In Translation

Stories originally written in other languages, translated into English. Read these and understand the world a little bit better!

Updated May 28, 2024
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Aunt Julia and the scriptwriter
Vargas Llosa, Mario
Paper Book
Reality merges with fantasy in this hilarious comic novel about the world of radio soap operas and the pitfalls of forbidden passion by the bestselling author of The Storyteller. Sexy, sophisticated, older Aunt Julia, now divorced, seeks a new mate who can support her in high style. She finds...
Beauty is a wound
Kurniawan, Eka
Paper Book
The epic novel Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead. Kurniawan...
Black Moses
Mabanckou, Alain
Paper Book
The "heart-breaking" (New York Times Book Review), rollicking, award-winning novel that has been described as "Oliver Twist in 1970s Africa" (Les Inrockuptibles) "One of the most compelling books you'll read in any language this year." --Rolling Stone Winner of the Hurston-Wright...
Daughter of fortune : a novel
Allende, Isabel.
Paper Book
From the New York Times bestselling author of The House of the Spirits, Isabelle Allende, comes a passionate tale of one young woman's quest to save her lover set against the chaos of the 1849 California Gold Rush.   Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the...
Drive your plow over the bones of the dead
Tokarczuk, Olga
Paper Book
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century "A brilliant literary murder mystery." --Chicago Tribune "Extraordinary. Tokarczuk's novel is funny, vivid, dangerous, and disturbing...
The emissary
Tawada, Yōko
Paper Book
Japan, after suffering from a massive irreparable disaster, cuts itself off from the world. Children are so weak they can barely stand or walk: the only people with any get-go are the elderly. Mumei lives with his grandfather Yoshiro, who worries about him constantly. They carry on a day-to-day...
The enlightenment of the greengage tree
Azar, Shokoofeh
Paper Book
LONGLISTED for the 2021 PEN TRANSLATION PRIZE LONGLISTED for the 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD for Translated Literature FINALIST for the 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE From the pen of one of Iran's rising literary stars, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is a family story...
Go, went, gone
Erpenbeck, Jenny
Paper Book
Go, Went, Gone is the masterful new novel by the acclaimed German writer Jenny Erpenbeck, "one of the most significant German-language novelists of her generation" (The Millions). The novel tells the tale of Richard, a retired classics professor who lives in Berlin. His wife has died, and he lives a...
How I became a nun
Aira, César
Paper Book
The idea of the Native American living in perfect harmony with nature is one of the most cherished contemporary myths. But how truthful is this larger-than-life image? According to anthropologist Shepard Krech, the first humans in North America demonstrated all of the intelligence, self-interest,...
My brilliant friend
Ferrante, Elena.
Paper Book
#1 BEST BOOK OF THE CENTURY - NEW YORK TIMES Now an HBO series: the first volume in the New York Times-bestselling "enduring masterpiece" about a lifelong friendship between two women from Naples (The Atlantic). Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the...
Norwegian wood
Murakami, Haruki
Paper Book
From the bestselling author of Kafka on the Shore: A magnificent coming-of-age story steeped in nostalgia, "a masterly novel" (The New York Times Book Review) blending the music, the mood, and the ethos that were the sixties with a young man's hopeless and heroic first love. ...
Pedro Paramo : a novel of Mexico
Rulfo, Juan.
Paper Book
Hong gao liang jia zu = Red sorghum
Mo, Yan
Paper Book
Signs preceding the end of the world
Herrera, Yuri
Paper Book
From the author of "A Silent Fury," available Summer 2020. Signs Preceding the End of the World is one of the most arresting novels to be published in Spanish in the last ten years. Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and...
Snow
Pamuk, Orhan
Paper Book
From the acclaimed author of My Name Is Red (“a sumptuous thriller”–John Updike; “chockful of sublimity and sin”–New York Times Book Review), comes a spellbinding tale of disparate yearnings–for love, art, power, and God–set in a remote...

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