Our translated fiction guru Laura Garcia Moreno is back with her latest picks – and this month she is joined again by the brilliant Rohan Wolsey, and they have reviewed some of their favourite recent releases…
The Naked Eye by Yoko Tawada (tr. by Susan Bernofsky). Anh Nguyet is a Vietnamese high schooler who experiences her life through Catherine Deneuve movies. In thirteen chapters, each titled after a different Deneuve movie, this is a blurry account of her kidnapping while attending the International Youth Conference in Berlin to deliver a paper she wrote in Russian: “Vietnam as a Victim of American Imperialism.” This is an elusive story of desperation and momentum.
Kibogo by Scholastique Mukasonga (tr. by Mark Polizzotti). This story in four parts starts in Rwanda during Belgian colonial rule, during a famine. The missionaries have brought Yezu and Maria to bring the rains back. But some, under the cover of darkness, prefer to put their faith on Kibogo. This is just the start of a kaleidoscopic story where we witness oral tradition morph and adapt, Mukasonga tells us about pious people, about witches who might have or not powers, politics, beliefs and colonialism all while poking fun at it all.
On The Clock by Claire Baglin (tr. by Jordan Stump). An accurately painful account of French working-class. Our main character is a non-politicised burger chain worker. We follow her though the motions of her soul-crashing day to day. This is an account of survival on a very impersonal day to day from her interview for the job to all of the stations that she learns to manage, drive-through, fries, drinks, cafe. There are little victories and a lot of desperation.
Last Supper of Queer Apostles by Pedro Lemebel (tr. by Gwendolyn Harper). “I speak from my difference” Lemebel self-proclaimed his writing as “warrior faggotry” in Chile, a country where queer people were hated by all the sides of politics and often disappeared and tortured. Lemevel, a fighter against authoritarism and acclaimed by Bolaño, hated the West. These crónicas, or essays, are full of fight, stories that mix reportage, memoir and poetry to give voice to Chile’s trans women and gay men.
Spanish Beauty by Esther García Llovet (tr. by Richard Village). An outlandish noir in la Costa Brava where Michela, a corrupt cop and daughter of an English gangster and a flamenco dancer, becomes dangerously obsessed with stealing a Russian mafioso’s lighter. The characters are unforgettable. There is money laundering, romance, parties, betrayals, a kidnapping, tapas, fry-ups and beers on the sand. Whiplash fast, anarchic and at times, nearly surreal.