delightful collection of picture books that follow two girls as they go on delightful, whimsical adventures in nature. Kaya Doi's illustrative work is vibrant and detailed, making clear her love for the natural world, & David Boyd and Yuki Kaneko's translations lay out a simple but charming narrative that follows Chirri and Chirra through their expeditions around their town, in thickets of tall grass, through deep banks of snow, and underwater. These books inspire the same feelings that I've experienced on the few rare opportunities I've been able to go on a walk through the woods: wonder, joy, contentment. –Abby
The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington
Translated from the French by Katherine Talbot
Lenora Carrington was a surrealist artist and writer--her own self-portrait graces the cover of this odd little collection of fables and fiction. Her stories are a fever dream full of horses, hair, and corpses. Deeply bizarre, whimsical, macabre, and darkly funny--expect nothing less from a woman who served her guests hair omelettes at a dinner party, using locks that she had lopped off their sleeping heads just the night before. –Anthony
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein
This series has become a modern classic for a reason! If you’ve seen it everywhere but haven’t gotten around to it yet, I strongly recommend it. Unforgettable characters, completely absorbing, incisive commentary on politics and class in 20th century Italy. If you’ve read the series, refresh your memory of how masterful Ferrante’s skill with language and storytelling is and get ready because she has a new book coming out Sept 4! Eee! –Colleen
Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah
Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith
I will remember this book for two reasons: one, I read it while in quarantine as a buddy-read with Nika, another bookseller, and two, the last chapter is my literal biggest fear.
This surrealist novel disorients and dazzles. It shows the slipperiness of reality and convinces us how what we experience may just be the dreamscape of an entity we can only hope is benevolent. –Danni
There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya
Translated from the Russian by Keith Gessen & Anna Summers
You should buy this book for the title alone but if that's enough, know this: Lyudmila Petrushevskaya is one of the best writers in the world. Period. Full stop. This collection of bleak and disturbing 'fairy tales' will convince you. –Eddie
The Odyssey by Homer
Translated from the Ancient Greek by Emily Wilson
When I was in college, I once drove back to college in Ohio by myself, a solid ten hours, with only The Odyssey on cassette to keep me company. It was, I think, 16 cassettes, which is a lot. Nevertheless, I loved it. I'm quite sure that I would have loved it even more if I'd been listening to Emily Wilson's translation of Homer's epic poem--the first English translation by a woman. Right now, the idea of a 10 hour drive by myself, with only Emily and Homer keeping me company sounds like a strange version of heaven. –Emma
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder
An Orwellian tale, arguably better than Orwell's own books!
Don't shoot the messenger! Set on an unnamed island, objects are erased from existence. Residents literally can not physically see or mentally visualize these items ever again. One day birds disappear. The next day could be anything: plants, toys, a type of food. Anyone who dares to keep disappeared items risks their life as well as their loved ones. Those who actually remember them are in bigger danger. The Memory Police, a Nazi-like group, enforces the removal of the items. When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards.
Favorite read of 2020 by far! I can't express how engrossing this book is. You truly have to read it yourself! It's translated from Japanese beautifully. I'm so grateful Yōko Ogawa's books are being translated because she is a true gem. I'd reccomend her full collection (especially if you're into analyzing the psychology of women's roles in society). Discover the magic of Yōko Ogawa! –Jacque
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith
Kang's novel is a grotesque wonderland, chronicling one woman's sudden decision to cut meat from her diet and become a vegetarian. This change quickly takes over her entire life, putting strain on her relationships with family members, causing extreme physical change, and a psychological "haunting." Deborah Smith's translation is superb, creating intense visceral descriptions which perfectly emphasize Kang's disturbing themes. –Lindsay
Include Me Out by María Sonia Cristoff
Translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver
A wonderful novel about silence, escape, and destruction. Mara works as a security guard in a rural Argentine museum in hopes of living by her rules of silence, which she wrote while working as a simultaneous interpreter. An assignment to assist a taxidermist with his work compromises her silence, pushing Mara to go to wild lengths to commit to her rules, and revealing glimpses into what led her to leave a cosmopolitan job and city. Mara's single-minded focus on her silence could lend itself to unchecked introspection, but this novel is fast-paced, and Mara's impact on her new community is messy and fascinating. –Maritza
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
Translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori
Convenience Store Woman follows Keiko, a 36 year old who has worked at the same convenience store in Tokyo for 18 years. Keiko struggles to conform to the way her family and society wants her to be when, ultimately, she just wants to follow her passion of working at this convenience store. She's totally punk rock. I loved this book and the ultimate message of following what you love regardless of society's expectations. –Mike FS
The Book of Anna by Carmen Boullosa
Translated from the Spanish by Samantha Schnee
Boullosa has done it again. Her brain blows my mind. This time she writes Anna Karenina's lost book that is briefly mentioned by Tolstoy in Anna Karenina. It is truly beautiful and an incredible book by an amazing author from Mexico City that now resides nearby in Brooklyn. Translated by the talented Samantha Schnee and put out by indie press Coffee House out of Minneapolis. You can't lose. –Nick
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli
Translated from the Arabic by Elisabeth Jacquette
This book was one of my most anticipated for the summer, and months later I still can’t get it out of my head. Minor Detail is an astonishing work of moral and political insight navigating memory, violence, and the legacies of Palestinian dispossession and occupation. Precise, restrained, and yet alarming, Adania Shibli’s language makes this novel, to borrow from and bend Garth Greenwell’s phraseology, one hundred percent political and one hundred percent high art. –Nika
The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán
Translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes
A strange, provocative exploration of grief and death, memory and inheritance, language and agency, and how all these things intersect with place, specifically: post-Pinochet regime Chile. Come for the story, for the voice, for the unforgettable characters. Stay for the sentences, the sentences, the sentences (the parentheticals are *chefs kiss*). Zerán’s writing is somehow both cerebral and deeply sensorial, it’s sensual and surreal, haunting and hallucinatory. This is one of those uniquely (and deliciously!) harrowing books that, upon completion, makes you say: now what do I do with myself? What do I do with this small, wretched life of mine? –Serena
We choose new staff picks every month, so stay tuned for regular updates.
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