#wit month

Claudia Piñeiro- A Little Luck (Argentina, translated by Frances Riddle)

Agustina Bazterrica- Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird (Argentina, translated by Sarah Moses)

Chiung-Yu Shih- Wedding in Autumn (Taiwan, translated by Darryl Sterk)

Okky Madasari- Bound (Indonesia, translated by Nurhayat Indriyatno Mohamed and Makna Sinatria)

*Legna Rodríguez Iglesias- My Favorite Girlfriend Was a French Bulldog (Cuba, translated by Megan McDowell)

*Natalia Borges Polesso- Amora (Brazil, translated by Julia Sanches)

Anita Agnihotri- A Day in the Life of Mangal Taram (India, translated by Rani Ray)

Oksana Lutsysyna- Ivan and Phoebe (Ukraine, translated by Nina Murray)

*Frieda Ekotto- Don't Whisper Too Much/ Portrait of a Young Artiste from Bona Mbella (Cameroon, translated by Corine Tachtiris)

Lily Yulianti Farid- Family Room (Indonesia, translated by John H. McGlynn)

Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay- Panty (India, translated by Arunava Sinha)

Guadalupe Nettel- Still Born (Mexico, translated by Rosalind Harvey)

*Nataliya Deleva- Four Minutes (Bulgaria, translated by Izidora Angel)

Bae Suah- A Greater Music (South Korea, translated by Deborah Smith)

Yūko Tsushima- Territory of Light (Japan, translated by Geraldine Harcourt)

Duanwad Pimwana- Bright (Thailand, translated by Mui Poopoksakul)

Eileen Chang- Half a Lifelong Romance (China, translated by Karen S. Kingsbury)

Rin Usami- Idol, Burning (Japan, translated by Asa Yoneda)

*Eva Baltasar- Permafrost (Spain, translated by Julia Sanches)

Choi Eunyoung- Shoko's Smile (South Korea, translated by Sung Ryu)

Thuận- Chinatown (France/Vietnam, translated by Nguyễn An Lý)

Mariama Bâ- So Long A Letter (Senegal, translated by Modupé Bodé-Thomas)

Vigdis Hjorth- Is Mother Dead (Norway, translated by Charlotte Barslund)

*Mónica Ojeda- Jawbone (Ecuador, translated by Sarah Booker)

Hanne Ørstavik- The Blue Room (Norway, translated by Deborah Dawkin)

Shahrnush Parsipur- Touba and the Meaning of Night (Iran, translated by Kamran Talattof and Havva Houshmand)

Faïza Guène- Discretion (Algeria/France, translated by Sarah Ardizzone)

Forugh Farrokhzad- Sin: Selected Poems (Iran, translated by Sholeh Wolpé)

*Lieke Marsman- The Opposite of a Person (Netherlands, translated by Sophie Collins)

Gine Cornelia Pedersen- Zero (Norway, translated by Rosie Hedger)

Zahida Hina- All Passion Spent (Pakistan, translated by Neelam Hussain)

Tatyana Tolstaya- Aetherial Wounds (Russia, translated by Anya Migdal)

Gabriela Alemán- Family Album (Ecuador, translated by Dick Cluster and Mary Ellen Fieweger)

Dorthe Nors- Mirror, Shoulder, Signal (Denmark, translated by Misha Hoekstra)

Marie Darrieussecq- Our Life in the Forest (France, translated by Penny Hueston)

Tea Tulić- Hair Everywhere (Croatia, translated by Coral Petkovich)

Oksana Zabuzhko- Fieldwork in Ukranian Sex (Ukraine, translated by Halyna Hryn)

Alexandra Chreiteh- Always Coca-Cola (Lebanon, translated by Michelle Hartman)

Fernanda Melchor- Paradais (Mexico, translated by Sophie Hughes)

*Dee Lestari- Supernova (Indonesia, translated by Harry Aveling)

Jokha Alharthi- Bitter Orange Tree (Oman/UK, translated by Marilyn Booth)

Hemley Boum- Days Come And Go (Cameroon, translated by Nchanji Njamnsi)

Djaïli Amadou Amal- The Impatient (Cameroon, translated by Emma Ramadan)

Murasaki Yamada- Talk To My Back (Japan, translated by Ryan Holmberg)

Katya Adaui- Here Be Icebergs (Peru, translated by Rosalind Harvey)

Larysa Denysenko- The Sarabande of Sara's Band (Ukraine, translated by Michael M. Naydan)

Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse- All Your Children, Scattered (Rwanda, translated by Alison Anderson)

*Malika Moustadraf- Blood Feast (Morroco, translated by Alice Guthrie)

*Camila Sosa Villada- Bad Girls (Argentina, translated by Kit Maude)

Elin Willows- Inlands (Sweden, translated by Duncan J. Lewis)

* books marked with * feature queer characters (at least i think so from my research)

This is meant as a possible TBR for me, meaning I haven't read these books! I were looking for translated fiction by women that interested me and wanted to focused on books that are not that well known and i thought others might find this list helpful 🥰

Because WIT month is meant to uplift womens voices that often get buried in (translated) publishing, i also find important to highlight the voices of woman that decided (or in some cases probably were pretty much forced to) to write in english but are not based in a Western English speaking countries and therefore also often don't recieve the attention they deserve.

So here are a few more books that are not set in the us/uk etc. but are in English originally:

*Kate Pedroso- Mnemonics (The Philippines)

Aimee Phan- The Reeducation of Cherry Truong (Vietnam)

Bessie Head- When Rain Clouds Gather (Botswana/South Africa)

Ovidia Yu- The Frangipani Tree Mystery (Singapore)

Neshani Andreas- The Purple Violet of Oshaantu (Namibia)

*Carolina De Robertis- Cantoras (Uruguay)

An Yu- Ghost Music (China)

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi- A Girl Is A Body of Water (Uganda)

Ayòdélé Olófintúadé- Lákíríboto (Nigeria)

Ayanna Lloyd Banwo- When We Were Birds (Trinidad and Tabago)

Rashmii Amoah Bell- My Walk To Equality (Papua New Guinea)

Saswati Sengupta- The Song Seekers (India)

*Wame Molefhe- Go Tell The Sun (Botswana)

*Marylyn Tan- Gaze Back (Singapore)

Kunzang Choden- Tales in Colour (Bhutan)

Lorna Goodison- By Love Possessed (Jamaica)

Flora Nwapa- One Is Enough (Nigeria)

YZ Chin- Though I Get Home (Malaysia)

*Azeenarh Mohammed- She Called Me Woman (Nigeria)

August 2024 marks 10 years of Women in Translation Month celebrating the work of women writing in languages other than English. So here is my selection of 10 fiction titles looking back over the last decade of works by women in translation.

Last Night in Nuuk by Niviaq Korneliussen (2014) tr. by Anna Halager from Grove Atlantic (2019)

A cast of queer twenty-somethings each give their own turn at narrating overlapping events in Greenland’s capital city.

Amora: Stories by Natalia Borges Polesso (2015) tr. by Julia Sanches from Amazon Crossing (2020)

An award-winning collection of many vignettes around wlw by a lauded Brazilian writer.  

Pina by Titaua Peu (2016) tr. by Jeffrey Zuckerman from Restless Books (2022)

A saga told round several members in a large highly dysfunctional family, descendants of Mā’ohi warriors, reckoning with generational trauma.

To the Warm Horizon by Choi Jin-Young (2017) tr. by Soje from Honford Star (2021)

Imagining the aftermath of an immensely deadly pandemic throwing the world into chaos and yet something like love that humans can still hold onto.

So Distant from My Life by Monique Ilboudo (2018) tr. by Yarri Kamara from Tilted Axis Press (2022)

From the first Burkinabé woman novelist, a West African man struggles over his identity and obsession with emigrating.

Feral by Gabrielle Filteau-Chiba (2019) tr. by David Homel from Mountain Leopard Press (2024)

This ecological, feminist, love story between women takes from the author’s own experiences in the Kamouraska region of Quebec.

Sons, Daughters by Ivana Bodrožić (2020) tr. by Ellen Elias-Bursać from Seven Stories Press (2024)

From Croatia, a trenchant novel of life on the margins.

We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets (2021) tr. by Emma Rault from Harper (2022)

From the Netherlands, a book for the online age showcasing the unreliable narration of a lesbian former content moderator.

Blue Hunger by Viola Di Grado (2022) tr. by Jamie Richards from Bloomsbury Publishing (2023)

From a much talked about Italian queer author, a feverish and visceral meditation on what can consume us.

Bad Habit by Alana S. Portero (2023) tr. by Mara Faye Lethem from Harper (2024)

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

- a short novel about a Korean woman who decides to become a vegetarian after a bad dream and how the people (mainly men) around her react to the decision and her subsequent spiral into stranger and stranger behaviour.

Convenience Store Woman by Sakaya Murata

- the story follows a neuro-divergent middle aged Japanese woman who loves her job at a convenience store more than anything and just wants to be left alone to do what makes her happy and how the people around her pressure her into conforming to what society expects from her (finding a man, getting a "real job", etc) and how those expectations negatively impact her life.

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin

- a strange winding Argentinian novel about a dying woman and a young boy sitting in hospital together and telling stories. I don't really know the best way to sell you on this one other than you'll have to try it to know if you'll like it lol. But if you like a whole lot of weird and appreciate narratives and themes around environmental abuse then this could be for you.

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

- another Argentinian book but this time it's just a straight up consumption horror lol. It follows a man who works at an abattoir essentially in a dystopian society where animal meat is now poisonous to people so they've started breeding and mass-processing humans for meat instead. Does what it says on the tin and pulls absolutely no punches in the process lol.

Confessions by Kanae Minato

- an excellent little Japanese thriller. A class room of teenagers are sat down by their teacher on her last day of work to talk about her resignation after her young daughter died in an accident on school grounds, only for her to reveal that she knows that two of the students are responsible for her death, and the steps she's taken to set her revenge into motion. The rest of the book jumps pov every chapter as you watch the consequences ripple out from there.

and last but not least

Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang

Wednesday, August 26, 2020 6:00 pm EST

"August is Women in Translation Month, a designated time to explore and celebrate female world authors in English translation.  This year we are moving our celebration online and will host our second annual event on Zoom.  Our focus is Black Women in (English) Translation and will feature works by brave and talented black women authors from Haiti, Senegal, Angola, Somalia and more.  Their books were written and published originally in their native languages of French, Creole, Portuguese, etc. and then later translated into English.  Click here for a suggested reading list. Many of these books are available now or are coming soon to Delray Library."

This week’s #WITmonth interview is with famed translator Natasha Wimmer, who is best known for her translations of The Savage Detectives and 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, among many others. Read on to find out what it was like for Natasha to translate Riverhead author Álvaro Enrigue’s psychedelic novel, what catches her eye when she’s looking something new to work on, and more.

Riverhead Books: You translated SUDDEN DEATH by Álvaro Enrigue, which came out in paperback earlier this year. What was the most exciting aspect about translating the book, and what in your opinion was the biggest challenge?

 Natasha Wimmer: SUDDEN DEATH is full of attractions for the translator--it's basically an amusement park ride, language-wise. It requires some familiarity with the vocabulary of the 16th century (which is when it's set), but Álvaro's register is closer to 21st-century baroque. Some of my favorite parts are the passages in which an Álvaro-like narrator addresses the reader directly, reflecting on what kind of book he's trying to write. Most difficult to get right was the made-up language of the Aztec feather worker Diego Huanitzin, whose grandiose, malaprop-ish Spanish is inflected by Nahuatl. But the ongoing tennis match between Francisco de Quevedo and Caravaggio is difficult too, and involved a lot of research into the Renaissance game of real tennis, which is a distant relative of modern tennis.

RB: Briefly explain your process of translating a book, from when a project is first presented to you to when the final version goes to print. How closely do you work with authors?

 NW: Once I've signed on to translate a book, I begin with a quick first draft of a short section, followed by a slow edit, and I proceed that way through the book. Once I have a complete manuscript, I go through the translation again slowly, reading for consistency of voice and addressing any lingering problems.

 I worked closely with Álvaro on SUDDEN DEATH, because he lives in New York, his English is excellent, and he was amenable (in fact, he seemed to relish the process--he added several pages of new material to the English translation). I also worked quite closely with Marcos Giralt Torrente on his memoir, FATHER AND SON. Otherwise, I've worked more independently. I never got the chance to talk to Roberto Bolaño, for example, because he died a few years before I took on THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES.

 RB: What about a book appeals to you that makes you want to translate it?

 NW: In recent years, I've been attracted to fiction that overlaps in some way with nonfiction or memoir. But in general, it's great writing plus a certain sense of urgency or newness.

 RB: Is there a newly released or forthcoming translated book (either one you’re working on or one you’ve heard about) that you’re particularly excited about?