Books in translation

Samanta Schweblin is an Argentinian born writer of short stories and fiction whose work is sometimes surreal. Her first work to be translated into English was Fever Dream in 2017.

“There’s a lot of ambiguity in her writing, and she trusts the reader a lot,” says her translator Megan McDowell “She leads you where she wants you to go, and then she leaves you there.”

Her books can be unsettling. She writes about technology and its effect on our lives in her stories. They are stories which require our attention. I am looking forward to her new book Seven Empty Houses which will be published in October 2022.

Mieko Kawakami lives in Tokyo, Japan. Before her success as a writer she was a poet and singer-songwriter. Mieko has enjoyed international success with her novel Breasts and Eggs (2020). She writes about women’s experience in contemporary Japan. Mieko Kawakami grew up poor in Osaka in a house without books.

Olga Tokarczuk is a Polish writer and activist who originally trained as a psychologist. She is well known in Poland as a public intellectual and has won many international awards for her writing. Her most recent book The Books of Jacob was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022. 

Jennifer Croft is the translator of Flights (2018). “Olga’s work is crystal clear: her characters live on the page and speak for themselves, and her tone and intentions are equally easy to grasp, transform, and transmit.”