Laura GM is back with another list of her favourite new translated fiction for March. This month she has a fantastic selection from South Korea, Sweden, Hong Kong, Turkey, Spain, and France:

We Do Not Part by Han Kang (tr. by E. Yaewon Paige Aniyah Morris)

Kyungha heads to the far reaches of snow-covered Jeju Island to look after the pet birds of her hospitalised friend. But Korea’s second largest island – and her friend’s family home in particular – is haunted by the massacre that took place there more than half a century ago. For Kyungha, in a place where the horrors of the past are never far from the surface, her perception of reality and the ghosts of her dreams begin to blur…

So stylish and strange, every image suffused with meaning, We Do Not Part is a delicate and disturbing novel of the highest quality. If you have never read the 2024 Nobel Prize winner before, this undoubted masterpiece is a perfect place to start.

Small Comfort by Ia Genberg (tr. by Kira Joseffsson)

Translated from Swedish, and now longlisted for The International Booker Prize 2026, this is a collection of five loosely interconnected short stories that explore the value of people, money and the price of debts, as it links financial worth to individual people and society. From the story of a child-actor who won’t engage in an interview except to philosophise about his life and make assumptions about the interviewer, to a separated couple who pretends to be together every year during the family holiday so the wife won’t lose her inheritance.

Throughout the stories, Genberg invites us to consider the meaning of success, greed, and our ambitions as it implicates the reader in the stories. Clever, funny and thought-provoking.

City Like Water by Dorothy Tse (tr. by Natascha Bruce)

A stunning and deeply unsettling piece of writing. Abstract, lyrical, hallucinatory. Even though the City could be an unnamed dystopian metropolis, there are strong hints pointing to Hong Kong and the constant trauma suffered by the Cantonese people.

Tse weaves together generational trauma, police brutality, memory and truth in a fever dream of a novella. A very unstable and blurry (and beautiful!) narrative that mirrors the political instability the book is commenting on while not losing track of the point the slippery narrative is making. The book morphs from a potential environmental story, to a novel about memory and conscience. 

Surgical Ward 9 by Peyami Safa (tr. by Ralph Hubbell)

A new edition of this 1930s Turkish classic that has sold over 10 million copies. This is a fictional journal about pain and grief. As the Great War and the Ottoman Empire come to an end, our narrator, a teenager with tuberculosis is also dying. He’s lonely, he’s angry, he’s envious of other people’s health. In his grief, he goes down the path of obsession with an older girl. A poignant and honest account of sickness and inner turmoil. Based on the author’s childhood struggles, this book still resonates today.

An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail by Helene Giannecchini
(tr. by Anna Moschovakis)

This is an auto-theory, creative non-fiction. Giannecchini theorises that queerness allows people to consider social dynamics differently, widening the spectrum of deep relationships with friendships at their core. Friendship as a salvation, as a founding principle. And precisely because in historically queer narratives all lovers have been delegated to roommates or best friends, it is actually difficult to find genuinely only platonic relationships with certainty. Drawing from archives and theorising about the existence and treatment of the archive, this is a book about language as well as people.

**MARCH HIGHLIGHT**

X is Where I Am by Sara Torres (tr. by Maureen Shaughnessy)

As Sara’s mother dies, Sara is making love . This novel follows a writer called Sara as she ponders in a confessional tone about growing up, growing old, sex and death. The narrator explains her guilt but also her unsurmountable need for sex. With messy love stories and a vibrant backdrop of popular culture and desire, this beautiful debut about queer love, mothers and daughters revolves around flesh that gives us both pleasure and death.