Translated Fiction

When József Debreczeni arrived in Auschwitz in 1944, had he been selected to go 'left', his life expectancy would have been approximately forty-five minutes. One of the 'lucky' ones, he was sent to the 'right', which led to twelve horrifying months of incarceration and slave labour in a series o...

In the summer of 1979, a house in Ghent caught Stefan Hertmans' attention. Despite its dilapidated state, he was drawn to the house and bought it on an impulse. Only twenty years later did he come to understand the house's horrific history. Its previous owner, Willem Verhulst, had been a member o...

The fourth novel in the internationally bestselling Before the Coffee Gets Cold Series, following a new group of customers in a magical time-travelling Tokyo café. The regulars at Café Funiculi Funicula are well acquainted with the whimsical ability it grants them to take a trip into the past -...

The renowned botanist Michel Adanson lies on his deathbed, the masterwork to which he dedicated his life still incomplete. As he expires, the last word to escape his lips is a woman's name: Maram. The key to this mysterious woman's identity is Adanson's unpublished memoir of the years he spent in...

In a skyscraper apartment overlooking Shanghai's blue-tinged, pulsating nightlife and filled with rotting food, two women swallow little yellow pills that will make all things dangerous feel safe. They're both running from a turbulent past. In abandoned factories and dilapidated slaughterhouses, ...

Can't I Go Instead follows the lives of the daughter of a Korean nobleman and her maidservant in the early 20th century. When the daughter's suitor is arrested as a Korean Independence activist, and she is implicated during the investigation, she is quickly forced into marriage to one of her fath...

"Deep in Brazil's neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother's bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever. Heralded as a masterpiece, th...

Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building lies a shop filled with hundreds of second-hand books. Twenty-five-year-old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride...

A famous broadcaster writes a forgotten love letter; a friend abruptly disappears; a lover leaves something unexpected behind; a traumatised woman is consumed by her own anxiety. In the throes of a high fever, a woman lies bedridden. Suddenly, she is struck with an urge to revisit a particular no...

The bookseller Carl Christian Kollhoff delivers books to special customers in the evening hours after closing time, walking through the picturesque alleys of the city. These people are almost like friends to him, and he is their most important connection to the world. When Kollhoff unexpectedly l...

A decade ago, Tokyo Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga went to collect the ashes of his recently deceased mother. Years before, she ran away from her husband and son without explanation or any further contact, only to die alone in an apartment far away, leaving her estranged son with many unanswered...

"Nowatari Rui has long been the subject of her husband's novels, depicted as a pure woman who takes great pleasure in sex. With her privacy and identity continually stripped away, she has come to be seen by society first and foremost as the inspiration for her husband's art. When a decade's worth...

The glamorous Marie-Laure never expected her wealthy older husband to survive a devastating car accident that left him in a fragile mental and physical condition. But three years later, Ludovic Cresson returns home to the family estate and finds himself in the throes of a tumultuous marriage. Ove...

"Tokyo, 1938. An amateur quartet, led by the compassionate Yu, gathers to practice. Suddenly, their rehearsal is brutally interrupted by military police. In the ensuing skirmish, Yu's violin is smashed while his son, Rei, witnesses his father's arrest. He will never see him again. Salvaging his f...

Against the backdrop of changing seasons in Japan, we meet Spin, a kitten rescued from the recycling bin, whose playful nature and simple needs teach an anxious father how to parent his own human baby; a colony of wild cats on a popular holiday island show a young boy not to stand in nature's way...

The modest apartment in Via Gemito smells of paint and white spirit. The living room furniture is pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio, and drying canvases must be moved off the beds each night. Federi, the father, a railway clerk, is convinced of possessing great artistic tal...

In 1953, a teenage girl, Jeanne Sarè, jumps in front of a train at the Gare du Nord station. She leaves behind writings that to some are unreadable, but to others tell universal, unspoken truths about the lives and struggles of women. When published in the 1970s, her work triggers a rash of copy...

The first time that Mélanie met Clara, Mélanie was stunned by Clara's sense of authority, and Clara was struck by Mélanie's pink, glittery nails, which shimmered in the dark. "She looks like a child," thought the first. "She looks like a doll," pondered the second. These two women, both of the sa...

A Quebec bestseller based on the life of Michel Jean's great-grandmother that delivers an empathetic portrait of drastic change in an Innu community. Kukum recounts the story of Almanda Simeon, an orphan raised by her aunt and uncle, who falls in love with a young Innu man despite their cultural ...

Prinkipo Island, Turkey, 2017. In the glow of a late summer morning, family gather for the 100th birthday of the famous artist Sirin Saka. It ought to be a time of fond reminiscence, looking back on a long and fruitful artistic career, on memories spanning almost a century, and of an era when imp...