26 August 2021
Tired of staycations? Us too. How about being transported to the pine islands of Matsushima instead?
August is Women in Translation month, and our intern, Carina Bryan, has put together a list of award-winning books for you to escape into.
Tell us about your favourite woman in translation – @SerpentsTail
THE PINE ISLANDS – Marion Poschman (Translated by Jen Calleja)
A charming, playful, profound tale of lost souls in search of transformation in modern Japan.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2019
When Gilbert wakes one day from a dream that his wife has cheated on him, he flees – immediately and inexplicably – for Tokyo, where he meets a fellow lost soul: Yosa, a young Japanese student clutching a copy of The Complete Manual of Suicide. Together, Gilbert and Yosa set off on a pilgrimage to see the pine islands of Matsushima, one looking for the perfect end to his life, the other for a fresh start.
Playful and profound, The Pine Islands is a beautiful tale of friendship, transformation and acceptance in modern Japan.
THE LITTLE COMMUNIST WHO NEVER SMILED – Lola Lafon (Translated by Nick Caistor)
The Montreal Olympics, 1976. A fourteen-year-old girl steps out onto the floor of the Montreal Forum and into history.
Twenty seconds on the uneven bars is it all it takes for Nadia Comaneci, the slight, unsmiling child from Communist Romania, to etch herself into the collective memory. The judges award her an unprecedented perfect ten, the first in Olympic gymnastics.
In The Little Communist Who Never Smiled, Lola Lafon weaves an intricate web of truth and fiction around Comaneci’s life, from her discovery by legendary gymnastics coach Béla Károlyi up to her defection to the United States in 1989.
Adored by young girls in the West and appropriated as a political emblem by the Ceausescu regime, Comaneci was a fearless, fiercely determined child whose body would become a battleground in the Cold War story of East against West. Lafon’s novel is a powerful re-imagining of a childhood in the spotlight of history, politics and destiny.
THE DISASTER TOURIST – Yun Ko-eun (Translated by Lizzie Buehler)
A satirical Korean eco-thriller with a fierce feminist sensibility.
WINNER OF THE CWA CRIME IN TRANSLATION DAGGER
Yona has been stuck behind a desk for years working as a programming coordinator for Jungle, a travel company specialising in package holidays to destinations ravaged by disaster. When a senior colleague touches her inappropriately she tries to complain, and in an attempt to bury her allegations, the company make her an attractive proposition: a free ticket for one of their most sought-after trips, to the desert island of Mui.
She accepts the offer and travels to the remote island, where the major attraction is a supposedly-dramatic sinkhole. When the customers who’ve paid a premium for the trip begin to get frustrated, Yona realises that the company has dangerous plans to fabricate an environmental catastrophe to make the trip more interesting, but when she tries to raise the alarm, she discovers she has put her own life in danger.
