Fantastic Fiction in Translation
To celebrate the Positive Images Festival, we have put together a list of thirteen fantastic titles of translated fiction. There are links to interviews, reviews and promotions and some of the titles have been listed for the International Man Booker Prize. The rising popularity in translated fiction shows we remain a country keen to look and learn beyond our shores.
| Book cover | Book title and author | Book introduction | Websites for more information |
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Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami (translated from Japanese) |
The much-anticipated new novel from the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of 1Q84 and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, Killing Commendatore is an epic tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art - as well as a loving homage to The Great Gatsby - and a stunning work of imagination from one of our greatest writers. |
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The Chestnut Man by Soren Sveistrup (translated from Danish) |
On a blistery autumn morning Rosa Hartung returns to her job as Minister for Social Affairs, a year after the dramatic disappearance of her 12-year-old daughter. Linus Berger, a mentally disturbed young man, confessed to her killing, but claims he can't remember where he buried her dismembered corpse. That same day Rosa returns to Parliament, a young mother is found murdered at her home in the suburbs of Copenhagen - she's been tortured, and one hand has been cut off. Detectives Thulin and Hess, sent to investigate the crime, arrive to find a figure made of chestnut hanging from a nearby playhouse. When yet another woman is murdered, and another chestnut figure is found, Thulin and Hess begin to suspect that there's a connection between the previously closed Hartung case and the new recent victims. |
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The Absolution by Yrsa Sigurdardottir (translated from Icelandic) |
The police found out about the crime the way everyone does: on Snapchat. The video shows the terrified victim begging for forgiveness. When her body is found, it is marked with a number 2. Detective Huldar joins the investigation, bringing child psychologist Freyja on board to help question the murdered teenager's friends. Soon, they uncover that Stella was far from the angel people claim - but, even so, who could have hated her enough to kill? Then another teenager goes missing, and more clips are sent. Freyja and Huldar can agree on two things at least: the truth is far from simple. And the killer is not done yet.
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The Reunion by Guillaume Musso (translated from French) |
French Riviera, Winter 1992. On a freezing night, as her high school campus is engulfed by a snowstorm, 19-year-old Vinca Rockwell runs away with Alexis, her philosophy teacher. No one will ever see them again. French Riviera, Spring 2017. Formerly inseparable, Thomas, Maxime and Fanny - Vinca's best friends - have not spoken in twenty-five years. But when they receive an invitation to their school's anniversary reunion, they know they must go back one final time. Because there is a body buried in that building - and they're the ones who put it there. |
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Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (translated from Japanese) |
Keiko has never really fitted in. At school and university people find her odd and her family worries she'll never be normal. To appease them, Keiko takes a job at a newly opened convenience store. Here, she finds peace and purpose in the simple, daily tasks and routine interactions. She is, she comes to understand, happiest as a convenience store worker. But in Keiko's social circle it just won't do for an unmarried woman to spend all her time stacking shelves and re-ordering green tea. |
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The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe (translated from Spanish) |
Available in e-book. Fourteen-year-old Dita is one of the many imprisoned by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Taken, along with her mother and father, from the Terezin ghetto in Prague, Dita is adjusting to the constant terror that is life in the camp. When Jewish leader Freddy Hirsch asks Dita to take charge of the eight precious volumes the prisoners have managed to smuggle past the guards, she agrees. And so Dita becomes the secret librarian of Auschwitz,responsible for the safekeeping of the small collection of titles, as well as the 'living books' - prisoners of Auschwitz who know certain books so well, they too can be borrowed' to educate the children in the camp. But books are extremely dangerous. They make people think. And nowhere are they more dangerous than in Block 31 of Auschwitz, the children's block, where the slightest transgression can result in execution, no matter how young the transgressor. |
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Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina (translated from Russian) |
In a small Tatar village, a woman named Zuleikha watches as her husband is murdered by communists. Zuleikha herself is sent into exile, enduring a horrendous train journey to a remote spot on the Angara River in Siberia. Conditions in the camp are tough, and many of her group do not survive the first difficult winter. As she gets to know her companions - including a rather dotty doctor, an artist who paints on the sly, and Ignatov, her husband's killer - Zuleikha begins to build a new life that is far removed from the one she left behind. |
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By Night the Mountain Burns by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel (translated from Spanish) |
Shortlisted for the 2015 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. By Night The Mountain Burns recounts the narrator’s childhood on a remote island off the West African coast, living with his mysterious grandfather, several mothers and no fathers. We learn of a dark chapter in the island’s history: a bush fire destroys the crops, then hundreds perish in a cholera outbreak. |
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The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld (translated from Dutch) |
Jas lives with her devout farming family in the rural Netherlands. One winter's day, her older brother joins an ice skating trip; resentful at being left alone, she makes a perverse plea to God; he never returns. As grief overwhelms the farm, Jas succumbs to a vortex of increasingly disturbing fantasies, watching her family disintegrate into a darkness that threatens to derail them all. |
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Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann (translated from German) |
He's a trickster, a player, a jester. His handshake's like a pact with the devil, his smile like a crack in the clouds; he's watching you now and he's gone when you turn. Tyll Ulenspiegel is here! In a village like every other village in Germany, a scrawny boy balances on a rope between two trees. He's practising. He practises by the mill, by the blacksmiths; he practises in the forest at night, where the Cold Woman whispers and goblins roam. When he comes out, he will never be the same. Tyll will escape the ordinary villages. In the mines he will defy death. On the battlefield he will run faster than cannonballs. In the courts he will trick the heads of state. As a travelling entertainer, his journey will take him across the land and into the heart of a never-ending war. |
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Serotonin by Michel Houellebecq (translated from French) |
Dissatisfied and discontent, Florent-Claude Labrouste begrudgingly works as an engineer for the Ministry of Agriculture, and is in a self-imposed dysfunctional relationship with a younger woman. When he discovers her ongoing infidelity, he decides to abandon his life in Paris and return to the Normandy countryside of his youth. There he contemplates lost loves and past happiness as he struggles to embed himself in a world that no longer holds any joy for him. His only relief comes in the form of a pill - white, oval, small. Captorix is a new brand of anti-depressant, recently released for public consumption, which works by altering the brain's release of serotonin. With social unrest intensifying around him, and his own depression deepening, Florent-Claude turns to this new medication in the hope that he will find something to live for. |
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Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila (translated from French) |
Lucien, a professional writer, fleeing the exactions and the censorship, finds refuge in the city thanks to Requiem, a friend. Requiem lives mainly on theft and on swindle while Lucien only thinks of writing and living honestly. Around them gravitate gangsters and young girls, retired or runaway men, profit-seeking tourists and federal agents of a non-existent state. 'Tram 83' plunges the reader into the atmosphere of a gold rush as cynical as it is comic and colourfully exotic. |
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Disoriental by Negar Djavadi (translated from French) |
Kimia Sadr fled Iran at the age of 10 in the company of her mother and sisters to join her father in France. Now 25 and facing the future she has built for herself as well as the prospect of a new generation, Kimia is inundated by her own memories and the stories of her ancestors, which come to her in unstoppable, uncontainable waves. In the waiting room of a Parisian fertility clinic, generations of flamboyant Sadrs return to her, including her formidable great-grandfather Montazemolmolk, with his harem of 52 wives. |
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A Good Day For Climbing Trees by Jaco Jacobs Translator: Kobus Geldenhuys (from Afrikaans) | Sometimes, in the blink of an eye, you do something that changes your life forever. Like climbing into a tree with a strange girl. Marnus is tired of feeling invisible, living in the shadow of his two brothers. His older brother is good at breaking swimming records and girls' hearts. His younger brother is already a crafty entrepreneur who has tricked him into doing the dishes all summer. But when a girl called Leila ends up on their doorstep one morning asking him to sign a petition, it's the start of an unexpected adventure. And finally, Marnus gets the chance to be noticed. |