Literature in Translation

Serge by Yasmina Reza

Translated by JEFFREY ZUCKERMAN | At Birkenau there is nothing to do but walk. We approach the hills. Rays of sunlight still come down. On the ramp, a man plays at throwing a child up in the air. Every so often a security guard comes through on a Segway. Practically a supersonic roly-poly in a light-blue short-sleeve shirt who goes through a barbed-wire door and disappears behind a hut. We walk down the railroad tracks. The tracks built to receive Hungarian Jews.

A Parish Chronicle by Halldór Laxness

Literature in Translation

Translated by PHILIP ROUGHTON | The ups and downs of the country’s sheep were discussed as one might normally discuss the circumstances of better-placed people in society: unctuously and ceremoniously, but perhaps not always with deep feeling.

Return by Raharimanana

Literature in Translation

Translated by ALLISON M. CHARETTE | Hira is coming to settle the memory and pain. He is in the room where he was born. In Ambohipo. Antananarivo. In a few hours, he will set off on the journey to return to his father. Out in Mahajanga.

My Dreadful Body by Egana Djabbarova

Literature in Translation

Translated by LISA C. HAYDEN | Even a little girl from a world where everyone else has brown eyes wanted blue eyes. Blue ones like some of the sultans’ wives or Turkish actresses had, probably after receiving the blueness from mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers.

Unfit by Ariana Harwicz

Literature in Translation

Translated by JESSIE MENDEZ SAYER | Seaside towns are more antisocial, more hesitant to change, there’s less gossip. Nobody can say, not even the local authorities, or the neighbors with their houses they passed down for several generations, what goes on inside the fortresses facing the breakwater.

Background for Love by Helen Wolff (and Marion Detjen)

Literature in Translation

Translated by TRISTRAM WOLFF and JEFFERSON CHASE | He pulls me along at his pace, and whistling and skipping we arrive in Saint-Tropez, where the harbor is full of sails flapping like flags; we end up at a little restaurant with gaily checked curtains, tablecloths and plates.

GlobalEurope’s 2025 Literary Translation Picks

Literature in Translation

GlobalEurope looks back and picks its favorite literary translations published in 2025.

Tamangur by Leta Semadeni

Literature in Translation

Translated by TESS LEWIS | Horsetails swayed on the bank, stretching their heads toward the water and behind them, barberries glowed on the hedge through the dark tree trunks.

Eskatos and the Stretched Necks of Stillness by Mats Söderlund

Literature in Translation

Translated by OLIVIA OLSEN | listen to / open beaks / open wounds / their terror in the nets / in the steel wire snares…

The Maroons by Louis Timagène Houat

Literature in Translation

Translated by AQIIL M. GOPEE with JEFFREY DITEMAN | A milky glow, the gauze of dawn, had begun to appear, vaguely wafting over the edges of the Orient.

Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue by Yoko Tawada

Literature in Translation

Translated by LISA HOFMANN-KURODA | Perhaps the desire to learn another language as an adult is simply a nostalgic yearning for that time in infancy when we had completely unrestricted movement over our tongue and lips.