Translation Archives - Page 13 of 46

Electrifying Reads from the Other Side of the World: Seven Korean Thrillers in Translation [in The Booklist Reader]

30 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Lists, Repost, Translation

Despite my Korean heritage, I don’t read the language well enough to enjoy Korea’s latest, greatest titles. Thankfully, notable Korean-to-English translators, especially Sora Kim-Russell, Deborah Smith, and Chi-Young Kim, enable all Anglophone audiences to discover – and for many of us, become ardent fans of...

Newcomer [Detective Kaga series] by Keigo Higashino, translated by Giles Murray [in Booklist]

03 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Japanese, Translation

P.J. Ochlan returns to voice the internationally bestselling Japanese author’s latest to arrive Stateside. Previously the voice of Detective Galileo in another series by Keigo Higashino, Ochlan assumes the second of the Detective Kyoichiro Kaga series following Malice in 2014. With Higashino’s signature vast casts, Ochlan’s...

Five More to Go: Margaret Atwood and Reneé Nault’s The Handmaid’s Tale [in The Booklist Reader]

16 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Lists, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Reneé Nault In the decades since its 1985 publication, Margaret Atwood’s dystopic classic has spawned audio, film, radio, theater, opera, ballet incarnations, and, most recently, the wildly popular television series (which veers significantly from the original, ahem). Given the evergreen...

Five More to Go: Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise [in The Booklist Reader]

10 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British Asian, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Korean, Korean American, Lists, Pakistani, Repost, South Asian, Translation

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi “That whole thing about fiction not being the truth is a lie,” one character admonishes another in Susan Choi’s fifth (and finest) novel. Returning to the multilayered teacher-student power struggles that were seared into My Education (2013), Trust Exercise immediately puts...

Star by Yukio Mishima, translated by Sam Bett [in Booklist]

09 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Revered writer of dozens of novels, plays, short stories, and essays, Yukio Mishima was an iconic master of the performative existence. A literary sensation by 24 for Confessions of a Mask (1949), a semi-autobiographical bildungsroman about a young homosexual’s hidden identity, fame would be Mishima’s...

Letter to Survivors by Gébé, translated by Edward Gauvin [in Booklist]

02 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Once upon a time, they were “that happy family”: two parents, two children, one dog, living in “the house of [their] dreams.” And then they added a coastal apartment and a mountain escape – traversed via luxury car, then adventure mobile – and then...

The House of the Pain of Others: Chronicle of a Small Genocide by Julián Herbert, translated by Christina MacSweeney [in Booklist]

26 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese, Latin American, Latina/o/x, Memoir, Mexican, Mexican American, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

The “largest mass slaughter of Asians on the American continent” claimed the lives of over 300 Chinese immigrants in May 1911 in Torreón, in the Mexican state of Coahuila. Despite its magnitude, the massacre remains a “buried episode,” obscured by substantial erroneous coverage, that writer,...

Flowers of Mold by Ha Seong-nan, translated by Janet Hong [in Booklist]

25 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Joining a growing cohort of notable Korean imports, Ha Seong-nan’s dazzling, vaguely intertwined collection of 10 stories is poised for Western acclaim. In “Flowers of Doom,” a loner painstakingly studies his neighbors by sifting through their trash – “Garbage never lies” – eventually deciphering...

The Lonesome Bodybuilder, by Yukiko Motoya, translated by Asa Yoneda [in Booklist]

21 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

Yukiko Motoya – who’s won major literary awards in her native Japan – makes her English-language debut (Anglophone-enabled by Asa Yoneda) with a label-defying, eyebrow-raising, beguilingly entertaining collection. Six narrators – Natalie Naudus, Brian Nishii, Erin Bennett, Paul Michael Garcia, Tanya Eby, and Kate Mulligan...

Five More to Go: Readymade Bodhisattva, edited by Sunyoung Park and Sang Joon Park [in The Booklist Reader]

20 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Australian, Chinese American, Fiction, Filipina/o American, Japanese American, Korean, Repost, Short Stories, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Readymade Bodhisattva: The Kaya Anthology of South Korean Science Fiction, edited by Sunyoung Park and Sang Joon Park Tenacious indie nonprofit Kaya Press launches its Magpie Series (which showcases Korean titles in translation that encapsulate “a reflexive picture of Korea and the breakneck speed of its...

Readymade Bodhisattva: The Kaya Anthology of South Korean Science Fiction, edited by Sunyoung Park and Sang Joon Park [in Booklist]

19 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Korean American, Repost, Short Stories, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Science fiction in Korea is relatively new, initially imported from the West via early-20th-century translations. By the late-1950s, the rapid modernization of postwar South Korea proffered considerable fodder for sf-writer wannabes. Over the following decades, Korea’s ongoing political, socioeconomic, and technological reinventions created fertile...

Princess Bari by Sok-yong Hwang, translated by Sora Kim-Russell [in Booklist]

18 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Because she was the seventh daughter, Princess Bari – whose name means “abandoned” – was discarded as a baby only to return in triumph to save the world. Like her mythic Korean namesake, Bari is the unwanted seventh girl in a house desperate for sons....

Five More to Go: Lisa See’s The Island of Sea Women [in The Booklist Reader]

06 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Indian American, Japanese, Korean, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian American, Translation

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See Known for her Chinese and Chinese American sagas, mega-bestselling author Lisa See (The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, 2017) travels across the Yellow Sea to the tiny southern Korean island of Jeju to create a stupendous multi-generational family saga...

Piero by Edmond Baudoin, translated by Matt Madden [in Booklist]

01 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Twenty years since its original French publication, Edmond Baudoin’s autobiographical homage to his older brother, Piero, and their shared childhood makes its English-language debut, admiringly translated by cartoonist Matt Madden. Growing up between Nice, where their father worked, and Villars-sur-Var (“our Mom’s village, our village”),...

When Spring Comes to the DMZ by Uk-Bae Lee, translated by Chungyon Won and Aileen Won [in Shelf Awareness]

30 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

When the Korean peninsula was divided into North and South in 1953, the consequences were especially tragic for separated families. In the six-plus decades since the ceasefire, reunion – politically and personally – has proven virtually impossible. On either side of the Military Demarcation Line,...

Zenobia by Morten Dürr, illustrated by Lars Horneman [in Booklist]

22 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Vast open water. An overcrowded boat. A horrific storm. A girl plunges backwards into the violent waves. Wishing, dreaming of rescue, Amina conjures happier moments playing hide-and-seek. “I am right here, Mama,” she thinks. She remembers making dolmas, salty like seawater – and tears. She...

The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa, translated by Philip Gabriel [in Booklist]

21 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Japanese, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW For those of us in need of a few hours of joyful catharsis, listen up. Despite a narrative driven by impending separation, the gratifying delight is well worth the tears. Narrator George Blagden effortlessly embodies this charming man-and-beast love story, so guilelessly gentle as...

Librarians Unite! 12 Tales of Librarian Badassery [in The Booklist Reader]

18 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Arab, British, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese, Korean, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

In just over a week, Seattle’s population will temporarily expand with tens of thousands of librarians (and other literary obsessives). Talk about a convergence of brains, guts, dedication, faith – and unconditional love of knowledge! Because that’s what it takes to be a librarian in...

I Am God by Giacomo Sartori, translated by Frederika Randall [in Booklist]

15 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Italian, Repost, Translation

“I myself am astonished at what’s happening to me,” God – yes, that God – confesses. “I’m the same ...

The White Book by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith [in Library Journal]

03 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

White, not black, is the color of mourning in Han Kang’s home country of South Korea, as well as other parts of Asia. This latest from Han, whose The Vegetarian was the 2016 Man Booker International Prize winner, is a meditative exploration of the limitless...

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