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% were originally written by women. It’s an alarming statistic.  

In an 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 translated fiction to transcend linguistic, cultural and even gender-based barriers.  

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

‘That would have to be Inger Christensen’s Alphabet. It must have been hard to translate, but it does exist in English, in a translation by Susanna Nied. It is just great poetry – asking you to open your intellect as well as your senses and imagination.’

Solvej Balle is the author of On the Calculation of Volume I, originally written in Danish.

‘A book in Spanish that I think everyone should read is Andrea Abreu’s Panza de Burro (Donkey’s Belly), published in English as Dogs of Summer, translated by Julia Sanches. It left a lasting impression on me because it also uses orality and colloquial language as a literary tool. It takes the beauty found in everyday speech – the language of working-class neighborhoods and communities, places where people are often thought to have nothing to say, where beauty is supposedly absent – and brings it into literature.’

Dahlia de la Cerda is the author of Reservoir Bitches, originally written in Spanish.

‘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 Goldfish and Concrete by Maartje Wortel [translated from Dutch by Michele Hutchison]. It’s one of those weird books I love. It’s about the sea, her father, the city of Tilburg, a love, an unfolded duvet, and Anish Kapoor’s black hole where space and time disappear. This story is impossible to explain, it says on the back cover. And it doesn’t need to be. You just have to dive in. One of the characters in the book says that in a painting, sometimes more than in a face, more than in a pair of loving eyes, you can see, no, feel, that someone understands you. Her stories have the same effect on me. They’re strange and familiar, liberating and comforting.’

Jente Posthuma is the author of What I’d Rather Not Think About, originally written in Dutch.

‘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.  

‘Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall [translated from German by Shaun Whiteside]. It’s the best book I’ve ever read when it comes to the unsettling experience of incomprehensible destruction, the so-called evil, in the world.’    

Jenny Erpenbeck is the author of Kairos, originally written in German. 

‘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.