It has been twenty years since Kiran Desai published her Booker Prize winning The Inheritance of Loss, so this latest novel has been much anticipated by many.
It was one of two Booker shortlisted novels this year that I was interested to read, because of their cross-cultural settings, the other being Flashlight by Susan Choi, set in Japan, US and North Korea.
Character led New Generation Indian Drama
At 670 pages, I had to be sure about Desai’s novel before committing to read it, an immersive Indian family saga sounded promising, then the author’s intention to write ‘a present-day romance with an old-fashioned beauty’ sealed it for me.
It was everything I hoped and more. All the old fashioned values and dilemmas of an India of the past and then the mix of young people sent abroad for an American education, isolated from their home culture and influences, while both benefiting from, and coping with the effect of a western education and so-called freedoms as they try to find their place in the world.
We also bear witness to the imbalance in power in a co-dependent and coercive relationship of a manipulative and emotionally abusive man over a young woman, who struggles to see what is happening to her and yet knows it is not right.
The Loneliness of Winter in a Foreign Country
In this modern day Indian family chronicle, we meet aspiring novelist, freelance writer Sonia in the snowy mountains of Vermont, and Sunny a struggling journalist now in New York.
Unable to return home during the holidays, having been in America for three years and not returned to India for two, Sonia complains to her family.
“Lonely? Lonely?”
In Allahabad they had no patience with loneliness. They might have felt the loneliness of being misunderstood; they might know the sucked-dead feeling of Allahabad afternoons, a tide drawn out perhaps, never to return, which was a kind of loneliness: but they had never slept in a house alone, never eaten a meal alone, never lived in a place where they were unknown, never woken without a cook bringing tea or wishing good morning to several individuals.
In Vermont working on campus in the library over the two month winter closure, with two foreign students, one day she encounters a much older man Ilan de Toorjen Foss, who invites her to dine, promises to find an internship for her. He takes something from her that becomes one of the core threads of the story, the thing that will bring Sonia and Sunny’s fates full circle.
Her colleagues in the library are suspicious.
“I still don’t understand who this person is and why he is here in the dead of winter. It doesn’t add up. Where is his family?”
When Sunny’s American girlfriend Ulla opens a letter from his mother with a photo of Sonia inside, he tries to downplay the foreign custom it refers to. She is suspicious.
“There’s nothing sinister about the letter,” he said. “Everyone gets these at my age, forwarded by relatives, friends, people who’ve never set eyes on you – a great pile arrives when you finish college, and the flood continues until everyone is settled. Then there is a lull before they begin marrying off the progeny of these mishaps, each generation lesser than what came before, because what hope can you have from such a process?”
Sunny avoids answering his mother’s calls and now his girlfriend suspects this custom might be the real reason he is reluctant to tell his family about their relationship. He finds it increasingly difficult to navigate his relationship, discovering there are as many pressures and expectations, with little understanding of the rules. He seeks an escape.
An Arranged Marriage? Not Likely!
Neither Sonia or Sunny are thinking about marriage according to the cultural traditions of their parents generation; they are too swept up dealing with their current circumstances. The letters they received were a response to a letter in India, sent from one family to the other, suggesting a match, inferring but never outright stating, a kind of favour that might balance out an old grievance these families had faced a decade ago, after an investment turned sour.
It was essential to remain close to those who had caused you harm so that the ghost of guilt might breathe through their dreams, that their guilt might slowly mature to its fullest potential. Not that Dadaji had thought it through – it never worked to consciously plot, to crudely calculate – and he himself was astonished at the possibility of what was unfolding. Even now it would never do to name this liability. The Colonel would not allow his grandson to bear the burden of his grandfather’s mistake. Dadji and Ba may simply suggest a desirable match between the grandchildren, two America-educated individuals, two equals, two people who naturally belonged together because of where they came from and where they were going. Without either of them mentioning it, the obligation might be beautifully unravelled.
The intended match fizzles out without Sonia or Sunny meeting, neither are interested, both already in romantic connections they are attached to but not entirely happy in.
However their paths will cross, igniting intrigue, but again they separate, as they struggle to find their place in the world and in themselves and overcome the mistakes they have made on the way, which have nothing to do with each other.
He passed a young woman sitting cross-legged staring at the rain. By her side was a book. Because Sunny couldn’t abide passing a book whose title he could not read, he walked by again and saw she had a face planed like a leopard, long lips, and watchful eyes, hair in a single oiled braid, but he still couldn’t see the title. So he passed by again. And one more time before he detected it: Snow Country by Kawabata.
Ultimately the two young people flee their present and go into a period of self imposed reflection, Sonia retreating to her mother’s house in the mountains, where she has mystical revelations that she decides not to be frightened of, but to look for simpler meaning from; while Sunny finds solace in nature and human rhythms in a village on the coast of Mexico, blending in with locals and receiving a visit from his friend Satya who is having his own realisations, seeking apology and reconciliation.
There is so much to navigate and nothing mentioned gives anything away, just an idea of the journey these two will go on as they seek a solution to their loneliness, a confrontation with themselves, in various parts of the world.
I was hoping for an immersive, character led Indian novel and this was everything I hoped for and more. It had all the old fashioned values and dilemmas of an India of the past and then the interesting blend of young people sent abroad for an education, isolated from their culture and influences, experimenting with the new and forbidden, benefiting from and coping with the effect of a western education and freedoms, while trying to understand themselves and their place in the world.
Though there were aspects that were deeply troubling, like the grooming of a young foreign student by a much older man, they are sadly relevant to the situation an isolated young woman without family around, might encounter abroad.
At the same time there were generational threads and mystical elements that disturb the equilibrium; there are parasitic entities met on their paths that cause them to learn, to suffer and grow, requiring surrender and courage. Everyone, young and old alike, must deal with their situation in order for any kind of balance to be regained.
I found the novel thoroughly entertaining and engaging, the mix of traditional and contemporary attitudes, the facing up to change and resistance against old roles. To a certain extent, as outsiders to the culture, we rely on authors to represent it authentically, but here we have characters that have been influenced and educated outside their own culture from within privileged families, which makes them neither one thing nor the other.
Loved all of it, did not want it to end, the ending was perfect.
Kiran Desai was born in New Delhi, India, was educated in India, England and the United States, and now lives in New York.
She is the author of Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, which was published to unanimous acclaim in over 22 countries, and The Inheritance of Loss, which won the Booker Prize in 2006, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Her third novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2025.
In 2015, the Economic Times listed her as one of 20 most influential global Indian women.
In the past of my parents, and certainly my grandparents, an Indian love story would mostly be rooted in one community, one class, one religion, and often also one place. But a love story in today’s globalised world would likely wander in so many different directions. My characters consider: Why this person? Why not as easily someone else? Why here, not there? In the past people were always where they had to be. My indecisive lovers, Sonia and Sunny, meet and part across Europe, India and America, their idea of themselves turning ever more fluid.
It’s nearing the end of the year and some of the book awards I have been following have made their announcements, while others like the Dublin Literary Award 2026 are sharing their nominations for next year.
Booker Prize Winner 2025
From the Booker shortlist of six novels, the prize went to Flesh by Hungarian-British writer David Szalay, a novel that follows a man from adolescence to old age as he is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp. It asks profound questions about what drives a life, what makes it worth living, and what breaks it.
The judges chose it for its singularity and said:
‘At the end of the novel, we don’t know what the protagonist, István, looks like but this never feels like a lack; quite the opposite. Somehow, it’s the absence of words – or the absence of István’s words – that allow us to know István. Early in the book, we know that he cries because the person he’s with tells him not to; later in life, we know he’s balding because he envies another man’s hair; we know he grieves because, for several pages, there are no words at all.
‘I don’t think I’ve read a novel that uses the white space on the page so well. It’s as if the author, David Szalay, is inviting the reader to fill the space, to observe – almost to create – the character with him. The writing is spare and that is its great strength. Every word matters; the spaces between the words matter. The book is about living, and the strangeness of living and, as we read, as we turn the pages, we’re glad we’re alive and reading – experiencing – this extraordinary, singular novel.’
‘There will be a temptation to pigeonhole Flesh as a novel about masculinity; its silences and its contortions, its frustrations and its codes. But while that is clearly a central concern, Szalay is also grappling with broader, knottier, more metaphysical issues. Because, at its heart, Flesh is about more than just the things that go unsaid: it is also about what is fundamentally unsayable, the ineffable things that sit at the centre of every life, hovering beyond the reach of language.’
I haven’t read ‘Flesh‘ and I’m on the fence about it based on reviews I’ve read, the lack of interiority, the focus on toxic masculinity and comments on the base dialogue. I still remember the first time I heard about it on the Irish Women’s Summer Reading podcast live at Kildare Village, but I am yet to be convinced I would enjoy it and I am not curious enough to consider it for its “singularity“.
Warwick Prize for Women in Translation Winner 2025
And the Walls Became the World All Around by Johanna Ekström & Sigrid Rausing,
translated from Swedish by Sigrid Rausing
published by Granta.
This book is a memoir created from 13 handwritten notebooks that Johanna Ekström (1970-2022) asked her friend Sigrid Rausing to finish.
First published in Swedish in 2023, it has been described as a literary experiment, a continuation of 30 years of friendship, and a deep meditation on grief.
“Just as the end of life will take us into unknown territory, so this extraordinary book pioneers new ways of thinking, feeling and writing about losses of many kinds.
Sigrid Rausing’s completion of, and commentary on, her friend Johanna Ekström’s final notebooks is not just a poignant and powerful double memoir: it is a record of a distinguished writer’s last years and the friendship she inspired.
Its language, beautifully chosen and artfully translated, helps us confront and understand grief and absence. But it also permits us to celebrate a unique inner life of dreams and visions that now survives in memories, and words.”
Warwick Prize for Women in Translation Highly Commended
The judges also highly commended:
Too Great A Sky, by Liliana Corobca,
translated from Romanian by Monica Cure
published by Seven Stories Press UK:
“This prose epic not only tells an astonishing, but largely forgotten, story of suffering and endurance amid the terrors of total war; Liliana Corobca also turns her historical research into the experience of Romanians deported by Soviet authorities from Bucovina to Kazakhstan into captivating fiction.
In Monica Cure’s immersive translation, the narrator’s voice seasons horror and upheaval with humour, resilience and folkloric charm as she recounts the ordeal of the deportees and the ways they survived it. This mighty, moving novel transforms fact into art, and brings ancient storytelling skills to bear on modern tragedies.”
Both these sound excellent and I’m definitely keen to read them, so watch this space for future reviews once I manage to get hold of copies. Ask your library to get these in, if they have a copy already, I’d love to hear what you think of them if you’re also interested to read them.
An Post Irish Book Awards 2025
I didn’t create a post this year for the Irish Book Awards but I like to read Irish literature, so I keep an eye on it, in particular fiction and memoir/biography.
Exclusively Irish, inclusive in every other sense, the An Post Irish Book Awards brings together the entire literary community – readers, authors, booksellers, publishers and librarians to celebrate Irish writing.
A reminder of the shortlist for fiction, from which I have reviewed two. You can read the shortlists of the other prizes here.
Eason Novel of the Year shortlist 2025
Conversation with the Sea by Hugo Hamilton (Hachette Books Ireland)
Fun and Games by John Patrick McHugh (Fourth Estate, HarperCollins)
Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell (Scribner Bools from Simon & Schuster)
The Benefactors by Wendy Erksine (Sceptre)
The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr (Picador, Pan MacMillan)
The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O’Connor (Harvill, Penguin)
Venetian Vespers by John Banville (Faber)
Eason Novel of the Year Winner 2025
The winner of the novel of the year went to:
Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell
a story of one woman’s escape from a coercive relationship and the challenges faced to stay away, while trying against the odds to build a new life.
Two of the shortlisted authors also won elsewhere.
Joseph O’Connor’sThe Ghosts of Rome won the people’s choice, The Last Word Listener’s Choice Award and Elaine Feeney took home The Library Association of Ireland Author of the Year Award.
The popular fiction award went to Celia Ahearn’sPaper Heart, and The Book Centre Crime Fiction award went to It Should Have Been You by Andrea Mara.
I had long wished to read Yvvette Edwards second novel, The Mother (2016) after very much enjoying her Booker longlisted A Cupboard Full of Coats (2011). I decided to read it alongside two novels on my shelf with similar themes of the bonds, burdens and breakthroughs of motherhood.
The three novels I chose are set in different countries and contexts: The Mother by Yvvette Edwards (UK) is set in London’s Caribbean community, Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona is set in apartheid-era South Africa, and The Mothers by Brit Bennett is set in contemporary Black America.
Sindiwe Magona has written numerous novels; however I have read and reviewed her autobiographies To My Children’s Children (1990) and Forced to Grow (1992), while Brit Bennett is well known for her novel that addresses the theme of passing, The Vanishing Half (2020).
The Complexity of Motherhood
All three novels expose motherhood as fraught with social pressure, moral judgment, and emotional complexity. Despite the different settings, they collectively form a global conversation about motherhood, resilience, and the human cost of structural and racial inequality.
In The Mother, Marcia grapples with grief and guilt after the murder of her son.
In Mother to Mother, Mandisa reflects on her life while writing to the mother of the girl her son has murdered.
And The Mothers, focuses on young women (and a collective “we” voice of church “mothers”) navigating the expectations of womanhood, including unwanted pregnancy.
The Mother by Yvvette Edwards
The Mother is the story of a mother’s struggle to come to terms with understanding her teenage son’s violent death, it is both a courtroom drama following the murder of Marcia and Lloydie’s 16-year-old son Ryan and a story of transformation and healing through grief.
I used to be good at making decisions, took it for granted completely, imagined it was one of those things that because I’d always been good at it, I would continue to be good at it, and then something like what happened to Ryan comes along and you realise some things are just temporary gifts granted for part of your life only, like the headful of hair you imagined would be yours forever that you went to sleep with one night and as usual but woke the following morning to find gone, clean gone.
Suffering Together, Drifting Apart – the Complexity of Grief
Marcia wants to be present every day at court, her husband Lloydie does not. Increasingly emotionally estranged, she does not understand what he does all day, where he goes. Their habits are changing and they seem to be leaving each other behind, dealing with the loss in completely different ways, on their own.
Lloydie is putting my cup of tea on the side when I return to the bedroom. He looks slightly sheepish, is probably annoyed with himself for the mistiming that has meant he has found himself alone with me when we are both awake and alert. He looks at me without speaking.
‘Aren’t you going to ask how it went?’ I say.
It’s not the question I intended; too in-your-face, accusatory. I didn’t want to start the discussion here but it’s out now, I can’t take it back.
His tone is dutiful. ‘How did it go?’
‘It was hard. Listening. Seeing that boy, his mother. Very hard.’
The Need to Understand
Marci is determined to be present every day, to understand why this happened and comes to realise that there may be things about her son that she did not know.
Understanding has been my problem from the start. How is it possible that my son was doing all the right things, that as parents, Lloydie and I, we were doing all the right things, and yet still Ryan is dead?
The novel follows the case and outside the court other events begin to shed light on the situation, Marcia’s beliefs and assumptions are challenged. In her need to know, she becomes reckless.
She observes the boy who is being charged, his fixed stare and has already decided his fate.
…he stares ahead as if it is all beneath him, and as usual I find it unnerving. I have to say that single quality in him is enough to convince me that he did it, that he’s guilty because he has something in his aura of the type of person who could kill someone at six thirty, then stroll home, have dinner and a hot bath, followed by an early night of unbroken sleep.
Edwards is adept at tapping into the realms of Ryan’s peers and the insidious, threatening world of youth gang culture, which comes into full view through he character of Sweetie, the girl caught between the earnest world of Ryan and the manipulative obedience she has to Tyson Manley and his type.
It is a thought provoking story of complicated parenting and motherhood highlighting effects of judgment, truth seeking, and the social forces that shape personal and family outcomes, while reflecting on the particular role of mother. Motherhood becomes a lifelong, consuming identity, the loss of a child, in this case, destabilising her sense of self.
Author, Yvvette Edwards
Yvvette Edwards is a British East Londoner of Montserratian origin and author of two novels, A Cupboard Full of Coats (2011) nominated for The Hurston-Wright Legacy Award and longlisted for the Booker Prize, and The Mother (2016). Her short stories have been published in anthologies and broadcast on radio.
She is interested in writing that challenges the single narrative, giving voice to characters who are absent or under-represented in contemporary fiction.
An Upcoming Novel in March 2026
Good Good Loving, Yvvette Edwards first book in almost a decade, will be published in March 2026 by Virago. The synopsis reads:
“Ellen’s big, beautiful family are gathered around her hospital bed as she prepares to slip away… her children have chosen now of all times to have a never-ending discussion about all her failings. Every single tiny thing they think she’s done wrong over the years – and the one big thing too. Even after everything, after all the sacrifices Ellen has made for every last ungrateful one of them, they still all take their father’s side. If only they knew the whole story.
“Moving backwards in time through all the decisive moments that have shaped Ellen’s life – the disasters, celebrations and surprises, the revelations, confrontations and betrayals – Good Good Loving is the vibrant story of a multi-generational British-Caribbean family across five decades.”
As I mentioned in the Booker Prize shortlist post, this is one of the two shortlisted novels I’m reading before the winner announcement on Nov 10.
Cross Cultural Relationships, Identity and Belonging
Flashlight interested me because it is a portrayal of a cross-cultural marriage and family that highlights the tensions between adults with different backgrounds and expectations, coping within one culture and the way a child of that union navigates both her life and her parents, when she comes from them both.
The novel begins with a scene plucked from the middle of the story, when ten year old Louisa and her father Serk are out for a walk in the early evening, in a coastal town in Japan.
Serk was born in Japan to Korean parents and while furthering his education in America, met Louise’s mother Anne. The family are in Japan on a one year secondment from his American university.
Hours later, Louisa is found washed up on the beach and her father is missing, presumed drowned.
Finding One’s Place Nowhere
The story then returns to the beginning, where we learn of the childhoods and upbringing of Serk in Japan and Anne in America, of his attachment to Japan and his success in school, while his family long to return to Korea (having not told him earlier where they were from) and wish their children to attend another school where they can learn about their culture and identity.
To learn it was not Japanese but Korean was so profoundly disorienting that the greater discovery, that he himself was Korean, was for the moment secondary.
As Serk matures, he comes to understand the ambiguous nature of nationality and belonging, of being caught between two nations, perceived and treated as an outsider by both of them; American thus becomes both an escape and an even greater frustration.
…disillusioned as he was, when his parents decided to abandon Japan he was dumbfounded.
The first half of the novel, prior to his disappearance has the feel of domestic fiction as the family navigate the intimate dramas of their lives and find their way.
Both Serk and Anne have withheld parts of their lives from each other and this adds tension to their marriage, as these things are sensed but unknown, or threaten to become visible, ultimately undermining their relationship.
That fall, Serk’s college announced it would send a member of its history department as a visiting professor to Japan, starting the following April. Before the history professor was chosen, Serk was asked if he would like to be considered and said he would not.
Louisa becomes partially aware of their secrets, adding to her own confusion and struggle to find a sense of belonging.
When Louisa hated her mother, it was because the thought of her caused her so much pain.
When she hated her father, it was because she was conscious of emulating his remoteness.
Shattered Lives Separate
In the second half of the novel, the family is no longer a cohesive unit, their lives diverge and chapters are then told from each character’s separate location and perspective. The pace changes, an element of mystery appears in the timeline and there was such a feeling of a true-crime element, that I paused reading and checked the back of the book for a bibliography. Sure enough, there are 15 works of fiction and non-fiction referenced, very revealing.
As the mystery of what happpened to Serk is revealed, other characters appear who are searching for their own disappeared and thus stories of a similar nature are discovered, told with such detail that they seemed as though true.
So while the novel continues, it also provides an insight into historical tensions between Japan and North Korea and the untold stories of a number of families whose tales of missing members of their family were ignored and disbelieved until subsequently proven to be true.
I don’t want to reveal too much more than what you can read in the blurb, because encountering the story is all the better for not knowing. Not everything that occurs is written, as each character chapter ends, we often know what is to be revealed and we fill that in ourselves, creating connections as the narrative leaps forward from one character to the next.
Perhaps no one but Anne, who had lived with him and tried for so long, could understand how impossible Serk made it to know the least thing about him. A constant wretched privacy had radiated from him, more powerful and more wretched the nearer you got.
An Illuminating Text
Flashlight was so many things, a complex story of a multi cultural family, the relinquishment of a child, four people whose lives came together then split apart, who we continue to observe, often decades later. It explores the effect on each person in the family of their culturally diverse pasts, their birth circumstance and the geographic moves they make that shift perceptions of who they are.
It exposes the cruelties of nations, abuses of humankind, the determination of those who seek the truth, the perseverance of those who want to bring justice and the importance of closure, of being present even when someone seems beyond comprehension.
What an effort to bring all that together and create a novel that traversed so many elements of the cross cultural family, the immigrant life, the (false) allure of the return, lost family members and the dangers of trying to find them. I was reminded a little of Jessica Au’sCold Enough for Snow, but this is much less introspective and Min Jin Lee’sPachinko, but with a different focus on aspects of history & family predicaments.
This was such an eye opening, thought provoking read that felt like reading two novels, the first half interesting but mundane and predictable, the second half mysterious, disconcerting and dangerous. For me it started a little slowly and almost methodically and then suddenly you become aware of a much greater story within which this narrative sits, and then it became completely absorbing and I didn’t want to put it down.
‘Flashlight is a sprawling novel that weaves stories of national upheavals with those of Louisa, her Korean Japanese father, Serk, and Anne, her American mother. Evolving from the uncertainties surrounding Serk’s disappearance, it is a riveting exploration of identity, hidden truths, race, and national belonging. In this ambitious book that deftly criss-crosses continents and decades, Susan Choi balances historical tensions and intimate dramas with remarkable elegance. We admired the shifts and layers of Flashlight’s narrative, which ultimately reveal a story that is intricate, surprising, and profound.’ Booker Judges
Author, Susan Choi
Born in South Bend, Indiana, Susan Choi is the author of six novels.
Her first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian-American Literary Award for Fiction. Her second, American Woman, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize. Her third, A Person of Interest, was a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. In 2010 she was named the inaugural recipient of the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award. Her fourth novel, My Education, received a 2014 Lambda Literary Award. Her fifth novel, Trust Exercise, won the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction – and was a US bestseller.
Her sixth novel, Flashlight, began as a short story in the New Yorker in 2020, and won the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award in 2021. She serves as a trustee of PEN America and teaches in Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
The winner of the Booker Prize 2005 will be announced on Monday November 10. I only read one novel from the longlist, Love Forms by Trinidad and Tobagan author Claire Adam (my review here). Initially, I perceived on the list as being too clever with the form, even if that is a characteristic of literary fiction, but then I saw two novels that fit my own preference, written by women, about lesser known cultures.
Below is a reminder of the six books on the shortlist being considered for the prize with a quote from the author and another from the judges answering different questions about each novel. You can read more interesting facts about the shortlisted authors here.
In the coming days I’ll share my thoughts on the two that I am reading, Flashlight by Susan Choi (my review here) and The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai (my review here).
The Booker Shortlist 2025
Penned in English, these shortlisted books are worldly in settings and universal in their themes, often featuring characters living outside their familiar communities and cultures, navigating a diverse set of eye-opening challenges, exposing aspects of history and geopolitical issues from Hungary to Japan, from Venice to New York, from India to England’s West Country.
If you click on the title of the book, you can read an extract from the novel:
‘I wanted to write a present-day romance with an old-fashioned beauty’
– The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the epic tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is said to be the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists.
What do you think it is about this book that readers will not only admire, but really love?
Its rich intricacies and the sheer bounty each page offers. Inter-generational family saga, sharp humour, poignant love story, state-of-the-nation novel, this book has it all. As a result, reading The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is an immersive, wonderful experience.
‘Reading a great book feels like being dropped onto an alien planet’
– Flashlight moves between the post-war Korean immigrant community in Japan, to suburban America, to two children trying to forge their own identities, and an eye-opening venture into the fate of those returned to North Korea, an astonishing story of one family swept up in the tides of 20th-century history.
What do you think it is about this book that readers will not only admire, but really love?
The scale of it, and the life-spanning trajectories of these characters of whom we get such intimate knowledge: all their drama and pain and, very occasionally, their joy. We found Flashlight to be one of those books that completely dominates your thoughts while you’re reading it.
‘As a culture, we’re becoming quite bad at holding a contradiction in our heads’
– An exhilarating, destabilising novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love. In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day – partner, parent, creator, muse – and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.
Is there something unique about this book, something that you haven’t encountered in fiction before?
Yes, the way Kitamura transitions between supposed reality – modern-day Manhattan – and something deeper and stranger, is bracing. She doesn’t hand-hold or explain, which some might see as a kind of hostility towards the reader. We saw it as a marker of trust.
This is a very controlled performance of a book that intentionally leaves a lot open to interpretation. We think readers will love finding others who’ve read it and talking to them about what it all might mean.
‘I wanted to write about a certain period of family life coming to an end’
– An unforgettable road trip of a novel about a middle-aged academic whose marriage, career and body are failing him. Pitch perfect, quietly exhilarating and moving, The Rest of Our Lives is a novel about family, marriage and those moments which may come to define us.
What do you think it is about this book that readers will not only admire, but really love?
Tom is not a literary king – he’s a dad and basketball enthusiast. We think readers will admire and enjoy high-concept analysis recounted by a ridiculously relatable narrator.
The star of this novel is Tom’s voice: the lodestar and the ‘why now’. He is a democratic guide, he’s delightfully embarrassed, and he is as observant as he is negligent. But what’s most impressive is Markovits’ dedication to Tom as an averagely flawed human. Tom makes bad jokes, he’s a pushover, and it’s difficult to imagine being taken with him in person.
– A masterful, page-turning examination of the minutiae of life and a dazzling chronicle of the human heart. As the ordinary cold of an English December gives way to violent blizzards, two couples find their lives beginning to unravel.
Where do you hide when you can’t leave home? And where, in a frozen world, can you run to?
Although it’s a work of fiction, is there anything about it that’s especially relevant to issues we’re confronting in today’s world?
The novel is set during the harsh winter of 1962-63 and, given what’s been happening to the weather since then, a harsh winter would be reassuring. But the novel is about the tensions within marriage and other relationships and those tensions are the same today as they were back then. How to live: that’s the big human issue and it forms the spine of the book.
‘I wanted to write about what it’s like to be a living body in the world’
– A propulsive, hypnotic novel about a man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp. Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. As the years pass, he is carried gradually upwards on the 21st century’s tides of money and power, moving from the army to the company of London’s super-rich, with his own competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth winning him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.
What do you think it is about this book that readers will not only admire, but really love?
Flesh is a disquisition on the art of being alive, and all the affliction that comes along with it, but it is also an absolute page-turner. It’s nearly impossible to put down. The emotional detachment of the main character, István, is sustained by the tremendous movement of the plot. The pace of this novel speaks to one of the greater themes; the detachment of our bodies from our decisions.
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Have you read any of these novels from the shortlist? Do you have a favourite to win?
A few catch up reviews from August 2025’s Women in Translation month. I realised I’ve mentioned them elsewhere but not here. The link above has a summary of all the novels I read during #WITMonth with links to reviews. So many of them were excellent 5 star reads, the 3 Italian novels, the Mexican, French.
Hungarian Literature in Translation
Magda Szabó’sIza’s Ballad (2014), translated from Hungarian by George Szirtes was originally published in Hungary in 1963 and brought to English fifty years later in 2014. She was the most translated Hungarian author, brought back to popularity thanks to Len Rix’s translations of her novels Abigail (2020) and The Door (2006) and Katalin street (2017).
It is the story of traditional villager Ettie and her daughter Iza, who lives in Budapest and the sequence of events in the wake of the death of Ettie’s husband Vince, when the daughter swiftly moves her mother away from the countryside and her familiar community to the city, where everything will be taken care of.
The news arrived just as she was toasting bread.
Three years earlier Iza had sent them a clever little machine that plugged into the wall and made the bread come out a pale pink; she’d turned the contraption this way and that, examined it for a while, then stowed it on the bottom shelf of the kitchen cupboard, never to use it again.
Thrust into a Modern Era
Ettie’s grief finds no solace in the new situation, baffled by the ways of her daughter and the city, where she struggles to find her place or role to assuage her loss. Even getting outside for fresh air becomes a source of anxiety due to the confusion of not knowing the area, the traffic, the transport system. Teréz who cooks, is hostile doesn’t want her in the kitchen or cleaning, no one wants her old-fashioned coffee or help.
She understood how an old woman rapidly heading towards eighty, who had spent all her life on firm ground, coping with straight forward problems, would now feel as though her life were hanging by a thread, and she also understood the bitterness she must be feeling, a bitterness she had never articulated in words that must have been there all the time: she was, after all, an old but still active woman, and she was in mourning. Having established the nature of their relationship, Teréz wanted to show her some tenderness without endangering her own importance and position.
Written in four parts, Earth, Fire, Water, Air, the narrative hops back and forth from present to past as we grow to understand the family, their relationships and the great divide between their generations and the lives they lead.
The story moves slowly through Vince’s illness and past and then speeds up with his demise as Ettie is literally thrust into a new era.
She was right, she was always right, it was just that old people grow fond of things that mean much more to them than the young.
A Formidable Daughter
Iza is an adept busy Doctor, divorced, childless, has a night companion and is extremely independent. Employing teréz to take care of all her domestic arrangements, she wants her mother to be looked after and not to have to do a thing, believing she should appreciate that.
One activity at a time she tries to find her role, only to be continuously rebuffed. Everything is taken care of and the effect as she pulls back from one potential helpful chore after the other is a slow deterioration of all ‘joie de vivre’. Her daughter’s efficiency removes all chance of Ettie helping out and efforts to do so, create more problems, further undermining the elderly mother’s sense of well-being.
She felt as if some elemental blow had destroyed everything around her and that only now did she really know what it was to be a widow, someone absolutely abandoned.
Return to One’s Roots
When she hears the headstone is ready for placement, Ettie makes plans for her return. It is quite a revelation to her for everything to feel so familiar and so strange at the same time. But her time away has hastened her decline and things don’t go as smoothly as she would have liked.
There’s so much more to the story and the backstory of the character’s that leads them to the predicament they are in by the time Ettie reaches widowhood. It’s an incredibly well portrayed depiction of the sudden transition of the aging mother from her simple village home to the modern convenience of her daughter’s third floor apartment in Budapest, and the effect that removing an elderly person from their familiar environment and from the process of transitioning can have.
Thought provoking and reflective, with an element of tension as the status quo can not be supported, it’s an excellent novel that captures an important and little acknowledged societal shift, of a dying era and of interesting mother daughter power dynamics.
Hungarian novelist, essayist, poet and literary translator Magda Szabó was born in Debrecen, Austria–Hungary in 1917 and died in 2007. She began her literary career as a poet and disappeared from the publishing scene in the 1950’s for political reasons, making a living teaching and translating from French to English.
She began writing novels and in 1978 was awarded the Kossuth Prize, the most prestigious literary award in Hungary. Her novel The Door won the Prix Feminina Etranger in France and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize and made into a film starring Helen Mirren.
She lived a long, eventful life decorated with many outstanding achievements in the field of literature, with several of her books being translated into more than 40 languages.
A 16 year old living in relative privilege in Trinidad, has one crazy night out at carnival and months later is clandestinely bundled into various transportations, made to wait at different locations, never told where she is going, crossing the water to a hideaway in neighbouring Venezuela, where she will stay a while, give birth to her baby and return alone.
It was my father who made the arrangements. My uncle helped, since he lived down south, where all this kind of business is carried out. I’m talking south-south : down past the airport, past the swamp, past the oilfields, everything. Way down at the bottom of the island, down where Columbus landed, long ago.
Years later, 58 years old, living alone in London, unable to pick up her career in medicine, two grown sons, divorced, her family still in Trinidad, she begins to search for her lost daughter, with very little knowledge, except that memory of the trip in the dark. The rest must be imagined.
I’ve spent many hours trawling through images online, trying to find this place again.But Venezuela is a big country…Even now, over forty years later, I still don’t know exactly where I was.
The novel explores a certain way of living in Trinidad, a daughter made to feel shame, an event unspoken of for more than a decade, a self-exile imposed. A child never forgotten, forever part of her, out of reach.
Over the years, I’ve come across a few photos in magazines and newspapers that I’ve cut out and kept, because they look the way I imagine her to look. I have them in different ages.
Though she maintains contact with her family, there is more than just physical distance between them. There’s a loss of intimacy, of trust, a love that overnight became conditional, an imposed silence that is easier to bear from afar.
I do love my mother dearly, despite everything, but this particular issue is fraught for us. If she and I were to start talking, and I were to finally tell her the honest truth about everything I’ve felt over these past forty years? Well, I couldn’t do something like that – not now, at her stage of life.
There’s A Community Out There
Not until she begins her search and becomes familiar with the experiences of others like her, of children like the one she abandoned, does she begin to be able to understand what it is she has been feeling, a life long loss, momentarily offered the promise of being filled, as each potential contact (a woman her daughter’s age searching for their mother) raises that hope. She confides in a work colleague, a safe stranger.
‘I wasn’t going to tell you,’ I said. ‘But I guess, why not. Another person has been in touch. A girl. I mean, a woman. From the websites. As a possible, you know. Match.
He was watching me closely, and I tried to take on the right manner. Steady and controlled, hopeful but in a measured way. With a hint of detachment, as if I were talking about something at a much greater remove, of academic interest. I said she was in Italy, a town in the north, and that she was a professional person, a biochemist with a pharmaceutical company.
This was a compelling read that would create interesting discussions, with its deeply flawed characters, many terribly inhumane behaviours and the life long wounding adults commit, who care more for status and reputation than the damage heaped on women and children for being in the too common situation of being pregnant, or birthed, unwanted. It’s a conversation and narrative that has for too long been dominated by one side, so it is good to see it being explored through fiction.
This kind of story comes in so many varieties and though this one is unique, again it is driven by the shame and blame of young women, without consideration for those whose consent is never given, those future adults severed from the natural maternal bond and their lineage, conditioned into false belonging.
On the return journey, in the jeep and then in the dented, rattling airplane, I felt as if something had changed, although I couldn’t, at that stage, have fully articulated what it was. Pieces were beginning to settle in new patterns. Maybe my story wasn’t: Dawn, who made a mistake and brought shame to her family. Maybe its: Dawn, mortal woman, who took a wrong turn in life and got lost.
One of the most hopeful parts of this novel for me, was the knowledge that this character and this author, read the forums and the stories of the many humans born into this paradigm who write of their shared, common experience of how that separation affects a child, their life, their future relationships, which helps dispel the myth, that it’s a good or right thing to do, to sever any baby from its mother.
Last year, I read the book Relinquished by Gretchen Sisson, a non fiction work that was the result of ten years of interviews, research and analysis of young women who had given up their babies, looking back at the impact of those decisions.
If you have any interest in the subject of family preservation, and creating conditions where families are supported not separated, read this. If you want to know the truth behind the experience of relinquishing a child (a lifelong trauma), not to mention the impact that has on the child (loving family or not), become more well informed by reading this excellent work.
Recent Research: Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood by Gretchen Sisson (2024)
Claire Adam, Author
Novelist Claire Adam was born and raised in Trinidad. She was educated in the United States, where she studied Physics at Brown University, and now lives in London with her husband and two children.
Her first novel, Golden Child, published in 2019, won the Desmond Elliott Prize, the McKitterick Prize, the Authors Club Best First Novel Award and was named one of the BBC’s ‘100 Novels that Changed the World’. Adam’s second novel, Love Forms, was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025.
I wanted to explore the bond between mothers and their children. On one hand, it’s the most ordinary, mundane, taken-for-granted thing in the world… on the other hand, it’s deeply mysterious. In the case of a mother and child who’ve been separated since birth, for example, often there is a pull towards each other that lasts a whole lifetime. These are people who don’t know each other, who’ve basically never ‘met’ – and yet they yearn to be together. Why is that? Claire Adam
Brandy Sour is a novella length book by the Cypriot author Constantia Soteriou, translated from Greek by Lina Protopapa. It won the 2023 National Book Prize in Cyprus and the author won the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story prize.
Foundry Editions, A Love of Mediterranean Literature
It was the first book published in the Foundry Editions collection of Mediterranean fiction back in 2024. This independent press was created out of a desire to discover and share new voices from the Mediterranean and the people and lands around it.
I heard about them after reading an excellent article in the Guardian entitled ‘Huge scars’: novelist finds a fractured Spain in its half-built houses about the book Far by Rosa Ribas (my review) translated by Charlotte Coombe. I sent a copy of it to a good friend in New Zealand and read it myself and loved it. I started seeing reviews for other Foundry Editions works and now I’m following their list closely.
A Turbulent History Told Through Hotel Beverages
Brandy Sour is set in the emblematic Ledra Palace Hotel, established in 1949 on Nicosia’s UN-controlled buffer zone, the Green Line that, since 1964, has divided the island into Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot sectors.
It has been witness to some of the country’s significant historical events and can be considered an integral part of Cyprus’ cultural heritage and difficult past.
“The Palace was the epicentre of the island’s recent history. It was built as the promise of a new era; a haven for all nationalities, all communities. It drew people from all backgrounds: the wealthy bourgeoisie who lounged by its cerulean pool; the poorer working classes who made its beds – and its Brandy Sours…
But in 1974, it became the site of the worst battle of the war; a symbol of all that could not be allowed to fall. After the division, it was the endpoint of student demonstrations, the gathering place for those who mourned their missing.
And when the barriers finally opened, the Palace once more became a symbol of hope. Of promises that were given, but never kept. Of wounds that ran very, very deep.” Constantia Soteriou, Cyprus Mail
The book is made up of twenty two vignettes or short character studies that form an interlinked slice of life of the hotel and the many characters who have had connections to it.
From Brandy Sour to Rosebud Tea to Grape Molasses
Each character is represented by a beverage starting with the Brandy Sour : The King. Much is revealed in the opening line.
They say a barman invented the cocktail for King Farouk of Egypt in the 40’s – a dark time for the king, who is already grown and in trouble, no longer the handsome, athletic boy charming Europe with his Western manners but a heavy middle aged man facing all kinds of political headaches in Egypt – and elsewhere too – who has to conceal his fondness for alcohol.
The King asks for something that doesn’t look like a drink, with that good brandy and the lemons he likes, and the barman obliges creating a cocktail worthy of a king that wishes to deceive people, with lemonade to sweeten him and the lemons to remind him of his sorrows in a tall glass that resembles an iced tea.
We learn of the tastes of local ladies and English ladies, of the maid, the cleaner, a guerilla fighter and with every consumer of a beverage, an important anecdote relating to their predilection.
City people think that roses are only good for looking at. Village people know that flowers are also good for eating. Especially roses – those tiny pink roses, the hundred-petal roses called damask roses, the ones that climb and spread their thorns across fences and hedges.
The Doorman likes his infusion of rosebud tea in his tin mag and when he starts work at the Big Hotel he takes his tin mug and the root of a damask rose and secretly plants it in the hedge. They must be picked in August with the morning dew, or risk a bitter infusion; it helps digest the indigestible.
He always wakes at dawn and he goes to the kitchen to have his coffee prepared the way he likes it. The only coffee of the day. With lots of kaymak and no sugar. Turkish coffee – Greek coffee, he always corrects himself – with sugar is an absolute waste of coffee. It needs to be bitter. There’s no point otherwise.
After the morning ritual of the maître’d, we learn of his role as the first shots are fired and he brings the foreigners down to the basement for protection. He returns home and anxiously watches the fighting on his TV, he meets his former colleagues in a coffee shop, the maid, the cleaning lady and the doorman.
He’s taken to drinking coffee in the afternoon now, too – no sugar the way it befits funerals and grief and tragedy and death. That kind of coffee. He takes his coffee with thick kaymak and no sugar. Coffee needs to be bitter – there’s no point otherwise.
The Builder and the Grape Molasses
One of the more moving stories near the end is that of the sensitive builder who gets mouth sores when he is stressed. He can’t eat or drink, there is no medicine that can help him.
The only thing that seems to make a difference is the grape molasses an old lady whose house he fixes gives him. Grape juice molasses that you boil for hours and hours, that you boil and boil until the liquid turns thick like honey – you dab it on your lips and on your gums and it’s the only thing that can cure mouth ulcers, those little holes in your mouth.
We learn the reason for his sensitivity, for only a few have the skills he does, who know old architecture like he does, how to repair the ancient materials in the foundations, to feel and understand old houses.
Ritual, Repetition and Reassurance
In each story there is often repetition, of that which is important to the character, like the ritual of the beverage, something that is repeated, that is part of a way of life. In the same way language repeats and reassures, building connection between the ritual and the meaning and importance it brings to the community, something to be cherished. The reader too is reminded of that meaning for that character and is moved by it.
I read the book without referring to the history, but on finishing it, I wanted to know more and went looking for the wider context, as we sense the changes occurring through each character and their habits, how the hotel itself somehow embodies the collective memory of a history. Over time, it is occupied by different kinds of guests, welcome and unwelcome, civilian and military and the local people who try to accommodate them and stay safe and adjust to the new paradigm of a post-colonial, independent country and then the destabilising effect of the coup in 1974 that created a separation and dividing line between Turkish and Greek Cypriots.
It’s a beautiful, evocative tribute to a culture, a heritage and the people that have populated and passed through it, that gives pause for thought, of the essence of ritual, of the importance of even the most simple traditions and need for humans to satiate a thirst, a soulful desire.
The Song of Youth‘el cant de la joventut’ is a slim collection of short stories written by Montserrat Roig translated by Tiago Miller, published in English in 2022 by fum de stampa press (originally published in Catalan in 1989).
It was shortlisted for the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize, (now rebranded the Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize) that rewards ‘bold and innovative’ literary fiction by small presses publishing 12 or fewer titles a year that are independent of any other commercial financial entity.
The winner of that prize in 2025 was There’s a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem (Ile de Reunion), translated from French by Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert and in 2024 Of Cattle and Men (reviewed here) by Brazilian writer Ana Paula Maia, translated by Zoë Perry, published by Charco Press.
Finding and Reading Catalan literature in Catalonia
When I visited the Backstory Bookshop in Barcelona, I was interested in and looking for Catalan literature that embraced something of its history in some way.
Monserrat Roig (1946-1991) was a novelist, short story writer, investigative journalist and feminist activist widely regarded as forming a central part of the Catalan canon, inspiring many other Catalonian writers to seek the intimate, personal testimonies of ordinary people, within a wider version of history guided by a strong sociopolitical engagement.
One of Roig’s many literary strengths was creating and placing subversive characters in deeply philosophical and provocative narratives, and bringing out their flawed, tender and very real aspects. It is helpful to consider this when reading her bold collection of short stories.
I’m going to mention two out of the collection that really stayed with me, The Song of Youth and Mar. Love and Ashes packs a punch, but is so short, it need not be described here.
The Song of Youth
I found it helpful to be reminded of this context, written on the back of the book.
In The Song of Youth, Montserrat Roig boldly presents eight remarkable stories that use language as a weapon against political and social “dismemory.” Her powerful and striking prose allows the important stories of those silenced by the brutal Franco regime to, at last, come to the fore. The Song of Youth is undoubtedly feminist and deeply critical but, as always, Roig’s lyrical writing gives shape, depth, and significance to the human experience.
This is how author Eva Baltasar described the collection:
The Song of Youth represents an array of lagoons in which Montserrat Roig’s most extraordinary flowers lay their roots.”
After the first reading of each story, I felt like I was sitting at the edge of one of those lagoons, firstly appreciating the flowers, though not always seeing those roots in the deep, dark depths. And so I went back and reread them. I wrote on and around the pages, and looked up the poetic literary references and was in awe.
The opening story, The Song of Youth, reread a few times, revealed its many layers with each reading. It is magnificent. I think it is a story that needs to read quietly to concentrate, like contemplating a work of art, it won’t reveal itself at a first glimpse. However, it is perfect as it is. A celebration of dying moments and the power of memory, of a life lived courageously.
I turn my face from the ominous day, Before it comes, everlasting night, So lifeless, it’s long since passed away.
But shimmering faith renews my fight, And I turn, with joy, towards the light, Along galleries of deepest memory. JOSEP CARNER, Absence
A woman lying prone in hospital with her eyes closed, near the end of her life, observes the white coat of the Doctor and has flashbacks to her youth, a stranger in a white shirt walked into the bar where she sat with her parents, with a decisive air. A transgression.
The men who came from the war didn’t have that air.
She opens her eyes, she is still alive. Everything as it was when she closed them. She knows the sounds. The sounds that keep them alive and the sounds that warn of encroaching death.
“They all died at daybreak. Just like the night.”
She is defiant. She is determined to remember a word. She succeeds.
It’s not easy to describe, this too is a story that needs to be experienced, to read the clues and the disjointed moments of the present and past that create the whole.
Death, Memory and Friendship
To Montserrat Blanes
Life has taught me to think but thinking has not taught me to live. HERZEN
The story MAR is the hardest hitting and most powerful – about a woman befriended, a relationship, admiration, of two people who are unalike but drawn towards each other, who go their own ways; until an accident changes everything.
…it never once occurred to me to give a name to that period of silence, madness and noise, to those moments when the hours would melt into timelessness and our intellectual friends, while watching us, would frown or raise an eyebrow. “They’ve got some nerve,” said their suspicious eyes while they stared, unaware of their own fear.
The time they are together changes the one telling the story, she is an intellectual, always analysing everything, living in a world of opinions and judgments. While in this friendship, something shifts, changes her. The presence of this unconventional friend disturbed others, messing up the carefully compiled archives on their minds. From vastly different worlds, they each gain something powerful from being in each other’s lives. Something that unsettles others.
We hardly said a word, we certainly didn’t reinvent anything, but it was only with her that I lost my fear, the fear of revealing who I believe myself to be, that little girl I keep hidden in the deep, damp depths of my inner self.
A friendship of silences, commotion and madness
A tribute to friendship, this story originally published in 1989, was celebrated in December 2021 when a documentary was produced about Montserrat Roig and Montserrat Blanes friendship of silences, commotion and madness.
The audiovisual is made up of two narratives, the one in the short story and that told through the live voice and presence of Montserrat Blanes speaking from experience, memory and remembrance.
If you understand Catalan, you can watch and listen to the recording of “Roig i Blanes. Una amistat de silencis, enrenou i bogeria” on Youtube here.
Overall a powerful and thought provoking collection that makes me keen to read her longer fiction.
Further Reading
Biography: Amb uns altres ulls (With Other Eyes) by Betsabé Garcia (2016)
“And when cancer attacked her, the hour of relentless truth that is illness brought out the self-portrait that the public persona had been hiding: a lucid, serene, combative writer and an excellent reader, who was cognisant of the fact that Franco’s dictatorship had pulled literary training up at its roots and who was, therefore, all too aware of her limits to that point and the power that, despite her illness, journalistic prose could give her.” Mercè Ibarz
Author, Montserrat Roig
Montserrat Roig (Barcelona, 1946-1991) was an award-winning writer and journalist, and the recipient of numerous prestigious prizes including the Premi Víctor Català and the Premi Sant Jordi.
Her journalistic work focused on forging a creative feminist tradition, and on recovering the country’s political history.
Her novels take similar stances, reflecting on the need to liberate women who were silenced by history.
Every novel I’ve read in translation this month has been exceptional. I do love August for seeing what others are reading in this category to ensure I have a future supply of excellent reads originating from elsewhere, coming from other languages.
Here’s what I hope to read this month and I’d love to hear your favourites, what you’ve read and loved or are looking forward to during WIT Month or any time!
Translation Opens World Views
I find it such an immense privilege to have the opportunity to read a novel that was originally conceived and written in another language, that can naturally dive into perspectives from other cultures that might be completely different or universally connected.
I loved norms being challenged and insights shared, new words, cultural references, all those opportunities to expand one’s awareness.
So I gathered what I had on my shelf to read for August to share here and I am very grateful to Daniela at Europa Editions UK who sent me three excellent new publications published by Europa in 2025, which arrived just as the month started, two of which I have devoured already.
Read Around the World
The books I have chosen are by women from Mexico (translated from Spanish), Rome and Abruzzo in Italy, Barcelona (Catalan), France (French), Iran (living as a political refugee in Australia, translated from Farsi), Russia living in Berlin (translated from German) and Debrecen, Hungary.
Mexico
I started the month with Guadalupe Nettel’s (Mexico) excellent autobiographical novel The Body Where I Was Born (reviewed here) translated by J.T. Lichtenstein, a book that reads like a memoir of childhood and adolescence, but from the perspective of looking at how those various experiences she had, might have moulded her character.
The real surprise was when she and her brother join her mother to come and live here in Aix en Provence while she’s working towards a PhD. Very insightful and for me, utterly riveting. You can also read Still Born (reviewed here) shortlisted in 2023 for the International Booker, hers is a voice and style I adore.
Italy
I’ve definitely been in a phase of reading Italian women writers from the 30’s and 40’s, so of course there is more Natalia Ginzburg and Alba de Céspedes in my pile for this month.
I’ve already finished There’s No Turning Back (reviewed here) translated by Ann Goldstein, a novel of eight women entering adulthood and potential independence in the face of a society that wants women to stay traditional, and I’m looking forward to Ginzburg’s novel All Our Yesterdays about a pregnant 16 year old who marries an older family friend to save her reputation.
I recently read an excellent article about Italy’s feminist history and literature by Margarita Diaz, who after reading Elena Ferrante’s essay collection In the Margins, sought out a women’s bookstore collective, the Libreria delle Donne di Milano, whose work had been a source of inspiration for her Neapolitan novels. The bookstore occupies a unique place in the history of the Italian women’s movement, having established “an alternative genealogy of culture,” a perspective quite different to that of English speaking cultural feminism. I would love to visit this bookshop.
The Libreria delle Donne di Milano (The Milan Women’s Bookstore), on Via Pietro Calvi in the Zona Risorgimento, houses more than 7,500 carefully curated works, mostly in Italian, by 3,700 female writers from all around the world. Works by icons of Italian literature like Sibilla Aleramo, Grazia DeLedda, and Elena Ferrante sit next to translated copies of works by anglophone writers like Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen. It is a refreshing, unapologetic, women-only space, where female voices are celebrated and encouraged.
My third Italian read, more contemporary, with a flashback to events of the 90’s is the Strega Prize 2024 winning novel The Brittle Age by Donatella Di Pietrantonio (reviewed here), also translated by Ann Goldstein.
Her novels are excellent. A Girl Returned was exceptional, and I was riveted reading this latest. Historical true crime inspired and a psychological exploration of the effect of traumatic events on the individual and community and the small actions that help heal – just brilliant.
Doesn’t that mountain look like our local Mount Saint Victoire, with the cross at the summit?
France
It being a busy and hot working summer, I was also looking for lighter reads that would be captivating and so I chose Virginie Grimaldi’s second novel All That Remains (my review here) translated by Hildegarde Serle, a story of three people whose paths cross when each is at a significant turning point. Jeanne (74) is widowed and is overwhelmed, Iris (33) has made a near-escape and is in hiding, and Théo (18) working in a boulangerie (bakery) is starting out having left a boy’s home.
I was particularly interested in this after having seen French a news item about inter generational living arrangements, where young people move in with the elderly, enabling them to stay in their own homes. This was a page turner, totally feel good, brilliant and uplifting, a perfect all year round read!
Catalan, Spain
In February, visiting Barcelona, I found my way to the BackStory Bookshop where I discovered works in Catalan translated into English. The Song of Youth (reviewed here) by Montserrat Roig (1946-1991) translated by Tiago Miller is a collection of eight stories, which I have already started and I am pencil scribbling all over, they are so, so good.
Looking back at that lower bookshelf in the bookstore, from where I obtained this volume, I wish I had bought Time of the Cherries as well, one I’ve seen reviewed by Jacqui and more recently, Goodbye, Ramona. The latter, wasn’t in the store, but I have recently found and ordered a copy. Those Fum de Stampa Press editions are gorgeous but not easy to find!
Iran
Delighted to see a new bold chunkster translated from Farsi by Shokoofeh Azar, The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen (reviewed here). This one, spanning fifty years in the history of modern Iran, is described as a lush, layered story embracing politics and family, revolution and reconstruction, loss and love amid the colourful stories of twelve children, each told against the backdrop of cultural and political change.
The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine was the second novel written by Alina Bronsky, a German novelist born in the Ural mountain area of Russia, a dark, funny novel that stars Rosalinda, the irrepressible tyrant babushka who’ll stop at nothing to keep her family from emigrating without her as the Soviet Union falls apart. She’s brutal and cunning but also induces sympathy and amusement. This has been on my shelf too long and reading this NYT interview has pushed me to want to read it.
“Sometimes I do readings and people can’t stop laughing, but I’m reading about pretty tragic things,” Bronsky says. “I think Soviet humor is a desperate humor, rather typical of very different nations, of Jewish people, Ukrainians, and of course Russians. It’s despair — just keep laughing, until you are dead.”
Hungary
Lastly another that’s been waiting a while to be picked up is Magda Szabo’sIza’s Ballad translated by George Szirtes, about a woman whose daughter insists she leaves her countryside home after her husband’s death to move to the city of Budapest. Uprooted from her community she must make a place and a life for herself anew.
I read her novel The Door some years ago and enjoyed it, so I’m looking forward to visiting Budapest and the countryside she left for it.
Recommendations
That’s my pile of potential reads for August, let us know in the comments below if you have read any of these or what you are looking forward to.
Word by Word 