Women in Translation
Selected by the Bookshop
August is women in translation month. To celebrate, we've gathered some of our favourite translated books written by women as well as some of their translators.
From the publisher:
Translated by Sophie HughesWinner of an English PEN Award | Shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker PrizeThe Witch is dead. After a group of children playing near the irrigation canals discover her decomposing corpse, the village of…
From the publisher:
Translated by Alison L. StrayerWinner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2022Considered by many to be the iconic French memoirist’s defining work, The Years is a narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of…
From the publisher:
Translated by Tanya LeslieWinner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2022In her spare, stark style, Annie Ernaux documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion. Blurring the line between fact and…
From the publisher:
Translated by Antonia Lloyd-JonesA woman settles in a remote Polish village. It has few inhabitants, but it teems with the stories of its living and its dead. There’s the drunk Marek Marek, who discovers that he shares his body…
From the publisher:
From the International Booker Prize–winning translator and Women’s Prize finalist, a propulsive, beguiling novel about eight translators and their search for a world-renowned author who goes missing in a primeval Polish…
From the publisher:
Translated from the French by Jessica MooreEastbound maps the fast-paced story of two fugitives on the Trans-Siberian Railway, where a desperate Russian conscript hopes a chance encounter with an older French woman will offer him…
From the publisher:
Translated by Charlotte BarslundOne of the foremost writers of her generation explores the strength and pain of being youngAs winter approaches in Norway and the daylight dwindles, a chance encounter prompts a novelist to reexamine her…
From the publisher:
Translated from Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer RussellA MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2023 IN TIME MAGAZINE , LITHUB, AND THE MILLIONSWINNER OF THE POLITIKEN LITERATURE PRIZEFrom the acclaimed author of The…
Recommended by Liv
The Wax Child - the narrator of this novel - gives their account of a 17th-century witch trial and bears testament to human folly, the persecution of women and the solidarity of these “victims of untruth”. Ravn's novel reads like one long incantation – it's deeply unsettling and eery – but there's also a sense of humour rooted in its irony.
From the publisher:
FROM THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR'Leila Slimani has a knack for breaking taboos.' TIMES'Slimani is a fearless writer.' EVENING STANDARDQ: If your house was burning down, what would you take with you?A: I'd take the fire.This is the…
From the publisher:
Discover the haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic tale of female friendship and intimacy set in a deserted world.Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned?…
From the publisher:
Translated by Caroline WaightA groundbreaking, profound and intimate novel about capitalism’s effects on the human heart: Money to Burn is the first volume of the Scandinavian Star series, a new masterpiece of Danish…
From the publisher:
In Agua Viva Clarice Lispector aims to 'capture the present'. Her direct, confessional and unfiltered meditations on everything from life and time to perfume and sleep are strange and hypnotic in their emotional power and have been a huge…
From the publisher:
'I write from the realms of the ugly, for the ugly, the frigid, the unfucked and the unfuckables, all those excluded from the great meat market of female flesh, and for all those guys who don't want to be protectors, for those who would…
From the publisher:
Translated from Persian by Faridoun FarrokhThe internationally acclaimed masterpiece from one of Iran's most influential writers - a powerful and essential tale of female freedom.‘The best feminist novel I know. It's thrilling,…
From the publisher:
Translated by Elisabeth JaquetteLonglisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize | Shortlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Translated LiteratureMinor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the…
From the publisher:
A NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2025A TIME MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FOR 2025'A labyrinthine masterpiece' New York Times'A subversive twist on the traditional serial killer story' TIME'Obsessive, dreamlike and hallucinatory'…
From the publisher:
From the critically acclaimed poet and classicist Anne Carson: a brilliant new translation of the work of Sappho, together with the original Greek. During her life on the island of Lesbos, Sappho is said to have composed nine books of…
From the publisher:
Translated by Deepa BhasthiWinner of the International Booker Prize 2025In the twelve stories of Heart Lamp, Banu Mushtaq exquisitely captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India.…
From the publisher:
Translated by Barbara J. HavelandLonglisted for the International Booker Prize 2025The first volume of the poetic, page-turning masterpiece about one woman's fall through the cracks of time.'A total explosion.' Nicole…
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