Welcome back to Book Break! Today we're doing another books in translation video, I know
you guys really enjoyed this last time around, so this time I'm going to try and recommend a book in
translation in every different genre. And a bunch of these you can get your hands on right now,
and a bunch of them you can add to your wishlist, get those pre-orders in and get excited. So let's
start with crime because I think this is a pretty popular area. I do hear a lot of English
speakers reading a lot of crime and thrillers translated from other languages. And maybe one
of the most successful translated crime series of all time is the Inspector Montalbano series
by Andrea Camilleri. There are almost 30 books in this series and you can read all of them as
standalones but it all started here, the first book, The Shape of Water. Not the same as the
movie, this is very different, this book is where we meet Inspector Montalbano for the first time.
He is a detective who is not quite willing to close the case of the mysterious death of Silvio
Luperello even though the case has been ruled a death by natural causes. Inspector Montalbano is
sure there is more to this than meets the eye. So along the way we get comedy, we get corruption,
mafia members, false clues and loads of delicious Sicilian food along the way as well.
So that was some Italian crime and then of course I had to talk about some Swedish crime. This is
basically a whole sub-genre in itself and one of the biggest best sellers in this area is Hakan
Nasser who has been described as the godfather of Swedish crime. so Hakan Nasser is the author of
the Inspector Barbarotti series, which again you can read as standalones but the series
is getting a new installment in October called The Lonely Ones. And this is about two couples
who die in the exact same spot but 35 years apart. And then a psychological thriller translated
from Dutch is The Melting by Lize Spit. So this is a story of revenge. It's about Eva,
who was one of just three children born in her small Flemish town in 1988, and she grew
up alongside these two boys - a friendship that turned dangerous as they got older. And now 13
years after this one summer that Eva has tried for a long time to forget, she is returning to
her village. She's got a block of ice in the boot of her car and she's ready to settle the score.
Creepy. And then moving from thrillers to just dark psychological stories, I've got my proof
here of Magma by Thora Hjorliefsdottir, which is coming in July. It's translated from Icelandic,
so the finished cover is going to look like this. So this book takes us into the darkest corners of
relationships. It's about a 20 year old who falls in love with an older man, and at first doesn't
notice his almost imperceptible acts of abuse that build into this really toxic cycle and lead to her
unraveling. And then there's Hellfire by Leesa Gazi which is translated from Bengali. This is
about two sisters called Lovely and Beauty who are now 37 and 40 and have never been allowed out of
the house on their own. They have been raised by this incredibly controlling mother who has kept
them imprisoned and this book all takes place on one day, the day of Lovely's 40th birthday,
when she has been allowed out for her first ever solo trip outside the house. If you're
in the market for some literary fiction you should read Catch the Rabbit by Lana Bastasic,
and this one is unique because the author herself actually translated it. She originally wrote it in
Serbian and then rewrote it herself into English. This one is about a road trip. So Sara and Ljeila
are childhood best friends who haven't spoken to each other in years, until one day Ljeila calls
up asking for Sara's help finding her missing brother, who has been missing presumed dead
since the end of the Bosnian war, but she is sure he is still alive. Last time we did a books in
translation video on Book Break, which I will link to below, I recommended the book Breasts and Eggs
by Mieko Kawakami, and now I'm going to recommend her next book coming this summer called Heaven.
This book is about two young classmates who both become the victims of relentless bullying,
and it's about their friendship - but what kind of friendship it can ever be when their shared bond
is this terror that they both face. So we've had some pretty sad ones, let's move on to something
a bit more feel good - The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa, the translation from Japanese
into English is coming out in september. OK so this one doesn't actually have the cheeriest
start but bear with me. Rintaro is a teenage boy who has been raised by his grandfather,
who owns a bookshop, and at the beginning of this book his grandfather dies, leaving Rintaro pretty
alone in the world. But then a tabby cat called Tiger shows up and sends Rintaro on three quests
to save books. And we, as you may know, absolutely love books about books here on Book Break. I will
link to a whole video we made before all about books that celebrate the joy of reading, and this
is very much one that would belong on that list, a really heartwarming book. Historical fiction fans
get excited for October when the book The Prince of the Skies by Antonio Iturbe is coming out,
translated from Spanish, this one is all about the life of Antoine de-Saint Exupery, the author
of the beloved classic The Little Prince. So fans of that book will definitely love this one. But as
well as being about the writing of The Little Prince, it's also this incredible historical
fiction story of its own about the life of Antoine de-Saint Exupery as a pilot in France when war hit
Europe. And then of course you can also read The Little Prince itself which is another classic
in translation from its original French. But if you can't wait till October I do have another
historical fiction recommendation that you can get your hands on right now, that is The
Most Precious of Cargoes by Jean-Claude Grumberg. This one is another one translated from French and
another one set during the war, it's a very fairy tale-esque book that is very very sad. This one is
about a poor woodcutter and his wife who live in the forest and every day they pray for a child.
Meanwhile we meet a Jewish man with two twin babies, his wife no longer has enough milk to feed
both, and so in the hopes of saving both of his children he wraps up his daughter in a shawl and
leaves her in the forest. So it is this fable set against the horrors of the Holocaust - get
ready to cry. And then for some non-fiction that you can read in translation, starting with this
chunky one, Revolt by Nadav Eyal is translated from Hebrew. This one has been really really
popular with young activists in Israel, it's all about understanding how we've got to this
point in history where revolts and protests are so commonplace, and this book is an attempt to
listen to them. So it's very very current but it also explores revolts from the past to show
how deep these roots lie. The Gospel of the Eels by Patrick Svensson translated from Swedish is a
natural science memoir. So it's partly about Patrick Svensson's fascination with eels,
which are actually this incredibly secretive fish that we know very very little about, but it's also
about Patrick's relationship with his father - a very difficult relationship with this man whose
only real passion in life was fishing for these elusive eels. OK now moving on to some sci-fi
fantasy books. Let's start with fantasy. You may have been watching The Witcher TV show on Netflix.
That is actually adapted from a whole series of books, The Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski
and translated from Polish. These books are set in a medieval world filled with magic and monsters
and witchers, who are these monster hunters who are bound to slay monsters. They have taken a
vow to remain impartial and they have undergone a series of mutations to help them fight these
monsters. Or for something a bit more speculative you could read Slipping by Mohammed Kheir which is
translated from Arabic. It's set in Egypt and it's about a struggling journalist called Seif. So the
book is about what happens when Seif is introduced to a mysterious source for a new story, this
former exile who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the country's most obscure magical spaces.
So together he and Seif go on this fantastical adventure, but it's also about Seif's inward
journey exploring his own past and looking at the way his traumas intersect with Egypt's traumas.
And then for some sci-fi you could read The Waste Tide by Chen Quifan translated from Chinese.
This is a dystopian book set in a futuristic 2020, the book was originally written in 2013 the author
could never have known how dystopian 2020 really would be. So the book is about the “silicon isle”,
this island-sized waste recycling plant where thousands of workers toil day and night creating
incredible wealth for their employers. So the book is about this battle between rich and poor,
it's about pollution and its dangers, and also rather presciently for a book set in 2020 it's
about this dark futuristic virus that is unleashed on the island. OK let's talk about romance. So you
could read All In by Simona Ahrnstedt, translated from Swedish. This is about an affair between two
key players in Sweden's financial elite. So it's about a venture capitalist and a CEO's daughter,
so it's a very fast-paced, very sexy affair with a dark edge. And then going back to a quirky
romance classic from the 90s, there's If Only It Were True by Marc Levy translated from French.
And you may recognize the storyline here as being the plot of the movie Just Like Heaven. This is
about a man who rents an apartment only to find it is occupied by the spirit of the woman who
lived there before, a young medical resident who is currently in a coma on the other side of town.
And of course these two fall in love and it is now up to our main character Arthur
to find a way to stop them from taking her off life support. Pretty dark sounding story but Just
Like Heaven was a great movie so I think I'm going to read this one. And then let's finish up with
some translated classics. So I've got here Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert translated from French.
This is about the beautiful bored Emma Bovary who is trapped in a dull marriage to a rather
mediocre doctor and longs for a life more exciting, something like what she reads about
in the pages of her books. So this leads her to romantic fantasising, then to compulsive spending,
and then finally to adultery which ends in disaster. And the character of Emma Bovary
is summed up so well by this one little extract on the back of the book here: “she wished at the same
time to die and to live in Paris”. And lastly a forgotten classic being published now for
the first time into English, Last Summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligarich. This one is set
in the late 60s and it's about Leo who leaves his family behind and moves to Rome and spends
his days in a hot alcoholic haze, until one day he meets this young woman Arianna. So it's about the
summer that Leo falls in love and the summer he loses everything. And this one is a cult classic
in Italy so it was initially turned down multiple times by basically every Italian publisher in
the late 60s, until it fell into the hands of the renowned Italian writer Natalia Ginzberg,
and she fell in love with it so she pushed for it to be published. And it had this incredible
first summer, it sold 17000 copies in the summer of 1973, and then just as quickly vanished again.
So it really grew this cult status, book lovers were seeking out copies at second-hand bookshops
and book stalls, and it built this incredible reputation. And now finally we can read it in
English! And it seems appropriate that this one is coming out this summer. So hopefully your wish
list will have grown quite a bit from this video, I would love to know which of these books you're
most excited by, so do leave us a comment below. And I'll also link here to the last video we made
on books in translation, if you're looking for even more recommendations. See you next time!