Most of you will know that it’s currently Women in Translation Month (#WITMonth), but did you know it is the 10th one?
Blogger Meytal Radzinski set up the first #WITMonth in 2014 as a way of drawing attention to the fact that just 30 per cent of literature in translation, at that time, was written by women. It was an idea amplified by book bloggers active on social media, and it’s now expanded into a worldwide movement adopted by booksellers and publishers keen to redress the balance and get more work by women who write in languages other than English translated.
There’s even a dedicated website promoting the idea.
Admittedly, when the first #WITMonth kicked off all those years ago, I wasn’t aware of the imbalance between the number of men in translation and the number of women. I am a keen reader of translated fiction, so I now make a conscious effort to redress the balance in my own reading life. I haven’t analysed my figures, but I reckon the needle now points to a 50-50 split where once men outnumbered women by 10 to one.
In 2017, I put together a quick list of 5 books in translation by women writers and in 2019 I compiled another featuring 10 of my favourite books by women writers in translation. I’ve read dozens more since then so thought it was probably a good time to compile another list.
These aren’t necessarily the best books I’ve read, instead I’ve tried to select those that might have slipped under the radar and aren’t especially well-known.
As ever, the books have been arranged in alphabetical order by author’s name — just click the title to see my full review:
‘Mothers Don’t’ by Katixa Agirre
Translated from the Basque by Kristin Addis
An examination of why mothers kill their children, this is a powerful and shocking story that reads like an extended essay. It’s framed around an award-winning writer who discovers someone she once knew has been put on trial for murder having been accused of drowning her 10-month-old twins in the bath. The book takes a close look at infanticide — who does it, why they do it and how society punishes, or doesn’t punish, the perpetrators — and motherhood. It’s fictional, but is not for the faint-hearted.
‘From the Land of the Moon’ by Milena Agus
Translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein
In 2008, this book won the prestigious Zerilli-Marimò Prize for Fiction. It’s an unconventional love story about a woman in the 1940s, forced to marry a man she does not love, who ends up bearing the child of someone she meets on holiday. She never tells her husband that he is not the father, but she becomes so obsessed with her secret lover that it affects her mental health — and eventually, many years later, goes looking for him. The twist at the end will make you want to turn right back to the first page to read it all over again!
‘Learning to Talk to Plants’ by Marta Orriols
Translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem
Winner of the Omnium Cultural Prize for Best Catalan Novel in 2018, this is a tragic story about a woman grieving the untimely death of her partner, only there’s a crucial twist — just hours before he dies in a cycling accident, he announces that their relationship is over. The novel charts the ways in which 40-something Paula, a doctor who specialises in the care of newborn babies, tries to make sense of her new reality without telling anyone her dearly departed had deserted her.
‘In Search of a Name’ by Marjolijn van Heemstra
Translated from the Dutch by Jonathan Reeder
A highly personal detective story that reads like a historical crime thriller, this novella is a fictionalised account of the author’s own family history. It’s about a pregnant woman who would like to name her unborn child after her great-uncle who was a hero of the Dutch Resistance in the Second World War. But is his name worthy of being handed down? Were his actions heroic? Or was he on the wrong side?
‘The Dinner Guest’ by Gabriela Ybarra
Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
This sad and hypnotic novel mixes fiction, reportage and memoir to explore inter-generational trauma and forgetting in the context of terrorism in the Basque Country. As well as an attempt to unravel the truth about the violent and untimely death of the author’s grandfather at the hands of the Basque separatist group ETA in 1977, it’s also a deeply personal look at what it is like to care for a terminally ill parent when Gabriela’s mother is diagnosed with colon cancer more than 30 years later.
Update 20 August: I neglected to include the list I put together in 2019 featuring 10 of my favourite books by women writers in translation, so have included that in the piece above. You can also find it here.
Have you read any of these books? Or can you recommend other translations by women writers? Are you taking part in #WITMonth?
Reading Matters 
