Resources and Recommendations for Reading Around the World

[Alwynne]

Thanks for the info Claire, am definitely going to take the plunge. And Hannah what a brilliant idea will see if any of the lists I've liked might fit too.

[Alwynne]

Here are some of mine, not all exclusively women but a number of women included in all of them:

Australian Women writers

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

The Zora Canon

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

Women of the Harlem Renaissance

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

Hungarian Literature

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/3...

Black British Literature

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/5...

Korean Literature

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

[Story]

50 Notable African Books of 2020 (not all by women but many are; also there are links to best books of 2018 and 2019 which might be easier to find in our libraries.)

https://brittlepaper.com/50-notable-b...

[Alwynne]

Great Story

[Carol]

Story wrote: "50 Notable African Books of 2020 (not all by women but many are; also there are links to best books of 2018 and 2019 which might be easier to find in our libraries.)

https://brittlepaper.com/50-no..."

Wow - what an awesome resource. And Brittle Paper is new to me. yay!

[Story]

Anyone read anything by Tove Ditlevsen?

This Paris Review article makes her sound interesting:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2...

Also just discovered Paris Review's "Feminize Your Canon" column:
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/c...

[Alwynne]

No Story but I pre-ordered the Penguin Modern Classics edition the complete trilogy, due out in January-ish!

[Story]

Alwynne wrote: "No Story but I pre-ordered the Penguin Modern Classics edition the complete trilogy, due out in January-ish!"

Can't wait to hear what you think.

[Tina]

If I may put in a plug for the YouTube channel founded by myself and fellow literary translator Charlotte Coombe; Translators Aloud features translators giving short readings of their own work and provides a perfect little taste of a wide range of titles both current and forthcoming for when you're looking for your next translated read. Please do subscribe to us! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjaq...

[Carol]

Tina wrote: "If I may put in a plug for the YouTube channel founded by myself and fellow literary translator Charlotte Coombe; Translators Aloud features translators giving short readings of their own work and ..."

Sure, Tina. Our group is decidedly self-promotion averse, but your comment is right on point and thanks for sharing it.

[Carol]

Story wrote: "Anyone read anything by Tove Ditlevsen?

This Paris Review article makes her sound interesting:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2......"

I've never heard of her - thanks for the education and these links are great!

[Story]

My pleasure, Carol! Another book pal has just reviewed the first two books in Ditlevsen's memoir series and added them to her 2020 favourites list. I'm looking forward to getting them sometime this year.

[Carol]

From The Guardian, What I learned from reading books by women from every country in the world, including many links to several of the 199 books the author read in the 3-year period during which she completed her project.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

[Story]

Great article, Carol. Thanks for sharing it!

[Carol]

Story wrote: "Great article, Carol. Thanks for sharing it!"

you're welcome, story! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I admit, I was charmed by the links and lesser known titles.

[Carol]

I was today year's old when I learned that Powell's (bookstore) blogs each month about then-new releases in translation. !!! Here's a link to the March Lit in Translation article (includes male authors):

https://www.powells.com/post/lists/ma...

I had just added Hoda Barakat's Voices of the Lost to my TBR -- and also my Q2 Immigrants, Exhiles, Expats, Refugees want-to-read list.

Argentina: Mona by Pola Oloixarac

Brazil: Antonio by Beatriz Bracher

Chile: The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernández

France: The Impudent Ones by Marguerite Duras

France: Public Reading Followed by Discussion by Danielle Memoire

Germany: The High-Rise Diver by Julia von Lucadou (debut)

Japan: There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura

[Hannah]

Thanks for these fantastic resources Carol. The Barakat looks fantastic and perfect for the Q2 challenge, I've asked my library to purchase

[Carol]

The International Booker Long List is out! The shortlist for the prize will be announced on 22 April 2021, and the winner announced on 2 June 2021.

The works by women authors on the longlist are:

I Live in the Slums: Stories by Can Xue, translated from Chinese by Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping, Yale University Press

The Pear Field by Nana Ekvtimishvili, translated from Georgian by Elizabeth Heighway, Peirene Press

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories by Mariana Enríquez, translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell, Granta Books

The Employees by Olga Ravn, translated from Danish by Martin Aitken, Lolli Editions

An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky, translated from German by Jackie Smith, Quercus, MacLehose Press

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, translated from Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette, Fitzcarraldo Editions

In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova, translated from Russian by Sasha Dugdale, Fitzcarraldo Editions

https://thebookerprizes.com/internati...

Have you read any of these? Recommendations?

[Claire]

I haven't read any of them, but I did appreciate this 20 minute summary created by Eric at Lonesome Reader, where he discusses every book, and briefly mentions the experience of the 3 books he has already read.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBlCQ...

I'm interested in the short stories by Can Xue, she is apparently very well known in China, and Minor Detail by the Palestinian author Adania Shibli has been much admired by readers.

[Carol]

Claire wrote: "I haven't read any of them, but I did appreciate this 20 minute summary created by Eric at Lonesome Reader, where he discusses every book, and briefly mentions the experience of the 3 books he has ..."

Thanks, Claire! I'll be interested to hear what you think of the Can Xue collection if you give it a go. I tried Frontier a couple of years back without success, due to a misalignment between my brain and experimental literature, but other GR friends thought it was magnificent.

I'll watch that video and see if it makes me serious enough to purchase 1 or more, since none of these are or will be purchased by my library, more's the pity.

[Alwynne]

Recently came across this site:

https://contemporaryirishwriting.ie/

which features 100 books by Irish writers - many are by women - with links to reviews, interviews and other resources for each featured title.

[Carol]

Arablit's overview of 30 2021 releases in English translation, presented by the month of their anticipated release date. (includes male authors)

https://arablit.org/2021/01/01/an-ove...

[Carol]

The 2021 International Booker List shortlist is out:

https://thebookerprizes.com/internati...

Women-authored books (3 out of 6) are:

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories by Mariana Enríquez, translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell, Granta Books
The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, translated from Danish by Martin Aitken, Lolli Editions
In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova, translated from Russian by Sasha Dugdale, Fitzcarraldo Editions

The winner will be announced 2 June.

[Carol]

Read for free, That Old Seaside Club, a story from Izumi Suzuki's newly released sci-fi collection, Terminal Boredom: Stories. Scroll down past the brief introduction if you're a no-spoiler, go-in-cold reader. I've excerpted the bio/significance para below the story link.

https://electricliterature.com/that-o...

On Suzuki:
"The writer Izumi Suzuki, an icon and pioneer of Japanese science fiction, came of age in the 1960s and was part of Japan’s artistic avant garde; she worked with the photographer Nobuyoshi Araki as well experimental film directors Shūji Terayama and Kōji Wakamatsu, and was married to the free jazz saxophonist Kaoru Abe. Suzuki died at 37, in the middle of the 1980s, completing her best work in the last ten years of her life. Despite being an outsider in the science fiction world during much of her career, she is compared to Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin, Anna Kavan, and others, having paved the way for many contemporary Japanese authors including the brilliant Yōko Tawada and Haruki Murakami. Suzuki’s work, now released in English for the first time, marks an exciting moment. Its themes feel of-the-moment despite being written over thirty years ago, and yet they are also surreal—the imagined artificialities of the 1980s written as futuristic now mirror our mundane, modern technology."

[Carol]

Of interest to those seeking #WiT books as well as reading around the world:

LitHub published an article, "5 Books in Translation You May Have Missed in April", which I thought other members might enjoy. 4 out of 5 are written by women authors, and the 5th has a woman translator, so ... yay!

https://lithub.com/5-books-in-transla...

Nancy by Bruno Lloret. Two Lines Press. Translated from the Spanish by Ellen Jones.

Bird Cottage by Dutch philosopher, Eva Meijer. Pushkin Press. Translated by Antoinette Fawcett. A novel based on the life and research of Len Howard. (Len was born Gwendolen Howard in 1895 in Wallington, UK.)

Thirst, the 28th novel of Belgian (living in Paris) author, Amélie Nothomb. 96 pages. Europa Editions. Translated by Alison Anderson. A fictional account of Jesus' final days and hours.

Permafrost, the prize-winning debut novel by acclaimed Catalan poet Eva Baltasar. And Other Stories. Only $4.99 for Kindle. Translated by Julia Sanches. It is the first novel in a triptych which aims to explore the universes of three different women in the first person.

We Trade Our Night for Someone Else's Day, a historical, political thriller by former-Yugoslavian-born Ivana Bodrožić. Seven Stories Press. Translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać. I'm so definitely buying this one.