The Wandering Bibliophile

This blog has been sadly neglected of late, as a return to grad school and a sudden job offer in publishing necessitated two cross-country moves in 12 months. But I couldn’t miss out on posting for International Translation Day, even if just to post a list of some of my favourite translations in recent (and not so recent!) years. I’ll stick with perhaps some lesser known authors and mainly indie presses. There’s some linguistic variety here (Korean, Turkish, Norwegian, French, Italian, Czech, Bulgarian, Icelandic, Russian, Angolan Portuguese, Catalan, Spanish…), but I’m doing this without the benefit of having my bookshelf nearby (sadly it is 4,000 km to the left of me), so these are the off-the-top of-my-head, less-obvious picks (besides the usual faves Borges, Saramago, Gogol, Kafka… you know the drill), and I’m certainly forgetting some great reads. Feel free to comment and recommend some of your own faves to me, as I do love an infinite TBR list!

1. Mr. Gwyn by Alessandro Baricco (McSweeney’s)
2. No One Writes Back by Eun-Jin Jang (Dalkey Archive Press)
3. The Man Who Walked Through Walls by Marcel Aymé (Pushkin Press)
4. The General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa (Archipelago Books)
5. The Tuner of Silences by Mia Couto (Biblioasis)
6. Collected Stories by Clarice Lispector (New Directions)
7. Spilt Milk by Chico Buarque (Grove Press)
8. The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am by Kjersti Skomsvold (Dalkey Archive Press)
9. Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal (Harcourt)
10. Varamo by César Aira (New Directions)
11. The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli (Coffee House Press)
12. The Garden of the Departed Cats by Bilge Karasu (New Directions)
13. The Goddess of Fireflies by Geneviève Petterson (Esplanade)
14. Granma Nineteen and the Soviet’s Secret by Ondjaki (Biblioasis)
15. Life Embitters by Josep Pla (Archipelago)
16. The Party Wall by Catherine Leroux (Biblioasis)
17. The Club of Angels by Luis Fernando Verissimo (New Directions)
18. Eleven Prague Corpses by Kirill Kobrin (Dalkey Archive Press)
19. Circus Bulgaria by Deyen Enev (Portobello)
20. The Blue Fox by Sjon (FSG)
21. The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz (Penguin Classics)

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