Our translated fiction guru Laura Garcia Moreno is back with her latest picks.
This month’s list features books from South America, Italy, Belgium, Norway and Denmark.
We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezon Camara (tr. Robin Myers)
Cabezon Camara excels at reimagining times in history. This is a great translation by Robin Myers with all the Guaraní in the Spanish original. The book tells the real story of the nun Alferez (Catalina de Euraso and then Antonio de Euraso) one of the first trans men registered in the 1500s. He escaped from a convent and became a soldier in the conquest of the Americas; with all the darkness this entails. Antonio tells his story by writing letters to his aunt. In three timelines, different dialects and lyrical prose, this book is sharp and brilliant and a thing of beauty.
A House in Sicily by Luisa Adorno (tr. Ann Goldstein)
A newly translated Italian classic. Luisa Adorno (pen name for Mila Curradi) won numerous awards in life for her biographical novels. Masterfully translated by Elena Ferrante’s translator, Ann Goldstein, the book explores life in the darkest period of recent Italian history as a young Tuscan woman falls in love with a Southern man. As the second world war is ending, they travel to meet his family, just to find a very eccentric set of characters who feel really nostalgic for the time of Il Duce.
Separate Rooms by Pier Vittorio Tondelli (tr. Simon Pleasance) with an introduction by Andre Aciman
A newly translated Italian book from the late 80s. Pier Vittorio Tondelli would die of AIDS only two years after publishing this book after having been taken to trial by the Italian censorship body due to sexual and queer themes. Thomas, a young musician is slowly dying and Leo his lover can’t watch anymore. Thus begins a journey through memory and Europe. Heartbreaking and beautiful.
The Remembered Soldier by Anjet Daanje (tr. David McKay)
Identity, memory, truth in a contemplative novel that still manage to be a page turner. It’s post WW1 in Flanders and a woman has finally found her husband, Amand lost during the war. Suffering of memory loss, he has been living at an asylum. As they reconnect and she tries to help him piece together their life before the war, Amand can’t escape his nightmares. Until he realises that some of the pieces of this puzzle don’t make sense and that his wife might not be telling the whole truth.
The Unworthy by Roy Jacobsen (tr. Don Bartlett and Don Shaw)
A story told from the perspective of a gang of working-class boys in Nazi-occupied Oslo as they navigate their criminal lives and slowly become part of the resistance. Told only through the lens of their knowledge and experience, as readers we puzzle the context of their lives with the hindsight of what we know. Without glorifying Carl, Roar and Olav’s brutal lives, this is a story of their own special sense of community.
Waist Deep by Linea Maja Ernst (tr. Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg)
Five old friends gather in a Danish cabin for midsummer, hoping to reclaim something they’ve already lost. Sylvia, stuck between her girlfriend and the longing for her friend’s fiancée, rekindles an obsession with Esben while tension rises like steam from the lake. Each character wrestles with the versions of themselves they were supposed to become. The writing is lucid, hot, and full of aching sensual desire, where every touch or glance carries the weight of memory. It’s about friendship, betrayal, and the unbearable weight of the life you didn’t choose. Tender and messy.