Female authors in translation

I've decided I wanted to read more books by female authors, who aren't from the US/UK, whose books were written in a language other than English. My stats/meme page has inspired me.

To read (by approximate country)
Algeria- Assia Djebar
Argentina- Alejandra Pizarnik, Alicia Steimberg, Angelica Gorodischer, Ana Maria Shua, Claudia Piñeiro, Juana Manuela Gorriti, Liliana Bodoc, Liliana Heker, Luisa Valenzuela, Silvina Ocampo
Armenia Elif Şafak
Austria- Elfriede Jelinek, Ingeborg Bachmann
Brazil- Clarice Lispector, Helena Parente Cunha, Hilda Hilst, Lygia Fagundes Telles, Nélida Piñon
Belgium- Amélie Nothomb, Françoise Mallet-Joris, Kristien Hemmerechts
Canada- Anne Hébert, Kim Thúy, Gabrielle Roy, Nicole Brossard, Pascale Quiviger,
China- Eileen Chang, Xinran, Xiao Hong, Zhang Jie
Chile- Gabriela Mistral, Diamela Eltit, Isabel Allende, Maria Luisa Bombal
Colombia- Laura Restrepo, Fanny Buitrago, Marta Traba
Costa Rica- Carmen Naranjo
Croatia- Slavenka Drakulic
Czech Republic- Eva Švankmajerová, Magdaléna Platzová, Petra Hůlová
Denmark- Isak Dinesen, Karin Michaëlis, Katrine Marie Guldager, Pia Juul
Ecuador- Alicia Yanez Cossio,Fanny Carrion de Fierro, Karina Galvez
Egypt- May Telmissany, Nawal El Saadawi, Salwa Bakr
Finland- Leena Lehtolainen, Johanna Sinisalo, Sofi Oksanen, Tove Jansson
France- Andrea H. Japp, Anna Gavalda, Annie Ernaux, Claude Izner, Colette, Élisabeth Vonarburg, Françoise Sagan, Fred Vargas, George Sand, Hélène Cixous, Irene Nemirovsky, Julia Kristeva, Juliette Benzoni, Marcelle Sauvageot, Marguerite de Navarre, Marguerite Duras, Marguerite Yourcenar, Marie Darrieussecq, Marie Ndiaye, Marie Redonnet, Maryse Condé, Monique Wittig, Muriel Barbery, Nathalie Sarraute, Paule Constant, Pauline Réage, Simone de Beauvoir, Valentine Penrose, Violette Leduc
Germany- Anna Seghers, Christa Winsloe, Christa Wolf, Cornelia Funke, Dorothea Dieckmann, Gabrielle Wittkop, Gertrud von Le Fort, Irmgard Keun, Jenny Erpenbeck, Judith Hermann, Juli Zeh, Julia Franck, Katia Fox, Kerstin Gier, Monika Maron, Nele Neuhaus, Unica Zürn
Greece- Amanda Michalopoulou, Eugenia Fakinou, Margarita Karapanou
Guyana- Grace Nichols, Janice Ross
Hungary- Ágota Kristóf, Magda Szabó, Margit Kaffka
Iceland- Svava Jakobsdottir
India- Ambai, Ismat Chunghtai
Indonesia- Ayu Utami
Iran- Shahrnush Parsipur
Israel- Batya Gur, Gail Hareven, Ida Fink
Italy- Anna Maria Ortese, Elena Ferrante, Elsa Morante, Goliarda Sapienza, Grazia Deledda, Matilde Serao, Natalia Ginzburg, Neera, Oriana Fallaci, Rosetta Loy, Sibilla Aleramo
Japan- Banana Yoshimoto, Fumkio Enchi, Masako Togawa, Miyuki Miyabe, Murasaki Shikibu, Natsuo Kirino, Sawako Ariyoshi, Sei Shonagon, Yoko Ogawa, Yoko Tawada
Lebanon- Hanan al-Shayka
Lithuania- Giedra Radvilaviciute
Mexico- Carmen Boullosa, Elena Garro, Elena Poniatowska, Julieta Campos, Laura Esquivel, Margo Glantz, Rosario Castellanos
Netherlands- Connie Palmen, Hella S. Haasse, Marga Minco, Tessa de Loo,
Norway- Amalie Skram, Anne Holt, Bjorg Vik, Cora Sandel, Ebba Haslund, Herbjørg Wassmo, Karin Fossum, Linn Ullmann, Sigrid Undset, Torborg Nedreaas
Peru- Clorinda Matto de Turner, Gabriella De Ferrari, Marie Arana
Poland- Magdalena Tulli, Olga Tokarczuk
Puerto Rico- Rosario Ferré
Romania- Herta Muller
Russia- Evgeniya Tur, Lydia Chukovskaya, Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Nina Berberova, Tatyana Tolstaya
Senegal- Mariama Bâ
South Africa- Ingrid Winterback, Marlene van Niekerk
South Korea- Kyung-sook Shin
Spain- Almudena Grandes, Carmen Laforet, Carmen Martin Gaite, Emilia Pardo Bazán, María Dueñas, Mercè Rodoreda
Surinam- Cynthia McLeod
Sweden- Astrid Lindgren, Camilla Läckberg, Helene Tursten, Kerstin Ekman, Liza Marklund, Majgull Axelsson, Marianne Fredriksson, Moa Martinson, Ninni Holmqvist, Sara Lidman, Selma Lagerlöf, Victoria Benedictsson
Switzerland- Fleur Jaeggy, Isabelle Eberhardt
Syria- Salwa Al Neimi
Taiwan- Miaojin Qiu
Turkey- Emine Sevgi Ozdamar
Ukraine- Oksana Zabuzhko
Uruguay- Delmira Agustini, Carolina De Robertis, Cristina Peri-Rossi, Marosa di Giorgio, Teresa Porzecanski
Yugoslavia- Dubravka Ugrešić
Venezuela- Alicia Freilich, Ana Enriqueta Teran, Ana Teresa Torres, Teresa de la Parra
Vietnam- Dương Thu Hương, Linda Lê

Book Reviews-
Belletrista: Celebrating Women Writers around the World
3 Percent

Groups-
Reading Globally
Girlybooks
In Translation

Publishers-
Peirene Press, SUNY Press: Women Writers in Translation, Northwestern University Press, Open Letter Books, Norvik Press

Articles, threads-
Where are the women writers in translation?
Women's Writing Often Gets Lost in Translation

That's a fine bunch you got there already. I think the biggest problem will be finding translations, it always is.

Off the top of my head, I'd recommend Anna Maria Ortese, Elsa Morante, Sei Shonagon, Margit Kaffka, Cristina Peri-Rossi, Silvina Ocampo, Alejandra Pizarnik, Violette Leduc... tbc!

>1 Settings:

Are you looking for literary authors, or genre? If the latter, any preferences?

How about Ismat Chugtai, Sara Lidman (both of whom seem to have been unlucky in their English translators) and - rather more mainstream - Ingeborg Bachmann?

Angelica Gorodischer if you like the genre.

Yes, I definitely have trouble understanding women even in my own language. Certainly could use translation...

Thanks guys! My list is skewed literary because I got the names from the 1001 books to read before you die list, translation awards, and ironically a list of female authors from the people of anonymous. Genre doesn't matter, I just like listing. Right now I'm reading The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto because she was the first author I could get hold of easily.

>2 LolaWalser:
I'm impressed you can think of so many off the top of your head. I omitted Sei Shonagon originally because I thought The Pillow Book was nonfiction, and I'm not finding any translated prose by Alejandra Pizarnik, but I'll throw them both in.

>4 thorold:
Added. Thank you!

>5 AnnieMod:
Thank you!

If you like mysteries, I'd suggest Fred Vargas and Christine Adamo (French), Karin Fossum & Anne Holt (Norwegian), Helene Tursten & Liza Marklund (Swedish), and Leena Lehtolainen (Finnish, although as far as I know, only one of her books has been translated into English -- My First Murder. Some Japanese writers are: Natsuo Kirino, Miyuki Miyabe and Masako Togawa, "the P.D. James of Japan."

>8 jburlinson:
All added, except for Christine Adamo since I couldn't find the translation. Mysteries are not a genre I'm familiar with at all, thank you.

The pillow book of Sei Shonagon is hard to classify, it's a mix of personal anecdote, incidents, tales... but not a novel, no.

More names, a bit off the beaten path: Hélène Cixous, Monique Wittig, Annie Ernaux; Marie Darrieussecq, Natalia Ginzburg, Nathalie Sarraute, Paule Constant... Assia Djebar (you really should ask avaland about African and Middle Eastern women writers), Valentine Penrose--these are all contemporary, older ones (probably more difficult to find)--Ricarda Huch, Gertrud von Le Fort, Sibilla Aleramo... annnnd, I stall, time for bed!

>7 Settings:

For a start (mostly drawn from my catalogue) and I think they should be available in English. (Some are less recommended than others - I'm just trying to be a completist!)

For mysteries Camilla Lackberg (Swedish), Nele Neuhaus (German), Batya Gur (Hebrew) Andrea H. Japp (French) Claude Izner (French)

Young Adult Kerstin Gier (German)

Fantasy Élisabeth Vonarburg (Canadian writing in French)

Historical Katia Fox (German) Juliet Benzoni (French)

Julia Kristeva (French

>10 LolaWalser: That is an excellent list, thank you. I added them all except Ricarda Huch and Valentine Penrose. I can't find what they've written that translated.

So many interesting authors, and it's going to be depressing how few of their works I'll actually get a hold of. (It is necessary to my well being that I consider Amazon books off limits, I'd have no money otherwise.) The trick will be getting sight recognition so if I ever see them in used bookstores or library sales I can snag them.

>11 Scorbet: All excellent.

#12

If you click on the touchstoned names, it'll take you to their author page with listed works where you can easily see what's appearing in English. Valentine Penrose's historical fiction La comtesse sanglante has been translated (not very happily) as The bloody countess...

As for store recognition, it's useful to get acquainted with the looks of imprints that carry a lot of translated literature--there have been several threads on this, I seem to remember rebeccanyc compiled a long list... For instance, Northwestern University Press published Evgeniya Tur, Karin Michaelis, I. Grekova (I have her in Virago Press), Amalie Skram, Lydia Chukovskaya, Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal, Matilde Serao, Neera etc.

P.S. Just remembered someone I read recently for the first time, fairly entertaining--Almudena Grandes.

I had a trawl through the "male or female" listing for my books: almost everyone I came up with is either in Anoplophora's list already or turns out not to write novels (or to write them in English). Those I did find were: Christa Winsloe ("Mädchen in Uniform") and the Belgian writer Françoise Mallet-Joris. I suppose Anaïs Nin would count too, but maybe she's someone whose historical moment has passed.

(Edited for Belgitude)

What, are you MAD, Anais 4EVA!! ;)

I've just started on her journals.

Rhea, yes, definitely include Anais!

From my own country Hella Haasse is indeed interesting - and many of her works are available in translation. I would add Marga Minco, but fair warning: her work is mostly about holocaust survival.

There are obviously many other Dutch female authors, but I'm unsure how many of their works will be available in translation.

>13 LolaWalser:
I've been checking out the authors through the touchstones, but the The Bloody Countess is tagged as biography and non-fiction. I'll add her now that I know it's historical fiction. It didn't occur to me to check the imprints. I'll have to track down those threads.

>14 thorold:
Thanks!

>14 thorold:, >15 LolaWalser:
I thought Anaïs Nin was an American who wrote in English, but now I see her earlier works were in French. I'll add her.

>16 Nicole_VanK:
Thanks! I'm aware of how few works get translated in English, but untranslated works are as inaccessible to me as if they didn't exist. :'(. I'm working on my Chinese and Spanish, but fiction is so difficult. I can read news articles or Wikipedia easily in Spanish, but with fiction it's like I've hit a wall. Authors add too much intricacy for me.

Well, I think I have plenty now, but if I'm missing someone critical please let me know.

This is now a personal challenge, but I'll iron out some rules if anyone wants to join me. As of now, I have read a total of 4 authors and 6 books. Compared to how many translated male authors I've read or how many English books that is pathetic.

It has fake dialogue in it! It can't be a biography! :)

Would you like more suggestions? There are tons more out there, even with the translation restrictions. But what you have now sure is a very full plate!

>19 LolaWalser:
I think I have enough for a good start. Thank everyone so much for all the help.

Slavenka Drakulic has written some interesting fiction ...

That's an impressive list you've got there! I don't think Magda Szabó's been mentioned yet. Her prose is beautiful, and at least some of her books are available in English.

Thank you two. I've got Szabó on the list, and even if Nemirovsky was already on it I remember her name better now.

I finished The Lake and now I've started working on Alejandra Pizarnik. I can't find any books at my library in English entirely by her, but the anthologies Surrealist Women, Women's writing in Latin America, The Oxford Book of Gothic tales, and Sudden Fiction Latino have stories by her. I'm starting on Surrealist Women tonight.

> 24. I'm starting on Surrealist Women tonight.

Cool. I'm interested in surrealism and would be interested in your reaction to this book.

>25 jburlinson:
The book turns out to be mostly essays and poetry, and even though the introduction made me excited to start reading, I'm not liking the works themselves. My favorite so far is a dream sequence by Renée Gauthier.

Each included writer has a short bio, but despite the bio's brevity it is often longer than the writer's work. I get the feeling that they made a list of women surrealists, and then hunted to find any bit of writing by them, any bit at all, judging the work by who wrote it and not it's intrinsic quality. Everything's just mediocre and I feel like the translated poetry has all the life sucked out of it. The bios often focus on why such and such writer is important, but they try so hard to do this, it often comes across as propping them up with straw.

Note: I'm not familiar with surrealism at all, and I know nothing about art. It's likely that's the book is falling flat for me because of this. I'm also only a 100 pages into it and so it can still get better.

> 26. Thanks for the status report on your reading. Lately, the surrealist movement has been somewhat under attack by feminist critics lead by Xavière Gauthier.

Very interesting thread. If anyone here isn't familiar with the Reading Globally and Girlybooks groups, you might want to come on over and investigate them.

And thanks for the shoutout, Lola (#13). I can't remember creating a list, but Archipelago and Open Letter, among others, are exclusively dedicated to works in English translation, but neither of them does a great job of translating women authors.

>28 rebeccanyc: rebeccanyc

I joined both of those groups, thank you for pointing them out. Those "regional threads" and "classics in their own country" Reading Globally has are just beautiful.

Edit- Reading Globally has given me some more authors, which I'll check for English and duplicates then add to my list when I'm less lazy. Ling Ding, Fumiko Enchi, Hanaan as- Sjaikh, Bapsi Sidhwa, Ulfat Idilbi, Jo-Hsi Ch'En, Park Kyong-Ni, Werewere Liking, Alifa Rifaat, Lina Magaia, Maryse Condé, Marie Vieux-Chauvet, Claribel Alegria, Teresa de la Parra, Elena Garro, Marja-Liisa Vartio, and Grazia Deledda.

Hi, Rebecca--I know there have been dozens of threads discussing translations and publishers strong on translations, and I vaguely remember the most recent one (recent being anything in the last two years!) involving making a long list--rings any bells? In a thread, not a List list. Oooh--maybe in the past Club Read, of course.

>30 LolaWalser: I have no idea if it's anything you're looking for, but I just saw this thread pop up the other day...?

ETA Doing a search (because this sort of thing interests me as well) I also turned up this one in a previous Club Read year.

#31

Thanks, Polymathic--those are very helpful! My visual snapshot contains a much longer list--if I can come up with a reasonable way to search for it, I'll try.

P.S. TOO BAD the Conversations link no longer take one directly to the posts! Argh!

#30, Well, your memory of what I did is obviously much better than mine, Lola! I'll try to search for what you're thinking about, and see if that sparks my memory, but I probably won't have a chance until Friday or the weekend.

Can I throw in a recommendation for Peirene Press. They have both male and female authors, all very good (that I have read) and chosen mostly to include authors who are well known in their own languages but not translated, or under-appreciated, in English. This year's theme is 'The Turning Point' and all three books in the series are by female writers.

Also, could I point you in the direction of Belletrista.com. It was a webzine created by avaland and staffed mostly by LTers. It is on hiatus at the moment, but there are plenty of editions still viewable. It is dedicated to contemporary female writers and is about 60% translated fiction.

>35 GlebtheDancer:

Talking about presses, Europa Press is probably also worth exploring.
And there is always Persephone Press but they do not do much translations...

Of those mentioned in the first list, I particularly recommend: Tove Jansson, Olga Tokarczuk, Sigrid Undset, Marianne Fredricksson, Selma Lagerlof, and add Isak Dinesen, Marie de France and the inimitable author of Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren.

Three Percent at the University of Rochester is also a great source for info on books in translation, though I haven't seen anything specifically by gender.

http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?s=about

Thank you guys for the resources and recommendations. I forgot that I've read Kristin Lavransdatter for some unknowable reason, despite the book being one of my top favorites.

I feel I've mischaracterized Surrealist Women. The sections are organized by both era and author, and since authors can show up in multiple eras the ratio of biography/works is decreasing as I get deeper into the book. And I'm enjoying the works more and more.

Well, I finally finished Surrealist Women. It got slightly better, but was mostly a slog. The most annoying part of the first 100 pages was how many of the early contributor's were notable for being the wives/lovers/associates of famous men. The second most annoying thing was that despite the introduction's claim that Surrealism was primarily a literary movement, they kept including excerpts by people who were primarily photographers, filmmakers, painters, etc. I'm not interested in reading bad poetry or a fumbled text by someone just because they were a famous sculptor, especially when I'm not familiar with their work and the anthology provides no examples. I suppose these are unfair criticisms though.

Despite all the harping, I really liked the stuff by Mary Low, Valentine Penrose, Irène Hamoir, Nora Mitrani, and Rikki Ducornet. They made the entire anthology worth reading. Plus I supposed (with nothing to compare it too), it was a good introduction to Surrealism.

My library has three more anthologies with Alejandra Pizarnik; Women's Writing in Latin America, Sudden Fiction Latino, and Oxford Book of Gothic Tales. I started Sudden Fiction Latino last night, and the stories in it are absolutely phenomenal. However, the compilers accidentally attribute The Bloody Countess to Pizarnik, confusing it with a short story she wrote based off of it. That loses my trust.

> 40. Thanks for the update. Was the piece by Mary Low an excerpt from the Red Spanish Notebook?

I love that book.

>41 jburlinson: It might have been. I'll have to check and I don't have the book on me.

Sudden Fiction Latino was fantastic, easily my favorite book I've read all year. I seem to be quite alone in this sentiment though, I can find very few reviews on the web that give it 5 stars and no one raves about it as much as I want to. Stand-outs were pretty much every single author in the anthology.

Women's Writing in Latin America is also fantastic.

>41 jburlinson:.
There were both poems by Mary Low, a work she translated from Spanish by another author, and a longer excerpt about the Spanish Civil War. I couldn't find where the excerpt was from.

Women's Writing in Latin America is still good, but the first section is my favorite so far. I picked up The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales (with a short story by Pizarnik) and Constance Ring today.

43. Thanks for following up.

a longer excerpt about the Spanish Civil War.

It's probably an extract from Red Spanish Notebook, which was co-authored by Low and her husband Juan Brea, a surrealist poet.

Women's Writing in Latin America is still good, but the first section is my favorite so far.

How is Women's Writing in Latin America sectioned up -- by country? by time period? What does the first section cover?

>44 jburlinson:
Thanks asking questions!

There's an online copy of Red Spanish Notebook if anyone else reading this is interested. It was published in London, 1933, in English. Mary Low was born in London in 1912, but seems to have spent much of her life in other countries, and published in other languages. Not sure. The best information I can find on her is on the French Wikipedia.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Low
http://www.marxists.org/history/spain/writers/low-brea/red_spanish_notebook.html...

The works in Women's Writing in Latin America are divided into 3 sections, but I'm not certain what the division was. Each section begins with an introduction by an English professor, which I had difficulty understanding. They're were filled with philosophy jargon and expect me to know things about philosophy and the history of women's movements I do not. This isn't a criticism. I believe the first section is about writing as a woman, except many of the authors argued women's writing as separate thing from writing doesn't exist. The second section is about discovering the self through writing, and the third section is about politics.

I finished Constance Ring last night, practically in one sitting. I read 20 pages in the morning and took a break to go running. Fantastic book. My edition was published by Seal Press (:Ground Breaking Books. By Women. For Women), which ran a series of translated books by women. There's a list on the end page I'll type up later. Constance Ring is now published by Northwestern University Press and isn't on Seal Press's website.

Just realized I can get another book by Amalie Skram; Professor Hieronimus. Translated by Alice Stronach and G.B. Jacobi.

An English edition of Fru Inés by Amalie Skram is also supposedly being released this year from Nordik press. Translated by Judith Messick and Katherine Hanson. I'll be buying that. Lucie, Betrayed, and Under Observation are also available, and I could get them on Amazon, but that would break my oath not to get books on Amazon. Buying a book as soon as it comes out like seems different.

Alright, may be attributing wrongly, but here's a list of books published by Women in Translation / Seal Press.

An Everyday Story: Norwegian Women's Fiction edited by Katherine Hanson
Early Spring by Tove Ditlevsen
Egalia's Daughters by Gerd Brantenberg
Cora Sandel: Selected Short Stories translated by Barbara Wilson
Two Women in One by Nawal el-Saadawi
To Live and to Write: Selections by Japanese Women Writers edited by Yukiko Tanaka
Nothing Happened by Ebba Haslund
The House with the Blind Glass Windows by Herbjorg Wassmo
Study in Lilac by Maria-Antonia Oliver
Constance Ring by Amalie Skram
Words of Farewell by Sok-Kyong Kang, Kim Chi-Won, and Chong-hui O
Echo: Scandinavian Stories about Girls by Ia Dubois, Katherine Hanson
Cockatoo's Lie by Marion Bloem
Under Observation by Amalia Skram
The Four Winds by Gerd Brantenberg
Ask the Sun by Dong He
Unmapped Territories: New Women's Fiction from Japan by Yukiki Tanaka
Unnatural Mothers: A Novel by Renate Dorrestein
Wayfarer: New Fiction by Korean Women by Bruce Fulton, Ju-chan Fulton

I went to the library to get Scandinavian Women Writers, and ended up with that, Gunnar's Daughter by Undset, To Hell with Cronje by Ingrid Winterbach, and Copenhagen by Katrine Marie Guldager.

Gunnar's Daughter by Sigrid Undset was good. In her historical fiction, Undset is very careful that her characters don't "think modern," and believe in the morals and ideas of the time. It's very refreshing. Gunnar's Daughter was published by Penguin Books and translated by Arthur G. Chater. Chater has also translated many of Undset's other books, including The Master of Hestviken, Images in a Mirror, and Ida Elizabeth.

Copenhagen by Katrine Marie Guldager (København) was also good. It was published by BookThug, which seems to mainly publish those thin but expensive books of modern poetry I always see in college libraries but nowhere else. Guldager is mainly a poet. The translator was P.K. Brask, who has translated Ibsen, and Niels Hav. The book was distributed by the Literary Press Group of Canada, which is a collection of independent publishers. Their website is pretty interesting. They have a pdf of books they're publishing this year indexed by where the author is from, but I didn't see anything that stuck out to me.

Went to the library to return some books, and ended up with An Aquarium of Women by Bjorg Vik, The Story of Gosta Berling by Selma Lagerlof, The Axe by Sigrid Undset, and Egalia's Daughters by Gerd Brantenberg.

Aquarium of Women by Bjorg Vik was another book published by Norvik Press. It was interesting, but I don't have much to say about it. 9 short stories about women with dreary lives. Translated by Janet Garton.

To Hell With Cronje was also interesting. Published by the aforementioned Open Letter Books and translated by Elsa Silke. Out of all the few I've read so far, I feel this was really written for someone living in the author's country. I assume the Boer wars are vastly important to history of South Africa, and so your average South African can be expected to have a basic pool of knowledge about them. The book had an index for words Elsa Silke chose to leave untranslated, but there was no introduction or no notes explaining the history. Good book though once I pieced together what was happening. There was a lot of feeling put into it, and there were lots of descriptions of insects. Open Letter books has a deal going where you can get a year subscription for $100 including shipping. That gets you the next 10 books they publish plus 2 of your choice. I don't have a $100 dollars to spend on it, and my advertising is probably annoying, but pretty good deal I guess.

The short stories relevant to my topic in The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales were If You Touched my Heart by Isabel Allende, Bloody Countess by Pizarnik, and Monkey by Isak Dinesen. If anyone is interested in Gothic stories, this is a good anthology. It had a nice introduction, and then the stories were arranged chronologically, with historical curiosities at the beginning. All were good stories, but Bloody Countess was one of the best stories in the anthology.

I finished reading The Emperor Tea Garden by Nazli Eray. It was strange book. Although it does have a linear narrative, it jumps around a lot and you have to be alright with symbolism trumping reality.

The Emperor Tea Garden was translated by Robert Finn and published by Syracuse University Press as part of their Middle East Literature in Translation series. Their translations have a very respectable ratio of female:male authors and they all have beautiful covers.

Finished Death as a Side Effect by Ana Maria Shua and New Islands by Maria Luisa Bombal, both fantastic books.

Death as a Side Effect was translated by Andrea G. Labinger (website) and published by the University of Nebraska Press as part of their "Latin American Women Writers" series (website).

New Islands was translated by Richard and Lucia Cunningham and published by Farrar Straus and Giroux, now owned by Macmillan. It doesn't seem to be part of a special project for once. It got an award from the Translation Center at Columbia University, but although Columbia University gives out a prize for translated Japanese literature, but the only information I could find about New Islands' award was on the translator's faculty site.

I finished Violations: Stories of Love by Latin American Women Beyond the Border, and Scandinavian Women Writers. All great collections of short stories.

Violations was mainly translated by Psiche Hughes, who has also translated Cristina Peri Rossi, and Carmen Boullosa. It's also published by the University of Nebraska Press as part of the "Latin American Women Writers" series.

Beyond the Border is definitely a research text, with extensive bibliographies on each of their included authors. I didn't count pages, but there might be more bibliography than story. It's published by Cleis Press. The blurb at the end of the book says "Since 1980, Cleis Press has published progressive books by women," but the website says, "Cleis Press publishes provocative, intelligent books across genres. Whether literary fiction, human rights, mystery, romance, erotica, LGBTQ studies, sex guides, pulp fiction, or memoir, you know that if it's outside the ordinary, it's Cleis Press." There are a few translated books, but they seem to have changed direction.

Scandinavian Women Writers was more excerpts that short works. It's published by Praeger. "Since 1949, Praeger has cultivated a distinguished reputation for producing scholarly and professional books in the social sciences and humanities, with special emphasis in modern history, military studies, psychology, business and economics, current events and social issues, international affairs, politics, the visual and performing arts, and literature."

I love this thread.

Female authored translated books I'm currently reading:

Novel Without a Name

Books I've read (and recommend):

The Second Sex (NF)
Memoirs of Hadrian
The Slynx
The Ten Thousand Things
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (NF)
Kitchen
The Ministry of Pain
The Pure and the Impure
The Bridge of Beyond
The Piano Teacher
The House of the Spirits
Purge
Out
The Lover
Like Water for Chocolate
Transit
The Diary of a Young Girl

Books I plan to read (and also recommend):

The Proof of the Honey
War’s Unwomanly Face (NF)
Dark Spring
The Man of Jasmine & Other Texts
The Museum of Abandoned Secrets
Mishima: A Vision of the Void (NF)
The Lake
Medea
The Necrophiliac
Who Ate Up All the Shinga? (NF)
Kristin Lavansdatter
Gunnar’s Daughter
Baba Yaga Laid an Egg
Thank You for Not Reading
Europe in Sepia
In Red
White Walls: Collected Stories
Primeval and Other Times
Ru
Where Europe Begins: Stories
The Tale of Genji
The Bastard of Istanbul
Death in Persia (NF)
All the Roads Are Open: The Afghan Journey (NF)
The Complete Persepolis (NF) (Do graphic novels count?)
The Art of Joy: A Novel
Woman at Point Zero
Empress
Death in Spring
Hôtel Splendid
Those Whom I Would Like to Meet Again
Putin’s Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy (NF)
A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya (NF)
Aaron’s Leap
The Book of the City of Ladies (NF)
The Time: Night
There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby
Touba and the Meaning of Night
The Diving Pool: Three Novellas
Fear and Trembling
Loving Sabotage
The Heptameron
All My Friends
The Appointment
The Hunger Angel
The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by Her Minstrel Laura: A Novel in Thirteen Books and Seven Intermezzos
Slander
A Breath of Life
The Hour of the Star
The Passion According to G.H.
In Praise of Imperfection: My Life and Work (NF)
Fanny Stevenson: A Romance of Destiny (NF)
The Saga of Gosta Berling
The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie: Three Novels
Grotesque
Gilgi
Kassandra and the Wolf
Fair Play
The Summer Book
Sweet Days of Discipline
Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong
The Unit
The Obscene Madame D
Hunting and Gathering
Letter to a Child Never Born: A Novel
Visitation
The Nomad: The Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt (NF)
The Time in Between
I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem
Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing (NF)
The Day I Wasn’t There
The Laugh of the Medusa (NF)
Double Oblivion of the Ourang-Outang
Love in a Fallen City
Yesterday, at the Hotel Clarendon
Mauve Desert
The Cocaine Salesman
The Blood of Others
The Ethics of Ambiguity (NF)
The Mandarins
The Prime of Life (NF)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
The Book of Franza & Requiem for Fanny Goldmann
The Thirtieth Year
April Witch
Women and Words in Saudi Arabia: Politics of Literary Discourse (NF)
A Woman
I Sweep The Sun Off Rooftops
Poems of Akhmatova

Some others I would recommend who haven't popped up yet would be Pascale Quiviger, a Québecoise author, Johanna Sinisalo, a Finn, and the young Czech writer Petra Hůlová.

Just in case your TBR list wasn't long enough already!

Well, I now have at least a dozen more authors to read.

I sorted everything by approximate nationality, and fixed a great deal of misspellings. Hopefully I didn't make more typos than I fixed.

I've since moved my challenge to the Reading Globally group (not doing very well though...).

Authors I've come across my last post include Xinran, Qiu Miaojin, and Marcelle Sauvageot.

I see Qiu Miaojin has an upcoming New York Review Books translation. NYRB is a publisher I haven't mentioned yet, but they are awesome people. They're new, from the Wikipedia page they started publishing in 1999, but since then they've been getting out tons and tons of translated classics. The books are nicely bound too, sturdy paperbacks with decent paper and nice artwork on the covers.

Marcelle Sauvageot's Commentary is an Ugly Duckling Presse translation, another relatively new publisher.

And Xinran's Miss Chopsticks is Vintage.

If I ever have enough money to spend, I'm going get an agreement with some of these publishers where they I just buy everything they publish automatically. NYRB, Open Letter Books, and Norvik Press Series B, definitely.

On Open Letter Books, they now offer Why I Killed My Best Friend by Amanda Michalopoulou (trans. from Greek by Karen Emmerich) and another one by Ingrid Winterbach called The Elusive Moth (trans. from Afrikaans by Iris Gouws and Ingrid Winterbach).

It looks like someone's been picking your brain, Anoplophora: http://biblibio.blogspot.com/2014/05/women-in-translation-introducing.html

I am very curious, but blogspot is blocked in China and I'm not setting up one of those proxies on the hotel wifi. It will have to wait. :(

Oh no! In that case, have a copy paste.

---

Women in Translation | Introducing WITMonth!

Introducing Women in Translation (WIT) Month

When I started posting about the lack of women writers in translation, I had one idea in mind: get people thinking. Just as I had never noticed this startling skew, I knew that most readers of literature in translation probably weren't aware of just how bad the situation had become. I wanted to spread awareness, make the issue known, and get readers, reviewers, translators and publishers involved in a discussion.

Thankfully - thanks to all of you - this has been possible. But as I've said before - this project is not one post, thrown to the wind. Over the past few months, this project has become more and more central to my reading. I spent January tracking down a lot of books by women in translation, and February, March, and April reading them. I've been writing more reviews than usual, widening my horizons, and all the while trying to understand what could be the reasons for the overwhelming male-preference in translated literature.

While many of you have voluntarily taken up the challenge to read more books by women in translation, another idea soon cropped up thanks to the wonderful T. Olmsted of BookSexy Review: a dedicated month for championing women in translation.

And so WIT Month is born.

WIT Month will be held in August of this year (2014), with two simple goals in mind:
Increase the dialogue and discussion about women writers in translation
Read more books by women in translation
These two goals are not meant to limit readers by any means. Longtime readers of this blog will know that I am notoriously terrible at planning my reading (or planning my blogging, for that matter), and am never capable of sticking to any sort of schedule. This month isn't actually asking anyone to bend over backwards to only read books by women, or drop whatever else you're reading, or suddenly post only about feminism. The point is to encourage readers who appreciate structure in their reading to have a bit of encouragement and guidance. It's to hear from authors and translators and publishers who may not always make their voices heard in the book blogging world. It's to have a time and place where we can all sit down together to have a discussion, plain and simple. And hopefully, to read some excellent books along the way.

Readers interested in participating can show their stripes using the above button. I'll be keeping a list of participants and all related posts in the new section here on the blog, right next to the newly updating list of recommended literature in translation by women. Links to posts, reviews, thoughts or anything related to WIT Month can be left in comments, emailed to me (biblibio at gmail), tweeted to Biblibio or using either the #WITMonth or #WomenInTranslation tags on Twitter. This is a growing project, with no fixed schedule yet, so make your voices heard! If you have any ideas for specific events or topics to discuss over the course of August, please share them. We'll be trying to build some kind of loose schedule over the coming weeks, and your input is not only helpful, it's necessary.

Any and all feedback welcome! We would love to hear your ideas in an effort to make Women in Translation Month interesting, educational, entertaining, and enlightening. Spread the word, tell your friends, neighbors, dogs and cats. Stock your bookshelves and get your bookmarks read. August is coming.

---

The blog site has links to surveys/other cool stuff, so you should still visit the site proper.

Thank you! That was an interesting read.

I don't know if I've said this before, but as it is now, so few of these books get translated that the ones that do are a select group of extremely fabulous books. How else can I explain why I find these books as a whole so excellent?

I tend to give up on personal reading challenges, but this is one I've stuck with and integrated into my reading habits. It is because the books are so great. I can go into the library, pick up a random translated book by a woman (LOC makes this easy) and be confident it is going to be a great book. I have found some of my new favorite books doing this. I can't do that with fiction in general.

So, my point is that this is another reason to seek out these books besides the social justice aspect. Readers are missing out and doing themselves a disservice if they do not.

(Sorry about taking so long to respond back, I'm having a horrible time getting the script LT uses for posting to load.)

Wow, someone linked to this excellent thread on the WITMonth post I did on Goodreads, but I didn't scroll down enough to see myself relinked until now! Awesome. :)

This seems like the relevant thread then to explain a bit further what I hope to do with the Women in Translation month, and what I definitely do NOT expect people to do:

1. People don't have to do anything to participate. Seriously. I posted a "schedule" on the blog for those readers who like structure and a challenge, but mostly it's there to also give post ideas and prompts. But it's entirely optional, and I'm trying to encourage people to participate even if they can't read a single actual book, or just don't feel like it. Not trying to force anyone's hand here!

2. Anoplophora - your point about it being more than social justice is spot on - I didn't start this because I want to impose quotas or because I think that the world has to run along strictly equal lines (though obviously the hope is that eventually it WILL, in a natural way, so that we get the diversity of books we deserve), rather because I think that the moment only a quarter of your translations are books by women, you're missing out on a lot of amazing books. As a bilingual reader who also sees HOW MANY excellent women writers get the shaft (as compared to subpar male writers who have their entire mediocre backlogs translated...), it becomes even more obvious of how many books we're just missing out on. It follows the same logic for why read translations in the first place...

3. August isn't meant to be a one-off. Discovering this thread (and goodness, I've discovered a lot of interesting-looking books from this list!), and discovering the amazing London Book Fair panel on Women in Translation, and all the different corners of the internet that have independently understood that there is a problem here just goes to show that there is an audience to discuss this matter. There's an imbalance, and there are people - readers, book-buyers, translators - who want to see it fixed, or at the very least discussed and understood. So the fact that this thread will live on longer than my project is making me very, very happy right now.

Obviously I encourage and invite any reader to participate in WITMonth in whatever way they see fit, whether it's here, on other sites, on personal blogs, or even just in a private journal... though of course I selfishly would prefer something a bit more public, even on the level of just emailing me to let me know what you think! :) I really think we have the potential to do some great work here, and I'd love to see more readers participate, more communities get involved, and more insight from across the spectrum.