WIT Month: Five women in translation share their must-reads

This August, we celebrate Women in Translation Month (WIT Month), a key initiative of the WIT movement aimed at addressing the gender imbalance in global literature. What imbalance, you might wonder? Currently, only 36% of books translated into English come from non-European countries, and of these, a mere 31% of those books were originally written by women. It’s an alarming statistic.  

In a recent interview with the Booker Prizes, Jenny Erpenbeck, the winner of the International Booker Prize 2024, reflected on the power of translated fiction. ‘There are so many lives not only to discover but to dive into by reading – so called “other” worlds that by turning page after page become familiar to you, since we all are human beings and live on one planet.’ Her words underscore the power of TF to transcend linguistic, cultural and even gender-based barriers.  

In this spirit, we turn the spotlight on five remarkable women writers from around the globe, all nominated for this year’s International Booker Prize. Here, they each recommend books written in their first languages that influenced their own work. 

I will turn to poetry, because poets in Poland are quite underrated. I would like to recommend a book of poetry called Vacation, Specter (Wakacje, widmo) by Magdalena Bielska. In it, the poet crafts a world on the borderline between dreams and real material objects and events. She seems to speak from these apparently incompatible sides. Bielska creates spaces immersed in the afterimages, unreality and, at the same time, tangibility of these worlds. I sometimes dream about this book. [Vacation, Specter has not been fully translated into English, but you can find a few of the poems on the Plume poetry website in 21 Polish Poems, edited and translated by Benjamin Paloff]. 

And prose? You should definitely try the books by Magdalena Tulli; for example, Dreams and Stones (Sny i kamienie), published in English and translated by Bill Johnston. I don’t know any other Polish writer with such original language and imagination! 

Urszula Honek is the author of White Nights, originally written in Polish.  

I would recommend with much love and admiration Enero (January) by Sara Gallardo [translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle and Maureen Shaughnessy]. It is a short novel, written with great intensity and lyricism, about a peasant girl, pregnant from a rape, who doesn’t know how to have an abortion. It was a book written in the 1950s, when the author was just 25 years old. It is her first novel. And it is a book that lacks nothing. A novel that seventy years before abortion was legalised in Argentina already spoke of it as an urgent necessity for the life and health of women from the most vulnerable classes. It is a book of great lucidity and sensitivity.   

Selva Almada is the author of Not a River, originally written in Spanish.  

Lina Wolff’s novels are so well-written. I believe all of them are translated into English. I recommend starting with Carnality [translated from Swedish by Frank Perry] and The Polyglot Lovers [translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel]. Her texts are brutal and complex, yet very nuanced. 

Ia Genberg is the author of The Details, originally written in Swedish.