recommend me a translated book

[WeshMaGueule]

It's the International Translation Day, so recommend me a good book you've read that was originally written in anything other than English :-)

I'm a translator too, that's how I know it's international translation day ;-) I could recommend some of my own stuff but, y'know, it would be a bit outing.

I'm a translator and editor but not literary translation.

Happy Translation Day

I was just about to add Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, which I adored years ago and is surely worth a reread.

About to add Snow Falling on Cedars as it has a similar feel, but I see it was written in English.

Also enjoyed Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky and the haunting Love in The Time of Cholera.

Great thread - thank you!

Here's the patron saint of translation, Jerome - he's looking mightily pissed off! Must be a bugger of a sentence that he's translating

The File on H by Ismail Kadare.

Very funny book about 2 Irish scholars researching Homer in 1920s Albania.

My favourite book ever.

Probably waiting for someone to pay him. Or maybe he's post-editing a particularly egregious piece of MT

The Atom Station by Halldor Laxness.
Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami.
The Plague by Albert Camus.
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa.

All excellent books.

This Should be Written in the Present Tense by Helle Helle

Very engrossing.

All quiet on the western front
Miss Smilla's feeling for snow
Anna Karenina

Lots here to add to my shopping list. Wonderful thread.

War and Peace, I loved it. Oh Prince Andrey, how I swooned.

Merci @WeshMaGueule, I like yours too!

@FetchezLaVache do you just do DE-EN, or other languages as well? I'm guessing you might do FR-EN based on your name

I've literally just finished The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia (beautifully translated from Spanish). I found it captivating hence why I was until 1am reading it last night and at almost 10am am not dressed yet as I've just finished it!

Hurray for translators!

I recommend Lindqvist's Let The Right One In. I also ADORE the Night Watch series - Lukyanenko. This is probably saying something about my tastes in dark fiction..

Rebecca Gable - Fortune's Wheel

Fred Vargas, you can read them in any order.

Love a bit of Fred Vargas. I recommend Antonin Varenne in the same vein.

Anything by Valerio Massimo Manfredi if you’re into ancient history.

We by Zamiatyn if you like dystopian novels!

Girls of Riyadh. Silly gossipy stuff... but in Saudi so way different to what you might expect.

Very different vibe, but there's always a place in my heart for Anna Karenina.

I haven't read much in translation but one of my all-time favourite books ever, my Desert Island Discs book, is Life A User's Manual by Georges Perec. It has everything, I cannot imagine having the command of language to write such a book never mind translate it.

I also adored HhHH and the Neapolitan novels. I feel the best Murakami is the Wind Up Bird Chronicle but then I've not read recent ones.

I currently have a dual language book of Pablo Neruda's 100 love sonnets on my bedside bookshelf, good for moments of ott romance.

The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. Written 40 years ago but very relevant today - about a young woman whose life is ruined by intrusive tabloid reporting.

Ted Hughes' Beowulf!

And by Ted Hughes' Beowulf I mean Swamy's Heaney's of course.

Forgive me, I'm waiting for my tea to cook and I'm hungry and confused

Seamus Heaney!!!!