It’s August, which means that it’s Women in Translation Month.
I have to admit, before joining Substack, I had no idea what this month was, or even that it existed! After some research, I discovered that the term was coined in 2014 by blogger Meytal Radzinski. She noticed that women writing in foreign languages and available in translation to English-speaking readers received very little attention online, and started WITMonth to change this. Oh, to have such a positive impact on the literary world!
Once I discovered WITMonth, I got to digging through my Goodreads history to find my favorite translated books written by women. I was delighted to find that many of my favorite books fell into this category!
However, a lot of these books, like I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, are all over social media. Yes, these books are fantastic. Yes, I think you absolutely should read them. But I feel like the whole point of this month is to give more visibility to lesser-known female authors, so I’ve chosen accordingly. 4 books I’ve read, 4 books on my TBR, 8 amazing women writing in translation.
Side note: researching for this post made me realize just how many Japanese/Korean books I’ve read in translation. If that’s a list you’d ever want to see, let me know in the comments below!
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Here are my top 4 picks, selected for geographical variation. One is a new release, so only time will tell if it goes “viral”! I debated whether I should only choose books where the translator was also a woman, but I ultimately chose to go with my favorite books overall.
A note on links: I am a library-first reader to my core, but I also love a good hardcover. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider buying the ones you fall for through the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!
Kim Jiyoung lives a normal life in the suburbs of Seoul. After leaving her job to take care of her newborn, she begins to experience psychological issues. The majority of the novel happens as she recounts many of her life’s injustices to her psychiatrist, from always being ignored in favor of her brother to workplace harassment to worse. This book was seminal in Korea in kickstarting the country’s new feminist movement. You’ll quickly see why.
Even though I read this book years ago, it comes up in conversation frequently, especially as K-Dramas romanticize life in Korea. I would call this a must-read. Fair warning, though, this book will enrage you.
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Imagine a world where Neanderthals have been brought back using DNA fragments. Now, imagine a world where they have been placed into a “nature preserve” and unknowingly star in a hit reality TV show?
One of the most intriguing premises I’ve come across in a long time, this book delivers much more than it promises. Instead of a simple thriller, The Shadows Tomorrow takes a more literary examination of what it means to be human and how we feel we can treat those we deem below us.
Note: The author is French-born, working and living in Belgium.
Tired of workplace misogyny, Ms. Shibata tells the entire office she can’t help with menial office chores because she’s pregnant. She suddenly experiences preferential treatment that extends far beyond what she expected. The only catch? She’s not actually pregnant….
This is one of the weirdest books I have ever read, and has already earned its place on my Weird Little Books list. If you’re looking for something unusual, this is the oddest pick on the list.
Told in the lush tradition of Persian storytelling and with hints of magical realism, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree tells the story of an Iranian family caught in the chaos that is post-Islamic Revolution Iran.
This book is absolutely heartbreaking and deals with life’s constant pull between good and bad, despair and joy. I’d suggest reading it alongside The Stationery Shop and The Lion Women of Tehran, both by Marjan Kamali, for a literary foray into post-coup/post-revolution Iran.
Here are 4 of the many books on my TBR penned by women who don’t write in English. I also decided to spread my picks out geographically!
After a mother dies, her husband and son set off on a road trip to her ancestral home. There, they encounter the Order, a group that will stop at nothing to achieve immortality. The occult society covets what runs in the boy’s blood, and the whole story is set against the country’s darkest years of the Argentinian dictatorship. Enríquez won numerous awards for this book.
Not all translated works have to be literary!!! This is horror in its purest form, and I happen to love that. I found this book when researching my World Cup article, and I can’t believe I’d never heard of it. I’m doing my best to save it for October, since it seems like the perfect Halloween read.
At the elite boarding school Notre-Dame du Nil, perched on the banks of the Nile River in Rwanda, a group of girls are being trained to be the next generation of elite women in their country. The story is set before the genocide, during Hutu rule, and the school’s strict quotas limit the number of Tutsi students to just 10%. The school becomes a microcosm, exploring the deep divisions that would lead to the genocide.
African women writing in French are woefully overlooked. Period. That’s why this is one of the books I’m keenest to get to and why I’m so glad events like WITMonth exist to help us escape the algorithm and explore truly exceptional works hiding just under our radar.
Set in the golden age of Baghdad in the Abbasid period, The Djinn’s Apple tells the story of Nardeen, who narrowly escapes a band of angry men who storm her house in search of a mysterious manuscript. After the group kills her entire family, Nardeen sets off to get justice for her family.
I don’t usually read much YA, but this premise was just too interesting to pass up. Pitched as equal parts historical fiction and crime fiction, my brain is already dying to understand the mystery behind this manuscript. If there’s anything you can say about book lovers, it’s that we love books about books!
In the nascent years of the 20th century, there’s a prosperous Georgian family with a closely guarded secret: a recipe for hot chocolate that’s been passed down the generations and is rumored to carry a curse. As the book traces 6 generations of the family, from the Russian Revolution and beyond, their fortunes rise and fall.
I have wanted to read this book for years. It slipped off my radar, but is firmly back on it, thanks to WITMonth and to my recent post on Obscure Historical Fiction books. If you’ve been here a while, you know I love a sweeping family saga, so I can’t wait to dive into all 900+ pages of this book!
The one thing I love about readers is that they are the most curious people I know.
With every book, they’re not just reading a story: they’re traveling to a new time, a new place, a new perspective. With each trip, they come back just a little bit changed.
That’s the reason I enjoyed putting this list together so much. For those readers with boundless curiosity, there is so much genuinely great work waiting in translation. As someone who worked as a translator myself for many years, however, I know the great pains translators take to ensure the final translation is true to the original story while making linguistic and cultural sense to the new audience.
If you’ve been holding back on reading translated works, now is the perfect time to jump in. If you’re already an avid reader of these types of books, I hope this list brought you many new books to enjoy.
I’d love to hear from you! What Women in Translation are you most excited to read, not just in August, but all year round?
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