Book awards season is in full swing, and readers couldn't be happier. The National Book Foundation is announcing its nominees for five awards — Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People's Literature — all week. And another longlist just hit the Internet. The 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature longlist highlights the best books in translation, and you won't want to miss any of them.
On Monday, the 2019 National Book Award for Young People's Literature longlist was released, bringing 10 must-read YA novels with it. Now, book lovers have 10 fantastic novels and memoirs in translation to add to their reading lists. The books listed were originally published in Danish, Norwegian, Arabic, French, Japanese, Finnish, Polish, Hungarian, Portuguese, and Spanish. You can read most of them today, with three entries — László Krasznahorkai's Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming, Eliane Brum's The Collector of Leftover Souls, and Nona Fernández's Space Invaders — out this fall from their respective publishers.
Check out the 10 books on the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature longlist below, and share your predicted winner with us on Twitter!
'When Death Takes Something From You Give It Back: Carl's Book' by Naja Marie Aidt, translated by Denise Newman
Greenlander Naja Marie Aidt's memoir of losing her 25-year-old son in a car crash is currently the No. 1 New Release in Scandinavian Biographies on Amazon.
'Will and Testament' by Vigdis Hjorth, translated by Charlotte Barslund
Twenty years after she cut herself off from her family, Bergljot returns home to help sort out her parents' will. For Bergljot and her other, disinherited sibling, the will is a reminder of a dark secret that has remained in the family for years.
'Death Is Hard Work' by Khaled Khalifa, translated by Leri Price
A novel set in the midst of the ongoing Syrian Civil War, Death Is Hard Work follows three siblings — Bolbol, Hussein, and Fatima — as they travel across the country to return their late father's body to his home village for burial.
'The Barefoot Woman' by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated by Jordan Stump
A moving story of the Rwandan genocide, Scholastique Mukasonga's memoir tells the story of her mother's fight to protect her children from violence against the Tutsi people.
'The Memory Police' by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder
In this novel of state surveillance, things — first small, then consequential — begin to disappear from an unnamed island. The people capable of returning them fear detection by the Memory Police, who keep the public from remembering their vanished items.
'Crossing' by Pajtim Statovci, translated by David Hackston
Following the death of longtime First Secretary Enver Hoxha, two Albanian youths leave their home country to start new lives in Italy. As the two explore their sexualities and identities, they come to realize that new opportunities may bring the same old challenges, as well.
'Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead' by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
This 2019 Man Booker Prize finalist centers on Janina, a reclusive scholar, who is forced to investigate a series of killings when bodies turn up near her home.
'Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming' by László Krasznahorkai, translated by Ottilie Mulzet (Sep. 24)
A formerly exiled Hungarian nobleman returns home, fleeing gambling debts accrued in Buenos Aires. He hopes to find peace at the end of his life, preferably with the woman he has loved since his youth. Things go quickly awry, in this dark, screwball novel.
'The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil's Everyday Insurrections' by Eliane Brum, translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty (Oct. 15)
Out on Oct. 15, Eliane Brum's collection of journalistic essays shines a spotlight on the lives of Brazil's most marginalized citizens, including the indigenous, poor, and homeless.
'Space Invaders' by Nona Fernández, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Nov. 5)
Centering on a group of Gen-Xers who were friends in childhood, Nona Fernández's Space Invaders tracks the story of Estrella González Jepsen, a mutual friend who disappeared in the latter years of Chile's military dictatorship.
