Dear Sarashina, I must confess that I have read your diary – and I did it twice. In my defense, I guess I could say that it is not exactly a diary, as we nowadays conceive of it; that it is highly imaginative rather than objective; and that it was meant to be a public…
Lady Sarashina
Sugawara no Takasue no Musume (菅原孝標女, also known as Takasue’s Daughter, c.1008 – after 1059) was a Japanese author known for her classic Heian period travel diary, the Sarashina Nikki. “Sugawara no Takasue no Musume” means daughter of Sugawara no Takasue. Her real name is unknown, so British scholar Ivan Morris, who translated her diary to English, referred to her as Lady Sarashina. Books…
It has a fascination of its own, that bend
Dear Lucy, At first, I felt skeptical about your novel Anne of Green Gables (1908). Anne seemed too chatty, too imaginative, too eager to please – too good to be true. Or perhaps I simply should have met her earlier, as a child of eleven, and on her own terms. But, gradually, so as it happened…
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Lucy Maud Montgomery (November 30, 1874 – April 24, 1942) was a Canadian writer. She attended Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, and obtained a teacher’s license. Lucy worked as a teacher in various Prince Edward Island schools. In 1897, she had her first short stories published in magazines and newspapers. In 1908, she published her first book, Anne of Green Gables, which was an…
herself held underwater by her hair, snared around auburn-rusted anchor chains
Dear Margaret, As I was reading your novel The Fire-Dwellers (1969), I had the feeling of having been caught in the middle of a conflagration, a large fire, difficult to get through. There is smoke everywhere, and the reality of the surroundings seems to have gone into flames. As much as your protagonist, we seem…
Margaret Laurence
Jean Margaret Laurence (née Wemyss, 18 July 1926 – 5 January 1987) was a Canadian writer. She attended Winnipeg’s United College, where she took courses in English, History, Ethics, and Psychology, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature in 1947. Laurence worked as a journalist at the independent newspaper the Winnipeg Citizen. After marriage, she and her husband moved…
In the new quiet I heard the sea as if my ears were laid against the ocean floor
Dear Deborah, Your novel Hot Milk (2016) has a physical quality that stung me like a blistering sunburn. Long after the last page had been turned, the heat could still be felt under the skin, like it usually happens at the end of a day spent under strong sun. The novel revolves around 25-year-old anthropologist…
Women in Translation Month 2017
Hello, lovely readers! Meytal over at the Biblibio blog is hosting the Women in Translation Month (#WITMonth) in August. The event aims to encourage readers, reviewers, publishers, and translators to explore more books written by female writers in translation. Here you can find a FAQ on the event. And here Meytal compiled a list of books. My list for WITMonth will overlap with some…
The secrets inside her mind are like flowers in a garden at nighttime
Dear Fumiko, Your novel Masks, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter (女面, Onnamen, 1958) reminded me of an intricate structure one is made to peel off, layer by layer, only to find out later that the layers only made more visible the core that they were to be hiding – they were, after all, the very things…
Fumiko Enchi
Fumiko Enchi (円地 文子 Enchi Fumiko, pen-name of Fumiko Ueda, 2 October 1905 – 12 November 1986) was a Japanese writer. She was taught English, French and Chinese literature through private tutors at home. From 1918 to 1922, she attended the girl’s middle school of Japan Women’s University, but later abandoned her studies due to poor health. She died of heart attack in 1986. Books Novels Kaze…
If you know about yourself, presumably you know about at least one other person
Dear Mary, Your novel The Charioteer (1953) is crossed over by what it seems to be a tense string, a rein held so tightly by opposing forces that we feel it is about to break. Drawing us into an atmosphere of war, blackouts, raids, transient relationships, urgent loves and forced secrecy – in short, an…
Mary Renault
Mary Renault (born Eileen Mary Challans, 4 September 1905 – 13 December 1983) was an English writer. Renault received an undergraduate degree in English from St Hugh’s College, Oxford, in 1928. She then trained as a nurse at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, where she met her lifelong partner, the nurse Julie Mullard. Renault worked as a nurse until…
