Latest posts tagged with #TranslatedLit on Bluesky
It’s a short book at 97 pages, but the prose, mood, and intense characterization of Such Small Hands by Andrés Barba gripped me long after I put it down.
carolinavonkampen.com/such-small-h... #booksky #books #AndrésBarba #SuchSmallHands #SmallPress #TranslatedLit #SpanishLiterature 💙📚
Photo of a bookshelf at the Czechia stand at London Book Fair. Top centre is the memoir The True Way Out, by Patrik Banga, which I translated. It is flanked by a new translation of Karel Čapek's RUR and Though the Sky is Embroidered by a Zigzagging Bat by Olga Stehlíková. On the shelf below are some publications about Czech literature.
Photo of the Czechia stand at London Book Fair. The top of the stand is royal blue, with a white inset displaying the Czech flag, and the stand number plus Czechia, Ministry of Culture Czech Republic in white text.
London Book Fair has been very full on, but also, I think, productive. I've met some new people, interest has been expressed in books I want to translate, and I was very pleased to see The True Way Out, which I translated, displayed so prominently!
#LBF #Czechia2026 #xl8 #translatedlit
The front cover of the novel The Fox, by Sólveig Pálsdóttir, and translated from the Icelandic by Quentin Bates. The cover image shows a mountain in winter, with thick snow lying in the foreground and a night sky above the peak. In the centre is a stylised image of a fox's head, consisting of geometric shapes with white outlines arranged in a composition. The title is in red, the author's name and a puff quote are in black.
The Fox (Refurinn) by Sólveig Pálsdóttir, translated by Quentin Bates. Sajee comes to Höfn to take up a nonexistent job. She finds something else... but what are employers Selma & Ísak up to? Then she disappears. Can disgraced detective Guðgeir find her before it's too late? #translatedlit 🌐 💙📚
How do translators add value to books in #translation?
I included a pronunciation guide in this one – something I often want in #translatedlit, sometimes even when I speak the language (*glares very sternly at French*) – & for a less-familiar language like Czech, I think it could be very helpful.
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Book cover for Shahrnush Parsipur's Women Without Men. A dark haired woman sits center of the frame in a white nightgown plucking her right eyebrow looking right at the reader.
Interesting to read this one directly after On Earth As Beneath. Both isolate groups away from society so readers focus on character & universal traits over action. This one elevates due to the interlocking nature of the vignettes, symbolism & #BookerInternational #LongList #BookSky #TranslatedLit
Book cover for Ana Paula Maia’s On Earth As It Is Beneath. The cover light blue. Symbolic images: 2 black hash marks stand inside 2 white tusks everything restrained by a pink slash.
Reminiscent of ChainGang All Stars & Tender Is the Flesh. Prison and violence stripping humanity away from everyone. A gripping meditation on good and evil. The dystopian, isolated setting allows it to resonate & feel universal. #BookerInternational #LongList #BookSky #TranslatedLit
Three books by Hiroko Oyamada: The Factory, The Hole, and Weasels in the Attic.
Three books by Mieko Kawakami: Breasts and Eggs, Heaven, and Ms. Ice Sandwich.
Two books by Sayaka Murata: Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings.
Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi and Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa.
Instead of #Murakami, try these Japanese authors:
Hiroko Oyamada
Mieko Kawakami
Sayaka Murata
Emi Yagi
Satoshi Yagisawa
#booksky #translatedlit #japaneselit #japanesefiction #amreading
If you look at this list and think there are other books I should add, let me know! #booksky #translatedlit #canlit #horror
I’m looking for the #TranslatedLit #Readers Help me find you! Since moving to this platform I miss finding unique titles from everywhere. I miss the #BookerInternational banter.
plus is a hapless alien who, though he is definitely the baddy, you cannot help but feel sorry for!
Yes, there are also giant alien robots leaping out of portals.
So. Much. Fun!
#xl8 #translatedlit #sfintranslation 🌐 💙📚🪐
I'm also in the Hindu with a review of Mariana Enriquez's Somebody's Walking on Your Grave (translated by Megan McDowell).
www.thehindu.com/books/review...
#booksky #writersky #translatedlit
#xl8 #translatedlit 💙📚🪐
Photo of the front cover of the crime novel The Foreign Girls, by Sergio Olguín. The cover, in black and white, shows two empty deckchairs beside a pool, with greenery immediately behind them and mountains in the far distance. The line of text across the top reads: The new Verónica Rosenthal mystery. Inspired by real events, and the line of text above the author's name reads: Wealthy, scenic Tucumán is shocked by the brutal murder of two young women – but is it down to black magic or age-old misogyny and corruption? The translator's name is not mentioned.
The Foreign Girls, by Sergio Olguín, tr. Miranda France.
2 European backpackers are found murdered, ritually it seems, after attending a high society party. Unfortunately for the murderer, they were friends with investigative journalist Verónica Rosenthal, who sniffs a cover-up...
#translatedlit 💙📚
It’s a short book at 97 pages, but the prose, mood, and intense characterization of Such Small Hands by Andrés Barba gripped me long after I put it down.
carolinavonkampen.com/such-small-h... #booksky #books #AndrésBarba #SuchSmallHands #SmallPress #TranslatedLit #SpanishLiterature
#translatedlit #xl8 💙📚🪐
Happy Sunday Womble! I've just started The Fragility of Bodies by Sergio Olguín, translated by Miranda France. I'm only a few chapters in but it's going well so far!
💙📚 #translatedlit #crimefiction
Photo of the front cover of the Korean novel Capitalists Must Starve, by Park Seolyeon, translated by Anton Hur and published by Tilted Axis Press. The cover is brick-red, with the publisher's name and logo at the top and the title in the centre, with the author's name bottom left and the translator's name bottom right.
Photo of the title page of the novel Capitalists Must Starve (see previous image), which has been signed by both author and translator. The author's dedication, at the bottom in red, reads 'To Isabel', with a signature, the date (25 October 2025) and some short Korean text. The translator's dedication, at the top in blue, reads 'Great to see you in person, Isabel!' with a signature and the date.
Capitalists Must Starve, by Park Seolyeon, translated by @antonhur.com
A novelisation of the life of Korean resistance fighter & labour activist Kang Juryong (1901-1932). Dear Lord, women had it hard in the early 20th century (no Koreans had it easy). Funny, sad, inspiring.
💙📚 #translatedlit
It’s a short book at 97 pages, but the prose, mood, and intense characterization of Such Small Hands by Andrés Barba gripped me long after I put it down.
carolinavonkampen.com/such-small-h... #booksky #books #AndrésBarba #SuchSmallHands #SmallPress #TranslatedLit #SpanishLiterature
New blog post: My Most Anticipated 2026 Books
The forthcoming #books on my to-read list include #smallpress picks, #translatedlit, debut novels, and two Survivor-adjacent books by two of my favorite #Survivor players and #RHAP podcasters.
carolinavonkampen.com/2026-books/ #booksky
Cover of Grove’s new translation of Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo
Even when it is not being framed in terms of the “Boom,” critics and publicists keep defining Pedro Páramo through reductive comparisons to other texts. The back cover of the new UK edition quotes a line from the Guardian that describes the novella as “Wuthering Heights located in Mexico and written by Kafka.” Pedro Páramo deserves better. It has sold over a million copies in English and is being adapted by Netflix. It should be read on its own terms.
Pedro Páramo, whose name means “rock” and “barren plain,” is a harsh, feudal lord. A womanizer and the de facto owner of the fertile land around Comala, he is associated with fecundity—yet his life and afterlife are defined by fatalities. There is the death of his father, killed by mistake at a wedding; the death of his rapist son, thrown off his horse; and the many deaths for which Pedro Páramo is himself responsible. These include Juan Preciado, “just about everyone who attended” the wedding where his father was shot, the concubine who dies in childbirth, the father of his forced bride Susana San Juan, and Susana San Juan herself. As revenge for the lack of mourning shown to Susana San Juan by the villagers, Pedro Páramo starts a famine that reflects the barrenness of his name: —I’ll cross my arms and Comala will die of hunger. And that’s what he did.
Pedro Páramo is a nonlinear story written in short scenes that resemble snapshots. It is polyphonic—told by Juan Preciado, at least one third-person narrator, and characters who resemble a chorus. It is a story of archetypes—an everyman, a tyrant, and a son searching for a father. It regularly alludes to Greek tragedy, particularly Sophocles’s Oedipus the King. As in his short story collection The Burning Plain (1953), Rulfo explores themes of land and displacement that evoke the history of Mexico and of colonial and postcolonial Latin America. Rulfo’s description and dialogue are spare, casting an uncanny atmosphere over Comala and the text. Juan Preciado perceives that “everything was completely quiet, the only sound a moth falling through the air and the whispering of silence.” Rulfo’s voice, particularly in the scenes set in the “underworld,” can be laconic, mythic, and surreal.
No. 3 - Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo tr. by Douglas J. Weatherfordq (@groveatlantic.bsky.social)
The ‘everyone who heard the Velvet Underground album started a band’ for the LatAm Boom but s/b viewed on its own as masterpiece of surrealism
Excerpts from Harvard Review
💙📚 #BookSky #TranslatedLit
These are some of the 2026 #books I’ve preordered or plan to read this year!
The books on my #tbr list include #SmallPress picks, #TranslatedLit, debut novels, and books by two of my favorite #Survivor players and #RHAP podcasters. 👀
carolinavonkampen.com/2026-books/ #booksky #toread
It’s important to note that Krzhizhanovsky’s subversion was not just a figment of the Soviet censors’ imaginations. His works — always beautifully written and brilliantly translated by Joanne Turnbull, always highly imaginative and playful, and always concerned with the individual’s psyche, whether expanding with the power of the imagination or shrinking under some other oppressive force — are more often than not screeds against the Soviet system, as one of those oppressive forces. For example, the protagonist in his short story “Quadraturin,” found in Memories of the Future, finds himself with a rare possession in Soviet Moscow: a room. It’s tiny and a bit miserable, but it’s valuable. To make it even more valuable, a salesman comes along with a cream that will “biggerize” the room on the inside while keeping it looking all the same on the outside. Ah, the space! Things do not end well, though, and our man finds himself in an endless abyss where he feels more like the one who has shrunk, an apt metaphor for Krzhizhanovsky’s view of the shrinking consciousness under the Soviet system.
Krzhizhanovsky often writes about the “I,” which to him is a vast property with endless imagination and potential, and about institutions or philosophies that minimize it. How fitting, as I said above, for Krzhizhanovsky to bring back Munchausen and send him back to a Russia so different from the land Munchausen found in the eighteenth century. The world has transformed into a place Krzhizhanovsky felt battered the imagination and, therefore, the “I,” the soul. Munchausen is a worthy advocate: “We Munchausens have always faithfully served fiction,” the Baron says early in Krzhizhanovsky’s book.
Cover of NYRB’s edition of The Return of Munchausen
No. 2 - The Return of Munchausen by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, tr. from Russian by Joanne Turnbull @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social
Turnbull’s intro & explanatory notes were indispensable
Excerpts below from @mookse.bsky.social review (mookseandgripes.com/reviews/2017...)
💙📚 #BookSky #TranslatedLit
In The Deserters, the French writer Mathias Énard’s latest novel, translated by Charlotte Mandell, we see the latest variation of this theme. Composed of two narrative strands twisting—but never crossing—around each other, The Deserters is unusual in the way it takes a certain American event—9/11—and places it within the context of other periods of historical rupture. The questions it raises are broad: Does history merely repeat itself, or can cycles be broken? Can we escape history, or are we forever at its mercy? By evoking 9/11 alongside the Yugoslav wars of the nineties and Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine, Énard is able to explore the tensions of a seeming contradiction: that a certain era of world history—and this includes America’s place within it—is over. For good. And yet: how familiar this moment appears, the sound and shape of it. How closely it repeats syllables of the past.
Cover of the New Directions edition of The Deserters by Mathias Énard tr. by Charlotte Mandell
Bailed on my 2025 reading accountability thread in late summer but restarting for 2026
No. 1 - The Deserters by Mathis Énard tr. by @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social from @ndbooks.bsky.social
🤞 @onebrightbook.bsky.social discuss it on the pod
From @thebaffler.com review:
💙📚 #BookSky #TranslatedLit
Trying to get one more read done before 2026 — The Deserters by Mathias Énard tr. by @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social pub. by @ndbooks.bsky.social
The first page has me hooked
💙📚 #BookSky #TranslatedLit #LitFic
“The reasons that Marana was impelled to visit the old novelist are not clear from the correspondence: to some extent it seems that he introduced himself as representative of the OEPHLW of New York (Organization for the Electronic Production of Homogenized Literary Works), offering him technical assistance to finish his novel (“Flannery turned pale, trembled, clutched the manuscript to his bosom. ‘No, not that,’ he said, ‘I would never allow it”);”
This bit from ch. 6 of Calvino’s ‘If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler’ still caused me laughter but a sadness too; probably one I wouldn’t feel if I read this pre-gen AI era
💙📚 #BookSky #TranslatedLit #LitFic
Please donate!
💙📚 🌐 #translatedlit
Books on offer!!
💙📚 #translatedlit 🌐 #xl8
Post a book you love from the 80s. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
💙📚 #BookSky #bookchallenge #readingchallenge #readingcommunity #booktok #bookish #books #translatedlit
