Books about translation

Books that center translation and linguistics as plot points.

Updated May 6, 2024
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Good on paper : a novel
Cantor, Rachel.
Is a new life possible? Shira is a permanent temp with a few short stories published in minor literary magazines and a PhD on Dante's Vita Nuova that she abandoned halfway. Her life has some happy certainties, though: she lives with her friend Ahmad, and her daughter, Andi, on the Upper West Side....
All the lost places
Dykes, Amanda
When all of Venice is unmasked, one man's identity remains a mystery . . . 1807When a baby is discovered floating in a basket along the quiet canals of Venice, a guild of artisans takes him in and raises him as a son, skilled in each of their trades. Although the boy,...
Girl in ice
Ferencik, Erica
New York Times Editors' Choice * Los Angeles Times Best Crime Novels of Winter 2022 * Reader's Digest Best Fiction Books of 2022 From the author of The River at Night and Into the Jungle comes a harrowing new thriller set in the unforgiving...
Intimacies
Kitamura, Katie M.
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2021 LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE 2021 READS AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER A BEST BOOK OF 2021 FROM Washington Post, Vogue, Time, Oprah Daily,...
Babel : or the necessity of violence : an arcane history of the Oxford Translators' Revolution
Kuang, R. F.
Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller from the author of The Poppy War   "Absolutely phenomenal. One of the most brilliant, razor-sharp books I've had the pleasure of reading that isn't just an alternative fantastical history, but an interrogative one; one that grabs colonial...
Meet us by the roaring sea
Kumarasamy, Akil
New York Times Editors' Choice 2022 An NPR Books We Love 2022 Shortlisted for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction Longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award Finalist for the Lambda Award in Bisexual...
Translation State
Leckie, Ann.
The mystery of a missing translator sets three lives on a collision course that will have a ripple effect across the stars in this powerful novel from a Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author. "There are few who write science fiction like Ann Leckie can. There are...
Battle of the linguist mages
Moore, Scotto
"This is a stand-alone novel with material enough for six... By the halfway point, it had blown my mind twice... an audacious, genre-bending whirlwind." --New York Times "It reads like Snow Crash had a dance-off with Gideon the Ninth, in a world where language...
Drunk on all your strange new words
Robson, Eddie
Eddie Robson's Drunk on All Your Strange New Words is a locked room mystery in a near future world of politics and alien diplomacy. Lydia works as translator for the Logi cultural attaché to Earth. They work well together, even if the act of translating his thoughts...
The sparrow
Russell, Mary Doria
A visionary work that combines speculative fiction with deep philosophical inquiry, The Sparrow tells the story of a charismatic Jesuit priest and linguist, Emilio Sandoz, who leads a scientific mission entrusted with a profound task: to make first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial...
The rise and fall of D.O.D.O. : a novel
Stephenson, Neal
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Goodreads Choice Awards Semifinalist! B&N Editor's Pick - Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2017  From bestselling author Neal Stephenson and critically acclaimed novelist Nicole Galland comes a captivating and complex near-future...
Scattered all over the earth
Tawada, Yoko
Welcome to the not-too-distant future: Japan, having vanished from the face of the earth, is now remembered as "the land of sushi." Hiruko, its former citizen and a climate refugee herself, has a job teaching immigrant children in Denmark with her invented language Panska (Pan-Scandinavian):...

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