However as a break in my Waterstones Prize Reading I have been consciously looking through my TBR pile and pulling out the books that are translated fiction by women. I may get through a couple more by the end of August but a pile of reservations from the library are calling and a lot of these can't be renewed!
Women in Translation books read in August 2024.
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (translated from German by Michael Hofmann)
In the Streets of Tehran by Nila (translated from Iranian by Poupeh Missaghi)
The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem (translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon)
Background for Love by Helen Wolff & Marion Detjen (translated from German by Tristram Wolff & Jefferson Chase)
The Third Love by Hiromi Kawakami (translated from Japanese by Ted Goossen)
Half Swimmer by Katja Oskamp (translated from German by Jo Heinrich
The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki (translated from Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood)
I have managed to read so many books in translation this month because most of them have been novellas rather than full length books, but also because in the main they have been so very good I've found it hard to put them down!
While I try to read widely and from as many different languages as possible this month has been heavily influenced by German and Japanese literature, and I have noticed that as a whole most of the books I've read translated from German in 2024 have been about dealing with life in East Germany before the Berlin Wall fell, and then how the reunification worked out for former Ossies.
Looking at my reading stats for the the year to date I can see that I've read books translated from Japanese, German, Korean, French, Arabic, Iranian, Greek (Cypriot Greek), Greek (Ancient Greek), German (Austrian), and Norwegian.
I am hoping to expand this over the next year and using the brilliant resources provided by The Women in Translation project and Norfolk Libraries!
well done!
ReplyDeleteI read a lot of books in translation throughout the year, but for once, I decided to do something special for WITmonth: I read one Japanese short story written by a woman everyday of August: https://wordsandpeace.com/2024/08/06/31-japanese-short-stories-by-women-authors/