A year in: women in translation

A final tally of how the "23 women in translation in 2023" challenge went for me

I know I said last time that it would be the final newsletter for 2023, but I wanted to share an extra post about a fun reading challenge I joined this past year.

I don’t know when exactly but at some point this year, my namesake Juliana (who you should definitely follow on instagram) mentioned she would be aiming to read “23 women in translation in 2023” and shared a Storygraph challenge for those who wanted to tag along (and you can join 24 women in translation 2024 too!). I was away from my library for most of August, the traditional #womenintranslation month, so I figured it would be a cool way to “catch up” and continue exploring non-Anglophone women authors.

Now that the year has come to a close, I bring to you my final tally of the challenge.

• Anna Seghers, Transit (German; trans. from German by Margot Bettauer Dembo)

• Yoko Tawada, The Bridegroom Was a Dog (Japanese; trans. from Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani)

• Elena Ferrante, The Neapolitan Novels and The Lost Daughter (Italian; trans. from Italian by Ann Goldstein)

• Samanta Schweblin, Mouthful of Birds: Stories and Fever Dream (Argentine; trans. from Spanish by Megan McDowell)

• Nathalie Léger, Exposition (French; trans. from French by Amanda de Marco)

• Tove Jansson, The True Deceiver (Finnish; trans. from Swedish by Thomas Teal)

• Sayaka Murata, Life Ceremony: Stories (Japanese; trans. from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori)

• Brenda Lozano, Loop (Mexican; trans. from Spanish by Annie McDermott)

• Malika Moustadraf, Blood Feast: The Complete Short Stories of Malika Moustadraf (Moroccan; trans. from Arabic by Alice Guthrie)

• Carmen Boullosa, Leaving Tabasco (Mexican; trans. from Spanish by Geoff Hargreaves)

• Natalia Ginzburg, The Dry Heart (Italian; trans. from Italian by Frances Frenaye)

• Hiroko Oyamada, Weasels in the Attic (Japanese; trans. from Japanese by David Boyd)

• Yevgenia Belorusets, Lucky Breaks (Ukrainian; trans. from Russian by Eugene Ostashevsky)

• Mieko Kawakami, Heaven (Japanese; trans. from Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd)

• Najwa Barakat, Mister N (Lebanese; trans. from Arabic by Luke Leafgren)

• Mariana Enríquez, Our Share of Night (Argentine; trans. from Spanish by Megan McDowell)

• Nona Fernández, Space Invaders (Chilean; trans. from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer)

• Olga Ravn, The Employees (Danish; trans. from Danish by Martin Aitken)

• Adania Shibli, Detalhe Menor [Minor Detail] (Palestinian; trans. from Arabic to Portuguese by Safa Jubran)

• Jenny Erpenbeck, Visitation (German; trans. from German by Susan Bernofsky)

• Maylis de Kerangal, Eastbound (French; trans. from French by Jessica Moore)

• Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (Polish; trans. from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones)

• Lorenza Pieri, Lesser Islands (Italian; trans. from Italian by Peter DiGiovanni, Donatella Melucci, William Greer, Jenna Menta, Christopher Paniagua, Kira Ross)

• Banana Yoshimoto, N.P. (Japanese; trans. from Japanese by Ann Sherif)

And, by my accounts, that makes it 24 women in translation for the year (but only 29 books out of 80)!¹

For 2024, I want to continue this streak and expand even more. I want to read more works in translation from other areas and linguistic traditions (reading “around the world,” if you will). I’ve already set aside some titles from my shelves and have added others to my wishlist. I might finally cave and read lusophone works in translation (as well as my Brazilian books that still await proper shelf space), since they are so much more readily available in the U.S. than the original texts. I want to read more about and from translators and exophonic writers. I want to put a dent in the pile of French books I got in November, and I want to read more non-fiction.

So, as you can see, there’s I have a lot of wants to sort through in the months to come… Let’s see how it goes!

medieval.juliana

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1. I read a lot of short novels and novellas this year, which definitely inflates this number.