{"id":408972,"date":"2018-11-29T10:00:39","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T15:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/?p=408972"},"modified":"2019-07-29T12:51:54","modified_gmt":"2019-07-29T16:51:54","slug":"women-in-translation-btba-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2018\/11\/29\/women-in-translation-btba-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Women in Translation [BTBA 2019]"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week’s Best Translated Book Award post is from Pierce Alquist of Book Riot.<\/em><\/p>\n

After a record-breakingly frigid Thanksgiving here in the northeast, I\u2019m dreaming wistfully of August. BBQs, beaches, and bikinis are all good but I mostly just miss being able to go outside without wrapping multiple scarves around my face. It\u2019s the little things in life! I also miss Women in Translation Month. This past August my social media feed was packed with great book suggestions and conversations and I loved it. But it doesn\u2019t have to be August to read women in translation and I\u2019ve picked out a selection of great titles by women that are eligible for this year\u2019s award.<\/p>\n

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After the Winter<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Guadalupe Nettel, translated from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey (Coffee House)<\/strong><\/p>\n

I took my time with this sharp and stunning novel and I absolutely loved it. In parallel and entwining narratives that move from Havana to Paris to New York City, After the Winter<\/em> is a novel ultimately about the human impulse to love, and yet it\u2019s unlike any other love story I\u2019ve ever read. The writing, in Rosalind Harvey\u2019s brilliant translation, is nothing short of transcendent\u2014subtle and dark but also surprisingly funny. Going forward, I want all of my love stories to have this many cemeteries in them.<\/p>\n

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The Governesses<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Anne Serre, translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson (New Directions)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this U.S. debut from major French writer Anne Serre, three governesses are shut off in a remote country home. They\u2019re supposed to be watching their pupils, but in this \u201cintense, delicious meringue of a novel\u201d they\u2019re off instead having frenzied erotic adventures. It\u2019s an absolute gem and I\u2019m not the first judge to gush about it<\/a> and I\u2019m sure I won\u2019t be the last. Sexy, funny, smart, and some spectacular writing. And all in like 100 pages and I just don\u2019t know how that\u2019s possible. Kirkus<\/em> calls it \u201cA sensualist, surrealist romp\u201d writing that \u201ceach sentence evokes a dream logic both languid and circuitous as the governesses move through a fever of domesticity and sexual abandon.\u201d<\/p>\n

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An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Helene Tursten, translated from the Swedith by Marlaine Delargy (Soho Press)<\/strong><\/p>\n

An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good<\/em> is dark, funny, and oh so satisfying. Maud is an 88-year-old Swede who has no scruples about solving life\u2019s problems with some low-key murder. I enjoyed this story collection and am planning to pick up Helene Tursten\u2019s mystery novels. An Elderly Lady<\/em> is also just such a great package\u2014the title is fun and clever, the needlepoint cover is hilarious, and the small trim size finishes it off perfectly.<\/p>\n

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People in the Room<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Norah Lange, translated from the Spanish by Charlotte Whittle (And Other Stories)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Long viewed as Borges\u2019s muse, Norah Lange has been widely overlooked as a writer in her own right. Translated for the first time into English, People in the Room<\/em> is an intense, haunting, and canon-breaking novel that completely overwhelmed me. A young woman is looking out her window in the midst of a thunderstorm when she catches sight of three women in the house across the street from her. She begins to watch, obsess over, and imagine the secrets and lies of the women in the window. \u201cLange\u2019s imaginative excesses and almost hallucinatory images make this uncanny exploration of desire, domestic space, voyeurism, and female isolation a twentieth century masterpiece.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Taiga Syndrome<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana (Dorothy)<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a huge fan of The Iliac Crest<\/em> by Cristina Rivera Garza and translated by Sarah Booker and I couldn\u2019t wait for the upcoming The Taiga Syndrome<\/em>, Garza\u2019s take on a contemporary Latin American detective novel. The narrative follows an ex-detective as she searches for a missing couple. It\u2019s complicated and genre bending, with nods to fairy tales\u2014Hansel and Gretel<\/em> and Little Red Riding Hood<\/em> specifically\u2014and written in a striking style that\u2019s all her own. The dark, unsettling tone really hit the spot for me in the midst of my fall reading. In a starred review, Kirkus<\/em> calls it \u201cAn eerie, slippery gem of a book\u201d and I just love that description.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No list would be complete without a mention of Fox<\/em><\/a> by Dubravka Ugresic and translated by Ellen Elias-Bursa\u0107 and David Williams. Fox<\/em> is astonishing. Complicated, intricate, funny, and wicked smart. And I\u2019m crazy about Eventide<\/em><\/a> by Therese Bohman and translated by Marlaine Delargy (if you\u2019re keeping track, that\u2019s two mentions of Delargy in this piece!) This insightful novel is at once cutting and beautiful. The prose, the character Karolina, the reflections on art and love\u2014it\u2019s masterful and devastating. I could go on but I won\u2019t. I have to go outside and it\u2019s going to take a while with these scarves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s Best Translated Book Award post is from Pierce Alquist of Book Riot. After a record-breakingly frigid Thanksgiving here in the northeast, I\u2019m dreaming wistfully of August. BBQs, beaches, and bikinis are all good but I mostly just miss being able to go outside without wrapping multiple scarves around my face. It\u2019s the little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":409002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408972"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":409042,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408972\/revisions\/409042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}