Micro Review 21 (2025) / Women In Translation Month

 

When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzen, translated by Alice Menzies (Transworld Publishing).

August is Women in Translation month and my reading for this has started strongly with the Waterstones' Debut Fiction Prize shortlisted book When the Cranes Fly South,

I confess when I chose this book from the shortlist I wasn't aware that it was a translated book but I did cheer (quietly - I was in the library after all) when I saw that it was a Swedish book.

The publisher blurb for the book warns you that you're in for an emotional rollercoaster of a read:

Bo is determined to live his own life in his own way. But his son has other ideas...

Bo lives a quiet existence in his small rural village in the north of Sweden. He is elderly and his days are punctuated by visits from his care team and his son.

Fortunately, he still has his rich memories, phone calls with his best friend Ture, and his beloved dog Sixten for company.

Only now his son is insisting the dog must be taken away. The very same son that Bo is wanting to mend his relationship with before his time is up. The threat of losing Sixten stirs up a whirlwind of emotions and makes Bo determined to resist and find his voice.

The book covers a fairly short time frame and is broken up into small chapters each prefaced with the notes Bo's carers leave in his log book and between these notes and Bo's memories we get to know what has made Bo, and his son, the way they are. 

I raced through this book because I was so fully and emotionally involved with all the characters, and yes - more than once I had a lump in my throat. However while this is quite a sad book it is ultimately heart warming and an excellent read.

It would have been nice for a translated book to win the WDFP but I did really love the winner (Lucy Steed's The Artist) when I read it earlier in the year.

Award Season (Micro Reviews 6 & 7)

 

The International Booker Prize and the Dublin Literary Award

May seems to be a big month for book awards, several prestigious ones have been announced, there's been shortlists galore and just this week Café Nero announced it was starting a new awards (hopefully to replace the much missed Costa award). However just this week two prizes were given out in awards I follow more closely - and to the books I'd have picked which is unheard of!

The International Booker Prize went to Time Shelter by the Bulgaria author Georgi Gospodinov and his translator Angela Rodel (Orion books).

I was about three quarters of the way through this book when it won and I enjoyed it greatly - indeed it was the one that leapt off the shortlist to me initially and the one I made sure to read first when my library reservations came in.

It deals with the idea of recreating rooms and apartments from different eras in time to help those with dementia and other memory problems. These are such a success that people run with the idea at ever bigger scales with scary (but all too believable) results. For me the very end of the book was a little out of balance with the main part but it was still a great read and I am very pleased that it won.

The Dublin Literary Award was awarded to Marzahn Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp and her translator from the German Jo Heinrich (Peirene Press).

I read this book last year and reviewed it here, it also made my 'best of 2022' list and I was very pleased that this won from the shortlist.

The Dublin Literary Award is very different from most as all the books on the longlist are nominated by libraries from around the world, including Norfolk Libraries. We put Lessons in Chemistry forward this year (along with a few libraries) and while we made the longlist it got no further. One year we'll predict the winner!

Talented Friends

 

Amarantha by E.R.Traina (trans. Marinella Mezzanotte) published by Kurumuru Books

I am very lucky to have a lot of talented friends who write (or translate) books and while each time I start one of their books there is some trepidation - what if I don't like the book? - I am always excited to read their creations.

I've been a fan of a particular genre of YA fantasy since I was a teenager. I don't quite know how to best describe the genre but authors who I really enjoy are Tamora Pierce and Trudi Canavan - they have strong female leads in worlds that are recognisable as being earth like, often have a strand of magic running through them, and are set in a pre industrial revolution age.

Amarantha by E. R. Traina instantly joins my list of favourites in the genre. The world is well built, believable and incredibly visual. The main characters are well drawn and credible, they never feel like cardboard cut outs. Throughout  the story the book kept me guessing but never confused.

I was a little worried towards the end that the book was going to only be half a story and that I'd be left hanging waiting for a sequel, but without being rushed or sketchy in any way the ending was complete and made total sense within the context of the plot. There are enough 'what ifs' that I'd pounce on a sequel like a shot but if Traina moves on to something new for her next book I'll be just as keen to read it.

As a nice touch the book also has a soundtrack, composed and played by the author, and these tracks definitely add to the reading experience rather than feeling like a gimmick.

The notes at the end explaining the translation process for the book were also fascinating and I am so pleased that I can wholeheartedly champion a book that ticks so many of my personal reading boxes.

I was sent an early copy of this book by Kurumuru but there was no obligation for me to review the book.

Books about Books and never ending reading lists

 

Down the rabbit hole thanks to Norfolk Library and Information Service

I’ve become very meta at present and many of the books I’ve been reading have been about reading or books. I think that perhaps my (not so) inner bookworm is out of control…

First up was Reading the World by Ann Morgan. This book charts her experiences of spending a year, 2012, in trying to read a book from every country.

This wasn’t as easy as you’d think as there’s a lot of dispute about who does appear on such a list – as Morgan found this is an incredibly fraught issue with many possible answers.

Her next issue was finding books that she could physically read – not very much literature gets translated into English in the grand scheme of things.

Then there was the issue of  finding the books (not every nation has a proud written word culture) and then getting them to England for reading.

The book wasn’t so much about the books read for the project as the process around it, however all of Morgan’s reviews are still available on her blog – along with lists of other books that could have been chosen but weren’t.

 

Next was Stig Abell’s Things I learned on the 6.28: a guide to reading. In 2019 Abell decided to focus the reading he undertook on his morning commute in an attempt to expand his reading, and looks at genres in more detail. Each month had a different theme such as Poetry, Shakespeare, American Fiction, and then Abell mixes his thoughts on the books with his daily diary and his research in to the author/genre.

As the world changed so much in 2020 this book felt a little bit like a historical document as I read it but dipping in and out reading a month at a time I found I really enjoyed this book, and like the best books about books I have added a fair few new titles to my “I’ll read these one day” list.

 

The final book in this genre for now is Tom Mole’s The Secret Life of Books: why they mean more than words. Unlike the other two books this isn’t about specific titles but is all about what the book as a physical object means to a person.

The 8 chapters take themes like Book/Life or Book/Self and then explore what the book brings to each of these areas, a lot of what Mole says resonates with my thinking on the topic – especially in light of reading Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own last year. Spread through the book are also some works of art that feature books and Mole explores what the books have to say about the paintings which is fascinating and a topic I’d like to read more about!

 

Three very different books and ones that have made me think a lot about my own reading. I love translated fiction and so will definitely be using Morgan’s books to learn more about literature from other countries, and Abell’s focused reading was inspiring.

However I can’t see myself dedicating my reading time to such specific (and limiting) projects. I look at my ‘to read’ pile and think that I should read all of that before anything new comes along. I am trying to read more from it but I’d hate not being able to read something new and exciting that came my way, and it would stop me from taking part in some of the exciting projects that do cross my path.

Reading is a pleasure and I want to keep it that way, several times while reading Morgan and Abell I got the feeling that their projects had become a chore. I want books and reading to stay as personal and pleasurable as possible – for as Mole says, the book really is a wonderful item.

Tea Break Reading

 

Short Stories and Essays

Working from home for the last umpteen months has had a surprisingly good effect on my work/life balance. When I was in the office I would rarely take a tea break (or a lunch break) away from my desk and would just work straight through my hours. I would take the recommended VDU breaks each hour but not a full break of any description.

Mr Norfolkbookworm has always been better at this than me and now I make sure to try for a proper tea break each morning (I finish my working day at lunch time so lunches are definitely away from the computer). I've been using this break to read and I've found that essay collections and short stories are fantastic for this time.

I've mentioned before that I've been reading nature journals and almanacs at tea time but now I am really enjoying a new set of short story collections...

These books are published the independent publisher, Comma Press, and pull together short stories set in cities around the world. Unlike other books like this that I've read in the past these books are actually translations of stories from writers who actually live the city/country and so are a real peek into other lives and cultures.

Each book comes with a fascinating introduction and all of the translators are named - two things I really love in a book!

So far I've treated myself to 3 books from the series:

• Tehran - because I read a book set in Iran during the 1970s as part of one of my reading projects and it left me wanting to know more about the country, then and now.
• Tokyo - because I've fallen in love with so many novels from Japanese writers (or set in Japan) over the past year.
• Venice - because after a year of not travelling I'm looking hard at my wish list's of places I want to visit. This is a city I've bumped much higher up my list as it is at such risk from sea level rise/climate change.

I'm not sure where I saw these books mentioned first but I would imagine that it was thanks to Bex at Ninja Book Box and the wonderful #IndieBookNetwork - they've also helped me keep to my resolution of supporting both independent bookshops and independent publishers!

I now look forward to my tea break hugely as I can't wait to discover more about a place through its writers. Once I've finished these friends have recommended Flannery O'Connor and Shirley Jackson as writers in this genre to try - even if we get back to the office I think my short story habit will remain! 

Blog Blast

 

Love in Five Acts by Daniela Krien (trans. Jamie Bulloch) Quercus Books

 (@QuercusBooks & @MacLeHosePress)

(eProof via NetGalley)

Books in translation are something I enjoy hugely and this one instantly appealed, both due to the setting (East Germany post reunification) and the translator - I've loved everything I've read in translation from Bulloch.

This book really wormed its way under my skin, in five stories (the Acts of the title) we learn about the lives of five women and how they interconnect. These women all have complicated lives and and various events in the present and past have shaped who they are.

What I most liked about this book was that the women felt real, they did feel like people you meet in daily life. They were fully rounded and you get to see all sides of them, no one is fully good or fully bad they just leap out of the page and into your life. The supporting cast weren't quite so well rounded but they definitely weren't cardboard cutouts, they had enough body to exist in their own right as well as in relation to the women.

My complaint with this book was that it ended - I wanted to spend more time with the five women and see where their lives went next.

2020 - Best of the Books

 

A year in books

Well what a year 2020 ended up being. It started so well with some great plays (and accompanying days out in London) and then we just managed to have our whole holiday before flights were cancelled and travel banned. Our holiday seems such a distant thing now that I have to pinch myself hard to remember that it was only 10 months ago...

We came back from holiday and instantly started working from home, due to having returned from (at that time) a higher risk area. I'm not sure I'd have believed you if you'd said that this would continue for the rest of the year, and then well into 2021. It has been 44 weeks since I was 'in the office' but as I am lucky enough to still have a job, and one that I can do from home I am not complaining about this.

Not being furloughed (and indeed working my hours over 5 days not 3), plus spending more time outside means that I didn't really increase the amount of time I spent reading. Oh and like a lot of people my concentration span has been as variable as the tiering system!

Not many books stuck out for me this year as being ones I had to shout about to all and sundry (except Leonard and Hungry Paul) and I did have to go through my reading journal a couple of times to get this list, but for what it is worth...

Top Fiction (in no specific order)

• The Cat and The City by Nick Bradley (Atlantic Books)
• The Autumn of the Ace by Louis de Bernieres (Vintage)
• Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (Penguin)
• The Umbrella Mouse to the Rescue by Anna Fargher (Macmillan Children's Books)
• Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hessian (Bluemoose Books)
• The Readers' Room by Anotoine Laurain, trans. Aitkins, Boyce & Mackintosh (Gallic Books)
• A Burning by Megha Majumdar (Scribner Books)
• After the War by Tom Palmer (Barrington Stoke)
• The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, trans. Philip Gabriel (Transworld)
• The Phone Box at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina, trans. Lucy Rand (Manilla Press)

Fracture by Andres Neuman, trans. Caistor & Garcia (Granta) just missed the cut too.

From this list I can see that fiction set in Japan was a common thread to my reading with 4 of these 11 set wholly or partially there. I'm also pleased to see that translated fiction features so much (4) along with independently published titles (5) and that two children's books made the list.

Non fiction (in no specific order)

• Rewild Yourself by Simon Barnes (Simon and Schuster)
• One More Croissant for the Road by Felicity Cloake (Harper Collins)
• Mudlarking by Lara Maiklem (Bloomsbury)
• Limitless by Tim Peake (Cornerstone)
• Dear Reader by Cathy Rentzenbrink (Pan Macmillan)

The Biscuit by Lizzie Collingwood just missed out on the top 5 here.

My best re-read of the year was Victoria Hislop's The Island and the novella One August Night was  in my top 20 fiction reads.

The book that I read that I can't wait to talk about more is Winter in Tabriz by Sheila Llewellyn and I think that the book I am most eagerly awaiting is The Swallows' Flight by Hilary McKay.

Overall not a bad year for books, and here's hoping that 2021 is a good reading year - it has started well as I've begun the highly acclaimed The Missing Half  and have Where the Crawdads Sing up after that.

I haven't really set myself any specific reading goals as I so rarely manage to reach them but I will continue to name the translator and the publisher in reviews as well as looking to continue reading more independently published books as these two targets really do expand my reading incredibly.

Micro Review 9

 

The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories - ed. Jay Rubin (various translators)

Apologies for the delay in reviews, I'm still working from home and this means that once I shut my laptop I just want to read a book - not write about them! Then once Mr Norfolkbookworm has finished his day (also from home) we're tending to go out for a walk while the weather is still good.

During lockdown I kept a book of short stories by the bed, this was great because even on the weirdest day I did still read something. I've kept the habit up as things have settled into a new normal and it means that depending on my mood I can read just one short story (and some are just two pages long) or can settle in for a longer spell. 

This volume of Japanese stories is fascinating, the editor has grouped them by theme but within these sections there are stories from the 19th century through to the present day and 99% of the authors are new to me.

As you'd expect in a book of short stories not every single one appeals, but certainly well over half do - and best of all (so far) none of the stories have given me nightmares, even though some of them have been incredibly weird.

I'm definitely going to look out for more books in this series from Penguin as it is a lovely way to learn more about literature from other countries and to add authors to my "must read" lists. A short story or two at the end of the day is also a nice routine to get into - bath, book and bed isn't just for children!

World Reading

Challenging my world views

I love reading books that are set in locations that I've never visited (and probably will never visit) whether the books are fiction or non fiction and regardless as to if they are in translation or not. Just lately two books have really challenged what I thought I knew about two countries.


The first was a non fiction book, called Two Trees Make a Forest.

This is a book that ticked many of my personal interests: travel, nature writing and family history. It was also about Taiwan, a country that I had always thought was a relatively liberal place and a definite alternative to China. I was very surprised to discover that it was subject to martial law for so long, and as repressive as mainland China in its way, just not a communist country.

I think that some of my preconceptions come about because in the time that I've been news/politically aware it has moved away from a one party, repressive system and become more liberal  - unconsciously I had thought that this was always the case.  Always good to learn more and this was a fascinating book about reconnecting with your roots.

The second book that really opened my eyes recently also comes from the far east, as it is set in South Korea, Kim Jeyung, Born 1982 (by Chi Nam-Joo, trans. Jamie Chang)

This is a book that is all about the pressures that South Koreans around my age/my sister's age face in society today, and especially how women are treated. It was truly horrifying and eye-opening, despite nothing truly horrific actually taking place.  The publisher blurb gives a hint of the subject matter:

Kim Jiyoung is a girl born to a mother whose in-laws wanted a boy.
Kim Jiyoung is a sister made to share a room while her brother gets one of his own.
Kim Jiyoung is a female preyed upon by male teachers at school. Kim Jiyoung is a daughter whose father blames her when she is harassed late at night.  
Kim Jiyoung is a good student who doesn’t get put forward for internships. Kim Jiyoung is a model employee but gets overlooked for promotion. Kim Jiyoung is a wife who gives up her career and independence for a life of domesticity.

This doesn't quite warn you just what a punch this book packs, especially at the end. Although fiction all of the statistical claims, figures and news stories are given footnotes that allow you to see that this is real and not exaggerated for a novel.

Again I had the idea that South Korea was a 'good guy' - that it was progressive and to be held up as a beacon for showing how a country can heal from a traumatic recent past.

A film has been made of the book, and it is a best seller in Korea. This translation will be published in February 2020 and I hope that it is as well received in English as it has been in Korean - it is an important read, and always good to remember that there is a lot of work to do world wide on equality.

With thanks to Norfolk Libraries & Net Galley for these two books.