WITMonth 2020
To celebrate Women in Translation Month we’re offering 20% off a selection of recent and forthcoming titles by women in translation for all of August — use the code WIT2020 at the checkout.
Scroll down to explore a range of fiction, nonfiction, and forthcoming titles. From Nino Hartischvili’s 944-page epic, crictically accalimed saga The Eighth Life to Mikaela Bley’s Ellen Tam thrillers, from the bestselling and fascinating look at our most underrated organ, Gut by Giulia Enders, to Małgorzata Szejnert’s forthcoming landmark work of history, Ellis Island, there’s something for every reader.
Women in Translation Month started in in 2014 on the initiative of book blogger Meytal Radzinski. Follow along and share your own reading and reccomendations with the hashtags #womenintranslation and #WITMonth on Instagram and Twitter.
Fiction
The Eighth Life
AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR
‘That night Stasia took an oath, swearing to learn the recipe by heart and destroy the paper. And when she was lying in her bed again, recalling the taste with all her senses, she was sure that this secret recipe could heal wounds, avert catastrophes, and bring people happiness. But she was wrong.’
At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian Empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified: this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries…
Elly
LONGLISTED FOR THE CWA DAGGER AWARD FOR FICTION IN TRANSLATION
A missing child is a nightmare for any family. But what happens when they come back?
Eleven-year-old Elly is missing. After an extensive police search she is presumed dead, and her family must learn to live with a gaping hole in their lives. Then, four years later, she reappears. But soon her parents and sister are plagued by doubts. Is this stranger really the same little girl who went missing? And if not, who is she?
Elly is a gripping tale of grief, longing, and doubt, which takes every parent’s greatest fear and lets it play out to an…
A Vineyard in Andalusia
A sweeping historical epic by an author whose novels have sold over 6 million copies worldwide.
1861. A ruined silver-mine owner sets sail from Mexico City to seek his fortune in the New World.
Mauro Larrera has just four months to pay his creditors, or his bankruptcy will be revealed and his family’s honour will be in tatters. In magnificent Havana — home to beautiful women and dangerous men who deal in mysterious trades — he gambles what little he has left on what will become the greatest adventure of his life …
A Vineyard in Andalusia is a novel of glories and defeats; of silver mines, family…
The House in Smyrna
From one of Granta’s Best Young Brazilian Novelists comes a startling and powerful story about returning to one’s origins in order to move forward.
In Rio de Janeiro, a woman suffering from a mysterious illness, which is eroding her body and mind, decides to accept a challenge from her grandfather: to take the key to the house where he grew up — in the Turkish city of Smyrna — and open the door.
As she embarks on this pilgrimage, she begins to write of her progress. The writing soon becomes an exploration of her family’s legacy of displacement in Europe, told in several narrative strands.…
Nonfiction
The Way Through the Woods
One woman’s journey to overcome grief by delving into an overlooked wonder of nature.
‘As the world of mushrooms opened up to me I began to see that the path back to life was easier than I had thought. It was simply a matter of gathering delights that flash and sparkle. All I had to do was follow the mushroom trail, even though I still didn’t know where it would lead. What would I find in the great unknown that lay ahead of me? What lay beyond those hilltops and mists and turns in the road?’
When Long Litt Woon loses her husband of 32 years to an unexpected death, she is utterly bereft. An…
Parenthood the Swedish Way
Using the latest research and a wealth of personal experiences, this is the fact-based, no-nonsense approach to birth, child health, and shared child-rearing you have been waiting for.
Many expectant parents will be surprised and relieved to hear the following: breastfeeding doesn’t protect against allergies; sterilising bottles and dummies is unnecessary in most countries; and if you think you shouldn’t drink alcohol when breastfeeding, you’ve been taken in by plain moralism and not scientific evidence. And by the way, you can forget the housework and prescribed routines: as long as you attend to…
Gut
The key to living a happier, healthier life is inside us.
Our gut is almost as important to us as our brain or our heart, yet we know very little about how it works. In Gut, Giulia Enders shows that rather than the utilitarian and — let’s be honest — somewhat embarrassing body part we imagine it to be, it is one of the most complex, important, and even miraculous parts of our anatomy. And scientists are only just discovering quite how much it has to offer; new research shows that gut bacteria can play a role in everything from obesity and allergies to Alzheimer’s.
Beginning with the personal…
1947
As the clock strikes the end of the war, the time begins to turn towards a new age — the one we call now.
This shift does not happen overnight, from one day to the next; instead, the world vibrates for a number of years. People try to find their way back to homes that are no longer there, or on to an uncertain future across the sea. Some run from their deeds, and most get away. Among the millions in flight across Europe looking for a new home in 1947 is Elisabeth Åsbrink’s father.
In 1947, production begins of the Kalashnikov, Christian Dior creates the New Look, Simone de Beauvoir writes The Second…
Made in Sweden
What are the real Swedish Values? Who is the real Swedish Model?
In recent times, we have come to favour all things Scandi — their food, furnishings, fiction, fashion, and general way of life. We seem to regard the Swedes and their Scandinavian neighbours as altogether more sophisticated, admirable, and evolved than us. We have all aspired to be Swedish, to live in their perfectly designed society from the future. But what if we have invested all our faith in a fantasy? What if Sweden has in fact never been as moderate, egalitarian, dignified, or tolerant as it would like to (have us) think? The recent…
Conquering Fat Logic
Why do diets fail? Is it because of genetic disposition? A sluggish metabolism? An underactive thyroid?
A behavioural psychologist reveals the truth about dieting, including how she lost over 100lb in one year.
After years of failed diets Dr Nadja Hermann weighed over 23 stone at the age of 30. All her life, she had heard and read about hundreds of reasons why diets wouldn't work for her. But when her weight started to seriously affect her health, she took a hard look at the science and realised that most of what she believed about dieting was a myth. What was more, those very myths were preventing her…
The Re-Origin of Species
What does a mammoth smell like? Do dinosaurs bob their heads as they walk, like today’s birds? Do aurochs low like cows? You may soon find out.
From the Siberian permafrost to balmy California, scientists across the globe are working to resurrect all kinds of extinct animals, from ones that just left us to those that have been gone for many thousands of years. Their tools in this hunt are both fossils and cutting-edge genetic technologies. Some of these scientists are driven by sheer curiosity; others view the lost species as a powerful weapon in the fight to preserve rapidly changing ecosystems.
It…
Questions I Am Asked About the Holocaust
‘There are no stupid questions, nor any forbidden ones, but there are some questions that have no answer.’
Hédi Fried was nineteen when the Nazis snatched her family from their home in Eastern Europe and transported them to Auschwitz, where her parents were murdered and she and her sister were forced into hard labour until the end of the war.
Now ninety-eight, she has spent her life educating young people about the Holocaust and answering their questions about one of the darkest periods in human history. Questions like, ‘How was it to live in the camps?’, ‘Did you dream at night?’, ‘Why did…
Coming soon
Ellis Island
A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR
A landmark work of history that brings the voices of the past vividly to life, transforming our understanding of the immigrant’s experience in America.
Ellis Island. How many stories does this tiny patch of land hold? How many people had joyfully embarked on a new life here — or known the despair of being turned away? How many were held there against their will?
To tell its manifold stories, Ellis Island draws on unpublished testimonies, memoirs and correspondence from many internees and immigrants, including Russians, Italians, Jews, Japanese, Germans, and Poles, along with…
The Scandinavian Skincare Bible
The Swedish bestseller that will revolutionise the way you treat your skin.
Beautiful, healthy skin is a holy grail for teens with acne and adults with wrinkles alike, and multi-step beauty routines are all the rage. But we know surprisingly little about our largest organ.
Think drinking water will replenish your skin? Think again. More products, better skin? Nope. And an expensive product doesn’t guarantee reliable results. You don’t need to cleanse your skin in the morning; in fact, too much cleansing can be damaging. Toner is redundant, natural products are not always best, and bacteria are not the…
Ancient Bones
A leading palaeontologist discovers the missing link in human evolution.
Somewhere west of Munich, Madelaine Böhme and her colleagues dig for clues to the origins of humankind. What they discover is beyond anything they imagined: the fossilised bones of Danuvius guggenmosi ignite a global media frenzy. This ancient ancestor defies our knowledge of human history. His nearly twelve-million-year-old bones were not located in Africa — the so-called birthplace of humanity — but in Europe, and his features suggest we evolved much differently than scientists once believed.
In prose that reads like a gripping…
