Recent favorites: IN TRANSLATION
Hi Everyone,
I’d like to recommend three novels in translation for your consideration. Two are recent translations from Spanish—Bad Girls by Argentine writer Camila Sosa Villada and When We Cease to Understand the World by Chilean novelist Benjamín Labatut. My third suggestion is the classic 1958 mystery novel Tokyo Express by Seichō Matsumoto, finally translated in 2022.
These three books couldn’t be more different—from the world of trans sex workers in Córdoba, Argentina to the lives of brilliant 20th century mathematicians and physicists retold in a compelling facts-to-fiction continuum, to the determination of an old-fashioned detective fixated on solving a murder in postwar Japan. I loved them all.
Do you have any favorite recent translations? Please share in the comments section.
Enjoy!
Abrazos,
Cristina
Thank you so much for the recommendations. I picked up Benjamin Labatut's novel last year at a bookstore in Miami. I read the first paragraph and bought it right away. I went next door to the coffee shop and practically read the whole thing in one sitting. Currently reading his latest, "The Maniac", this time focused on a single mathematician, each chapter told by a different one of his contemporaries and their relationship to him.
As long as you bring up classics, I read Yukio Mishima's "The Temple of the Golden Pavillion" a long time ago and often recommend it to others.