Happy August, everybody! Somehow it’s August of 2021, which is a fact I don’t want to dwell on too much because HOW, but the good news is that it means we’ve circled back once more to Women in Translation Month! While books in translation still don’t comprise a huge chunk of my reading, I fully credit WIT Month and, more broadly, its inventor Meytal of Bibliobio, for making translated books feel less scary to me. I used to require a lot of persuasion before I’d try a translated book, and now I’m actively allured by them, especially when the authors are from the Global South. I even have a favorite translator: Megan McDowell, who’s not just a terrific translator but also tends to choose weird, creepy, haunting projects that very much jibe with my own personal reading aesthetic.
All to say, I wanted to mark the occasion (instead of forgetting to post about it like I usually do) with a rundown of a couple of my favorites among the translated books by women that I’ve read in the last year.
Our Riches, Kaouther Adimi, trans. Chris Andrews
French Algerian author Kaouther Adimi tells the story of the famous Algerian bookshop and publisher, Les Vraies Richesses, and its owner, Edmond Charlot. Half the book is set in Algeria’s colonial and independence eras, in diary entries and third-person narration of Charlot’s experiences in the 1930s and 1940s. The other half is set in the present day, a time when Les Vraies Richesses has been sold to be a beignet restaurant, and a young man has come to the village to clear the old bookstore out. While my knowledge of Algerian history is patchy, and my tolerance for books about books has gone way down over the last decade, I genuinely loved Our Riches. The author’s love and admiration for Charlot, for literary culture, and for Algeria in all its incarnations shines through every page.
Earthlings, Sayaka Murata, trans. Ginny Tapley Takemori
If you came out of Convenience Store Woman (Murata’s previous novel) whispering “what the fuck” quietly to yourself, you are fully not prepared for the what-the-fuck-ness that awaits you in Earthlings. It’s about a young woman who — along with her beloved cousin — believes that she is an alien, a fact that would explain her deep disconnection from those around her. When she and her cousin sleep together, it causes a family scandal, and they’re separated. Years later, Natsuki is in a marriage of convenience. She and her husband flee to the family home in Akashina, where they’re reunited with Natsuki’s cousin Yuu. It’s…. shit gets weird. Is what I’ll say. Sayaka Murata is not afraid to write the absolute weirdest, darkest shit, and I respect her for that.
cw for child sexual abuse and a whole bunch of violent murder
Eartheater, Dolores Reyes, trans. Julia Sanchez
Speaking of violent murder, Eartheater follows a young woman in the slums of Argentina who discovers, after her mother dies, that she can eat earth and gain visions of the lost and disappeared. Her newfound talent unnerves many of the people around her, and she’s left with just her beloved brother, Walter, for company and guardianship. Gradually she gains a better understanding of what she can do, and her neighbors begin to come to her with dirt for her to eat to find their missing loved ones. The narrator even teams up with a gentle local cop to solve crimes! But there’s an emotional cost to constantly witnessing the violence that befell the people around her.
This is another one I really loved. A thing that I’ve grown to love in translated literature is how often it denies the necessity of explaining what the fuck is happening. It just is what it is! This woman can eat dirt and get visions of what happened to the dead! No follow-up questions!
What translated literature have y’all been enjoying lately? What are you planning to read this August?