8 Under-The-Radar Reads for Women in Translation Month
August is Women In Translation Month and the perfect chance to expand our literary horizons!
Something I’ve tried to get better at over the last few years is the diversity of the books on my shelves and the literature I consume. It’s easy to stick to books with narratives we can easily identify with, but it’s when we open the doors to broader perspectives that we gain insights into how valuable and thought-changing reading and literature can be.
There’s plenty of incredible books to choose from, but as the month draws to a close, I wanted to highlight a few lesser-known reads well worth getting on your radar to round out the month - and hopefully keep translated works on our shelves all year round.
Fish Soup, by Margarita García Robayo. Translated from the Spanish by Charlottle Coomb
Publisher: Charco Press
A unique collection comprising two novellas - Waiting for a Hurricane and Sexual Education - and a collection of short stories, Worse Things, which won the prestigious Casa de las Américas Prize. Set on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, Waiting for a Hurricane follows a girl obsessed with escaping her life and country. Emotionally detached and disillusioned with what her future holds, she takes drastic steps in her attempts to leave, oblivious to the damage she is causing both to herself and those around her. Sexual Education follows a student’s attempts to challenge the strict doctrine of abstinence taught at her school with the very different moral norms from her social circles. Worse Things provides snapshots of lives in turmoil, frayed relationships, dreams of escape, family taboos, and society’s rejection. García Robayo’s signature writing style blends beauty with an undercurrent of dark humour and cynicism. Fish Soup is a brilliant selection of her work compiled together for readers to dive into.
On Lighthouses, by Jazmina Barrera. Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
Publisher: Two Lines Press
Far from home, in the confines of a dim New York apartment where the oppressive skyscrapers further isolate her, Barrera offers a tour of her lighthouses: structures whose message is “first and foremost, that human beings are here.” On Lighthouses examines lighthouses from the Spanish to Oregon coasts and explores literary representations within Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allan Poe, Ingmar Bergman, and others. Equal parts memoir and literary history, On Lighthouses takes readers on a journey from “hopeless isolation to a meaningful one”, landing safely at a place of light. The perfect companion for lockdown days.
Packaged Lives: 10 Stories and a Novella, by Haifa Zangana. Translated from the Arabic by Wen-chin Ouyang
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
The ten subtle stories in Packaged Lives show Zangana at her best as a fiction writer. Iraqis living in exile, caught between two worlds, come to life through her narratives of men and women forced to wait for news of home while unable to adjust to life in Britain. Each story attempts to explore the question “What is home?” as the protagonists struggle to untangle themselves from the relationships and narratives of their upbringings and pasts. Zangana uses the channel of art, poetry and nature to help provide escapism for her characters and expertly weaves insights into the complex and affirming process of building ideas of ‘home’ somewhere new.
Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima. Translated from the Japanese by Geraldine Harcourt
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Territory of Light was first published in twelve instalments in the Japanese literary monthly, Gunzo in the 1970s. Collected together for the first time, the story follows a young woman whose husband has left her as she attempts to start a new life with her young daughter in Tokyo. Her new apartment is consumed with light streaming in through expansive windows. The brightness of her unique living situation coupled with the youthful naivety of her daughter provides a startling backdrop to our narrator’s own dark thoughts as she continues to question who she is and what she will become—a beautifully written exploration of abandonment, desire and transformation.
Aviaries, by Zuzana Brabcová. Translated from the Czech by Tereza Novická
Publisher: Twisted Spoon Press
Aviaries is a novella composed of random diary entries, vignettes, dreams, observations, interior monologues, meditations, and excerpts of poetry and prose. These elements meld to create a miscellany of the life of a woman navigating a city indifferent to those living on the margins. Through interactions with other residents of Prague’s Smíchov district, characters who might be figments of her imagination, and the other women in her life - infirm mother, artsy sister, absent daughter - the narrative reaches a point where fantasy and reality are seamlessly merged. Dreamlike and poetic, this was Brabcová’s final book before her unexpected death.
Here is a Body, by Basma Abdel Aziz. Translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright
Publisher: Hoopoe Fiction
Mysterious men are rounding up street children and enrolling them in a so-called “rehabilitation program,” designed to indoctrinate them for the military-backed regime’s imminent crackdown on its opponents. Across town, thousands of protesters encamp in a city square demanding the return of the recently deposed president. In Here is a Body, Abdel Aziz illustrates the universal struggle between resisting and succumbing to an oppressive regime. This is a courageous depiction of the state cooptation of human bodies, the dehumanisation of marginalised groups, and religious rhetoric to manipulate a narrative.
The Snow Sleeper, by Marlene van Niekerk. Translated from the Afrikaans by Marius Swart
Publisher: Human & Rosseau
The Snow Sleeper contains four magically interwoven tales of friendship; each story has a solid attachment to South Africa and Denmark, building on the personal knowledge and narrative of van Niekerk’s mixed sense of locality in the world. The stories - The Swan Whisperer, The Percussionist, The Friend, and the titular story - each build on a narrator's narrow vision, as it is gradually broadened and transformed into illuminated self-knowledge. Van Niekerk expertly plays with language, and readers will have no doubt that they are slipping through the terrain between languages. The Snow Sleeper is a unique meditation on the intriguing nature of art, life and what it means to be human.
Human Acts, by Han Kang. Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith
Publisher: Portobello Books
A hauntingly tragic and evocative novel that tracks a sequence of interconnected lives as they encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of events that changed a country. Human Acts is a fictionalised account of a student uprising, and subsequent massacre, in Gwangju, South Korea, in 1980. Kang creates an incredible cast of characters through whom we live the events before, during and after the uprising. From Dong-ho's best friend who meets his fateful end; to an editor struggling against censorship, to a prisoner and a factory worker, each suffering from traumatic memories and Dong-ho's grief-stricken mother. Through their collective heartbreak and hope, Human Acts is the tale of a brutalised people searching for their voice. Kang’s writing is, as ever, poetic and powerful. A controversial book when it was first released, Human Acts needs to be experienced.
Elaine Mead is a freelance writer and book reviewer, currently residing in Hobart, Tasmania. She is passionate about the ways we can use literature to learn from our experiences to become more authentic versions of ourselves and obsessed with showing you photos of her Dachshund puppy. You can find her online under www.wordswithelaine.com.
