Fiction in translation: Four bestselling novels to explore the world

With settings from Siberia to Seoul, these bestselling novels offer English speakers a taste of the world.

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August 4, 2023

From 16th-century Mexico to the wilds of Siberia to modern-day Seoul, literature from around the world offers a window into diverse cultures and customs.

But only a small number of books published in the United States each year are translated from other languages.

Fortunately, certain publishers specialize in just such books and several have brought out three novels and a short-story collection, all originally published in Europe and Asia, affording English speakers an opportunity to embrace the larger world in their reading experience.

“Not Even the Dead” by Juan Gómez Bárcena

“Not Even the Dead” begins in the 16th century, in an unspecified part of New Spain, in southern Mexico. Juan de Toñanes, a destitute Spanish conquistador now eking out a living as an innkeeper, is hired by representatives of the Spanish crown to hunt down an Indigenous man, also named Juan. Educated by Christian friars as a boy, Juan the Indian, as he is known, has since renounced those teachings, has traveled north, and is stirring up trouble among the native people. Worse, he has translated the Bible from Latin to Spanish, an act of supreme heresy.

Juan the innkeeper is commissioned to find and return Juan the Indian, or his head, along with his “notorious” book. In his long and eventful journey “north always north” among the marginalized people of Mexican society – and with Juan the Indian always a step or two ahead of him – the former conquistador begins to feel an affinity for the target of his search, thinking of him as “a fellow adventurer” and of themselves as “two homeless men, advancing because they can no longer go back.”

Spanish novelist Juan Gómez Bárcena spins an epic, picaresque, hallucinatory tale that stretches in place and time from the interior of colonized Mexico to the U.S. border during the time of Donald Trump. Originally published in Spain in 2020 and translated into English by Katie Whittemore, “Not Even the Dead” is difficult to categorize. Part Western, part adventure story, with echoes of Cormac McCarthy and Joseph Conrad, it makes for a rich and unique reading experience.

“Evil Flowers” by Gunnhild Øyehaug

Norwegian poet, essayist, and fiction writer Gunnhild Øyehaug has an international reputation and gained a sizable following in the English-speaking world after the publication of her short-story collection “Knots” in 2017. Her latest book, “Evil Flowers,” published in Norway in 2020, is her fourth translated into English by Kari Dickson. It is composed of 25 short stories that display her inventive and playful wit, along with an affinity for the bizarre.

In “Birds,” the opening story, an ornithologist loses the part of her brain that contains all her knowledge of birds. She’s preparing to defend her Ph.D. thesis, so she scrambles frantically to relearn everything she can about them (“There were creatures that could actually fly!”). In the process, she recaptures the delight she once found in bird-watching.

In several stories, Øyehaug parts company with established literary conventions. “Thread,” about an older woman in a care home navigating a thicket of memories, is followed by three very short “protest” stories in which the narrator, reminiscent of a Monty Python sketch, takes issue with various aspects of the preceding story. “We herewith wish to submit a written complaint against the previous text,” she writes, then offering a critique and suggestions for improving the story.

Adventurous readers with a taste for the absurd will find this collection a delight.

“Greek Lessons” by Han Kang

Han Kang won the Man Booker International Prize for fiction in 2016 for “The Vegetarian,” a novel that garnered the South Korean writer many new English-language readers. She returns with “Greek Lessons,” written in 2011 and newly translated into English by Deborah Smith and Emily Yea Won.

Two unnamed characters – one female, one male – tell their stories in alternating chapters. Grieving the death of her mother and the loss of custody of her son to her ex-husband, the woman suddenly loses the ability to speak. A similar incident 20 years previous, when she was 16, was treated unsuccessfully with psychiatry and medicine, and was only remedied during a lesson in French. This time, the woman enrolls in a class in ancient Greek, hoping that immersing herself in a language completely unlike her native Korean will cause her to regain speech. The Greek class is taught by the male character, who has been slowly losing his sight for many years and will soon be blind. The woman begins writing poetry, which catches the attention of the teacher. The characters, both solitary souls disconnected from the world in different ways, somehow find a connection.

Kang is also a poet, which is readily apparent in many skillfully rendered passages in “Greek Lessons.” While the relationship between the two protagonists is moving, and the novel touches on some important themes regarding language and communication, the drama is pitched at a low level of intensity, and it lacks the appealing strangeness of “The Vegetarian.” The result is more smoke than fire.

“Eastbound” by Maylis de Kerangal

Two strangers traveling to Siberia meet in Maylis de Kerangal’s brisk and brilliant “Eastbound,” a novella first published in France in 2012 and now available in poet Jessica Moore’s English translation.

Skinny, innocent 20-year-old Aliocha and more than a hundred other rowdy young Russian conscripts are packed like “a mass of squid” into the third-class cars of the Trans-Siberian Railway, heading east.

Terrified of the horrific hazing by second-year conscripts that likely awaits him, then badly beaten up by two fellow draftees, Aliocha resolves to desert at one of the train’s stops, a busy station where he can blend in with the crowd and make his escape.

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Desertion proves to be more difficult than he thought as the exits are closely watched and he draws the attention of his malevolent sergeant. Then he meets Hélène, a 35-year-old French woman who is fleeing her Russian lover, whom she had met in Paris and later followed to Siberia for his work. Though she speaks no Russian, Hélène understands Aliocha’s plight and offers to hide him in her first-class compartment.

They communicate through gestures and facial expressions. In a cat-and-mouse game to avoid the sergeant, they swap clothes and hide in an overhead compartment – and then in a toilet – as he moves relentlessly through the train in search of the would-be deserter. The action takes place almost entirely in the liminal space of the train, while the immense Siberian landscape that passes by the windows – especially a spectacular sighting of Lake Baikal, the country’s “jewel” – plays an important role in this brief but exhilarating adventure.

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