For National Translation Month, observed annually during the month of September, we asked our member magazines and presses to share some of the literature they have published in translation.
Fiction
Translated from the Turkish by Doina L. Kovalik and Atiye Erden
Flexible Press | 2023
This short fiction collection “bridges both cultures and time, finding the universal in the lives of children, of family, and of community.”
Translated from the German by Rachel Hildebrandt
Catalyst Press | 2019
Winner of the 2017 German Crime Fiction Prize and set in a South African gated community, this crime novel “tackles the issues of gun violence, racism, and exclusion in contemporary South Africa.”
Translated from the Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman
Arab Lit Books | 2022
This collection of Azzam’s short fiction is “full of her vivid snapshots of life in Palestine and Lebanon in the first half of the twentieth century.”
To the Forest by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette
Translated from the French by Rhonda Mullins
Coach House Books | 2023
According to Michelle Anne Schingler, “Covering a period of grief, growth, and rebirth, To the Forest is an exquisite novel that revels in wild places.”
Halley’s Comet by Hannes Barnard
Translated from the Afrikaans by Hannes Barnard
Catalyst Press | 2022
This coming-of-age novel is “about a tumultuous period in South Africa’s history and being a teen in a society rampant with racial and sexual violence.”
The Loneliness in Lydia Erneman’s Life by Rune Christiansen
Translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson
Book*hug Press | 2023
This novel is “a quiet, beautiful exploration of solitude and how we relate to other beings.”
The Shehnai Virtuoso by Dhumketu
Translated from the Gujarati by Jenny Bhatt
Deep Vellum | 2022
According to Publishers Weekly, “Complex characters, vibrant imagery, and descriptions of rural Gujarat State bolster each of the stories.”
Translated from the French
Two Lines Press | 2023
In this anthology, eight women writers from Haiti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe “explore the beauty, pain, and complexity wrapped up in their identity.”
Translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls
Transit Books | 2022
The three volumes of Jon Fosse’s Septology—The Other Name, I is Another, and A New Name—collected here for the first time, are “a transcendent exploration of the human condition, and a radically other reading experience.”
Milk and Other Stories by Simon Fruelund
Translated from the Danish by K. E. Semmel
Santa Fe Writers Project | 2013
The stories in this collection “display the often quiet, inconspicuous way in which terrible truths and experiences are intimated.”
Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman and Daniel Hahn
Bellevue Literary Press | 2022
In Canción , Halfon’s “eponymous wanderer is invited to a Lebanese writers’ conference in Japan, where he reflects on his Jewish grandfather’s multifaceted identity.”
Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman
Graywolf Press | 2023
The characters in Herrera’s new story collection “inhabit imagined futures that reveal the strangeness and instability of the present.”
Drums for a Lost Song by Jorge Velasco Mackenzie
Translated from the Spanish by Rob Gunther
Hanging Loose Press | 2017
This novel is “the tale of José Margarito, ‘the Singer,’ escaping from slavery in nineteenth-century Ecuador.”
Let No One Sleep by Juan José Millás
Translated from the Spanish by Thomas Bunstead
Bellevue Literary Press | 2022
Let No One Sleep is a novel “in which the mundane and extraordinary collide, art revives and devastates, and identity is unhinged by the treacherous forces of contemporary society.”
Happy Stories, Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu
Translated from the Indonesian by Tiffany Tsao
Feminist Press | 2023
This short fiction collection “blends together speculative fiction and dark absurdism, drawing from Batak and Christian cultural elements.”
A Cat at the End of the World by Robert Perišić
Translated from the Croatian by Vesna Maric
Sandorf Passage | 2022
According to Nell Zink, this novel “moves past realism and insight into the realm of expression and symbol.”
Arid Dreams by Duanwad Pimwana
Translated from the Thai by Mui Poopoksakul
Feminist Press | 2019
In this collection’s thirteen stories that “investigate ordinary and working-class Thailand, characters aspire for more but remain suspended in routine.”
Translated from the Swahili and the Sheng
Two Lines Press | 2023
According to Shailja Patel, this first collection of Swahili fiction in English translation is “an absorbing sampler of the literary feast available in Africa’s most widely spoken language.”
Dead Men Cast No Shadows by Sergio Ramírez
Translated from the Spanish by Daryl R. Hague
McPherson & Company | 2021
In Volume 3 of The Managua Trilogy, “Inspector Dolores Morales undertakes a dangerous journey back into Nicaragua, hunted by agents of the secret police.”
Translated from the German by Lucy Jones
Transit Books | 2023
Reimann’s first novel to appear in English is “a story of sibling love ruptured by the Iron Curtain.”
Cells of Terror by Alfonso Sastre
Translated from the Spanish by Ellis Ging
Hanging Loose Press | 2022
This collection consists of 24 stories “about a few of the key situations that sow in the hearts of human beings the monstrous seed of terror.”
Professor Schiff’s Guilt by Agur Schiff
Translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen
New Vessel Press | 2023
This “darkly comic” novel “examines economic inequality and the global refugee crisis, as well as the memory of transatlantic chattel slavery and the Holocaust.”
Translated from the Korean by Anton Hur
Feminist Press | 2022
In this novel set over the course of one summer in Seoul, Shin “explores misogyny, erasure, and repressed desire.”
Pollak’s Arm by Hans von Trotha
Translated from the German by Elisabeth Lauffer
New Vessel Press | 2022
According to Salvatore Settis, this novel “brings back to life the voice of Ludwig Pollak who, when confronted with Nazi-occupied Rome’s grim reality, powerfully conveys a taste for collecting, the pleasure of erudition, and an unshakeable faith in culture.”
Translated from the French by Pablo Strauss
Coach House Books | 2020
This collection of “lush and bracing linked climate fictions depict a world gorgeous and terrifying in its likeness to our own.”
Nonfiction
The Beauty of Light: An Interview by Etel Adnan and Laure Adler
Translated from the French by Ethan Mitchell
Nightboat Books | 2023
This book is “a lively and spontaneous interview with Etel Adnan about her absolute belief in the beauty of the world and the beauty of art.”
Banzeiro Òkòtó: The Amazon as the Center of the World by Eliane Brum
Translated from the Portuguese by Diane Whitty
Graywolf Press | 2023
This essay collection is “a confrontation with the destruction of the Amazon by a writer who moved her life into the heart of the forest.”
Translated from the Croatian by Mirza Purić
Sandorf Passage | 2022
Neon South is “an off-the-beaten-path Latin American travel narrative that unfolds like a novel, shadowing locals all too aware of how outside influences, from colonialism to globalism, have changed their lives.”
Poetry
Except for this Unseen Thread: Selected Poems by Ra’ad Abdulqadir
Translated from the Arabic by Mona Kareem
Ugly Duckling Presse | 2021
According to Don Mee Choi, “Ra’ad Abdulqadir’s Selected Poems consists of fragile, tender moments observed during life and death under sanctions and wars in Iraq.”
Días naturales by Nicole Cecilia Delgado
Translated from the Spanish by Carina del Valle Schorske
La Impresora | 2022
This collection features poems written “during a work and cleaning brigade on a farm in the town of Cabo Rojo a few months after Hurricane María in Puerto Rico.”
Translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers
Wave Books | 2022
Copy is “a prose poem sequence that insinuates an experience of violent removal: a person’s disappearance from a country, from normal life, and forcible reintegration into a new social and existential configuration.”
A Sinking Ship is Still a Ship by Ariel Francisco
Translated into Spanish by José Nicolás Cabrera-Schneider
Burrow Press | 2021
This bilingual poetry collection “deals with climate change and the absurdities and difficulties of being a millennial Latinx in the Sunshine State.”
Translated from the Korean by Susan K, Léo-Thomas Brylowski, Hannah Quinn Hertzog, Joanne Park, Soohyun Yang, Soeun Seo, and Jiyoon Lee
Black Ocean | 2023
In this selection drawing on her work across her career and five books in Korean, Haengsook’s “poetic spaces are shrouded in a magic fog that is clarifying instead of obscuring.”
Tree Spirits Grass Spirits by Hiromi Itō
Translated from the Japanese by Jon L. Pitt
Nightboat Books | 2023
This collection “adopts a non-linear narrative flow that mimics the growth of plants, and can be read as a companion piece to Itō’s beloved poem ‘Wild Grass on the Riverbank.’”
Signs of Collapse by Antonio Rodríguez Jiménez
Translated from the Spanish by Jorge Rodríguez-Miralles
Clare Songbirds Publishing House | 2023
This bilingual poetry collection “presents the hauntingly painful realities of modern life.”
A Violin from the Other Riverside by Dmytro Kremin
Translated from the Ukrainian by Svetlana Lavochkina
Lost Horse Press | 2023
Each poem in this bilingual collection is “akin to a dictionary entry on Ukraine composed in complex and intellectually laden—yet colourful and virtuosic—light-footed verse.”
Grotesque Weather and Good People by Solah Lim
Translated from the Korean by Olan Munson and Oh Eunkyung
Black Ocean | 2022
The poems in this collection “explore the simultaneous intimacy and alienation of everyday life in urban Seoul.”
Song of the Absent Brook by Sabrina Ramos Rubén
Translated from the Spanish by S. Yates Gibson
Ugly Duckling Presse | 2022
Ramos Rubén’s first English publication “explores wild landscapes and architectural ruins, personal anguish and individual wonder.”
Translated from the Korean by Jack Jung, Don Mee Choi, Sawako Nakayasu, and Joyelle McSweeney
Wave Books | 2020
Edited by Don Mee Choi, this selection of poems, stories, and essays by “one of the great revolutionary legacies of modern Korean literature” is a “visionary and daring response to personal and national trauma.”
Translated from the Russian by Martha M. F. Kelly
Slant Books | 2023
According to Scott Cairns, “These poems are united by a rare combination of humility, candor, and confidence, and by a deep, bass note of joy undergirding their claims on my heart as well.”
Whoever Drowned Here by Max Sessner
Translated from the German by Francesca Bell
Red Hen Press | 2023
These poems “employ a matter-of-fact magical realism to engage the profound, philosophical mysteries of the everyday.”
I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara by Lalbihari Sharma
Translated from the Bhojpuri by Rajiv Mohabir
Kaya Press | 2019
Originally published in India in 1916, this collection of spiritual songs is “the only known literary work written by an indentured servant in the Anglophone Caribbean.”
A Field of Foundlings by Iryna Starovoyt
Translated from the Ukrainian by Grace Mahoney
Lost Horse Press | 2017
In this collection of her selected poems, Starovoyt “investigates Ukraine’s suppressed generational memory of the 20th century and the new context of its retelling in Eastern Europe.”
The Blue House: Collected Works of Tomas Tranströmer by Tomas Tranströmer
Translated from the Swedish by Patty Crane
Copper Canyon Press | 2023
The poems in this bilingual collection—which is “a stunning testament to an illustrious career”—“range from agile haiku to cinematic prose.”
Choosing to be Simple: Collected Poems of Tao Yuanming by Tao Yuanming
Translated from the Chinese by Red Pine
Copper Canyon Press | 2023
This bilingual collection “chronicles Tao Yuanming’s path from civil servant to reclusive poet during the formative Six Dynasties period (220-589).”
Material Exercises by Blanca Varela
Translated from the Spanish by Carlos Lara
Black Sun Lit | 2023
This bilingual poetry collection “is a display of the vatic exorcism of the unconscious and a phenomenological investigation of space and intersubjective incarnation.”
Drama
A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War: 20 Short Works by Ukrainian Playwrights
Translated from the Ukrainian by John Freedman, Natalia Bratus, John Farndon, Evgenia Kovryga
Laertes Books | 2023
The plays in this collection “reflect the shock of a peaceful people who were invaded and relentlessly attacked, destroying all the cornerstones of daily life they had known.”
Literary Magazines
“The Light at the End of the Tunnel” by Mohamed Aboelgheit
Translated from the Arabic by Rudaina Halasa
The Markaz Review | 2023
This excerpt from the memoir Light, I Am Coming is “a moving testimony to life, death, and the human condition by an Egyptian journalist who was blessed, and cursed.”
“Abortion Tale: On Our Ground” by Ghadeer Ahmed
Translated from the Arabic by Hala Kamal
The Markaz Review | 2023
In this story, “three women with no abortion rights refuse to be victims of exploitation and blackmail.”
“Carnal Knowledge: Colette’s Chéri and The End of Chéri” by Kevin Brown
Rain Taxi Review of Books | 2023
This essay about two new translations begins, “Our Colette problem isn’t that there’s too little of her. The problem is where to begin. Did she write fifty, seventy-five books? Nobody knows.”
Translated from the Chichewa by Benedicto Wokomaatani Malunga
Southern Humanities Review | 2023
This poem begins, “He bears the name of a father / he has not seen. / Now and again, he asks the troubling question: / Where is my father?”
“Joyous News” by Vaiva Grainytė
Translated from the Lithuanian by Karla Gruodis
Full Bleed | 2023
This excerpt from Grainytė’s collage novel Roses and Potatoes “features several epistolary exchanges between Vika (in Vilnius) and Davis (in Canada).”
“The Spuds Are Sprouting” by Anita Harag
Translated from the Hungarian by Marietta Morry and Walter Burgess
Apple Valley Review | 2023
This short story begins, “It is the third time that I pass the sign ‘Surgery.’ I stomp my heels loudly against the stone floor, the corridor echoes. My grandmother is reading the newspaper, she is used to having to wait a long time.”
Translated from the Korean by Stine Su Yon An
Vestiges | 2021
The prose poem “peonies” begins, “the peonies you said you’d planted climb night and writhe into bloom, not knowing when these flowers are supposed to bloom and believing that it is now summer….”
“Falling Flower 2” by Cho Ji Hoon
Translated from the Korean by Sekyo Nam Haines
The Hopper | 2023
This poem begins, “Without being seen, the fading flower falls / only the white haloed // candlelight knows / its tender hearts.”
“Furthermore” by Miron C. Izakson
Translated from the Hebrew by Joseph Faust
Paper Brigade | 2022
This excerpt from the novel Furthermore begins, “When they brought in the new crane I knew the city would change, but of course I had no idea just how much.”
“The Radio” by Tahir Hamut Izgil
Translated from the Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman
Words Without Borders | 2023
In this excerpt from the memoir Waiting to be Arrested at Night, “the author recalls his childhood introduction to the Chinese government’s ban on Uyghur music.”
Two Poems by Leeladhar Jagoori
Translated from the Hindi by Matt Reeck
Another Chicago Magazine | 2023
The poem “Each Day” begins, “before they all wake up / and the forest starts to hum and pulse / like an old machine…”
Translated from the French by Austin Carder
Vestiges | 2022
The poem “My Déraison d’être” begins, “despair has three pairs of legs / despair has four pairs of legs / four pairs of airborne volcanic absorbent symmetrical legs.”
“Mutual Unconsciousness: An Interview with Hiromi Itō and Jeffrey Angles”
Rain Taxi Review of Books | 2023
In this interview by Karen Noll, Itō and Angles discuss translation and the process of translating Itō’s work from Japanese into English.
Reading List: National Translation Month
The Common | 2023
This reading list features poems by Chung Kwok-keung translated from the Chinese by May Huang, poems by George Seferis translated from the Modern Greek by Jennifer R. Kellogg, fiction by Amar Mitra translated from the Bengali by Anish Gupta, and more.
Translated from the Polish by Mira Rosenthal
The Hudson Review | 2023
This poem begins, “Five days I polish the stones of the city with the soles / of my shoes, where time likewise has honed trajectory…”
“Words and Kisses” by Kim Sehee
Translated from the Korean by Paige Aniyah Morris
The Georgia Review | 2021
This story begins, “Go Hyunjin graduated from college, took a job as a team secretary at an insurance firm, and got married. The man she married was an actuary.” (Read an accompanying interview with the translator.)
“Mohammad and Youssef” by Omar Youssef Souleimane
Translated from the French by Ghada Mourad
Words Without Borders | 2023
In this excerpt from the novel The Last Syrian, “two young men establish an intimate connection against the backdrop of the Syrian civil war.”
Three Stories by Lyudmila Ulitskaya
Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
The Hudson Review | 2023
The story “Blessed Are Those Who…” begins, “The elderly sisters Lydia and Nina came to the empty house in a forsaken Italian village by different routes, from different directions. One travelled by way of Milan, the other through Genoa.”
Words Without Borders | 2022
This series is “an attempt to create a space for the voices of Iranians who are using their words and their art to document the ongoing uprising in Iran as well as protest and fight the system.”
“Are you at home?” by Liu Ying
Translated from the Chinese by Michael Day
Another Chicago Magazine | 2020
This story begins, “Her: ‘Are you at home?’ / Me: ‘I’m at a café.’ / Her: ‘It’s nine at night. What are you doing at a café?’”
