At a demolition site in modern-day Osaka, workers unearth an old air raid shelter, sealed for decades. Inside, Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr, The Tragedy of the Funatomi by Yu Aoi, and other classic mystery novels are wrapped in a faded cloth, embroidered with “House…
A compilation of reviews in the past twelve months for Women in Translation month (August 2025), including non-fiction and poetry and well as novels, short stories and children’s books. These include translations from Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Sumerian, Bengali, Kannada, Hindi, German, Vietnamese, Thai and Kurmanji.
The opening panels of the manga Miss Ruki show the title character working from home processing medical insurance claims. In a voice so dry it verges on sardonic, an unseen narrator explains that Miss Ruki finishes projects weeks earlier than her boss thinks she does, so she spends most of her time reading books from…
A family has gathered in a mansion to discuss the inheritance of a wealthy grandfather’s estate. It is a familiar mystery setup, and one that risks cliché, but Yasuhiko Nishizawa takes it into exciting new territory in The Man Who Died Seven Times. Nearly the whole story occurs within a single repeating day, much like…
In Mistress Koharu, a Hungarian love doll comes to life, turning heads as she stalks the streets of Tokyo, while the man who bought her—Akira—strings along two other relationships in a spectacular feat of multitasking greed that benefits no one, least of all him. Written in Japanese by Noboru Tsujihara and translated by Kalau Almony,…
Anyone who has enjoyed learning a second language knows how productive the exchange between a first and second language can be. Yoko Tawada has published fiction and nonfiction in Japanese and German and demonstrates this principle more than most, having moved to Germany as an adult in 1982. She positions herself not as an immigrant…
Though the Tamil freedom fighter and writer, CS Chellapa, was initially influenced by the energy and zeal of Bhagat Singh’s anarchical resistance to the British Empire, he grew increasingly enamoured by the non-violent, subtle resistance of Mahatma Gandhi. It’s a seismic shift from Singh to Gandhi, one that many in India adopted pre-independence. Yet it…
Izumi lost her husband and her job. Now she spends her time doing craft projects like sewing handmade stuffed animals. She has come to realize that she spent 20 years acting the role of “successful woman”
It never rains but it pours. From having no English translations of Akutagawa Prize-winning Rie Qudan, three of her novels have (or soon will have) become available in a matter of months, the first two—“Schoolgirl” and “Bad Music”—in a combined volume from Australian publisher Gazebo and Sympathy Tower Tokyo from Penguin in Britain and Summit…
In Kyung-Ran Jo’s Blowfish, two people flirt with death in their own traumatic ways, only to find themselves slowly entangled in one another. Translated from the original Korean by Chi-Young Kim, the novel unfolds through alternating perspectives and flits between Seoul and Tokyo. Blowfish privileges atmosphere over plot, unfolding as a moody and cinematic meditation…
New Story of the Stone by Wu Jianren is one-part fan fiction, one-part historical fiction, and one-part science fiction. A full translation by Liz Evans Weber gives English-language readers access to the early 20th-century novel and a fascinating perspective on a moment in China’s history that speaks volumes about its present and possible futures.
Tae Kudo is a neurotic 46-year-old woman who has become something of a hypochondriac in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic. Some of her experiences will be deeply familiar to most readers—like her caution about masking or disinfecting her groceries. Others, like her hyperfixation on conscious capitalism, the environmental impact of her actions, or…
Zhang Guixing’s Elephant Herd is as complicated and teeming as the rain forest in which it is set. Within this rich natural environment is a family drama, a political drama, and what amounts to a coming-of-age novel in an incredibly violent, and seemingly amoral, world.
Mud, blood, farts and plenty of swearing: esteemed author Jia Pingwa minutely details the brutal reality of peasant life in this magnum opus set during the Cultural Revolution.
It’s customary to begin writing on North Korea by acknowledging how difficult it is to get reliable information from such a secretive and tightly-controlled regime in such a highly politicized context. Though an undoubtedly repressive regime, in an information vacuum misinformation can spread, such as the easily-disproved but persistent misconception that all North Korean citizens…