Women in Translation Month | 2018

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):

1. 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)

2. 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)

3. Read a book with red on the cover

   

   

   Review

   

   

   Review

   
   • 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)

4. 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:

1. 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)

2. 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?

1. Read texts that were also translated by women translators
   • Recommendations: see above!

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My TBR list

As always, my list for WITMonth this year will overlap with some of my other reading projects for the Summer:

1. Artemisia, by Anna Banti, tr. Shirley D’Ardia Caracciol (Readathon bonus point 1)
2. Grand Hotel, by Vicki Baum, tr. Basil Creighton
3. The Blue Room, by Hanne Ørstavik, tr. Deborah Dawkin (Readathon bonus point 1)
4. Flights, by Olga Tokarczuk, tr. Jennifer Croft (Readathon bonus point 1)
5. These Possible Lives, by Fleur Jaeggy, tr. Minna Proctor (Readathon prompt 1 & bonus point 1)
6. Complete Poems, by Karin Boye, tr. David McDuff (Readathon prompt 1)
7. Purge, by Sofi Oksanen, tr. Lola Rogers (Readathon bonus point 1)
8. Shape of Time, by Doris Kareva, tr. Tiina Aleman (Readathon prompts 1 and 4 & bonus point 1)
9. The Boarding-School Girl, by Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya, tr. Karen Rosneck (Readathon prompt 2, bonus prompt 1 & bonus point 1)
10. Soviet Milk, by Nora Ikstena, tr. Margita Gailitis (Readathon prompts 3 and 4 & bonus point 1)
11. Breathing into Marble, by Laura Sintija Cerniauskaite, tr. Marija Marcinkute (Readathon prompts 2 and 4 & bonus point 1)
12. Baboon, by Naja Marie Aidt, tr. Denise Newman (Readathon bonus point 1)
13. 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.

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