A spotlight on new translated fiction
This month we're reading fiction translated from: Spanish, Italian, Swedish, French, Norwegian, Japanese, Polish and Korean.
The Last Dream by Pedro Almodovar (translated from Spanish by Frank Wynne)
The Last Dream brings together for the first time twelve unpublished stories from Almodovar's personal archive, written between the late sixties and the present day. Both a tantalising glimpse into Almodovar's creative mind and a masterclass in how to tell a story, this intimate and mischievous collection reflects Almodovar's obsessions and many of the themes of his cinematic work, spanning genres from autofiction to comedy, parody, pastiche and gothic. The title story, 'The Last Dream', is a beautiful chronicle of the death of Almodovar's mother, and other stories include: a love story between Jesus and Barabbas; a cult film director out in search of painkillers on a bank holiday weekend; the primary version of the film Bad Education; and a gothic tale of a repentant vampire among monks.
Read our staff review here.
A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez (translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell)
Mariana Enriquez's A Sunny Place for Shady People is her first story collection since the International Booker Prize-shortlisted The Dangers of Smoking in Bed.
Featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, the occult and the macabre, the stories explore love, womanhood, LGBTQ counterculture, parenthood and Argentina's brutal past.
Read our staff review here.
Tasmania: A Novel by Paolo Giordano (translated from Italian by Antony Shugaar)
In late 2015, Paolo feels his life coming apart. His wife has given up on pregnancy after years of trying; he clings to the dream. Paolo immerses himself in work, traveling to Paris to report on the UN Climate Change Conference in the wake of terrorist attacks, his journalism dovetailing with a book he hopes to write on the atomic bomb and its survivors. As he traverses Europe and Japan, Paolo interacts with a vibrant cast of characters, including a brilliant physicist who will test his loyalty and values.
Napalm in the Heart by Pol Guasch (translated from Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem)
In a deserted village, an unnamed young man waits for an opportunity to escape. Society has been militarised, the dead lie unburied, and thugs patrol the land. As he waits, he marks the days that pass and writes to his lover Boris, with whom he shares an animal desire. In a series of impassioned dispatches, Napalm in the Heart unearths what it means to survive when language and nature fail, to refuse to give up when everything is lost. A blistering debut voice in international literature.
The Divorce by Moa Herngren (translated from Swedish by Alice Menzies)
There are two sides to every story. Together for more than thirty years, Bea and Niklas live a comfortable life in Stockholm. But one evening, following a trivial argument, Niklas disappears. Weeks pass before it emerges that he has met someone else. To Bea’s horror, he insists they must divorce. But is this divorce really coming out of the blue? Is the person who does the leaving always the one at fault? What emerges once you begin scratching the surface?
Available from 15 October.
Annihilation by Michel Houellebecq (translated from French by Shaun Whiteside)
It is 2027. France is in a state of economic decline and moral decay. As the country plunges into a closely-fought presidential campaign, the French state falls victim to a series of mysterious and unsettling cyberattacks. The sophisticated nature of the attacks leaves the best computer scientists at the DGSI – the French counter-terrorism agency – scrambling for answers.
An advisor to the country’s Finance Minister, Paul Raison is close to the heart of government. His wife Prudence is a Treasury official, while his father Édouard, now retired, has spent his career working for the DGSI. When Édouard has a stroke, his children have an opportunity to repair their strained relationships, as they determine to free their father from the medical centre where he is wasting away.
Read our staff review here.
Before We Forget Kindness by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot)
In the fifth book in the sensational Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, the mysterious cafe where customers arrive hoping to travel in time welcomes four new guests: The father who could not allow his daughter to get married; A woman who couldn't give Valentine's Day chocolates to her loved one; A boy who wants to show his smile to his divorced parents; A wife holding a child with no name...
They must follow the cafe's strict rules, however, and come back to the present before their coffee goes cold. In another moving and heartwarming tale from Toshikazu Kawaguchi, our new visitors wish to go back into their past to move on their present, finding closure and comfort so they can embark on a beautiful future.
The Third Realm by Karl Ove Knausgaard (translated from Norwegian by Martin Aitken)
For several days, a bright new star in the sky above Norway has blazed over the restless lives of those below. Tove, an artist, is consumed by creativity, spiralling towards psychosis. Line falls in love with a musician and is lured to a secret death-metal gig in a remote forest. Geir, a policeman, is investigating a ritual murder but chances upon something even more horrifying – because, as undertaker Syvert has realised, people have stopped dying.
The universe of The Morning Star and The Wolves of Eternity expands with The Third Realm.
The Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu (translated from Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood)
Is three days with a cat enough to change your life? The troubled and anxious of Tokyo are desperate to find out. They all want to believe that a feline companion from a unique pet shop can help them find a solution. But there are rules: the cats must be returned after three days, and they must always sleep in their own familiar blankets. But like all their kind, the blanket cats are mysterious creatures with their own unknowable agendas. And perhaps what their hosts are looking for isn’t what they really need.
Gifted by Suzumi Suzuki (translated from Japanese by Allison Markin Powell)
In 2008, the unnamed narrator of Gifted is working as a hostess and living in Tokyo’s nightlife district. One day, her estranged mother, who is seriously ill, suddenly turns up at her door. As the mother approaches the end of her life, the two women must navigate their strained relationship, while the narrator also reckons with events happening in her own life, including the death of a close friend.
Based on the Suzuki’s own experiences as a sex worker, Gifted heralds an exciting new literary talent.
The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk (translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones)
The Nobel Prize-winner's latest work is a riveting, humorous tale of mystery that takes misogyny to task. In September 1913, Mieczyslaw, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at a health resort in what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the day: will there be war? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior?
But disturbing events are happening in the guesthouse and its surroundings. Someone - or something - seems to be infiltrating their world. As our student attempts to decipher the sinister forces at work, little does he realise they have already chosen their next target.
Read our staff review here.
Goodnight Tokyo by Atsuhiro Yoshida (translated from Japanese by Haydn Trowell)
Every night, Matsui guides his taxi around the streets of Tokyo, collecting passengers and their stories. Confessions of intimacy and loneliness merge with the surreal: the funeral of an old telephone, the flea-market in which objects are bartered for that don’t actually exist. Told over a number of nights – and punctuated by Matsui’s dawn arrival at his favourite canteen for a plate of their famous ham and eggs – Atsuhiro Yoshida weaves a web of stories that prove to be intimately and compellingly connected.
Marigold Mind Laundry by Jungeun Yun (translated from Korean by Shanna Tan)
After young Jieun accidentally causes her beloved family to vanish, she conjures up her Mind Laundry. In the village of Marigold, she cleanses painful experiences from her customers’ hearts as she does their laundry. We meet five wounded souls: a frustrated young filmmaker; a tortured social-media influencer; a distraught mother who has discovered her husband’s other family; a young woman two-timed by her lover; and Yeonghui, a victim of bullying, who works as a delivery man. After washing their pain away, Jieun makes an astonishing discovery.