Lost in translation? Here’s my top 10 foreign novels
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Version 0 of 1. Thanks. Thanks a lot, Comment is free, for asking me to come up with a list of the top 10 “must read” translated novels. As one Twitter user wrote, when I, panic-stricken at the riches that lay before me, asked for recommendations: “Isn’t this like … an endless list of the greatest books of all time?” It’s timely, though. Yesterday, Nick Barley, director of the Edinburgh international book festival, said that British “reading habits are something of an embarrassment”. And last week Marina Warner, who chaired the Man Booker international prize this year, said we could be “oddly provincial in outlook” when it comes to literature. Just 3% of books published in the UK have been translated from a foreign language, according to a recent report. Nobody needs me to tell them that Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Don Quixote are quite good In compiling my list, I decided to steer clear of the classics. Nobody needs me to tell them that Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Don Quixote are quite good. So I’ve included personal favourites, recent prizewinners, top sellers, suggestions from Twitter, and the wise recommendations of friends and colleagues: it’s an eclectic list. But of course I’ve got this wrong – no Murakami! No Cercas! No Knausgaard! No Bolaño! Anyway, this is my top 10, in no particular order, as of 11 June 2015 (they could be different tomorrow). Tell me yours. Let’s talk about translated literature – or else Nick Barley might tell us off again next year. The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Susan Bernofsky Winner of this year’s Independent foreign fiction prize, which has done sterling work for years in highlighting fiction in translation, this imagines the five possible lives and deaths of one woman in the 20th century. Judge Boyd Tonkin said it “packs a century of upheaval” into its pages, is “both written and translated with an almost uncanny beauty”, and is a “jewel of a book” in which both WG Sebald and Virginia Woolf would “recognise a kindred spirit”. My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein Mystery surrounds the Italian novelist’s identity, but there is no doubt about her brilliance. This is the first of her Neopolitan novels portraying the friendship of Elena and Lila as the girls grow up; her books are “intensely, violently personal, and because of this they seem to dangle bristling key chains of confession before the unsuspecting reader”, said James Wood in the New Yorker. In the Beginning Was the Sea by Tomás González, translated by Frank Wynne A couple, Elena and J, move to the remote Colombian coast in search of an idealised hippie lifestyle; things rapidly go wrong, as is hinted, brilliantly, early on: “The other bedroom, where they would later open up the shop and where, later still, the corpse would be bathed, was completely empty”. I love the fact this was first published by the owner of the Bogotá nightclub where González worked, in 1983. Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera, translated by Lisa Dillman A friend says this is the best book he has read in years. It’s the story of Makina, a young woman who leaves Mexico to search for her brother in the US, bringing along both a message for her brother from their mother, and a package from a Mexican gangster called Mr Aitch. The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Teal Everyone knows, and everyone loves, the Moomintrolls. Here is Jansson with a novel for adults, about a six-year-old called Sophia and the summers she spends with her grandmother on a small Finnish island. “Tove Jansson was a genius,” said Philip Pullman of the book. “This is a marvellous, beautiful, wise novel, which is also very funny.” Satantango by László Krasznahorkai, translated by George Szirtes The winner of this year’s Man Booker international prize, set in a Hungarian town where the drunken villagers are deceived by a newcomer who might be the devil. Theo Tait wrote in the Guardian: “This is an obviously brilliant novel. Krasznahorkai is a visionary writer; even the strangest developments in the story convince, and are beautifully integrated within the novel’s dance-like structure.” Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov, translated by George Bird Kurkov chronicles the life of Viktor, an obituary writer who has only his pet penguin Misha for company, and who waits mournfully for his work to be published. “Not only had none of them died, but not one had so much as fallen ill,” he says of his subjects, before he begins to suspect that something sinister is going on. The New York Times praised his dark humour. Alex by Pierre Lemaitre, translated by Frank Wynne I adore Scandinavian crime, but let’s not let the Scandis get all the attention (and I say that as someone who lives in Norway). Pierre Lemaitre writes horribly disturbing, excellently plotted French thrillers. In the award-winning Alex, the eponymous heroine is kidnapped and subjected to a horrendous ordeal; commandant Camille Verhœven just hopes he can find her before her time runs out. Stephen King, who said this week that he avoids novels in translation, makes an exception for Lemaitre and calls him “a really excellent suspense novelist”. A cracking thriller. Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou, translated by Helen Stevenson The Congo-Brazzaville author, a finalist for this year’s Man Booker international prize, tells the story of Congolese bar Credit Gone Away. Narrator Broken Glass, an alcoholic French teacher, recounts the comings and goings of customers in a notebook provided by the bar’s owner, planning to throw himself into the River Tchinouka after he writes the final words. “The real meat of Broken Glass is its comic brio, and Mabanckou’s jokes work the whole spectrum of humour,” wrote Tibor Fischer in his review. The Last Lover by Can Xue, translated by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen This has just won the best translated book award, a prize run by Three Percent, a resource for international literature based at the University of Rochester. Judges said it pushes the novel “into bold new territory” and is “radiantly original”. Following the lives of characters including Joe, a clothing company sales manager in an unnamed western country, his wife Maria and customer Reagan, it’s a “Chinese vision of the west”, said the Independent, and a “delirious cross-cultural hall of mirrors”. For more suggestions here’s an excellent list from Publishers Weekly; past winners of the best translated book awards; past winners of the Independent foreign fiction prize; and the excellent Complete Review website. Happy reading – and please don’t hesitate to tell me who I have unforgivably failed to include … |