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On Wednesday, May 27th at 6pm eastern, we will be hosting a reading for all of the BTBA finalists. Various authors and translators will be reading—some live, some recorded—and we’ll have a chance to celebrate and highlight all fifteen finalists.

Then, on Friday, May 29th at 6pm eastern, all of the judges and representatives for all of the books will gather to talk about each title and announce the two winners.

To join in the festivities, simply fill out and we’ll send you the Zoom links and passwords before each event.

See you there!

Psychological horror/thriller/chiller/etc.—you know the sort, taut with spring-loaded tension and positively oozing dread—is tricky to pull off in a work of literature, let alone to sustain over the course of an entire novel. Anything containing too much gory mayhem runs the risk of being slapped with the genre label (Quelle horreur, indeed!), while taking too cerebral a tack could attract the charge that nothing “happens.” An effective workaround in the current milieu of literary scares is to aim for the unsettling, Ă  la expert spine-tingler Samanta Schweblin, whose forthcomingÌęÌę(trans. Megan McDowell, Riverhead Books) will arrive with just such claims already embedded in its jacket copy. (See also: Guadalupe Nettel’sÌę, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine, due out from Seven Stories Press later this year.) Think of the infamous diner scene from David Lynch’sÌęMulholland Dr.Ìę(2001), a startling encounter with the inexplicable that upends all previous notions of what might happen from one moment to the next. It’s no wonder that, like “unsettling,” the term “Lynch-ian” has pretty much had the tread worn off its tires as far as bookish buzzwords are concerned. This method, essentially, takes reality and makes it unreal.

However, recent entries into the canon of cinematic terror, like Ari Aster’sÌęHereditaryÌę(2018) or Jordan Peele’sÌęUsÌę(2019), suggest a shift in what we as a culture deem hair-raising. A hyper-reality borne of not just fright but ambient stress and buried trauma, centered around the family, has acquitted itself as a convincing boogeyman for contemporary America. Even in Robert Eggers’ deliciously demonicÌęThe WitchÌę(2015), the devil himself opts to sow seeds of suspicion in the hearth of an ousted Puritanical clan, pitting mother against daughter and infant against goat (or something like that). Sure, there’s no shortage of bloodletting in these films, but the true innards-twisting aspect of each lies not with any amount of over-the-top slasher theatrics. Instead, it’s the permeating sensation that something—specifically something close to home—isn’t right.

For fiction that addresses a similar strain of homestead horror and genealogical angst, we must turn to two 2019 Nordic novels in translation: Linda Boström KnausgĂ„rd’sÌęÌę(World Editions), translated by Martin Aitken, and Vigdis Hjorth’sÌęÌę(Verso Fiction), translated by Charlotte Barslund. Both are attuned to the complex contaminants that can burble to the surface among relatives and loves ones, especially where grief is involved. From Nicolas Roeg’sÌęDon’t Look NowÌę(1974)—which Lynch ripped off for the aforementionedÌęMulholland Dr.Ìęscene, if we’re being honest—to Lars von Trier’sÌęAntichristÌę(2009) to Aster’sÌęMidsommarÌę(2019), a death in the family remains fertile ground for exploring our inherent fears.

InÌęBoström KnausgĂ„rd’sÌęWelcome to America, we’re introduced to Ellen, a newly non-verbal tween convinced that she’s colluded with God in a plot to murder her mentally unstable and frequently menacing father. Rather than address these worrisome notions via whatever passes for conventional methods, Ellen’s actress mother becomes ebullient and distant, her brother adopts a posture of physical intimidation, and our eleven-year-old patricide collaborator recedes into a chrysalis of torment. There is an atmospheric disquietude reminiscent of Roman Polanski’sÌęRepulsionÌę(1965) or Ingmar Bergman’sÌęPersonaÌę(1966) to the novel, a hallucinatory netherworld crafted from isolation. Echoing Catherine Deneuve’s confinement in the former and Liv Ullmann’s silence in the latter,ÌęWelcome to America’s troubled narrator possesses all the makings of a budding woman on the brink. A spiritual successor to the vanishing girls of Peter Weir’sÌęPicnic at Hanging RockÌę(1975), Ellen slips through a geological recess of the mind, simultaneously trekking further out while burrowing deeper in. The bog of doubt, delusion, and scattered dreams she discovers there is as haunting as anything in modern fiction.

Meanwhile, Hjorth’s comparatively cogentÌęWill and TestamentÌęresembles Henri-Georges Clouzot’sÌęThe Wages of FearÌę(1953) with the nitroglycerin swapped out for the phrase “cabin valuations.” This diabolical bit of legalese dredges forth all manner of curdled resentment after being invoked one too many times — yes, like how Beetlejuice functions inÌęBeetlejuiceÌę(1988) or Candyman inÌęCandymanÌę(1992), exactly — and thrusts black sheep Bergljot back into the familial fray. There’s another felled patriarch, another trail of abuse, but whereas adolescent Ellen is left to merely cope following her father’s passing, grown-ass Bergljot confronts her trauma with the advantage of resolute indignation and abundant hindsight. When the matter of the inheritance goes sour, the surviving family members split into competing factions: those who believe that the trespass occurred and those who, for various reasons, feel compelled to deny, deny, deny. What follows is a free-for-all rhetorical chess match marked by passive aggression, suppression, grievance, subterfuge, and bad faith diplomacy. Like Audrey Hepburn’s sightless protagonist in Terence Young’sÌęWait Until DarkÌę(1967), Bergljot must fend off attempts to undermine what she knows to be the truth. (A certain Mia Farrow character can also totally relate.) The slow burn of steadily accumulated anxiety, increasing with every perceived slight and cutting remark, is enough to leave you tied up in sympathetic knots. That is, if you can bear to watch.

There are few things I love more than a dark, strange book and my reading for the judging this year has provided me with such delightfully weird and unsettling books by women in translation that I couldn’t help but share them with my fucked-up fellows! And I know there are even more that I still need to read so please send your recs my way and stay dark, weirdos.

by Ha Seong-Nan, translated by Janet Hong (Open Letter)

“If you’re looking for a book that will make you gasp out loud, you’ve found it.” So says Kirkus Reviews and dozens of other publications and reviewers who can’t stop talking about Flowers of Mold, myself included. Unnerving, haunting, captivating, these ten stories follow ordinary characters going about their lives—they have a nightmare, lend their neighbor a spatula, or find out their landlord wants to sell their building. But something disturbing lies just below the surface. One small crack and everything’s unleashed. “The latest in the trend of brilliant female Korean authors to appear in English, Ha cuts like a surgeon, and even the most mundane objects become menacing and unfamiliar under her scalpel.”

by Mariana DimĂłpulos, translated by Alice Whitmore (Transit Books)

In striking fragments that shift between time and place, All My Goodbyes follows a young Argentinian woman and her “repeated acts of departure.” She leaves places. She leaves people. Ultimately, she thinks she’s found a home in the southernmost region of Patagonia, a place to stay, but it’s not to be. In the midst of archiving all of her goodbyes, her departures, we also have violent murders that haunt her story from the first page. A propulsive, restless force kept me glued to this novel and I read it in one sitting.

by Alia Trabucco ZerĂĄn, translated by Sophie Hughes (Coffee House)

Iquela and Felipe are two friends, living in the legacy of Chile’s dictatorship, when Paloma, an old acquaintance, comes to Santiago to repatriate and bury her mother. Ash rains down from the sky from a nearby volcanic eruption, grounding flights all over the country. When Paloma’s mother’s coffin ends up lost in transit, the three friends borrow a hearse (as you do) and journey through the mountains to get her. Intense and haunting, The Remainder is a startling reckoning with the history of violence. It’s a novel of unforgettable imagery: Felipe wandering the streets of Santiago counting the dead, the three friends drinking in the hearse, and the ash falling and mixing in with the snow in the mountains. I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time to come.

by Silvina Ocampo, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Katie Lateef-Jan (City Lights)

“Silvina Ocampo is one of our best writers. Her stories have no equal in our literature” wrote Jorge Luis Borges and now for the first time in English translation, readers can delight in all of the strange brilliance that is Silvina Ocampo’s first collection of stories, Forgotten Journey. Published alongside her novella The Promise, this collection is primarily concerned with the lives of young women and girls. Often menacing and strange, each story has a thrill to it, a dark joy that keeps you fixed to the collection. In her foreword, Carmen Boullosa writes of the often cited comparison between Ocampo and Julio Cortázar but argues instead that, “While in his fabulous stories Cortázar discovered the unreal in everyday life, Silvina enters real, detailed, intimate spaces, which she observes with an eye that is intimate, real and detailed, and yet an eye from another world.”

by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell (Riverhead)ÌęÌę

Samanta Schweblin, author of the literary sensation Fever Dream, returns with her first short story collection translated into English. Like Fever Dream, I was struck by the elusive, almost unsatisfactory nature of the stories. Some are strikingly short. Others are carefully crafted to confound. All leave you wanting more and thinking about them long after. Strange and fantastic, dark and disturbing, the stories in Mouthful of Birds are sure to please fans of Schweblin’s uniquely unsettling style.

I am always thinking of books and authors and stories and far away places and having just traveled to Iran, I was reminded of Negar Djavadi, a French Iranian writer who was born in Iran and came to France as a child. Her wonderful novel, Disoriental, follows an Iranian family through three generations in Teheran and Paris. It’s beautifully translated from the French by Tina Kover, published by Europa, and was a finalist for the National Book Award for translated literature for 2018. And this all makes me think about language. Hearing Persian spoken, seeing it written in Arabic calligraphy, thinking about reading an Iranian author writing in French whose work has been translated into English. The wonder of it all. The gift of translation, that can open another world, take an unfamiliar tongue, an unfamiliar alphabet and present it to us on a silver platter. I learned a new word in Iran: “Bali,” which means “yes” in Persian. I never needed the word for “no”!

I went on to Turkey, where the good news of writer and journalist Ahmat Altan’s release from prison was momentary and he was rearrested. His memoir I Will Never See the World Again is from Other Press, translated from the Turkish by Yasemin Congar. And so I think about protest, the pen mightier than the sword, writers the first in the line of fire. Mussolini exiled them to remote villages, as with Carlo Levi, who wrote the amazing Christ Stopped at Eboli about his year of political exile in a small town in southern Italy.

I meet Sebnem Isiguzel, the Turskish author whose novel The Girl in the Tree is her first to be translated into English (she’s written ten) and will be published by Amazon Crossing in March. Inspired by the protests in Istanbul in 2013 against the urban development of Gezi Park, the novel’s protagonist, a young girl horrified by the violence, retreats to an abandoned stork’s nest in the tree tops. Isiguzel’s agent, Nermin Mollaoglu, says she loved the book so much, that the agency paid for the translation (by Mark David Wyers). Isiguzel says she is excited to be published in English, to bring the voice of Istanbul to American readers. “All my dreams are on paper; I live for literature,” she tells me. I leave Turkey: A new book to read . . . and a new friend.

Some books are made of fucking—of cum and cumming, cocks, twats, and tongues, desires of all kinds. A la Gass, literature may arrive in different shades of blue: some the color of morning, an erection at sunrise, a shadow sexual tension undispersed by the night; others darkened to purple in their perversions, heavy, overwrought, fit to burst. For the prude, such books might be vulgar; the aesthete: garish; the reactionary: obscene; the fanatic: forbidden.

The state versus Molly Bloom deemed her language “unparlorlike.” In the UK, the Obscenity Act of 1959 sunk its teeth in Mr. Lawrence for a few “fucks” and “cunts.” Naturally, Nabokov, fine purveyor of pedophilia and incest, won his share of bans, for works that stand at the outer edge of linguistic profundity, and his public’s decency. Then, for a time, it seemed the dam had broken, as we moved into this century, unmoored by neo-liberalism, cavorting all we like between the pages, with naught but the odd local library acting the iron-clad censor.

So enter our fresh fallen world: in America, with 30% of our neighbors unmasked as bigots, white supremacists, and, for what seems like something of a first, self-styled vulgarians, untethered, finally, by a reality star’s innate vulgarities; and abroad, with all manner of buffoons, conmen, and plutocratic libertines taking the reins across every hemisphere, their pale faces framed, dead-eyed, on all of our screens, grinning through their malice. And, though the Left has historically held the mantle of obscenity in art and cultural life, that pride increasingly seems property of the Right, the alt-right, the fascists, who bear it happily against calls for decency, normality, and truth. Where once perversity was an aesthetic and political tool for critiquing power, for digging into its cracks to expose any rot, the obscene has now been subsumed by power itself. The emperor is naked, and his subjects adore it.

What’s to be done? Well, down with decency, I say, and bring back a version of truth-telling fiction that doubles down in its most vulgar strategies. And what better weapon to bring to this struggle against the arch xenophobes than books from outside our borders.

—a slim, strange 2016 novel by Spanish author Juan JosĂ© MillĂĄs, and translated this year by Thomas Bunstead and Daniel Hahn for Bellevue Literary Press—traffics in a kind of perversity that flickers between comedy and domestic horror and, ultimately, economic alienation. The protagonist, DamiĂĄn Lobo, recently fired from his job, spends all day imagining himself a celebrity on an extended TV interview. Early in the novel, the imaginary interviewer starts a line of questioning that brings DamiĂĄn to the subject of his adopted Chinese step-sister, two years his senior. What starts as a sequence of questions lining up an adolescent crush in an unusual family arrangement, quickly drops into out-and-out incest. As the story progresses, DamiĂĄn flees a petty theft by hiding in a wardrobe, which is in turn delivered to a family’s home. There, he becomes something like a phantom servant, cooking and cleaning and spying on the father’s hapless affair with a co-worker, until his phantomhood reaches a kind of violent apotheosis. It’s a novel where perversion leads to alienation in an absolute sense: from the bonds of a family via incest; from one’s own labor through capitalism’s rapacious march; and from personhood through a total disengagement with the world. In the end, all that’s left is a male gaze, obsessive, extreme, detached from life’s logic.

In —a 2015 novel by Argentine writer Pola Oloixarac, newly translated from the Spanish by Roy Kesey for Soho Press—sex underlies the techno-evolution of capitalism, as a form of exchange, currency, and domination. A few apt scenes: the story opens on the Canary Islands in 1882; the intrepid explorer, Niklas Bruun, arrives to the hidden village of Mahan, where a fertility rite begins that will forever connect the Europeans “into the genetic history of the island in a torrent of semen and blood.” The novels second storyline introduces Cassio, a young hacker in the 80s, by-way-of the fuck that founded him. His mother, Sonia Liberman, has an affair with a Brazilian man, for whom she is exclusively a sexual object, and, naturally, a lack of protection and care leads us right to young Cassio, who grows into his own passages as an incel, for a time. In the final section, set in Bariloche, the now-techno-futurist hub of South America in 2024, a young female professional wears VR glasses and watches two Komodo dragons ravage a blonde woman in explicit detail, and masturbates. Each of the novel’s narrative strands uses sex as its own distinct critique of our ideological past, present, and future—be it colonialist, chauvinist, or techno-utopic. The sexual is always political, and this wonderful, maximalist little novel wields ribaldry like a gun aimed at capitalism’s amoral heart.

I teach an online beginner’s translation class. On the first class, I ask students to briefly review a work in translation (I give them the option between a short story and a poem). The task, at first, seems hard. I’ll get questions like: Can I really judge this if I don’t know the original language or haven’t read the original? How do I know if it’s good? I tell them to evaluate a translation like any text: Analyze the use of language, the tone, the imagery. Is it clear and vivid? Elegant and fluid? The big news flash of this exercise: The qualities of the work are partly thanks to the efforts of your translator.

Over the course of six weeks, we continue to debate what makes a good translation and how to make our own translations as best as they can be. There are no straightforward answers. We talk about whether translations should necessarily cater to American-style sentence structures, or whether there is a value in challenging the English-language reader with atypical syntax. We compare multiple translations of the same texts, and in realizing how drastically different they can be, we conclude that a translator and her perspective can have a great influence.

For this prize, I’ve received so far around fifty books, originally written in at least ten different languages, and I only know three of those languages (Portuguese, French, and I can get by with Spanish). The stories range from a man who keeps a notebook of handwriting exercises ( by Mario Levrero, translated by Annie McDermott), to a thriller where young boys keep mysteriously jumping into the train tracks of Buenos Aires (by Sergio Olguín, translated by Miranda France). Many of the authors are new to me.

As a judge, I feel I must not only look for a good translation, but also for an exciting one. Is the translator making surprising or risky choices, and succeeding? Is the author’s voice startling and unfamiliar? Has the story or narrative been overtold or not expressed enough? Who is the translator and what kind of work have they been committed to? Like my students, I acknowledge that it’s not an easy task to evaluate translations, mainly because there is a lot of work that goes into considering them—we’re not only dealing with the books themselves, but the many contexts that surround them.

Admittedly, I have the most fun obsessively pondering things like word choices and the shapes of sentences in translations. For example, the first chapter of Alia Trabucco Zerán’s , titled “11,” is two pages long but just one sentence. As a translator, I am in awe of how the prose flows, so I pause at each comma and conjunction, figuring out how translator Sophie Hughes made the English version read so effortlessly. Over the next few months, I suspect I’ll sit with all kinds of puzzles. In the meantime, I look forward to encountering not just new authors, but also new translators, who challenge and amaze me.

To be honest, I’ve had a lot of trouble putting together this first blog post for the Best Translated Book Award. At this point in the judging process, it feels impossible at best and disingenuous at worst to try and construe some long thought out observation or prediction of what is to come. The judges are still getting to know each other, new books still flood our mailboxes every day, and there is just flat out too much reading left to do over the next several months. In that regard, this is actually quite an exciting time for us judges as well. There are just so many possibilities. No clear favorite has yet emerged. All there is to do is read. So, I’ve decided to simply lay out a few titles and themes that have caught my eye so far. Consider it a glimpse of the vast field still in play before the inevitable culling to come. A time when anything could happen.

The Elephant(s) in the Room: This could very well be the year of the big book for the BTBA. Several massive and dense literary tomes—the kind that make book geeks in general and translation nerds specifically swoon with anticipation—are in the running. First and foremost, there is the undeniable “final” novel from the Hungarian wizard László Krasznahorkai, . If any title can be considered a betting favorite right now, this is it. Brimming with Krasznahorkai’s darkly comedic yet apocalyptic prose—rendered beautifully by Ottilie Mulzet—and with the added weight of finality behind it, this could make the modern master a three-time winner of the award. (He’s already the only two-time winner.) But in page count and prominence, there is another giant on the horizon that could possibly topple the Baron. Meticulous and engrossing, Vasily Grossman’s mammoth World War II opus has all the trappings of not only a great book but an important one. Replete with action-packed battle scenes and a list of characters that goes on for pages, this is truly epic Russian literature. I eagerly await this clash of titans.

New Kids on the Block: We judges are also blessed this year with the inclusion of Edinburgh’s . This fascinating indie has been a cult favorite at Brazos Bookstore for awhile now, but newly acquired US distribution brings their terrific catalog of Latin American literature to the BTBA for the first time with three eligible titles—, , and the Man Booker International longlisted . And it is this last novel by Ariana Harwicz that is perhaps poised to make the biggest splash with American readers. Hallucinatory, unsparing, and teetering on the edge of horror, this psychological portrayal of a young wife and mother coming undone has the visceral impact of death metal. Whether or not it wins, Die, My Love is an unforgettable read. Just go buy it now.

Country Roads Take Me Home: An astonishing number of eligible titles this year deal with explicitly rural locales and concerns. Perhaps, there have always been a good number of translated works set in the country and I am only now noticing with this new crop of BTBA candidates. But there are several very promising novels I’ve come across with a rural setting/story. So many in fact that I find it at least worth mentioning here. There are existential detective and gothic horror stories set in cloistered towns cut off from civilization, like Jean Giono’s , Paolo Maurensig’s campy , and Tokarczuk’s . There is also the aforementioned Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming, set in the absurdly provincial village of the Baron’s youth where all the follies of man are played out. But perhaps the strongest example I can give of this trend is Jean-Baptiste del Amo’s stunning . Through Frank Wynne’s immaculate translation, this family saga of a small French pig farm rising to industrial prominence in the twentieth century describes the day-to-day drudgery and brutality of farm life with an unnervingly tactile sensibility. The smells. The dirt under your nails. It’s all there.

Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die: Finally, I have to quickly shout out the all-around coolest book I’ve come across so far. The first volume in French author and certifiable badass Virginie Despentes’s trilogy is a hilarious and biting satire of an aging record shop owner’s fall from grace after the internet puts him out of business. Translated (again) by Frank Wynne, this is without a doubt the best book by Despentes I’ve read. It’s a fun romp run through with myriad music references and a sly social commentary that dispels masculine and pop cultural illusions.

The conceptual artist Anicka Yi’s olfactory-based installationÌęWashing Away of WrongsÌę(2014, created in conjunction with French perfumerÌęChristophe Laudamiel) consists of two stainless steel dryer doors embedded into a gallery wall, each containing a motion-activated diffuser which, once the darkened portholes are unhinged, emits a lab-engineered puff meant to evoke a relationship’s nadir in terms both “abstract” and “representational,” respectively. When I initially encountered the work, however, it wasn’t by scent—or even sight—but by sound: a coterie of similarly-attired school children, on a field trip to the Cleveland Museum of Art, were taking turns daring one another to get a whiff of the exhibit, scattering amid peals of tinny laughter and performative revulsion before being wrangled by their chaperones. The details of my own experience are unimportant (and too voluminous to unpack here). Instead, I’ll simply postulate that the act of opening a small doorway, shoving your oily visage into the recess, and inhaling an assortment of unsettling—possibly mind-altering—aromas is an ideal sensory analogue for reading a book. That is, the sort of book that alters your chemical composition in some imperceptible manner. The sort that infiltrates your physiological make-up, surreptitiously slipping a flounder into a ventilation duct so that weeks or months later you’re still puzzling over the source of that haunting smell. Here are five such books, ranked by the intensity of their odor profiles, from palatable to putrid.

by Hiroko Oyamada, translated by David Boyd (New Directions)

The surface-level environs of the corporate city-state that sprawl across Oyamada’s English-language debut are inoffensive at a glance, redolent of clinical efficiency with accent notes emanating from the industrial laundries (starchy sweetness) and casual dining options (savory tang) dotting the terrain. Beneath the sterile exteriors lie dingy, intestinal workspaces where menial tasks, notably perpetual paper-shredding, are undertaken, creating a musty mĂ©lange of recycled oxygen, bored tedium, and wood pulp. It’s when the essence of reptilian rot begins to emanate from the crevices, while hulking rodentia patrolÌęThe Factory’s brackish outer edge, that things truly begin to smell funny.

by BjĂžrn Rasmussen, translated by Martin Aitken (Two Lines Press)

Rasmussen’s little obliteration wastes no time in expounding on the pungent pleasures of an illicit tryst, reminiscing over “breathing that special kind of air” from the very first page. Specifically, the intoxicating inhalant being referred to in this case is a lover’s asshole, butÌęThe SkinÌęgoes much deeper than that to assemble its heady stench. The manure and urine of the stables are ever-present, alongside the musky leather of saddles and riding crops, each element blurring seamlessly with an overall genital funk (ammonia and brine) radiating from the increasingly sadistic carnal excursions. Where the stink really sets in, though, is among the more cerebral concoctions—fear, arousal, and desperation are a potent mix.

by Pola Oloixarac, translated by Roy Kesey (Soho Press)

While much of Oloixarac’s latest trawls the global tech sector for content, no Soylent-saturated incubator could hope to stand up to Dark Constellations’ hallucinatory interstitial sections concerning a motley crew of 19th-century explorers. These assorted scientists find themselves ensnared in the odoriferous bouquet of a vast cavern, surrounded by fist-sized insects and translucent crustaceans, while gaseous pockets of volcanic runoff erupt in a “night perfumed with sulfur.” The exploration culminates in a prerequisite “torrent of blood and semen” as a marathon sex ritual, followed by the guzzling of albino butterfly innards, ensues. A primordial hothouse of herbaceous depravity—and I didn’t even mention the eventual depiction of VR-assisted lizard porn which, though presumably fragrance-free, should cause all your senses to recoil in unison.

by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, translated by Frank Wynne (Grove Press)

A nearly unparalleled entrant into the pantheon of putrescence, Del Amo’s AnimaliaÌęstinks to high heaven as a matter of course. There’s no way around it, a provincial pig farm proves to be fertile ground for a grim symphony of filth and viscera, expertly exuding the kind of pore-clogging reek that permeates down to the marrow. When it isn’t offal and entrails, the novel is locked in a constant battle with its main antagonist: shit. A veritable deluge of hog shit, glutting orifices and spreading disease, threatens ruin at every turn. In its scorched-earth crescendo, the sky is choked by a miasma of charred flesh and blanketed by toxic plumes of blackened smoke. A book this revolting is unlikely to be toppled from its position as preeminent nasal offender.

byÌęRodrigo MĂĄrquez Tizano, translated by Thomas Bunstead (Coffee House Press)

Although,ÌęRodrigo MĂĄrquez Tizano may have a thing or two to say about it. IfÌęAnimaliaÌęis Hell on Earth, thenÌęJakartaÌęis a pissed-off Tartarus covered in napalm. Rampant pestilence in the form of “poxes, choleras, fevers, and plagues” have ravaged the population, littering the landscape with decaying corpses, as an economy ruled by vice has taken hold of what’s left. Vermin ferry the sickness from one host to the next as mangy carrion canines scavenge the remains. Waste piles up in “mountains of garbage and meat.” Societal hygiene falls victim to government regulation.ÌęJakartaÌęis a bile-and-brimstone grotesquerie that should absolutely be sold with a warning label attached.

Women in Translation Month is nearing its end but the joy of celebrating and reading women in translation doesn’t have to! That’s especially true in a year like this one—there are so many exciting new releases by women eligible for this year’s Best Translated Book Award in Fiction. I thought I’d share a recommendation for every day in the month of August, so here are thirty-one brilliant books to keep the spirit of Women in Translation Month going. Enjoy!

by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell (Riverhead)

Strange and fantastic, dark and disturbing, the stories in Mouthful of Birds are sure to please fans of Fever Dream and Schweblin’s uniquely unsettling style.

by Rita Indiana, translated by Achy Obejas (And Other Stories)

Tentacle is the queer, punk, dystopian, climate change, science fiction novel from the Dominican Republic you didn’t know you needed in your life. An unforgettable and wild book.

by Linda Boström KnausgÄrd, translated by Martin Aitken (World Editions)

An intense and masterful portrait of a family, with a child narrator you won’t soon forget.

by Mariana DimĂłpulos, translated by Alice Whitmore (Transit)

In striking fragments that shift between time and place, All My Goodbyes follows a young Argentinean woman and her “repeated acts of departure.” A propulsive, restless force kept me glued to this novel and I read it in one sitting.

by Yuko Tsushima, translated by Geraldine Harcourt (FSG)

A women starts her life over again after her husband leaves her and their young daughter. Her new Tokyo apartment is awash in light, but she finds herself falling further into darkness and depression. Painful and beautiful with a truly exquisite translation.

by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith (Hogarth)

A nameless narrator reckons with the death of her older sister, who died a few hours old and left an indelible mark on the narrator and her family. She writes about this tragedy in a series of profound reflections through the color white. A gorgeous and startling meditation on death and grief.

by Rania Mamoun, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette (Comma Press)

A beautiful and moving collection of stories set in contemporary Sudan.

by Helene Tursten, translated by Paul Norlen (Soho)

The first installment in a new series from the author of the Irene Huss series and An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good follows Swedish Detective Inspector Embla Nyström as she’s swept into a murder investigation during her family’s annual moose hunt. A fun and chilling Nordic mystery.

by Igiaba Scego, translated by Aaron Robertson (Two Lines)

A poignant family story for our turbulent times, this novel set across Somalia, Argentina, and Italy still haunts me.

by Kim Yideum, translated by Jiyoon Lee (Deep Vellum)

Blood Sisters, the debut novel from celebrated poet Kim Yideum, tells the story of Jeong Yeoul, a college student trying to figure out who she is and who she wants to be amidst the unrest of 1980s South Korea. A thought-provoking and powerful novel.

by Hiroko Oyamada, translated by David Boyd (New Directions)

Three employee’s lives are taken over by the large factory they work for in this strange and surreal tale, that I suspect might fill part of the Convenience Store Woman–sized hole in many readers’ hearts.

by Duanwad Pimwana, translated by Mui Poopoksakul (Feminist Press)

Pimwana turns her keen eye and sharp wit on a changing modern Thailand in this collection.

by SigrĂșn PĂĄlsdottĂ­r, translated by Lytton Smith (Open Letter)

The narrator of History. A Mess. believes she’s made a groundbreaking discovery, one that will forever change the art world and her own academic career. That is until she realizes⁠ that her discovery was nothing more than two pages stuck together. Strange and interior, History. A Mess. is a fascinating novel.

by Juli Zeh, translated by John Cullen (Nan. A Talese)

A suicide prevention clinic doubles as a criminal organization connecting suicidal patients to terrorist organizations in this prescient thriller inspired by today’s headlines.

Ìę

by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Alison Markin Powell (Europa)

In ten closely-linked stories, Kawakami follows the lives of ten different women at their intersection points with the enigmatic and seductive Yukihiko Nishino. An intimate and insightful portrayal of sex, love, and modern relationships.

by Alia Trabucco ZerĂĄn, translated by Sophie Hughes (Coffee House/And Other Stories)

Intense and haunting, The Remainder is a startling reckoning with the history of violence and a novel of unforgettable imagery as three friends set off on a journey to find a coffin lost in transit.

by Veronica Raimo, translated by Stash Luczkiw (Black Cat)

A fascinating novel of power and sex, it’s been called “the first post-Weinstein novel” by Vanity Fair Italy.

by Selva Almada, translated by Chris Andrews (Graywolf)

In Almada’s arresting debut, four souls are “thrown together on a single day in rural Argentina” as a storm brews overhead. A profound examination of family and faith, set against one of the most powerful and beautifully described backdrops of a novel I’ve ever read.

by Wioletta Greg, translated by Jennifer Croft (Transit)

In this much-anticipated continuation of Swallowing Mercury, we follow Wiola as she leaves her childhood village for the nearby city. She moves around, adapting, growing, and soaking up the sights, sounds, and stories around her. A lush and evocative translation.

by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder (Pantheon)

The master Yoko Ogawa’s take on an Orwellian novel of state surveillance. Ogawa’s writing is always stunning—haunting in its own spare, powerful way.

by Asja Bakić, translated by Jennifer Zoble (Feminist)

A thought-provoking and darkly funny collection of stories from an exciting new voice in Balkan literature.

by Pola Oloixarac, translated by Roy Kesey (Soho)

A wildly brilliant and genre-defying novel that combines science fiction with naturalism, political satire, and more, resulting in a darkly funny read.

by Jokha Alharthi, translated by Marilyn Booth (Sandstone/Catapult)

The first novel originally written in Arabic to ever win the Man Booker International Prize, and the first book by a female Omani author to be translated into English. A beautiful and sweeping story of one Omani family.

Ìę

by KristĂ­n EirĂ­ksdĂłttir, translated by Larissa Kyzer (Amazon Crossing)

A novel of isolation and secrets, the emotional resonance of A Fist or a Heart sneaks up on you as you’re busy trying to figure out what’s lying underneath the solitary lives of these women.

Ìę

by Anne Serre, translated by Mark Hutchinson (New Directions)

From the author of the brilliant novel The Governesses, comes another beguiling piece of art, this time a collection of three novellas exploring desire and morality.

by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Riverhead/Fitzcarraldo)

Reclusive Janina is a passionate astrologer and advocate for animals, happy to keep to her quiet life until her neighbor turns up dead and things take a strange turn in her community. Part investigative thriller and part fairytale, with biting social critique and a wicked sense of humor.

by Ambai, translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom (Archipelago)

Ambai’s stories of motherhood, marriage, and sexuality confront the construction of gender in Tamil literature.

by Ha Seong-Nan, translated by Janet Hong (Open Letter)

I would love to get a glimpse into Ha Seong-Nan’s brain, although I’m a little scared of what I might find. These stories are chilling and I’d recommend them to fans of Revenge by Yoko Ogawa.

by Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Sam Taylor (FSG)

A deceptively simple and beautifully told story of a young cook finding his way in the kitchen and in the world.

Ìę

by Mikella Nicol, translated by Lesley Trites (VĂ©hicule)

I love a novel set during a heat wave. The sticky, claustrophobic heat affecting everyone’s tempers and judgment. This one, set in Quebec, is a gem.

by Silvina Ocampo, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Jessica Powell (City Lights)

Legend Silvina Ocampo worked on perfecting this novella over the course of twenty-five years! A woman reminisces about her life, and lets her imagination get away with her, after falling into the sea.