Women in Translation Month 2025 wrap up

Women in Translation Month was such a good way to concentrate my read around the world project and a good way to clear a fraction of my TBR pile. This August I read 11 books in translation and 7 were by female authors.

The books I read were:

In Late Summer by Magdalena Blazevic, translated from Croatian by Andelka Raguz

The Murder of Halland by Pia Juul, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken

Free Ride by Noraly Schoenmaker, translated from the Dutch by Bo-Elise Brummelkamp

Just a Little Dinner by Cecile Tlili, translated from the French by Katherine Gregor

The Ex-Boyfriend's Favourite Recipe Funeral Committee by Saki Kawahiro, translated from the Japanese by Yuka Maeno

Dinner at the Night Library by Hika Harada, translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel 

Byobu by Ida Vitale, translated from the Spanish by Sean Manning

While I enjoyed the two Japanese books I don't really have enough to say about them for separate blog posts, and there are only two books in Japanese on the list as one came through for a project after I'd already read a book from Japan.

In Late Summer was an incredibly powerful read about the Bosnian war of 1993 - the style owed a little to Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones but that was a good thing. I found it quite hard hitting because as a family we'd visited rural parts of, what was then, Yugoslavia in 1990 and I could 'see' the book all too vividly.

The Murder of Halland and Byobu  both took me far out of my reading comfort zone and to be honest neither did a huge amount for me so I will be looking for more books from both Denmark and Uruguay.

I loved and reviewed Just a Little Dinner during August and reviewed Free Ride too!

I was pleased to see that the translator is being listed on the cover more, and this includes newer titles from Peirene, who I was surprised hadn't listed Aitken on the cover, and this year 4 of my #WIT books were also translated by a woman.