The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon  

Speculative and meditative, haunting and deeply humane, Azem’s second novel is an exceptional exercise in memory-making, history, and psycho-geography. The premise – the overnight disappearance of all Palestinians – is at once ambitious and audacious, shocking and unsettling. The author dares us to imagine, and from this place of imagination erupts a challenge: to read differently, against the grain. The book alternates between the perspectives of Alaa (whose grandmother was displaced during the Nakba) and his neighbour-friend Ariel (a liberal Zionist journalist), between past and present. Azem’s strength is in having fun with a conceit that’s not for the faint-hearted. We found that this palimpsestic and potent novel – originally published over a decade ago, and translated into English with a coolness and spareness – offered newfound socio-political, moral and emotional resonances and implications in the current climate. 

On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland  

On the Calculation of Volume I takes a potentially familiar narrative trope – a protagonist inexplicably stuck in the same day – and transforms it into a profound meditation on love, connectedness and what it means to exist, to want to be alive, to need to share one’s time with others. The sheer quality of the sentences was what struck us most, rendered into English with deft, invisible musicality by the translator. This book presses its mood, its singular time signature and its philosophical depth into the reader. You feel you are in it, which is sometimes unnerving, sometimes soothing, and this effect lingers long after the book is finished. 

There’s a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem, translated from French by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert  

If there ever was a need to prove how a translation can vividly recreate a sense of place and time and personhood, Gaëlle Bélem’s There’s a Monster Behind the Door would be exhibit A, with translators Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert brought in to testify. In prose that throbs with verve, humour and pain, this narrative set on the island of Réunion brings to life a narrator beset with the history of her family and her people, who tries to use the power of language and literature to transcend her circumstances. While she fails within the story, the book succeeds – spectacularly – as a novel. 

Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated from Romanian by Sean Cotter 

Solenoid is uncategorisable epic of interconnected realities, a book that seems to be about… everything. On a single page you might be flung from intimate insights into the banality of a teacher’s life to grand theoretical re-imaginings of the universe, to microscopic insights into mites, matter, love or letter-forms. It’s a mind-boggling, bravura and ceaselessly entertaining book, unlike anything else. The translation struck us as word perfect, a feat of attention to detail that transports us with total control from Communist Romania to the far sci-fi reaches of the imagination and back again. 
 

Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda, translated from Spanish by Heather Cleary and Julia Sanches 

Reservoir Bitches is a blisteringly urgent collection of interconnected stories about contemporary Mexican women. It absolutely bangs from the first page to the last. It’s extremely funny but deadly serious and we loved the energy and flair of the dual translators’ approach. It packs an enormous political and linguistic punch but is also subtle, revelatory and moving about the ways in which these women hustle, innovate, survive or don’t, in a world of labyrinthine dangers. This book weaves the riotous testimony of the living and the dead to create an expletive-rich feminist blast of Mexican literature. 

Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson  

Following the disastrous deaths of 27 people, when a dinghy capsizes while crossing the Channel, the book’s narrator – who works for the French authorities and who had refused to send a rescue team – attempts to justify the indefensible and clear her conscience. In a world where heinous actions often have no consequence, where humanity’s moral code appears fragile, where governments can condemn whole swathes of society to poverty or erasure, Small Boat explores the power of the individual and asks us to consider the havoc we may cause others, the extent to which our complacency makes us complicit – and whether we could all do better. A gut-punch of a novel. 

Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, translated from Japanese by Polly Barton 

Who is permitted to feel – and be – desired? Saou Ichikawa’s short, razor-sharp novel – exquisitely distilled into English by Polly Barton – features a protagonist with disabilities who lives in a care home near Tokyo. Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka Isawa has severe spinal curvature, and uses an electric wheelchair and ventilator. She is, as the cool kids would say, ‘very online’ – tweeting passionately and posting erotic stories – and her anxieties range from the existential to the sexual. A provocative and powerful indictment of ableism and sexism, this unapologetic, unashamed and unflinching novel defiantly dismantles societal and moral assumptions about disability as it leans into pleasures of the body. In around a hundred pages, Hunchback grips the reader with its raw, fizzing, subversive energy, even as it shakes off shackles — both physical and mental. A book that moved and thrilled us.   

Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda 

Hiromi Kawakami’s Under the Eye of the Big Bird tells the story of humanity’s evolution on an epic scale that spans as far into the future as the human imagination could possibly allow. In each of its chapters, separated by eons but gracefully unified under the crystalline clarity of Asa Yoneda’s seemingly timeless translation, a variegated cast of posthuman characters each interrogate what it means to be not an individual or a nation but an entire species, that unit of being we currently and urgently struggle so much to grasp, much to the cost to the planet we live on and our own survival. 

Eurotrash by Christian Kracht, translated from German by Daniel Bowles 

Eurotrash is the auto-fictional account of a writer contemplating his unpleasant and abusive childhood, his morally repugnant ancestry and his toxic financial inheritance as he drives his crotchety, alcoholic, senile mother through the landscape outside Zurich. This doesn’t sound like much fun! But this book is one of the most entertaining and ultimately moving stories we read. It is brilliantly, bitterly funny, even as it documents a vicious and tarnished emotional universe. This book is immaculately and wittily translated; on every page its sentences sparkle and surprise like guilty-legacy gold. 

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes 

An astute, discomfiting, cringe-making and often laugh-out-loud funny portrait of everyday privilege and modern aspirations, following an expat couple in Berlin. Tom and Anna are defined by their material lives, working their way through a tick-list of clichés readers will recognise in themselves and experience as a dig in the ribs. Compassionate as well as cynical, the book – in an exquisite, precise and perfectly executed translation from Italian by Sophie Hughes – holds up a mirror up to the way so many people aspire to and are let down by today’s off-the-shelf measures of success. A startlingly refreshing read. 

Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi  

In a dozen stories – written across three decades – Banu Mushtaq, a major voice within progressive Kannada literature – portrays the lives of those often on the periphery of society: girls and women in Muslim communities in southern India. These stories speak truth to power and slice through the fault lines of caste, class, and religion widespread in contemporary society, exposing the rot within: corruption, oppression, injustice, violence. Yet, at its heart, Heart Lamp returns us to the true, great pleasures of reading: solid storytelling, unforgettable characters, vivid dialogue, tensions simmering under the surface, and a surprise at each turn. Deceptively simple, these stories hold immense emotional, moral, and socio-political weight, urging us to dig deeper. 

On a Woman’s Madness by Astrid Roemer, translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott 

A modern classic set in Suriname and lyrically rendered into English for the first time, On a Woman’s Madness is a testament to both the resilience of queer lives that exist everywhere and everytime and the alchemy of literary translation where a perfect book meets its perfect translator. Through its heightened understanding of character and history filtered through a lush and enriched language, Astrid Roemer draws from suffering, heat, and imprisonment to create a story of love, survival, and freedom that translator Lucy Scott expertly reweaves into English with an empathetic, artistically accomplished touch. 

A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated from French by Mark Hutchinson  

Anne Serre’s short novel is the deeply romantic telling of a platonic love story between the narrator and his complicated childhood friend, Fanny; a story so beautifully realised – and translated so sensitively by Mark Hutchinson – that the pair become part of the life of the reader. A perfectly balanced book, slender in size but bearing significant weight all the way through, A Leopard-Skin Hat is testament to the ways in which we continue to hold the people we love in our memories, with respect and dignity, after they die.