There's a Book for That: Women in Translation Month
Did you know that August is Women in Translation Month (#WITMonth)? Launched in 2014 by book blogger Meytal Radzinski, Women in Translation Month focuses on women’s writing from across the globe and and is featured at bookstores, libraries on in online literary spaces. Penguin Random House imprints, as well as its clients, publish some of the most lauded translated fiction by women in the world. Here is a vibrant sampling:
A haunting, unforgettable collection of tales by Samanta Schweblin, winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Translated Literature and three-time Booker Prize finalist. The characters of Good and Evil find themselves at a point of no return, dazzled by the glare of impending tragedy. Vulnerable and profoundly human, they become trapped in the instant in which the uncanny has lurched into their lives. Some are transformed, some are isolated, others waver between guilt or tenderness. All of them are driven by uncertainty.
A spellbinding and heartwarming Japanese bestseller about a young woman who inherits a stationery store from her late grandmother and becomes the trusted scribe of the town. Set to the rhythm of the four seasons and the Japanese rituals and festivities that come with them, Tsubaki Stationery Store is a charming story about the importance of community and the reconciliatory power of the written word.
From one of the boldest and most captivating voices in world literature, a sensual and provocative coming-of-age novel about a young Arab woman on a quest for sexual and political freedom. “Leila Slimani is one of our best writers, a master stylist and an exquisite storyteller. I read anything she writes.” —Rabih Alameddine, National Book Award–winning author of The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)
SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
In a small, sleepy town, a mediocre witch, in a mediocre marriage, tries to pass on her gifts to her twin daughters, who, it becomes immediately apparent, have skills far beyond her own. Equal parts dreamlike and disquieting, The Witch tells a tale as old as time, with a dark twist: Without looking back, children fly the nest, laying bare the tenuous threads of family that have long threatened to snap.
Han Kang’s most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter in Korean history. Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully brings to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable pain—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.
From Mieko Kawakami, award-winning author of Breasts and Eggs, comes a bold novel of sacrifice and the tumultuous bonds of sisterhood, set in the gritty Tokyo of the 1990s: A story of enduring friendship and deep betrayal, Sisters in Yellow is a masterpiece of teenage dreams and adult cruelties that confirms Mieko Kawakami as one of the great writers of her generation.
“I have a feeling I won’t forget Hana, perpetually running up life’s down escalator, willing to try anything to scrape together a little happiness.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
In the mode of Flights, a novel about the rich stories of small places, from the Nobel Prize-winning author. Another brilliant “constellation novel” in the mode of her Booker-winning Flights, House of Day, House of Night interweaves narrative, musings, history, and mythology, reminding us that the story of any place, no matter how humble, is fascinating and boundless, and awaits any of us with the imagination to seek it.
Three generations of German Jewish family undergo the tumult, upheaval, and brutality of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history in this panoramic and skillfully nuanced family drama, rich with gossip and incident, capturing a Germany now lost to time. Woefully underrated when it first appeared in 1951, and only recently rediscovered in Germany, Effingers is a meditation on identity and nationality that establishes Tergit as one of the most significant writers of the twentieth century.
Weaving personal stories with reportage, interviews, myths, hauntology, personal photographs, and more, Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave is memoir channeled through Enriquez’s passion for cemeteries, revealing as much about her own life and unique sensibility as the graveyards she tours. Fascinating, spooky, and unlike anything else, Enriquez’s first work of nonfiction, translated by the award-winning Megan McDowell, is as original and startling as the fiction for which she’s become so beloved and admired.
The Kokoro Clinic for the Soul reopens in this delightful follow-up to the award-winning, bestselling Japanese novel We’ll Prescribe You a Cat. As characters from one chapter appear as side characters in the next, we follow a young woman who cannot help pushing away the man who loves her, a recently widowed grandfather whose grandson refuses to leave his room, the family of a young woman who struggle to understand each other, and an anxious man who works at a cat shelter seeking to show how the most difficult cats can be the most rewarding. This moving, magical novel of interconnected tales proves the strength in the unfathomable bond between cats and people.
WINNER OF THE SWEDISH BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD
When the Cranes Fly South is a profoundly moving debut novel that follows an elderly man’s attempts to mend his relationship with his son before it’s too late: an emotional story of love, friendship, fatherhood, dogs, and atonement that is already an international sensation.
Now a major motion picture (The Sheep Detectives with Hugh Jackman, Nicholas Galitzine, and Emma Thompson), this funny and surprising mystery stars a new breed of detectives you’ve got to read to baaaaa-lieve. With wit and heart, this clever international bestseller is a mystery to chew on—and savor.
The first short story collection by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author: Rome—metropolis and monument, suspended between past and future, multi-faceted and metaphysical—is the protagonist, not the setting, of these nine splendid stories. Written in Jhumpa Lahiri’s adopted language of Italian and seamlessly translated by the author and by Knopf editor Todd Portnowitz the stories are steeped in the moods of Italian master Alberto Moravia and guided, in the concluding tale, by the ineluctable ghost of Dante Alighieri, whose words lead the protagonist toward a new way of life.
WINNER OF THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATED LITERATURE
A surreal, devastating story of a homeless ghost who haunts one of Tokyo’s busiest train stations.
Kazu is dead. Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Japanese Emperor, his life is tied by a series of coincidences to the Imperial family and has been shaped at every turn by modern Japanese history. But his life story is also marked by bad luck, and now, in death, he is unable to rest, doomed to haunt the park near Ueno Station in Tokyo.
A book that “speak[s] volumes about our need for connection—human, feline or otherwise” (The San Francisco Chronicle), The Travelling Cat Chronicles is a life-affirming anthem to kindness and self-sacrifice that shows how the smallest things can provide the greatest joy. With his crooked tail—a sign of good fortune—and adventurous spirit, Nana is the perfect companion for the man who took him in as a stray. And as they travel in a silver van across Japan, with its ever-changing scenery and seasons, they will learn the true meaning of courage and gratitude, of loyalty and love.
For more on these titles visit the collection Women in Translation Month
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