A beginners guide to translated books

with 10 books from around the world

Books+Bits is now 3 years old! And there are over 100,000 of you reading. What an incredible privilege, from something I started on a whim when 7 months pregnant with my third child (don’t recommend.) One of the most joyful things about growing this letter (aside from all of you) is that I am now in a position to start commissioning writers I love, on a semi-regular basis. Because the other joyful thing about writing this letter has been discovering young, incredibly talented writers in the Substack eco-system who are brilliant at what they do.

One of those writers is Martha, who writes a newsletter, Martha’s Monthly, with an emphasis on translated fiction. Last year, she interviewed the author of Hunchback, the hit Japanese novella, for this letter, and I’m so pleased to have her back, to help you ease your way into translated books. I’ve loved discovering translated books over the last few years - I’m currently reading the astonishing Lázár - but I know from my friends and fellow readers here, how intimidating it can be, if you’re new to the genre. So herewith, Martha! (I just bought three from her list.)

Let us know YOUR favourite translated book in the Comments.

I started reading translated books out of desperation, when I was chronically unwell. I couldn’t travel the world physically - but I could in my reading. A feverish obsession was born, which I immortalised by starting a newsletter focused on translated books.

There has been a huge increase in translated fiction in the UK in the last 5 years - with hit titles like Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of The Dead and Convenience Store Woman - and publishing houses dedicated to translated works, like Fitzcarraldo Editions, Charco Press and Foundry Editions. But even I, a self-proclaimed ‘expert’, can see that the genre has a bit of an image problem: the sedate covers and high brow tone; translators being omitted from their covers altogether (as if to mask that they are translated); the strangely dominant trend for Japanese translations about talking cats and bookshops. As for One Hundred Years of Solitude and Crime and Punishment being held up as the ‘best’ translated books ever? I am not one to mince my words - they are as dull as they are inaccessible.

I am here to assure you that translated literature doesn’t have to be impenetrable. You just need a guardian angel (like me) to help you find your way. And to remind you that the challenging part (the act of translating it) has already been done! While the inherent weirdness of translated fiction is a cornerstone of what makes the genre so great (do you really want to read the same books about British/American white women feeling stuck?!) I would gently suggest that you do not start at its most obscure point (talking trees, shape-shifting ghosts). Instead, I offer you a ‘beginners selection box’, with titles from Germany, Brazil, Central African Republic, The Netherlands, Togo, Italy, Cuba, Argentina, Spain and France.

If you’re wondering whether you should start reading translated or not - yes, you should! The world is big and rich, your brain deserves to encounter all it has to offer.

Women in the Pillory by Brigitte Reimann - translated by Lucy Jones

Kathrin and her sister-in-law are struggling to manage their farm while her husband, Henrich, is away fighting for the Third Reich. To help them, a Russian prisoner of war named Alexei is arranged to labour in the fields. Kathrin soon becomes drawn to Alexei - and a relationship between them blossoms.

Reimann was one of East Germany’s most significant writers. Pillory, published in 1956 - but only published in English last year - was an immediate success, unusual and notable for its focus on the emotional lives of its characters. Reimann once said that it was her aim to live “thirty wild years instead of seventy well-behaved ones”. She died from cancer aged 38 as a celebrated writer and cult figure, known for her distaste for the Third Reich.

This is for those who like stories about how the communities left behind in war. It is about forbidden relationships, but more enduringly it is about the search for humanity and the unlikely places hope can be found in. It’s concise, engrossing and propulsive - I read it in a day and I loved it.

The Dark Side of Skin by Jeferson Tenório - translated by Bruna Dantas Lobato

In Porto Alegre, Pedro is trying to learn about his father, Henrique, from the objects he left behind after his death. Written in second person, we learn about Henrique and Pedro’s differing experiences growing up as Black men in Brazil. The Dark Side of Skin is a painful account of the cordial racism - the ‘subtle’ and ‘polite’ racial discrimination - that shapes society in Brazil. Tenório’s prose is an emotional and compelling exploration of the relationship between father and son; and a father figure who is trying his best in a world where he is criminalised and misunderstood.

Published in 2020, The Dark Side of Skin won the Jabuti Prize - Brazil’s most prestigious literary award. When she translated it into English, Dantas Lobato included a note on the political complexities of translation, explaining how she wrestled over whether to capitalise ‘Black’ throughout the novel - which is normal practice in the US, but doesn’t correspond to the racial debate in Brazil. If she capitalised the B, would she be tampering with the text? She ultimately decided to “let the racialized language live in the novel as it ought to”.

I often think about how challenging it must be for a translator - how they decide to shape narratives that aren’t their own, to tell stories that aren’t theirs to tell. There are intricacies to their work that we don’t notice, grammar choices that can carry more weight than we could ever imagine. The Dark Side of Skin is a sad and beautiful book for those who enjoy meditations on parent/child relationships, the bonds and burdens of family and the exploration of race and masculinity.

Boulder by Eva Baltasar - translated by Julia Sanches

Boulder is a cook on a merchant ship. She gets to know Samsa, who gives her the nickname, ‘Boulder’, and they subsequently fall in love. When Samsa gets a job in Reykjavik, the couple move in together. Samsa boldly declares she wants to settle down and to have children. Boulder does not feel the same way, but she doesn’t know how to say no. And so she is drawn into a journey of pregnancy, childbirth and raising a baby. In motherhood, Samsa turns into a stranger and Boulder is faced with a huge decision - should her yearning for love overshadow her yearning for freedom?

Boulder is a lyrical tale about the least maternal woman ever having the role of ‘mother’ thrust upon her. The novel drips with atmosphere and tension as Samsa suffocates Boulder. Baltasar writes pregnancy as this primal, slightly sinister and repulsive transformation - I was utterly engrossed. Boulder is part of a triptych (including Permafrost and Mammoth which I also rec) that explores three women who exist on the margins of society. It’s a sharp edged, uncomfortable and intoxicating exploration of how hard it is to be honest about what we truly want in life.

Boulder was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2023 after being translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches, who is one of my favourite translators. It was only after reading several books translated from Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan that I noticed they were all translated by Sanches - and I began to follow her work. Some people have favourite authors; I have favourite translators. Sanches translates with an emotional clarity that I cannot get enough of.

A Little Luck by Claudia Piñeiro - translated by Frances Riddle

If you enjoy crime and mystery novels, you should absolutely get to know Argentinian author Claudia Pinerio, who is known in Argentina as ‘the first lady of crime fiction’. (Every novel she writes becomes a bestseller.) While she is most famously known for her novel Elena Knows, A Little Luck (translated in 2023) is in my opinion, her best.

Twenty years after a shocking accident, Mary Lohan returns to the Buenos Aries suburb she fled. She has changed almost everything about her - from her name, to the colour of her hair and eyes. But she can’t change what happened, and now she has returned, the past is coming up to meet her. This book is enticing, propulsive and incredibly moving. It explores the line between bravery and cowardice, and examines the ripple effect from a single decisive event. Piñeiro’s writing is quietly gripping, tense and unbelievably enthralling to read. I honestly feel confident in recommending Pinerio to anyone. Her next novel Cathedrals is due this summer - I’m excited to get my hands on it.

Co-Wives, Co-Widows by Adrienne Yabouza - translated by Rachel McGill

This book is for readers looking for fun. Ndongo Passy and Grepoubou are the wives of Lidou - a prosperous builder of houses in the Central African Republic. When Lidou suddenly dies, his opportunistic cousin, Zouaboua, accuses the wives of poisoning him so that he can snatch Lidou’s fortune for himself. Ndongo Passy and Grepoubou join forces to fight against a backdrop of corruption in which bribery oils the wheels of the society they live in.

First published in French in 2015 in Mali, and translated into English by Rachel McGill in 2021, Co-Wives, Co-Widows was received as groundbreaking and insightful for its portrayal of the realities of life for women in the Central African Republic. Yabouza was born in the Central African Republic and fled to France in 2013 because of the civil war. Her work deals with the difficulties facing women in her birth country; many of the stories derive from things she has heard in her family, neighbourhood and working in a hair salon.

Yabouza’s work also provides an authentic look at polygamy and patriarchal structures. The story is both a humorous and a sociopolitical commentary about women’s rights in the country. Ndongo Passy and Grepoubou are spunky, determined women who have a heartwarming relationship. It’s a joyful, absorbing book for readers who enjoy fables of goodwill and social justice.

Afterlight by Jaap Robben - translated by David Doherty

Young, free-spirited Frieda grew up in a strictly Catholic environment in the 1960s. She meets the married Otto, and they have a passionate affair that ends in Frieda becoming pregnant. An epic scandal, it is decided for her that she cannot keep her child. She keeps this secret for decades, never telling her subsequent husband and son. When Frieda is 81, she is moved into a care home, and struggles to adapt to a new way of life. She finds herself thinking about the child that was taken from her, wondering what happened to them.

Several years ago, Robben was asked to write a poem in memory of the stillborn babies taken from their Catholic mothers in the Netherlands and neighbouring countries between the 1950s and the 1980s, buried in secret without a funeral. When his poem was unveiled at a ceremony in Nijmegen, women who had experienced this loss came up to him and shared their stories - some who had never spoken about it before. Robben says the enormity of their grief, and the injustice inflicted on them, never left him - leading to him write Afterlight.

Afterlight was incredibly successful in the Netherlands and Belgium when it was published in 2022 and since its English translation by David Doherty in 2024, it has received international recognition. This book is for readers who are interested in stories that explore the sheer grief, and hope, that is contained in one single life. This is a ‘cradle to grave’ narrative and the only book I have read where we get to meet the protagonist as a young girl and an old lady, which I loved.

Michel the Giant: An African in Greenland - by Tété-Michel Kpomassie translated by James Kirkup

Born in Togo in the 1950s, Kpomassie reads about Greenland in a book as a child, and becomes determined to visit. Once there, he envelopes himself unbelievably foreign to him with astonishing open-mindedness and incisive curiosity. He lives among the Greenlanders, and this is his account of his experience; what he eats, witnesses and takes part in while he is there.

In 1981, the non-fiction book won the Prix litteraire francophone international and The TLS devoted a review of it in 1981 written by James Kirkup, who eventually went on to translate it into English in 1983. He declared it as ‘the most extraordinary book to come out of Black Africa’. In his Afterword, Kpomassie says this book has instilled ‘a priceless gift’ to his community in “instilling the importance of opening one’s mind to the outside world”. In other words, the hunger for knowledge and experience was no longer something reserved for the African elite. His book is engrossing, enamouring and deeply human. It was a thrill, and a privilege, to read his account of witnessing such a vast, white landscape for the first time.

Strangers I Know by Claudia Durastanti - translated by Elizabeth Harris

Durastanti’s personal portrait of how she carved out her own identity from her unconventional childhood, is sharp, humorous and insightful. Durastanti was raised by two deaf parents who refused to learn sign language, between NYC and a rural southern Italian village - and she constantly felt like an outsider. Her deeply personal book explores how she manages to forge a distinct identity separate from her family, and how language shapes our understanding of ourselves. Split into the sections of Family, Travel, Health, Work and Money and Love, she honestly and humorously recounts her coming-of-age and how she survived.

This is the kind of novel that feels familiar, and graciously reminds you that all our families are uncomfortable and a bit mad. She discusses disability and ableism with insightfully sharp humour in a way I haven’t come across before. In 2019, the book was a finalist for Premio Strega - one of Italy’s most prominent literary awards. Following this success it was translated into over twenty languages. This is for those who like reflective, memoir writing that meditates on how we manage to form our own identities separate to those thrust upon us.

Forbidden Notebook by Alba De Céspedes - translated by Ann Goldstein

Forbidden Notebook started as a serialised novel in an Italian magazine in 1950, and is a story about Italy recovering after the Second World War and twenty years of Fascism. Written in the form of a diary, it follows Valeria’s life as a 1950s housewife. She has a husband and two children and she works outside of the home - which is unusual for the time - because of her family’s precarious finances. She finds her mother unbearable, and her husband and children also unbearable, in different ways. Never before has she expressed these thoughts until she started writing in her forbidden notebook that she keeps scrupulously hidden.

She discovers desires she didn’t know she had, admits she feels worn out by her family and can’t remember the last time she was called by her real name instead of ‘mum’. While undertaking her daily tasks, she is secretly imagining who she might have been if she made different choices, if she married a different man. It is somehow both mundane and electric. I cannot imagine the voyeurism this novel would have given women at the time in daring to want something a little different.

Ann Goldstein’s 2023 translation has brought renewed attention to this Italian classic. Forbidden Notebook is for those who like protagonists with a restless desire to reject all they’ve ever known, and stories of women saying ‘to hell’ with the gendered dynamic of the household. Valeria is having an identity crisis - but it’s one hell of a joyful crisis to read.

On The Line by Joseph Ponthus - translated by Stephanie Smee

A final non-fiction recommendation is this ode to manual labour and unstable employment. An educated writer and poet who is unable to find work in his field, Ponthus starts to pick up shifts in fish factories and abattoirs in Brittany. He records the nature of working on the production line; the assault on the senses, the physical suffering and the camaraderie between the workers.

Ponthus writes in verse that is refreshingly easy to engage with. He asks, what is the meaning of life if we spend all of our time working? He finds solace in his partner, his dog and walks on the beach in a way that makes you tear up. How the novel explores our relationship with time, work and ‘purpose’ is something every single person can relate to, and that is why this book is so excellent - it is so deeply human. This is for those who enjoy existentialism in their stories. It is a little bit gory (it’s about meat production) but it is poetically profound about the beautifully strange aspects of human existence.

On The Line won several notable literary prizes in France after its publication in 2019. Sadly Ponthus died in 2021, just weeks before the English translation by Stephanie Smee was published. His sudden death coincides with questions his novel raises about the emotional and physical impact of the culture of our labour market on those who are trapped within it. Despite the horror of insecure work contracts, this book is exceedingly beautiful and compassionately reminds you that there is no such thing as the ‘right’ life.