A spotlight on new translated fiction
This month we're reading fiction translated from Japanese, Korean, German, Chinese and Spanish.
The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami (translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel)
A novel about the porous boundary between the real and shadow worlds.
After losing his beloved as a teenager, the narrator finds his way to the Town, a mysterious place where he finds work as a Dream Reader in the library. Back in the real world as an adult he tries to recapture his time in the Town by taking a job as a librarian in a remote location in Fukushima province, where he takes over the job from a ghost. When a boy, M, who visits the library every day, vanishes, the boundaries between spatial and temporal realities, and between individuals, seems to have been breached.
Available from 19 November
Read our staff review here.
The Trunk by Kim Ryeo-ryeong (translated from Korean by The Ko-lab)
Meet Noh Inji: thirty years old, five wedding rings so far, and she's never once been in love. When Inji takes a job at Wedding & Life, the popular matchmaking service, she never imagines her role will be with NM, their secretive marriage division that rents out 'field spouses' for a fixed period to their elite clientele. Just like a real marriage, Inji's assignments involve a wedding, some sex and a spot of housework. It's all tailored exactly to the client's desires – no legal battles, no fights, no emotional baggage.
In no way is Inji interested in finding real love, because accidents happen when you mistakenly assume that you are somehow special. At NM, love is temporary, which is just how Inji likes it. When one of Inji's old husbands, a mysterious high-profile music producer, requests her back for another year of marriage, Inji's own dark past will begin to unravel.
Read our staff review here.
The Granddaughter by Bernhard Schlink (translated from German by Charlotte Collins)
1964. At a youth festival in East Berlin, an unlikely young couple fall in love. It is only years later that Kaspar discovers the price his wife paid to get to him into West Berlin. Shattered by grief, Kaspar sets off to uncover Birgit’s secrets in the East. His search leads him to a rural community of neo-Nazis, and to a young girl.
This tale from the author of The Reader transports us from the divided Germany of the 1960s to contemporary Australia, asking what might be found when it seems like all is lost.
Invisible Kitties by Yu Yoyo (translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang)
Every cat contains multitudes... When a young couple accidentally come into possession of a playful kitten, their daily routine (and cramped apartment) is turned upside down. Soon they find their peaceful existence forever altered.
Charting the couple’s ever-evolving relationship with cats – some they live with, others who exist only in their imagination – Invisible Kitties is a meditation on the quiet moments of everyday life and a celebration of cats in all their many magical, chaotic, extraordinary forms.
Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk (translated from Spanish by Heather Cleary)
In the nineteenth century, a vampire arrives from Europe to the coast of Buenos Aires, on the run from the Church. She must adapt, intermingle with humans, and, most importantly, be discreet.
In present-day Buenos Aires, a woman finds herself at an impasse as she grapples with her mother's terminal illness and her own relationship with motherhood. When she first encounters the vampire in a cemetery, something ignites within the two women – and they cross a threshold from which there's no turning back.
With echoes of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Thirst plays with the boundaries of genre while exploring the limits of female agency, the consuming power of desire, and the fragile vitality of even the most immortal of creatures.
Read our staff review here.
Your Neighbour’s Table by Gu Byeong-mo (translated from Korean by Chi-young Kim)
When Yojin moves with her husband and daughter into the Dream Future Pilot Communal Apartments, she’s ready for a fresh start. Located on the outskirts of Seoul, the experimental community is a government initiative designed to boost the national birth rate. Yojin has agreed to have at least two more children over the next ten years. Yet, from the day she arrives, Yojin feels uneasy. A thought-provoking story of community and the cultural expectations of motherhood, through four women whose lives intersect in unexpected ways.
Available from 10 December
Bad Habit by Alana S. Portero (translated from Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem)
An unnamed young trans woman grows up in a working-class suburb that has no place for her. She discovers community and kinship in downtown Madrid, amid a dazzling party scene animated by charming junkies, glamorous pop divas, and fallen angels. With each step she takes forward in the city, she finds herself confronted by an antagonism she does not yet know how to counter.
In this thrilling and yet often frightening place, each decision can have the highest of stakes – and yet she knows that only she can forge a path forward to the life she truly wants to live.
Hotel Lucky Seven by Kotaro Isaka (translated from Japanese by Brian Bergstrom)
Nanao 'the unluckiest assassin in the world' has been hired to deliver a birthday present to a guest at a luxury Tokyo Hotel. It seems like a simple assignment but by the time he leaves the guest's room one man is dead and more will soon follow. As events spiral out of control it becomes clear several different killers, with varying missions, are all taking a stay in the hotel at the same time. And they're all particularly interested in a young woman with a photographic memory, hiding out on one of the twenty floors.
Will Nanao find the truth about what's going on? And will he check out alive? In this original, gripping and inventive follow-up to the international bestseller Bullet Train, Kotaro Isaka demonstrates his unparalleled gift for unique characters and unexpected twists.
