August is Women in Translation month. There’s such an overwhelming cast of brilliant, contemporary female writers constantly publishing amazing books, but today we’d like to take you back through a very short history of some translated women who aren’t so well known. But, make no mistake, their writing glitters nonetheless, and each has as much to say now as they did when their work was freshly printed…
Parisian Days
by Banine
translated from the French by Anne Thompson-Ahmadova
Born into great wealth, Banine left her homeland of Azerbaijan after the Russian Revolution, and had to make her own way as a member of a precarious but dazzling bohemian set in her new home of Paris. She may have lost her fortune, but she retained her vivacious wit and her lust for life – luckily for readers of this delightful, vivid memoir.
A Woman in the Polar Night
by Christiane Ritter
translated from the German by Jane Degras
‘A year in Arctic should be compulsory for everyone’, the Austrian author of this iridescent memoir would say in later life. You’ll be inclined to agree once you’ve read her account of life in the harsh landscape of Spitsbergen, which has so much to teach about endurance and beauty.
A Bookshop in Berlin
by Françoise Frenkel
translated from the French by Stephanie Smee
This memoir of dreams fulfilled and destroyed tells the Polish author’s story of running a French-language bookshop in Berlin – then losing it all when she was forced to flee the Nazis. A story of terrifying persecution but also of boundless kindness, this is a book as thrilling as it is exquisite.
Forbidden Notebook
by Alba de Céspedes
translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein
A devastating, incendiary howl of domestic angst, this novel in diary form tells the story of Valeria Cossati, a housewife in 1950s Rome. She’s relatively content – at least, so she thinks until she starts keeping a secret journal. It begins as a simple record of her days, but each entry makes it harder to fit into the guise of wife and mother she has worn so easily till now.
Land of Smoke
by Sara Gallardo
translated from the Spanish by Jessica Sequeira
The stories in this collection by Argentinean author Sara Gallardo are a dazzling, beguiling, and hallucinatory display of magical realism. We encounter thoughtful horses, floating gardens and women with spare heads in these tales, which treat human foibles with the author’s signature combination of violence and playfulness.