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.

Micro Review 25 (2025) / Women in Translation Month

Just a Little Dinner by Cecile Tlili, translated by Katherine Gregor. (Foundry Editions)

I read and loved Foundry Edition's first book - Brandy Sour - last year, and since then I've been looking at their beautiful covers and interesting sounding books regularly. I gave in and subscribed to the publisher's 2025 list at the start of August and from my parcel this book was the one that practically leapt into my hands screaming 'read me next'!

In tired, hot Paris at the end of August, a group of friends, who’d rather still be at the sea, meet for a dinner in one couple’s apartment.

Taking us behind the shutters of the Sixth Arrondissement, with a cast of characters that both delight and repel, fractured relationships, manipulation, bad behaviour and desperation are all laid bare in this very contemporary take on a Parisian huis clos story. 

What starts as just a little dinner ends up having monumental consequences for everyone.

The plot unfurls over just a couple of hours but is an incredibly tense read as the writing (and translation) made me feel I was an invisible person in the flat with the four characters watching the car crash of a dinner party unfold - I could smell the food and feel both the heat and the tension completely!

None of the characters is entirely sympathetic but by the end I certainly knew who I really wanted to slap and who I wanted to hug!

This is a book that will stay with me for a long time and one I really recommend. I can't wait to start more of the books that came in my parcel, that's for sure, and how nice to see the translators name on the front of the book in almost the same size type as the author's!

Micro Review 23 (2025) / Women in Translation Month

 

The Lake by Bianca Bellova, translated by Alex Zucker. (Parthian Books)

I picked this book up for my reading the world project as it is by a Czech author and I hadn't crossed the Czech Republic off my map, that it also counted for ~WITMonth was a bonus!

I wasn't sure that the book was going to be for me from the synopsis but the whole point of my project is to read more widely (and occasionally out of my comfort zone): 

A dystopian page-turner about the coming of age of a young hero, which won the 2017 EU Prize for Literature.

A fishing village at the end of the world. A lake that is drying up and, ominously, pushing out its banks. The men have vodka, the women troubles, the children eczema to scratch at.

Born into this unforgiving environment, Nami, a young boy, embarks on a journey with nothing but a bundle of nerves, a coat that was once his grandfather's and the vague idea of searching for his mother, who disappeared from his life at a young age. To uncover the greatest mystery of his life, he must sail across and walk around the lake and finally dive to its bottom. 

Boy was this bleak! At no point could anyone catch a break in the story but all the way through I was kept hoping for the one glimmer of hope/happiness that would redeem the book so it was incredibly well written/translated.

It didn't help that at first I was reading the book as an allegory for the Cold War and expected at some point for the narrative to become more hopeful, so much of the book seemed to be an about the Soviet Union's treatment of the Aral Sea (which I'd just been reading about!) for example. It wasn't until I'd finished the book and then seen that it was a dystopian story it made more sense!

I'm not sure I recommend this book, but I can admire it and it was certainly different to everything else I've read either for my project or for Women In Translation month!

Micro Review 22 (2025) / Women in Translation Month

 

When the Museum is Closed by Emi Yagi (trans. Yuki Tejima) Vintage Publishing

My second read for Women In Translation was a relatively short book from Japan, but whilst it still had elements of whimsy it was in a totally different way from the When the Coffee Gets Cold... books and the others like it.

I was very much drawn in by the synopsis:

Rika Horiuchi’s new part-time job is to converse with a statue of the Venus de Milo – in Latin – every Monday, when the museum is closed.

Initially reluctant, Rika starts to enjoy her strange new job: she and Venus talk about everything. They fall in love, and (with the help of a statue of Artemis’ hunting dog) eventually break free.

And I really loved this part of the book, in idle moments I've often wondered what would happen if paintings/statues did come to life once no one was looking at them (a la Toy Story) and Yagi took this idea and ran with it. I loved that Venus de Milo needed someone to talk to because all of the other statues in her museum room were created in Greek studios and so couldn't speak Latin. Even the bonkers ending made sense in this world.

I was however left very confused by Rika's life in the real world and her yellow mac. However slowly and carefully I read the book I just didn't understand the points being articulated here. 

By taking the book as a long short story about Rika and Venus I found a book I really liked but I wish that I could have gained the full experience. Definitely an interesting Japanese translation and a world away from the cat/book/coffee ones that seem to be everywhere.