I learned via Mrs Peabody’s excellent blog that August is being celebrated as Women in Translation month. This is in an attempt to address the fact that only about a quarter of the world’s literature that is translated into English is by women authors. Being woefully monolingual myself I am truly grateful to translators and thought I would share here some of my favourite books by women authors that have been translated into English.
- Karin Alvtegen‘s MISSING (translated from Swedish by Anna Paterson)
- Karin Fossum‘s THE CALLER (translated from Norwegian by K.E. Semmel). This is probably my favourite of Fossum’s books but several others are just as good so you might also try DON’T LOOK BACK (translator Felicity David) or THE MURDER OF HARRIET KROHN (translated by James Anderson)
- Kati Hiekkapelto‘s THE EXILED (translated from Finnish by David Hackston)
- Camilla Lackberg‘s THE ICE PRINCESS (translated from Swedish by Stephen T Murray)
- Asa Larsson‘s THE SECOND DEADLY SIN and UNTIL THY WRATH BE PAST (both translated from Swedish by Laurie Thompson)
- Liza Marklund‘s RED WOLF, LAST WILL and LIFETIME (all translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith). These later installments from Marklund’s long running series about journalist Annika Bengtzon form a high quality trilogy
- Claudia Pineiro‘s THURSDAY NIGHT WIDOWS (translated from the Spanish by Miranda France)
- Yrsa Sigurdardottir‘s WHY DID YOU LIE? (translated from Icelandic by Victoria Cribb)
Teresa Solana‘s A NOT SO PERFECT CRIME (translated from Spanish by Peter Bush)- Fred Vargas‘ THE THREE EVANGELISTS (translated from French by Sian Reynolds), I struggle with Vargas’ popular Adamsberg series but thoroughly enjoyed this standalone novel.
Although I don’t publish my ratings here on the blog any longer I do keep a personal record and all of these have a rating of 4 or 5 on that personal scale so are well worth reading.
I’ve already added a couple of titles to my wishlist from Mrs Peabody’s own list but if you have other recommendations for translated books by women I should read do leave a comment.
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