The Monthly Booking: August 2022

August is Women in Translation Month, a time for much celebration – or, more specifically, to focus on reading works by women writers from around the world who have been translated into English. Women are still a vastly underrepresented group in this area, writing less than one-third of all translated literature, but thanks to this

‘Unassailable in their womanhood’ [book review]

A review of No Touching by Ketty Rouf, translated from the French by Tina Kover ‘Challenging’ is the word that first springs to mind when I think of how to describe No Touching, the award-winning debut novel by Italian-French author Ketty Rouf, which has just been translated into English by Tina Kover. It is a

‘Something had been brutally obliterated’ [book review]

A review of Black Box by Shiori Ito, translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell Content warnings: rape, sexual assault. In April 2015, Shiori Ito, then a promising young TV journalist, met up in Tokyo with Noriyuki Yamaguchi, an older and highly respected journalist she had met during a stint working in New York.

The Monthly Booking: August 2021

After taking a break in July to concentrate on other things, The Monthly Booking is back with a brand-new reading list for Women in Translation Month. For those who don’t know, WIT Month takes place every August and is a celebration of women writers from across the world whose works can be read in (English)

‘Lost when she woke up to die’ [book review]

A review of Dead Girls by Selva Almada, translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott Some books are hard to write about. Selva Almada’s Dead Girls is one of them. Hard to write about, and in many ways hard to read as well – though this is purely in terms of the content with which

‘Tiny tears in silk cloth’ [book review]

A review of The Stray Cats of Homs by Eva Nour, translated from the Swedish by Agnes Broomé Writing in the author’s note that comes at the end of The Stray Cats of Homs, Eva Nour explains her name. The pseudonym she uses is a combination of Swedish and Arabic names meaning ‘life’ and ‘light’,

Ten Books to Read for Women in Translation Month

August is nearly upon us, and that can mean only one thing: it’s just a handful of days until Women in Translation Month begins. Created in 2014 by Meytal Radzinski, Women in Translation Month is an international celebration of literature by women writing in languages other than English, as well as a movement that seeks