Litfest International Fiction Online Book Club

If you are interested in fiction from all around the world, here is the list of more than 45 books translated from 20 languages which the book club has read and discussed since it was founded in April 2020.

We read contemporary fiction in translation, aiming to choose books published no more than ten years ago and translated in the last five. In 2023 we decided to read a modern classic every other month, starting in May. An asterisk in the list below indicates a modern classic, defined as a book first published in its original language from 1900 onwards.

We are sometimes joined in our discussions by…

Leading authors
Andrey Kurkov, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Alice Zeniter, Geetanjali Shree and Georgi Gospodinov

Translators:
Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Olga Tokarczuk), Margaret Jull Costa (Javier Marías), Carlos Rojas (Yan Lianke), Frank Wynne (Alice Zeniter) and Jeremy Tiang (Zhang Yueran)

And by editors and critics:
Michael Reynolds (Europa Editions) and Gerald Martin (biographer of Gabriel García Marquez).

The Litfest International Fiction Book Club is convened by Bill Swainson of Litfest and Sam O’Donoghue of Lancaster University, and has been supported by the Fondation Jan Michalski.

2025

Han Kang The Vegetarian (tr. from the Korean by Deborah Smith, Granta)

Orhan Pamuk My Name Is Red (tr. from the Turkish by Erdağ M. Göknar, Faber)

Olga Tokarczuk The Empusium (tr. from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd Jones, Fitzcarraldo Editions)

2024
Yan Ge Strange Beasts of China (tr. from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang, Tilted Axis Press)
Tayeb Salih Season of Migration to the North* (tr. from Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies, Penguin Modern Classics)
Jon Fosse A Shining (tr. from Norwegian by Damion Searls, Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Narine Abgaryan Three Apples Fell from the Sky (tr. Linda C. Hayden, Oneworld)
Marcel Proust ‘A Love of Swann’s’ from vol. 1 of In Search of Lost Time* (tr. from French by Lydia Davis, Penguin Modern Classics)
Balsam Karam The Singularity (tr. from Swedish by Saskia Vogel, Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Mikhail Bulgakov The Heart of a Dog* (tr. from Russian by Michael Glenny, Vintage)
Anne Berest The Postcard (tr. from French by Tina Kover, Europa Editions)
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa The Leopard* (tr. from the Italian by Archibald Colquhoun, Vintage)
Guadalupe Nettel Still Born (tr. from the Spanish by Rosalind Harvey, Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Marguerite Duras The Lover* (tr. from the French by Barbara Bray, Harper Perennial)
Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being* (tr. from the Czech by Michael Henry Heim, Faber)

2023
Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir Miss Iceland (tr. from Icelandic by Brian FitzGibbon, Pushkin Press)
Zhang Yueran Cocoon (tr. from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang, Tilted Axis Press)
Roy Jacobsen The Unseen (tr. from Norwegian by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw, MacLehose Press),
Tove Jansson The True Deceiver* (tr. from Swedish by Thomas Teal, Sort of Books)
Chuden Kabimo Song of the Soil (tr. from Nepali by Ajit Baral, Balestier Press)

Jorge Luís Borges Fictions* (tr. From Spanish by Andrew Hurley, Penguin Modern Classics)
Paola Oloixarac Dark Constellations (tr. From Spanish by Roy Kesey, Soho House)
Clarice Lispector Hour of the Star* (tr. From Portuguese by Benjamin Mosers)
Georgi Gospodinov Time Shelter (translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel, W&N)
Juan Rulfo Pedro Páramo* (tr. from Spanish by Dougklas J. Weatherford, Serpent’s Tail)
Patrick Chamoiseau Texaco* (tr. from French and Creole by Rose-Myriam Rejouis and Val Vinokurov, Granta)

2022
Itsumi Suzuki Terminal Boredom (tr. from Japanese by Polly Barton et al., Verso)
Georgi Gospodinov The Physics of Sorrow translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel, W&N)
Mariana Enríquez The Dangers of Smoking in Bed (tr. from Spanish by Megan McDowell, Granta)
Paulo Scott Phenotypes (tr. from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn, And Other Stories)
Sayaka Murata Convenience Store Woman (tr. from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori, Granta)
Andrzej Tichy Wretchedness (tr. from Swedish by Nichola Smalley, And Other Stories)
Norman Erikson Pasaribu Happy Stories, Mostly (tr. from Indonesian by Tiffany Tsao)
Enrico Starnone Trust (tr. from Italian by Jhumpa Lahiri, Europa Editions)
Alice Zeniter The Art of Losing (tr. from French by Frank Wynne, Picador)
Geetanjali Shree Tomb of Sand (tr. from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, Tilted Axis Press)
Bora Chung Cursed Bunny (tr. from Korean by Anton Hur, Honford Star)
Annie Ernaux The Years (tr. from French by Alison L. Strayer, Fitzcarraldo Editions)

2021
Yan Lianke The Four Books (tr. from Chinese by Carlos Rojas, Vintage)
Daniel Kehlman Tyll (tr. from, German by Ross Benjamin, riverrun)
Andrey Kurkov Grey Bees (tr. from Russian by Boris Dralyuk, MacLehose Press)
Fiston Mwanza Mujila Tram 83 (tr. from French by Roland Glasser, Jazaranda Books)
Maria Stepanova In Memory of Memory (tr. from Russian by Sasha Dugdale, Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Yu Miri Tokyo Ueno Station (tr. from Japanese by Morgan Giles, Tilted Axis Press)
Fernanda Melchor Hurricane Season (tr. from Spanish by Sophie Hughes, Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o Wizard of the Crow (tr. from. Kikuyu by the author, Harvill-Secker/ Vintage)
Juan Gabriel Vásquez Songs for the Flames (tr. from Spanish by Anne McLean)
David Diop At Night All Blood Is Black (tr. from French by Anna Moschovakis, Puskhkin Press)
Elisa Dusapin Winter in Sokcho (tr. from French by Aneesa Abba Higgins, Daunt Books)

2020
Lars Mytting The Sixteen Trees on the Somme (tr. from Norwegian by Paul Russell-Garrett, MacLehose Press)
Olga Tokarczuk Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead (tr. from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Toshikazu Kawaguchi Before the Coffee Gets Cold (tr. from. Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot, Picador)
Shokoofeh Azar Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree (tr. from Iranian by Anon., Europa Editions)
Gabriela Cabezón Cámara The Adventures of China Iron (tr. from Spanish by Iona Macintyre and Fiona Mackintosh, Charco Editions)
Yoko Ogawa The Memory Police (tr. from Japanese by Stephen Snyder, Harvill-Secker/ Vintage)
Javier Marías Berta Isla (tr. from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa, Penguin)
Robert Seethaler A Whole Life (tr. from German by Charlotte Collins, Picador)
Delphine de Vigan Based on a True Story (tr. from French by George Miller, Bloomsbury)