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 24 (2025) / Women in Translation Month

Free Ride by Noraly Schoenmaker, translated by Bo-Elise Brummelkamp (Canelo)

I think that this book popped on to my radar after reading Sovietistan by Erika Fatland (translated by Kari Dickson) and enjoying the accounts of female travellers in more obscure or intrepid locations - why should men have all of the adventures?

When the book arrived at the library there was no clue that this book would qualify as a read for Women in Translation Month - poor Brummelkamp gets no mention anywhere in the book apart from a tiny line on the copyright page and this is in a tiny type size. I am assuming that this, lets call it, discretion rather than obfuscation, is because Schoenmaker's YouTube films are all in English and the publishers didn't want to put any readers off by announcing that it was a translation.

Like so many big trips Schoenmaker's was kickstarted by a personal upheaval but became so much more adventurous once her travels had started: 

Noraly Schoenmaker was a thirty-something geologist living in the Netherlands when she learned that her live-in partner had been having a long-term affair. Suddenly without a place to stay, she decided to quit her job and jet off to India in search of a new beginning. Her plans were dashed when she fell quickly and helplessly in love: with a motorcycle. Behind the handlebars, she felt alive and free – nimble enough to trace the narrowest paths, powerful enough to travel the longest of roads.

She first rode toward the Pacific, through the jungles of Myanmar and Thailand, then into Malaysia. Rather than satisfy her appetite for the open road, this ride only piqued it. She shipped her bike to Oman, at the base of the Arabian Peninsula, and embarked on a journey through Iran, across Turkmenistan along its border with Afghanistan, over the snowy peaks of Central Asia and into Europe, all the way back home to the Netherlands.

She covered remote and utterly unfamiliar territory; broke down on impossibly steep mountains; and pushed too many miles along empty roads, farther and farther from civilization. But through her travels, she discovered the true beauty of the world – the kindness of its people, the simplicity of its open spaces, as well as her own inner strength.

Now I've never even sat pillion on a moped let alone tried riding a powerful motorbike in such varied terrain and I'm afraid this book hasn't enticed me to try either, long distance motorcycle touring is not for me in any way shape or form (which my family will be pleased to hear as my lack of balance and coordination is legendary!).

Schoenmaker's writing also didn't inspire me to think at all of exploring the countries she visited, probably because her book isn't really about the places she visited - it is all the journey.

In normal circumstances I'd never have reviewed this book but I was so incensed that the translator wasn't mentioned I wanted to acknowledge Brummelkamp's work!

 

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!

Women In Translation 2024

 

I am so pleased that I saw advance warning of this go by online as while I do read a lot of books in translation (40 last year and 36 already this year) I don't really pay attention to the author - it is if the book appeals to me that is important!

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!

Micro Reviews 73, 74 & 75

 

Women in Translation Month

August has been designated Women in Translation month and I've managed to read a few books that fit this brief - well two books written and translated by women and the third just being translated by a woman.

Marzahn. Mon Amour - by Katja Oskamp and translated from German by Jo Heinrich (Peirene Press)

This has recently been Radio 4's book at bedtime but to my annoyance I kept falling asleep while listening. I did however have a copy of the book on my shelves and decided to 'read along' as it were.

It's a strange little book, set in the former East Germany and focusing on a woman who's retrained as a chiropodist and her clients. The book is a series of vignettes about the people who come to the clinic where she works, or those who live in the area. It meanders and repeats key phrases but was wholly compelling and like nothing I've read before.

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The Easy Life - by Marguerite Duras and translated from French by Emma Ramadan (Bloomsbury)

Incredible The Lover by Duras was one of our French A Level set texts but since then I've not read or heard anything about her books. This one isn't out until December but while it was beautifully written and translated I am not sure I understood it at all. I'm not sure that I hugely understood The Lover either but that might just have been my French - I'm going to reread it again (in English) soon to see if it does bear any resemblance to my memories.

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Tasting Sunlight - by Ewald Arentz and translated from German by Rachel Ward (Orenda Books)

Another quirky tale with two strong female voices thrown together by circumstance and yet perfectly suited. Each has her own traumas to battle and these are unfurled slowly and convincingly.

I had my heart in my mouth on more than one occasion and wouldn't have minded if the book was twice as long!

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So in month that has seen me battle to find novels that capture my full attention it is literature in translation from independent publishers that has seen me though!