Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Summer books of 2021: Fiction in translation - Financial Times - Translation

The Republic of False Truths
by Alaa al-Aswany, translated by SR Fellowes, Faber £16.99/Knopf $28.95

Banned in the author’s home country, this fictionalised account of 2011’s Egyptian revolution serves up a chorus of voices — a corrupt general, a depraved but pious cleric, an idealistic school teacher, a dissatisfied workers’ representative — to capture the discontent, the excitement and the dashed hopes of the Tahrir Square movement.

Civilisations
by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor, Harvill Secker £16.99/Farrar, Straus and Giroux $27

What if Vikings, rather than Spaniards, had been the first Europeans to roam the Americas? And what if the Incas, acquainted with horses and iron, and immune to Old World diseases, had sailed across the Atlantic and invaded 16th-century Europe? A bold and thrilling experiment in counter-factual history from a masterful storyteller.

Kokoschka’s Doll
by Afonso Cruz, translated by Rahul Bery, MacLehose Press £14.99

The tale of Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka, who was so distraught by his separation from Alma Mahler that he commissioned a life-size replica of her, is one of many narrative strands woven into this quirky, multi-layered and occasionally surreal novel about identity and loss by one of Portugal’s most celebrated writers.

At Night All Blood Is Black
by David Diop, translated by Anna Moschovakis, Pushkin Press £14.99/Farrar, Straus and Giroux $25

The recently announced winner of this year’s International Man Booker Prize tells the story of Alfa Ndiaye, a Senegalese soldier fighting with French forces during the first world war, and chronicles his descent into brutality and madness after the death of his childhood friend. A powerful examination of comradeship and violence.

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell, Granta £12.99/Hogarth $27

Unnerving tales of voyeurism and self-harm, of missing children and male violence against women. With this latest collection of spine-tingling short stories, a predecessor to Enriquez’s excellent The Things we Lost in the Fire, the Argentine writer reaffirms her claim to the title of queen of Latin American gothic.

Tell us what you think

What are your favourites from this list — and what books have we missed? Tell us in the comments below

Slash and Burn
by Claudia Hernández, translated by Julia Sanches, And Other Stories £11.99

In an unspecified war-torn country, evocative of the author’s native El Salvador, an unnamed narrator takes up arms to fight for the poor but must pay a high price as she is forced to give up her daughter. A brutal dramatisation of the immediate and longer-term consequences of war as experienced by women.

Love in Five Acts
by Daniela Krien, translated by Jamie Bulloch, MacLehose Press £14.99

In this multifaceted examination of female longing and loss, German novelist Daniela Krien tells the interconnected stories of five women struggling to reconcile their multiple and often conflicting roles as professionals, as mothers, as daughters, as wives, as lovers and as friends. A sympathetic and clear-eyed view of modern womanhood.

Our Lady of the Nile
by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated by Melanie Mauthner, Daunt £9.99

Set in a Catholic girls’ school in late 1970’s Rwanda, this debut novel moves from a near-satirical and light-hearted depiction of the schoolgirls’ antics towards a darker and deeply troubling examination of the ethnic hatred that would eventually lead to the massacre of more than half a million Tutsi in 1994.

The Employees
by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken, Lolli Editions £12.99

Danish artist Lea Guldditte Hestelund invited novelist Olga Ravn to write a piece of fiction based on an exhibition of her sculptures. The result is a critique of life in the modern workplace, in which the discovery of strange objects on a faraway planet leads a space crew to question what it means to be human.

In Memory of Memory
by Maria Stepanova, translated by Sasha Dugdale, Fitzcarraldo £14.99/Book Hug Press $25

In her first prose work published in English — a rich and sprawling hybrid of memoir, literary essay and fiction — Russian poet Stepanova sifts through the letters, scrapbooks and photographs left behind by her deceased aunt, threading her family’s memories into the troubled history of 20th-century Russia.

Summer Books 2021

All this week, FT writers and critics share their favourites. Some highlights are:

Monday: Business by Andrew Hill
Tuesday: Economics by Martin Wolf
Wednesday: Politics by Gideon Rachman
Thursday: History by Tony Barber
Friday: Fiction by Laura Battle
Saturday: Critics’ choice

Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café

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