13 books this month. Not surprising that a certain proportion of them were women in translation, given that it is #WITMonth, but I also felt tempted to read more women in general, which is reflected in the ratio of women to men: 8 women, 5 men this month. I was also keen to read more foreign authors in general: 11 are either in another language or in translation. My favourite genre remains crime fiction, obviously, with no less than 7 books in this area, but I have also read short stories, diaries and essays this month.
Women in Translation – done a good job of reviewing nearly everything
Lucy Fricke: Daughters – in German
Teresa Solana: The First Prehistoric Serial Killer and other stories
Beatriz Bracher: I Didn’t Talk
Anne Holt: Dead Joker
Lilja Sigurdardottir: Trap
Marina Tsvetaeva: Earthly Signs – Moscow Diaries 1917-22
Veronique Olmi: La Nuit en vérité – in French, review to come possibly at the weekend
Crime Fiction
Tana French: The Trespassers – one of my favourites of the Dublin Squad series because of the prickly, larger than life voice of Antoinette Conway, the main protagonist
Michael Stanley: Dead of Night – standalone about the rhino horn trade in South Africa
Pierre Lemaitre: Inhuman Resources – the most extreme assessment centre you can imagine and the despair of the unemployed, review to come soon on CFL
Antti Tuomainen: Palm Beach Finland – comic noir, review to come soon on CFL
Other Random Reads
Mircea Eliade: The Old Man and the Bureaucrats – an elderly teacher ends up on the wrong side of a totalitarian state when he tries to find an old pupil of his
Norman Manea: The Fifth Impossibility – essays about censorship, the difficulties of translation, living in exile, as well as many Romanian and other authors.
