Reading list

Women in Translation: A Reading List

Incredible works from women all over the world!

Verso Books15 August 2024

Women in Translation: A Reading List

Happy Women in Translation Month! We seek to highlight and promote women writers from across all walks of life, all languages, and all experiences.

We are celebrating WIT Month by showcasing our incredible women writers in translation including Japanese countercultural icon Izumi Suzuki, one of Norway’s most highly regarded novelists, Vigdis Hjorth, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú

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Set My Heart on Fire

Set My Heart on Fire

by Izumi Suzuki

Translated by Helen O'Horan

Hope I’m in for a good time, I thought. Even if it’s just for tonight.Set in the underground bar and club scene of 1970s Tokyo, Set My Heart On Fire tells the story of Izumi in her turbulent twenti...
If Only

If Only

by Vigdis Hjorth

Translated by Charlotte Barslund

A relatively young woman, aged thirty. She married in her early twenties, had two children. It is winter. January and minus 14°C, white, frosty mist around the parked car, around the spruces, the m...
I, Rigoberta Menchú

I, Rigoberta Menchú

by Rigoberta Menchú

Introduction by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray

Edited by Elisabeth Burgos-Debray

Translated by Ann Wright

Now a global bestseller, the remarkable life of Rigoberta Menchú, a Guatemalan peasant woman, reflects on the experiences common to many Indian communities in Latin America. Menchú suffered gross i...
Is Mother Dead

Is Mother Dead

by Vigdis Hjorth

Translated by Charlotte Barslund

**Longlisted for The International Booker Prize 2023**'To mother is to murder, or close enough', thinks Johanna, as she looks at the spelling of the two words in Norwegian. She's recently widowed a...
Will and Testament

Will and Testament

by Vigdis Hjorth

Translated by Charlotte Barslund

Longlisted for The Millions Best Translated Book Awards for FictionLonglisted for the National Book Award for Translated LiteratureFour siblings. Two summer houses. One terrible secret. When a disp...
Long Live the Post Horn!

Long Live the Post Horn!

by Vigdis Hjorth

Translated by Charlotte Barslund

Ellinor, a 35-year-old media consultant, has not been feeling herself; she’s not been feeling much at all lately. Far beyond jaded, she picks through an old diary and fails to recognise the woman i...
Hit Parade of Tears

Hit Parade of Tears

by Izumi Suzuki

Translated by Sam Bett, David Boyd, Daniel Joseph and Helen O'Horan

A new collection of stories from the cult author of Terminal Boredom.Izumi Suzuki had ideas about doing things differently, ideas that paid little attention to the laws of physics, or the laws of t...
Terminal Boredom

Terminal Boredom

by Izumi Suzuki

Translated by Polly Barton, Sam Bett, David Boyd, Daniel Joseph, Aiko Masubuchi and Helen O'Horan

On a planet where men are contained in ghettoised isolation, women enjoy the fruits of a queer matriarchal utopia -- until a boy escapes and a young woman's perception of the world is violently int...
Paradise Rot

Paradise Rot

by Jenny Hval

Translated by Marjam Idriss

"As intriguing and impressive a novelist as she is a musician, Hval is a master of quiet horror and wonder."Chris Kraus, author of I Love DickJo is in a strange new country for university and havi...
Girls Against God

Girls Against God

by Jenny Hval

Translated by Marjam Idriss

Welcome to 1990s Norway. White picket fences run in neat rows and Christian conservatism runs deep. But as the Artist considers her past, her practice and her hatred, things start stirring themselv...
Feminism or Death

Feminism or Death

by Francoise d'Eaubonne

Translated by Ruth Hottell and Emma Ramadan

Originally published in French in 1974, radical feminist Francoise d’Eaubonne surveyed women’s status around the globe and argued that the stakes of feminist struggle was not about equality but abo...
Feminist Antifascism

Feminist Antifascism

by Ewa Majewska

In this exciting, innovative work, Polish feminist philosopher Ewa Majewska maps the creation of feminist counterpublics around the world—spaces of protest and ideas, community and common struggle,...
China in One Village

China in One Village

by Liang Hong

After a decade away from her ancestral family village, during which she became a writer and literary scholar in Beijing, Liang Hong started visiting her rural hometown in landlocked Hebei province....
Rape

Rape

by Mithu Sanyal

From Title IX cases on campus, to #metoo and #timesup, rape is a definitive issue at the heart of feminism, and lately, it’s barely out of the news. Cultural critic Mithu Sanyal is picking up where...
We Built the Wall

We Built the Wall

by Eileen Truax

Translated by Diane Stockwell

For decades, the American political asylum process has been used to punish enemies and reward friends of the US government. Refugees from Cuba can walk through an open door. People fleeing Eastern ...
The Comrade from Milan

The Comrade from Milan

by Rossana Rossanda

Translated by Romy Giuliani Clark

In this much-lauded memoir, acclaimed for its blend of literary elegance and political passion, Rossana Rossanda, a legendary figure on the Italian left, reflects on a life of radical commitment.Ac...
Self-Defense

Self-Defense

by Elsa Dorlin

Translated by Kieran Aarons

Is violent self-defense ethical? In the history of colonialism, racism, sexism, capitalism, there has long been a dividing line between bodies "worthy of defending" and those who have been disar...
The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg Volume V

The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg Volume V

by Rosa Luxemburg

Edited by Paul Le Blanc and Helen C. Scott

Translated by Jacob Blumenfeld, Mathias Foit, Nicholas Gray, Henry Holland, Zachary King and Manuela Kölke

This volume is the first to contain all of Rosa Luxemburg’s eloquent writings on the 1917 Russian and 1918–19 German revolutions. Also contained here are articles, essays, and manuscripts on the Eu...
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Civil Imagination

Civil Imagination

by Ariella Aïsha Azoulay

Translated by Louise Bethlehem

The photograph is not just an image but an event, one in the longer sequence of a photographic moment. Challenging given definitions of photography and of the political, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay calls...
Work

Work

by Andrea Komlosy

Translated by Loren Balhorn and Jacob Watson

Andrea Komlosy argues in this important intervention that, when we examine it closely, work changes its meanings according to different historical and regional contexts. Globalizing labour history ...
Rape

Rape

by Mithu Sanyal

From Title IX cases on campus, to #metoo and #timesup, rape is a definitive issue at the heart of feminism, and lately, it’s barely out of the news. Cultural critic Mithu Sanyal is picking up where...
We Built the Wall

We Built the Wall

by Eileen Truax

Translated by Diane Stockwell

For decades, the American political asylum process has been used to punish enemies and reward friends of the US government. Refugees from Cuba can walk through an open door. People fleeing Eastern ...
The Comrade from Milan

The Comrade from Milan

by Rossana Rossanda

Translated by Romy Giuliani Clark

In this much-lauded memoir, acclaimed for its blend of literary elegance and political passion, Rossana Rossanda, a legendary figure on the Italian left, reflects on a life of radical commitment.Ac...