Fiction Genres Recent Picks

March 2008 - Translated novels

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The bad girl by Mario Vargas Llosa ; translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman. (2007)
"Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad girl. He loves her as a teenager known as 'Lily' in Lima in 1950, where she claims to be from Chile but vanishes the moment her claim is exposed as fiction. He loves her next in Paris as 'Comrade Arlette', an activist en route to Cuba, an icy, remote lover who denies knowing anything about the Lily of years gone by. Whoever the bad girl turns up as and however poorly she treats him, Ricardo is doomed to worship her. Gifted liar and irresistible, maddening muse, does Ricardo ever know who she really is?" (Amazon)

The burnt-out town of miracles by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw. (2007)
"Set in Finland in 1939, this is the story of one man who remains in his home town when everyone else has fled, burning down their houses in their wake, before the invading Russians arrive. Timo remains behind because he can't imagine life anywhere else, doing anything else besides felling the trees near his home. This is a novel about belonging, a tale of powerful and forbidden friendships forged during a war, of unexpected bravery and astonishing survival instincts. The (non-fiction) background story is the legendary military victory, the battle of Suomusalmi, where a few thousand Finns vanquished tens of thousands of Russians by donning white clothing and fighting on skis in -40C temps, a true story of survival and heroism in extreme circumstances." (Amazon)

The girl with the dragon tattoo Stieg Larsson ; translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland. (2008)
"Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared off the secluded island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger family. There was no corpse, no witnesses, and no evidence. But her uncle, Henrik, is convinced that she was murdered by someone in her own family, the deeply dysfunctional Vanger clan. Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomqvist is hired to investigate; he links Harriet's disappearance to a string of gruesome murders from forty years ago. He hires an assistant, computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. She is a tattooed, truculent, angry girl who rides a motorbike like a Hell's Angel and handles makeshift weapons with the skill born of remorseless rage. This unlikely pair forms a fragile bond as they delve into the sinister past of this island-bound, tightly-knit family. But the Vangers are a secretive lot, and Mikael and Lisbeth are about to find out just how far they're prepared to go to protect themselves and each other." (Amazon)

Homecoming by Bernhard Schlink ; translated from the German by Michael Henry Heim. (2008)
"As a child reared by his mother in post-war Germany, Peter Debauer becomes fascinated by a story he discovers in the proof pages of a novel edited by his grandparents. It is the tale of a German prisoner of war who escapes from a Russian camp and braves countless dangers to return home to a wife who believes him to be dead. But the novel is incomplete, and he becomes obsessed by the question of what happened when the soldier and his wife met again. Years later, the adult Peter remembers the novel and embarks on a search for the missing pages that soon becomes a search for his own father, a German soldier whom he always believed was killed in the war. Peter's quest leads him into a love story of his own, and as he begins to unravel the mystery of his father's disappearance, he is forced to question his own identity." (Amazon)

Binu and the Great Wall by Su Tong ; translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt. (2007)
"In Peach village, crying is forbidden. But as a child, Binu never learnt to hide her tears. Shunned by the villagers, she faced a bleak future, until she met Qiliang, an orphan who offered her his hand in marriage. Then one day Qiliang disappears. Binu learns that he has been transported hundreds of miles and forced to labour on a project of terrifying ambition and scale, the building of the Great Wall. Binu is determined to find and save her husband." (Amazon)

20 fragments of a ravenous youth by Xiaolu Guo. (2008)
""So I was the 6787th person in Beijing wanting to act in the film and TV industry. There were 6786 young and beautiful, or ugly and old people before me trying to get a role. I felt the competition, but compared with 1.6 billion people in China, 6786 was only the population of my village. I felt an urge to conquer this new village." Life as a film extra in Beijing might seem hard, but Fenfang won't be defeated. She has travelled 1800 miles to seek her fortune in the city, and has no desire to return to the never-ending sweet potato fields back home. Determined to live a modern life, Fenfang works as a cleaner in the Young Pioneer's movie theatre, falls in love with unsuitable men and keeps her kitchen cupboard stocked with UFO instant noodles." (Amazon)

Woman on the other shore by Mitsuyo Kakuta ; translated by Wayne P. Lammers. (2007)
"Sayoko, a 34-year-old housewife with a child, begins working for Aoi, a free-spirited, single career woman her own age. Increasingly hesitant about her relationships with others, Sayoko becomes drawn to Aoi's independent lifestyle, and the two hit it off right away. As their lives unfold and intertwine, transporting us to the bittersweet years when Aoi was in high school and ran away from home, we are introduced to a range of issues facing women today, including friendship, marriage, child-rearing, work, bullying at school and being alone." (Amazon)

The hundred-yen singer by Naomi Suenaga ; translated by Tom Gill. (2006)
"Rinka Kazuki is condemned to scraping together an income performing traditional Japanese ballads (enka) in bathhouses and other sleazy venues, scrabbling for hundred-yen tips to make ends meet. Her professional life is built on illusion but the crushing realities of every day life; unscrupulous agents, jealous rivals, an unsupportive married lover and lascivious would be patrons, often threaten to sink her." (Amazon)

A perfect waiter by Alain Claude Sulzer ; translated from the German by John Brownjohn. (2008)
"In the late 1930s, Erneste falls in love with Jakob. However, for Jakob, their affair was just a fling and he flees Switzerland for a new life in America. Three decades later, Erneste receives a letter from Jakob in America, leading to dramatic news which threatens all the loving memories he held of the affair." (Book cover)

Hell by Yasutaka Tsutsui ; translated by Evan Emswiler. (2007)
"Gamaliel Friedman is only a child when his family flees Czechoslovakia in 1939 for the relative safety of Hungary. For him, it will be the beginning of a life of rootlessness, disguise, and longing. Five years later, in desperation, Gamaliel's parents entrust him to a young Christian cabaret singer named Ilonka. With his Jewish identity hidden, he survives the war, but in 1956, to escape the stranglehold of communism, he leaves Budapest after painfully parting with Ilonka. He settles in Vienna, then Paris, and finally, after a failed marriage, in New York, where he works as a ghost-writer, living through the lives of others. When Gamaliel is asked to help draw out an elderly, disfigured Hungarian woman who is barely able to communicate but who may be his beloved Ilonka, he begins to understand that a real life in the present is possible only if he will reconcile with his past." (Amazon)

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