By Jane Bentham, Zoe Wallace, Ainsley Lin and Nicole Sterba
August is Women in Translation Month, a project aimed to promote the translated works of women writers across all languages and countries. As women writers account for only 30% of new releases in translation each year in the United States, this is the perfect opportunity to support translated works by women and discover your new favourite authors! Here are our recommendations for this year.
Yoko Ogawa
Yoko Ogawa is a Japanese writer whose books frequently meditate on memory and human psychology, receiving countless awards in Japan and internationally.
Her widely acclaimed science-fiction novel, The Memory Police, translated by Stephen Snyder, is set on an island where objects regularly disappear and are instantly erased from the minds of inhabitants. People who are immune to this phenomenon are arrested and never seen again. We follow a young writer, who, upon discovering that her editor is someone who remembers, attempts to hide and protect him from the ruling memory police. Perfect for fans of 1984 and Brave New World, this is a gripping, thought-provoking book that reflects on loss, oppression and the meaning of being human.
Among Ogawa’s other notable works – The Housekeeper and the Professor, translated once again by Stephen Snyder, deserves a mention. This gentler, more intimate novel focuses on the way a Maths professor; who loses his memory every eighty minutes, his housekeeper and her son, all forge a familial bond with one another.
Sayaka Murata
Sayaka Murata is another incredible Japanese writer from a small town in Tokyo, who has won all of Japan’s major literary prizes and been named Vogue Japan’s Woman of the Year.
She is an international bestseller with her novel Convenience Store Woman, a story about a middle-aged woman who doesn’t seem to fit in within society, with her family constantly worrying after her. Keiko has been working in the same shop for eighteen years, which makes her happy, and nobody can take that away from her. A beautifully written novel that is easily polished off in a few hours.
Her most gripping novel, Earthlings deserves some praise too. If the mood for an unhinged book arises, this is definitely the one to read. Full of unease, grossness and cultish vibes, Earthlings raises so many questions about childhood and trauma. Written in an incredible gripping tone, Murata’s ability to discuss difficult scenarios is outstanding.
Let’s not forget her most recent novel, Life Ceremony, another truly disturbing but intriguing book about belonging and what it means to be human in this world.
Andrea Jeftanovic
Andrea Jeftanovic is a Chilean author and professor. She has received many awards for her writing, including a PEN Translates Award and a Chilean Art Critics Circle Award. Her works include fiction, non-fiction and essays. Jeftanovic has also supported other female authors by anthologising works by fellow Chilean author, Pía Barros and the Brazilian author, Clarice Lispector. She published Conversations with Isidora Aguirre, which details three years of interviews and research about the Chilean playwright.
In her widely praised debut novel, published in 2020, Theatre of War, Jeftanovic highlights the disastrous physiological effects of war. The story is told by a young girl, whose daily life is haunted by a war that ended before she was even born. After surviving the conflicts in the Balkans in the early tens, her parents fled to South America to forge a new life. Theatre of War is a heartbreaking poignant depiction of trauma passed down through a broken family.
Marina Jarre
Marina Jarre is a Latvia-born Italian writer, who has published over a dozen novels and short stories in her time. Born to a Jewish father and an Italian mother, Jarre often writes about her rich cultural heritage and the struggles of trauma in adolescence. Some of Jarre’s other famous works include her autobiography Distant Fathers.
Her novel Return to Latvia was translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein in 2023. This novel won the Italian literary award the Grinzane Cavour Prize in 2004, and was first translated into French, German and Hungarian. Return to Latvia is a memoir that explores Jarre’s homecoming to her birthplace in Riga, where she attempts to come to terms with her past. After leaving Riga for Italy when she was ten years old, Jarre recounts the mass execution of the Jewish population by Nazi death squads. In this gripping novel, she reports all that she had missed after her parents’ split and was sent to live with her grandparents in Italy as just a young child. She deals with grief, guilt and the repression of these realisations. Touching on topics of generational trauma as well as generational healing, Jarre’s work is sure to tug on your heartstrings.
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