Fiction in Translation

Coer image for Bloody Awful in Different Ways by Andrev Walden

Bloody Awful in Different Ways by Andrev Walden (transl. Ian Giles): Seven dads in seven years

Andrev Walden’s Bloody Awful in Different Ways was a huge bestseller in Sweden, winning the country’s prestigious August Prize in 2023. It’s pitched at readers who loved Frederik Bachman’s A Man Called Ove which didn’t appeal to me but I liked the sound of this slice of autofiction which begins with young Andrev, aged seven […]

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Cover image for The Place of Shells by Mai Ishizawa

The Place of Shells by Mai Ishizawa (Transl. Polly Barton): Trauma, grief and memory

I’ve often mentioned the power of novellas on this blog, how in the right hands a few pages can convey much more than several hundred. Mai Ishizawa’s prize-winning debut, The Place of Shells, is a fine example of that for me. Set during the pandemic, it’s narrated by an unnamed academic from Tōhoku, whose coastline

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Cover image for The Director by Daniel Kehlmann

The Director by Daniel Kehlmann (transl. Ross Benjamin): In a bind

I’ve read all six of Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann’s novels and reviewed four on here, each of them very different from the others. The Director tells the story of film director G. W. Pabst who found himself trapped after the annexation of Austria, apparently with no choice but to produce films for Goebbels’s Ministry of

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Cover image for Back in the Dday by Oliver Lovrenski

Back in the Day by Oliver Lovrenski (transl. Nichola Smalley): ‘You might love the streets but theyre never gonna love you back’

Oliver Lovrenski’s Back in the Day topped the bestseller lists in Norway for months, winning the country’s prestigious Bookseller Prize when Lovrenski was just nineteen. Set in Oslo, his episodic, fragmented novel follows four boys through their school days onto the streets into a life that will likely lead to an early death. argan was

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Cover image for On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle

On the Calculation of Volume 1 by Solvej Balle (transl. Barbara J. Haveland): Here we go again

Recently shortlisted for this year’s International Booker Prize, the first book in Solvej Balle’s septology comes garlanded with praise from a wide range of writers including Jon McGregor whose endorsement swung it for me; that and its intriguing premise. On the Calculation of Volume 1 follows Tara Selter who wakes up every morning to find

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Cover image for The Cafe with No Name by Robert Seethaler

The Café with No Name by Robert Seethaler (transl. Katy Derbyshire): Everyday life writ large

This is the fourth novel by Robert Seethaler I’ve reviewed on here. The first was A Whole Life which sees a man lead a simple yet rich life, leaving his alpine valley just once. After that I snapped up both The Tobacconist and The Field as soon as they appeared. All offer a slice of

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Cover image for Your Neighbour's Table by Gu Byeong-Mo

Your Neighbour’s Table by Gu Byeong-Mo (transl. Chi-Young Kim): ‘Strangely, not a single child called for their dad’

I’ve read so little Korean fiction that when Gu Byeong-Mo’s Your Neighbour’s Table popped up on NetGalley I decided to give it a try. It’s set in an apartment building for which there is a long waiting list and strict rules to obey: tenants must have at least one child and produce two more. You’d

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Blasts from the Past: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie (transl. by Ina Rilke) (2000)

This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy in as many hands as I could. I’m ashamed to say that I read far less fiction in translation back in 2000 when I first

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Cover image for A Perfect Day to Be Alone by Nanae Aoyama

A Perfect Day to Be Alone by Nanae Aoyama (transl. Jesse Kirkwood): A poignant, funny coming-of-age story

Nanae Aoyama’s A Perfect Day to Be Alone is already a bestseller in several European countries, translated into German, French and Italian before Jesse Kirkwood’s English version. Spanning a year in which twenty-year-old Chizu lives with an elderly distant relative, it’s a quiet coming-of-age story. It turned out that when you put three people with

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Cover image for Malma Station by Alex Schulman

Malma Station by Alex Schulman (transl. Rachel Willson-Broyles) ‘You are never alone’

The blurb for Alex Schulman’s Malma Station was so impenetrable I’d have passed it by had I not been so impressed by The Survivors back in 2021. Schulman’s new novel explores similar themes following three journeys to the eponymous station deep in the Swedish countryside, separated by several decades. Often, when her parents fought, she

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Cover image for Where the Wind Calls Home by Safra Yazbek

Where the Wind Calls Home by Samar Yazbek (transl. Leri Price): ‘War! What is it good for…’

I’d only read one book by a Syrian author – Nihad Sirees’ Tales of Passion – before Samar Yazbek’s novella which seems a bit of a gap. Yazbek is acclaimed, both within her country and outside it, and has written in an impressively wide number of genres, from journalism to television drama. Where the Wind

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