Women in Translation Month 2026 4: Sleepless by Marie Darrieussecq translated by Penny Hueston

One of the pleasures of reading for Women in Translation Month is not just discovering new writers, but reconnecting with past favourites. That’s how it was reading Sleepless, as I enjoyed several …

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Women in Translation Month 3: Han Kang’s Greek Lessons and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.

South Korean writer Han Kang deservedly won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2024. I’ve enjoyed every book I’ve read by her: The Vegetarian, translated by Deborah Smith and winner of the 2016 Inte…

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Jana Hensel- Es war einmal ein Land-Warum sich der Osten von der Demokratie sich verabschiedet..

I was really pleased to come across this book in Leipzig last week. The title translates as Once Upon a Time there was a Country-Why the East is saying goodbye to Democracy and will resonate with a…

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Vati- Daddy- by Monika Helfer

Vati, by Austrian writer Monika Helfer, follows on from her novel die Bagage, The Riff-Raff, which is an imaginative reconstruction of her grandmother’s life in rural Austria during the First World…

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Women in Translation Month 2026: The Sleep Thief by Ibtisam Azem, translated by Sinon Antoon.

I was completely taken by Ibtisam’s first novel The Book of Disappearance, long listed for the International Booker Prize 2025, so was thrilled that The Sleep Thief arrived just in time for Women i…

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The White Desert by Luis López Carrasco, translated by Rosalind Harvey

I read this collection of five interlinked stories while wildfires raged to the west of Madrid and it couldn’t be more timely. Tales of the daily lives and challenges for a group of young-ish Spani…

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International Booker Prize 2025 Longlist-The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem translated by Sinan Antoon

Shimon stands perplexed amid a sea of silent carnations on his flower farm. It’s 4 am and Maryam and her fellow workers from the Balata Refugee Camp haven’t turned up to work. He checks with the ca…

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Beyond the Wall, East Germany 1949-1990 by Katja Hoyer

In this fascinating history of the 40 year life of the German Democratic Republic, Katja Hoyer aims to set the record straight. In the preface she says that reunification of East and West Germany i…

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The Gypsy Goddess by Meena Kandasamy

I’m a great fan of Meena Kandasamy’s novels When I Hit You and Exquisite Cadavers. Her fourth book, Fieldwork as a Sex Object, is due out shortly, so before reading it I decided to go back to her d…

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The Nights are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar translated by Ruth Martin.

In February 2024 I attended a book launch at London’s Goethe Institut where Shida Bazyar and her translator, Ruth Martin, presented her debut novel Sisters in Arms. I really enjoyed this book and w…

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Names for the Sea- Strangers in Iceland by Sarah Moss.

Sarah Moss is one of my favourite writers in English, (My Good Bright Wolf, The Tidal Zone, Ghost Wall, Summerwater), but it took a recent short trip to Iceland to remind me that she’d also spent t…

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#ReadingWales26 : Selected Stories by Rhys Davies-Library of Wales

Rhys Davies (1901- 1978) was born in the Rhondda, and though he lived most of his adult life in London, his novels and short stories are set mostly in the pit villages and surrounding countryside o…

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Returning to New Caledonia- Frapper l’epopee by Alice Zeniter

I really enjoyed Alice Zeniter’s prize-winning novel The Art of Losing, so I’ve been looking forward to reading her next book, Frapper l’épopée. All the more so, as it’s set in the French overseas …

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The Nights are Quiet in Tehran by Shida Bazyar translated by Ruth Martin.

In February 2024 I attended a book launch at London’s Goethe Institut where Shida Bazyar and her translator, Ruth Martin, presented her debut novel Sisters in Arms. I really enjoyed this book and w…

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The Rarest Fruit by Gaёlle Bélem translated by Karen Fleetwood and Laetitia Saint-Loubert, published by Bullaun Press.

I’ve got a faible for Bullaun Press, an Irish independent press publishing literature in translation. I’ve reviewed several of their books here on Peak Reads (Forgottenness, Without Waking Up, What…

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Forgottenness by Tanja Maljartschuk, translated by Zenia Tompkins.

There are two parallel stories in Tanja Maljartschuk’s novel Forgottenness. It’s the story of Viacheslav Lypynskyi, born in 1882, an important figure in the early 20th century struggle for Ukrainia…

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Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev by Maxim Gorky, translated from the Russian by Bryan Karetnyk

It was the name Tolstoy that drew my attention to this title. I read War and Peace as a young person and it’s one of the great works of world literature that I often think about rereading. This edi…

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The Hunger of Women by Marosia Castaldi translated from the Italian by Jamie Richards

Rosa, the protagonist of this novel, likes to cook. At the start of this first person narrative she makes simple (by Italian standards) meals for her daughter, and neighbour, Tina. We learn she’s r…

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The Door by Magda Szabo

This is the first book I’ve read by Hungarian writer Marta Szabó. First published in Hungary in 1987, the novel was translated into English by Len Rix in 2005, and published in this Vintage edition…

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Dead and Alive- Essays by Zadie Smith

I’ve only dipped my toe into the essay form up till now, the sum total of my essay reading being Jenny Erpenbeck’s Not a Novel, reviewed here at Peak Reads, and A Memoir of My Former Self by Hilary…

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Life in Spite of Everything-Tales from the Ukrainian East by Victoria Donovan.

Victoria Donovan first visited the Donbas area in Eastern Ukraine in 2019, and found herself going back there time and again. Originally from Cardiff, she felt some affinity to the landscape in the…

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The River and the Sea - Asymptote

I lived for a few years as a child by the small Franconian river called the Regnitz. We were moved there in 1951, from a camp for Displaced Persons to the four new tower blocks by the river. We were f...

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Mother Mary Comes To Me by Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy’s most recent book is a memoir of her mother, Mary Roy, who died in 2022. Mary Roy was a formidable and extraordinary woman, who founded and led a progressive school in Kerala, India,…

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German Lit Month 2025 Week 4-Das Liebespaar des Jahrhunderts-The Couple of the Century by Julia Schoch.

This week is supposed to be about writers from the former GDR. I can’t really categorise Julia Schoch as such. She was in her mid-teens at the time of reunification, and so has lived most of her li…

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German Lit Month 2025-Mann vom Meer-Thomas Mann, Man of the Sea, by Volker Weidermann.

Here I am again, reading around the great Thomas Mann, rather than tackling the work itself. But I couldn’t resist this book, recommended by danares.mag-blog, as I very much enjoyed Volker Weiderma…

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German Lit Month 2025- Week 3- Thomas Mann. Der Zauberberg, die ganze Geschichte by Norman Ohler.

It feels like Thomas Mann has been on my mind this whole past year—not surprisingly, as 2025 is the 150th anniversary since his birth, and readers have been looking again at the man and his work. F…

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The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing.

Contrary to what the title suggests, this is not just a book about gardens or gardening. It is certainly both those things. But it’s also an exploration of cultural, literary and political ideas ar…

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German Lit Month 2025- Week 2- The City-Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by FC Delius, translated by Jamie Bulloch

What better book to suit this week’s German Lit Month theme than this short novella, set in Rome? It takes place over one hour in January 1943 and is an inner monologue told by a young woman walkin…

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