Hello, folks!
It’s that time of the year again! 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 women writers in translation. Here you can find a FAQ on the event. Here and here Meytal compiled very useful lists of books. Here you can find my WIT reviews. And here is my ongoing WIT list/ project.
Matthew Sciarappa, Kendra Winchester, and Jennifer are also hosting a WIT Readathon on Youtube from August 25th to August 31st, and I will be trying to take part.
Here are the Readathon prompts, along with my recommendations ( & at the end of this post, you will find my TBR list for the month):
PROMPTS (& recommendations):
-
Read something that is not a novel
- The God of Carnage, by Yasmina Reza, tr. Christopher Hampton (play, 2008)
- This House: Selected poems, by Ana Martins Marques, tr. Elisa Wouk Almino (poetry, 2017)
- Tail of the Whale, by Alice Sant’Anna, tr. Tiffany Higgins(poetry, 2016)
- Oriana Fallaci: The Journalist, the Agitator, the Legend, by Cristina de Stefano, tr. Marina Harss (biography, 2017)
- I Am the Brother of XX, by Fleur Jaeggy, tr. Gini Alhadeff (short stories, 2017. Original: Sono il fratello di XX, 2014)
- Complete Stories, by Clarice Lispector, tr. Katrina Dodson (2015)
-
Read a book about childhood
- Manja, by Anna Gmeyner, tr. Kate Phillips (2003)
- Why the Child is Cooking in the Polenta, by Aglaja Veteranyi, tr. Vincent Kling (2012)
-
Read a book with red on the cover
- Incest, by Christine Angot, tr. Tess Lewis (2017)
- Hut of Fallen Persimmons, by Adriana Lisboa, tr. Sarah Green (2007)
- The House in Smyrna, by Tatiana Salem Levy, tr. Alison Entrekin (2015)
- Deborah, by Esther Kreitman, tr. Maurice Karr (1983)
- Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz: Selected Works, Juana Inés de la Cruz , tr. Edith Grossman (2015)
-
Read a text translated from a language that you haven’t read a text translated from before
- The Door, by Magda Szabo, tr. Len Rix (2005, translated from the Hungarian)
BONUS PROMPTS:
-
Read a book that was translated posthumously
- City Folk and Country Folk, by Sofia Khvoshchinskaya, tr. Nora Seligman Favorov (2017)
- Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz: Selected Works, Juana Inés de la Cruz , tr. Edith Grossman (2015)
- Manja, by Anna Gmeyner, tr. Kate Phillips (2003)
- Why the Child is Cooking in the Polenta, by Aglaja Veteranyi, tr. Vincent Kling (2012)
- Complete Stories, by Clarice Lispector, tr. Katrina Dodson (2015)
- The Diary of Lady Murasaki, by Murasaki Shikibu, tr. Richard Bowring (2005)
- The Sarashina diary: a woman’s life in eleventh-century Japan, by Lady Sarashina, tr. Sonja Arntzen & Itō Moriyuki (2014)
- Transit, by Anna Seghers, tr. by Margot Bettauer Dembo (2013)
-
Read a text written by a Nobel Laureate
- The Land of Green Plums, by Herta Müller, tr. Michael Hofmann (2009)
- The Piano Teacher, by Elfriede Jelinek, tr. Joachim Neugroschel (2004)
- Kristin Lavransdatter #1-3, by Sigrid Undset, tr. Tiina Nunnally (2005)
BONUS POINTS?
- Read texts that were also translated by women translators
- Recommendations: see above!
My TBR list
As always, my list for WITMonth this year will overlap with some of my other reading projects for the Summer:
- Artemisia, by Anna Banti, tr. Shirley D’Ardia Caracciol (Readathon bonus point 1)
- Grand Hotel, by Vicki Baum, tr. Basil Creighton
- The Blue Room, by Hanne Ørstavik, tr. Deborah Dawkin (Readathon bonus point 1)
- Flights, by Olga Tokarczuk, tr. Jennifer Croft (Readathon bonus point 1)
- These Possible Lives, by Fleur Jaeggy, tr. Minna Proctor (Readathon prompt 1 & bonus point 1)
- Complete Poems, by Karin Boye, tr. David McDuff (Readathon prompt 1)
- Purge, by Sofi Oksanen, tr. Lola Rogers (Readathon bonus point 1)
- Shape of Time, by Doris Kareva, tr. Tiina Aleman (Readathon prompts 1 and 4 & bonus point 1)
- The Boarding-School Girl, by Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya, tr. Karen Rosneck (Readathon prompt 2, bonus prompt 1 & bonus point 1)
- Soviet Milk, by Nora Ikstena, tr. Margita Gailitis (Readathon prompts 3 and 4 & bonus point 1)
- Breathing into Marble, by Laura Sintija Cerniauskaite, tr. Marija Marcinkute (Readathon prompts 2 and 4 & bonus point 1)
- Baboon, by Naja Marie Aidt, tr. Denise Newman (Readathon bonus point 1)
- Invisible Links, by Selma Lagerlöf, tr. Pauline Bancroft Flach (Readathon bonus prompt 2 & bonus point 1)
What are your reading plans, fellow WIT readers? Which books/authors do you recommend? 🙂
Yours truly,
J.

Some nice prompts there, and a lovely list to choose from. Flights will be my first read of the month but I don’t know where I’ll go after that!
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Thank you, Karen! I loved your WITMonth list 🙂
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What a wonderful post (as usual!). I had so many responses running through my head as I read I will try to enumerate them here. (First of all, though, I am always overcome by the artistic beauty of your blog. It is truly a visual treat, not to mention the content of ideas.) One of the ideas which really popped out at me was reading a child’s book. I am missing children’s literature as I will not be back in the classroom for the first time in 35 years. Now I just have to set my fingers upon one which truly appeals. I, too, have both Purge and Kristin Lavransdatter. Maybe I’ll open them because they both look tremendous. Xo
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Thank you, Bellezza! ❤ You are right, I feel the same about children's lit – I should read it more often! For WITMonth, I would recommend Sophie's Misfortunes, by Comtesse de Ségur, tr. Stephanie Smee (1857) & Pippi Longstocking, by Astrid Lindgren, tr. Florence Lamborn (1945) – those were my favourite books as a child! In fact, now you made me want to reread them… 🙂
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I loved Pippi Longstocking, too, and on a more serious note, Heidi. But I’m not sure if that was translated now that I think about it…
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I hadn’t intended joining WIT, but find I’ve just read something in that category so shall post on it very soon! Tried the Lispector stories a while back and didn’t get on too well…maybe time to try again
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I will be looking forward to your WITMonth post! And I hope you give Lispector another go. I really love her collections Family Ties (1960) & Covert Joy (1971). 🙂
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Love these picks! They all look absolutely amazing! ❤
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Thank you! 🙂
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So many great recommendations and potential future reads! I’ve been reading a few French translations and just yesterday an Arabic translation, The Open Door by Latifa Al-Zayyat. I might try a Simone de Beauvoir, although I have a feeling it may be slow going. I’ve noticed that all of them have a bit of a coming of age of the female protagonist theme this year.
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Thank you, Claire! I will take a look at your review of The Open Door! And yes, coming of age stories are my cup of tea… 🙂
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