Ten Books to Celebrate Women in Translation Month 2024

August is Women in Translation Month. We are honoured to publish many amazing books written and translated by women from all over the world. To celebrate #WITMonth, we’ve assembled a list of ten must-read titles written and translated by women. Use it to inspire your summer (and beyond) reading or to organize a women in translation-themed reading group. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but a starting point for you to discover more wonderful books by women that have been translated into English.

Plus, don’t miss our Women in Translation Month sale running throughout August. Until August 31, 2024, save 25% off all books in our Literature in Translation Series written or translated by women.

My Work by Olga Ravn, translated from Danish
by Jennifer Russell and Sophia Hersi Smith 

My Work is a fervent, intimate, and compulsive examination of the relationship between motherhood, writing, and everyday life. In a mesmerizing, propulsive blend of prose, poetry, journal entries, and letters, Olga Ravn probes the pain, postpartum depression, housework, shopping, mundanity, and anxiety of motherhood, all the while celebrating the unbounded that comes from the love in a parent and child relationship—and rediscovering oneself through art.

Sadie X by Clara Dupuis-Morency, translated from French by Aimee Wall 

Combining the cerebral and the sensual, Sadie X is a deeply inventive and singular novel about the power of metamorphosis and symbiosis that explores humanity’s relationship to the rest of the world, and the role of rationale—and its limits in our multilayered, regenerative existences.

As The Andes Disappeared by Caroline Dawson, translated from French by Anita Anand 

This expansive coming-of-age autobiographical novel probes the plurality of identity, elucidating the interwoven complexities of immigrating to a new country. As the Andes Disappeared tenderly reflects the journey of millions and is a beautiful ode to family commitment and the importance of home—however layered that may be.

The Singularity by Balsam Karam, translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel 

Lyrical and devastating, The Singularity is a breathtaking and powerful study of grief, loss, migration, and motherhood from one of Sweden’s most exciting contemporary novelists. Balsam Karam weaves between two narratives in this formally ambitious novel and offers a fresh approach to language and aesthetic as she decenters a white European gaze.

Blue Notes by Anne Cathrine Bomann, translated from Danish by Caroline Waight 

Blue Notes is a literary medical thriller about loss, empathy, science, Big Pharma, and societal norms. It is brimming with ethical and existential ideas about the search for identity and one’s place in the world, while offering a highly original literary adventure that ultimately underscores the healing power of love.

you by Chantal Neveu, translated from French by Erín Moure 

you is a book-length poem that demonstrates with exceptional beauty how, in the interval between words or verses, language can glimmer, absorb, and refract the changing realities and attractions of an all too human relationship.

Heating the Outdoors by Marie-Andrée Gill, translated from French by Kristen Renee Miller 

Heating the Outdoors describes the yearnings for love, the domestic monotony of post-breakup malaise, and the awkward meeting of exes. In these micropoems, writing and love are acts of decolonial resilience. Rooted in Nitassinan, the territory and ancestral home of the Ilnu Nation, they echo the Ilnu oral tradition in Gill’s interrogation and reclamation of the language, land, and interpersonal intimacies distorted by imperialism. They navigate her interior landscape—of heartbreak, humour, and, ultimately, unrelenting light—amidst the boreal geography.

Holy Winter by Maria Stepanova, translated from Russian by Sasha Dugdale 

Written in a frenzy of poetic inspiration, Holy Winter speaks of winter and war, banishment and exile, social isolation and existential abandonment. Here, she masterfully interweaves confusing signals from the media and social networks, love letters, travelogues, and fairy tales, creating a polyphonic evocation of frozen time and its slow thawing.

Nauetakuan, a silence for a noise by Natasha Kanapé Fontaine,
translated from French by Howard Scott 

A timely, riveting story of reclamation, matriarchies, and the healing power of traditional teachings, Nauetakuan, a silence for a noise affirms how reconnecting to lineage and community can transform Indigenous futures.

Elevator in Sài Gòn by Thuận, translated by Nguyễn An Lý

From the acclaimed author of Chinatown comes a personal and political journey through Hanoi, Sài Gòn, Paris, Pyongyang, and Seoul. Elevator in Sài Gòn is part detective story, part historical romance, part postcolonial ghost story, and a biting satire of life in a communist state.