women in translation month reading
i read way too much this month - most of the books were pretty short but still. here’s the WIT selection (whenever i name two translations, i read the german). anyway this one has even more school/uni settings, dream cities, crocodiles in human suits, and a lot of misery and violence :(
gazelle tracks, miral al-tahawi (translated from arabic by doris kilias - german/anthony calderbank - english) growing up in a bedouin family in egypt, muhra tries to figure out her family history (especially the question of who her mother really was) through the many family pictures, showing legendary grandfathers, tragic mother/aunts, falcon hunts, fine steeds and the mysterious foreigner who painted the family. some lovely writing, especially about the hunts, but the dreamy quality of the narration sometimes drifted into too much vagueness. 3/5
the colonel’s wife, rosa liksom (translated from finnish by lola rogers - english/stefan moster - german) a dark & vivid historical about a young girl growing up in a nationalist finnish household before world war 2, who is seduced (and probably groomed) by the eponymous colonel into a sexual relationship and an even more fervent belief in nationalism. while the abusive side of the colonel shines through at times (much like the inherent cruelty and atrocities of fascism), the narrator is too blinded by love and ideology to question her seemingly perfect world, which only cracks when the nazis abandon finland and the war is lost. as the colonel becomes abusive and violent, his wife has to slowly disentangle herself both from him and from the ideology she grew up in. while the first half is a very intense evocation of the seductive power of fascism and nationalism and of the kind of intoxicating relationships built on power imbalances, the second unfortunately does not quite live up to the task of disentangling the narrator from the ideology - there are some asides regarding the narrator’s changed beliefs, but it doesn’t fully do the work; after all, she was already a nationalist before her relationship with the colonel. 3.5/5
four by four, sara mesa (translated from spanish by katie whittemore) an cool companion read to catherine house (see the non-translated wrap-up), as this is another novel set at an isolated, elite school (high school rather than college) where the shining exterior hides a dark secret (although the presentation and style and the type of dark secret are very different). the novel is told in three parts; the first from the perspectives of a few different students at school, including célia, a scholarship student from a poor background, and ignacio, who is bullied but eventually turns the tables; the second in form of the diaries of a substitute teacher who is trying to understand the obscure rules of the school while also hiding the fact that he is an impostor; the third made up of writings by the teacher the substitute is subbing for. throughout all three sections, despite their formal and stylistic differences, there is a strong undercurrent of social hierarchies, power imbalances, a concern with security, and sexual(ised) violence. ultimately, i do not think this quite pulls of the interplay of the 3 sections or the balancing act of hinting at and revealing the disturbing core of the school, but it is an unsettling read (and a really cool cover!). 3/5
amatka, karin tidbeck (translated from swedish by the author) not sure how i feel about author translations as a concept/practice. anyway this is a pretty interesting speculative dystopia with a unique spin on the concept of creating/changing the world thru language, in that this feature of the world is mainly, at first, a nuisance, as all objects have to be constantly re-named in order to remain stable, with the instability of matter being seen as threatening and disruptive rather than something exciting to explore or a source of power. i don’t think the book goes as weird and all out with this premise as i would have wanted, but the ending is strange and ambivalent and on the whole i enjoyed this a lot. really want to read jagannath now. 3.5/5
it would be night in caracas, karina sainz borgo (translated from spanish by elizabeth bryer) intense novel about a woman’s experience during the recent civil unrest in venezuela (something i do not know a lot about), during which she loses her mother (who dies when it becomes impossible to afford medical care) and her apartment (which is violently taken over by a group of ‘revolutionary’ women). taking refuge in a dead neighbour’s flat (whose body she has to get rid of) adelaida tries to find a way to get out of a country she is convinced is dead. some very sharp writing that brings adelaida’a bitterness, anger and grief to life, and a strong start, showing adelaida’s grief, the hyperinflation, the beginning of the unrests, but overall the pacing just kind of peters off, there are some confusing flashbacks and i honestly thought adelaida was mid-twenties & was very ????? when she mentions that she is almost 40. 3/5
our lady of the nile, scholastique mukasonga (translated from french by melanie l. mauthner) (thanks to archipelago for offering this as a free ebook during lockdown) a novel set at a rwandan lycee for the future female elite in the 1970s, where tensions between the hutu majority and the tutsi quota students (and a few who do not neatly fit into either categories) are exacarbated by european teachers with deeply colonialist and race-sciencey beliefs. veronica and virginia, the only tutsi students in their year, have to navigate their hostile classmates, complicit or indifferent teachers, the uneasy relation of christianity and native religions, and a particularly weird white man who fetishises and idealises tutsi women as descendents of queens and goddesses. it’s really interesting and shows the complex reasons for and escalation of anti-tutsi discrimination in a really effective way. my only critique would be that the dialogues occasionally read quite stilted and there is some ‘as you know bob’ type exposition between the students. 4/5
dreams and stones, magdalena tulli (translated from polish by bill johnston) (again, thanks to archipelago!) i am highkey obsessed with this dreamy, almost prose-poetry novella, which has no plot, no characters and is entirely about the genesis, development and end of a city, built out of dreams and stones, in a fantastical (and seemingly otherwise empty) cosmos (until all the other cities also exist), in eternal resistance to the counter-city. the city is all cities, a fantastical city, but also warsaw, and the development it undergoes is fantastical and surreal but also legible as warsaw’s 20th century. Some short characteristic quotes (I marked so many passages in this lmao): “Since life is from a certain perspective only a replication of urban design, order in the city compels order in the mind.” “Put another way, cities based on stars and cities based on right angles are superior to cities based on meanders, so long as the world is a machine.” “No one knows where sorrow comes from in a city. It has no foundations; it is not built of bricks or screwed together from threaded pipes; it does not flow through electric cables nor is it brought by cargo trains. Sorrow drifts among the apartment buildings like a fine mist that the wind blows unevenly across the streets, squares and courtyards.” and this one Anyway: obsessed. 4.5/5
maryam: keeper of stories, alawiya sobh (translated from arabic by nirvana tanoukhi) (thanks to seagull books for this lockdown gift!) a novel about women’s lives in lebanon during the 20th century, which starts with great potential: maryam is looking for alawiyya subuh (note the slightly different spelling; i’m curious how this was done in the arabic?), who intended to write a novel about stories told to her by maryam and her friends. since alawiyya has disappeared, maryam decides to tell the stories herself, although the ending hints at greater confusion about who is telling which stories. unfortunately, the main part of the novel, the stories of maryam and the various women in her life, are not super compelling: they are pretty much all about women abused and mistreated by the men in their lives. not that this isn’t worth talking about, i just found it pretty repetitive. towards the end, the book talks about how these stories are every woman’s story bc women have all experienced this kind of abuse and violence, so there’s a point here, but... i don’t know. i wish this had focused more on the lebanese civil war/war against israel and the narratorial confusion. 2/5
notes of a crocodile, qiu miaojin (translated from chinese by bonnie huie - english/martina hasse - german) this is a lesbian cult classic from taiwan about a university student (nicknamed lazi) struggling with her attraction to women, internalised homophobia as well as external homophobia, and her suicidal urges. there’s also a crocodile wearing a human suit trying to evade the public’s hysteria about the presence of secret crocodiles in the country, in a fairly transparent allegory for lgbtq experience in a fervently homophobic society. sadly, i didn’t really get this - it felt overwritten, often stilted, and pretty repetitive. i liked the crocodile parts, but they only made up maybe 15% of the book, so.... not for me, this one. 2/5
the hole, pyn hye-young (translated from korean by dwita rizki - english/ki-hyang lee - german) on his way to a vacation with his wife, a man causes an accident that kills his wife and leaves him almost completely paralysed, dependent on his only family member, his mother-in-law, for care. unfortunately (and increasingly disturbingly) his MIL seems more interested in punishing him for how he failed his wife, as well as digging a huge hole in his backyard. this was a bit of a let-down and i don’t really have much to say about it - there’s a few disturbing scenes, but otherwise it was just.... pretty boring. 2/5
stats # of languages: 8 (2x arabic, finnish, 2x spanish, swedish, french, polish, chinese, korean) female translators: 8/10 (using the translation i read)
i’m currently not reading anything by women in translation, but three books by men in translation so men can have some rights i guess
