Women in Translation

My top three novels

Photo by Carlo Villarica on Unsplash

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I only realised it was Women in Translation month in August when we were already halfway through the month.  

This piece from

Martha

on Martha’s Monthly gave me a nudge and, whilst it was too late to start reading WIT for the whole of August, some of her brilliant recommendations did push me to recall my own favourite translated novels. This inspired a slight change from what I was going to write about this week.  

Martha’s Substack is a new find for me, and on it she celebrates all things translation all the time- not just for August!  And what is even better, she even devised her own ‘Martha’s Map’ to keep a running list of the countries she has read translated books from.  

I was interested to note in her piece that less than 31% of translations into English are written by women, and that, because of financial constraints, there are significantly more books translated from some languages than others.  I definitely recommend checking out both Martha’s newsletter and in particular her recommended reads for this month!

But her piece got me thinking about the translated texts by women that I have read, always knowing that I could be seeking out more.  Here are my top three translated novels, which also happened to be some of my favourite books of all time.

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This Should be Written in the Present Tense by Helle Helle (Translator: Martin Aitken)

This 2011 novel is written by the bestselling Danish author Helle Helle and I really loved its spare language and short sentence structure.  The narrator of the novel reveals her life and relationships through the ways in which she speaks and acts with others, and no words are wasted.  

‘It was the third time I’d left home. My mum and dad gave us a pewter mug as a moving-in present, but they never got the chance to see the place.’

The narrator is a young woman named Dorte, who is twenty years old and adrift.  She pretends to study literature at Copenhagen University but in reality rides the trains that run beside her house and has random encounters with strangers in her new home beside the railway tracks.  

The story is revealed in a tight and sparse prose, and Dorte is a somewhat evasive character.  The book has been described by critics- and indeed by the character of Dorte herself- as a ‘quiet’ story; she tells us that in order to tell her story to the reader, she has had to discard lots of material.  She has hidden the bigness away, and even current events happening in real-time are reported as passed events.  ‘I hated the narrative present,’ she tells us.  This has the effect of providing distance, making them less immediate to both Dorte and the reader.  She makes it clear that she needs this distance in order to make sense of how her life has turned out.

This Should be Written in the Present Tense by Helle Helle

Moving to a tiny railway town named Glumso, Dorte enjoys living so close to the train station because she is near movement and people, but does not need to get involved with them.  She experiences casual relationships and visits her aunt’s sandwich shop.  With her aunt also bearing her name, the novel can become confusing at times, and from the get-go you get the feeling that Dorte is a somewhat unreliable narrator of her story.  

I enjoyed the quietness of this book; Dorte is a fascinating character and the ways in which Helle reveals her through her unusual lifestyle is intelligently written and illuminating.  

The Vegetarian by Han Kang (Translator: Deborah Smith)

This is a book that sat with me for a long while after reading, and I found it difficult to say exactly why I loved it so much.

Written and set in South Korea, and published in 2007, the book is written as a three-part novel based on Kang’s original 1997 short story ‘The Fruit of my Woman’.  

Set in modern-day Seoul, the book tells the story of Yeong-hye, a part-time graphic artist who decides to stop eating meat after a bloody nightmare about human cruelty.  Whilst this may sound reasonable enough, her choice comes to have devastating consequences for her personal and family life.

The first part of the book, ‘The Vegetarian’, is narrated in first person by Yeong-hye’s husband, Mr Cheong.  

I particularly became engrossed in the first part of the book, which sees Mr Cheong considering his wife to be ‘completely unremarkable in any way.’  He explains that he wasn’t even attracted to her when he first met her.  He appears to wish to live a conventional and unremarkable life and sees his wife as fitting nicely into this.  After several years of marriage, however, he wakes up to find his wife disposing of meat products in their home.  Demanding an explanation for her actions, she vaguely explains about her dream.  

‘The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure.’

When the situation becomes more dire, with his wife growing thinner and hardly eating at all, Mr Cheong calls in the help of her family.  After refusing to eat, her father convinces Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law and brother to hold her whilst he force feeds her, leading to her taking matters into her own hands.  

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

The second section explores Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law who is a video artist.  Attracted to Yeong-hye, who has now been served divorce papers by her husband, he convinces her to model for him.  When his wife finds out and calls the emergency services, believing both of them to be mentally unstable, he considers throwing himself from the balcony. 

Finally, in ‘Flaming Trees’, the story is again picked up by Yeong-hye’s sister, who is now the only family member to support her following her mental and physical decline.  Having now also separated from her husband, she attempts to take care of both her son and her sister, who, now refusing to eat at all, is behaving more and more plant-like.

The book is a fascinating look at humanity and innocence; about the choices we make and the ways in which society attempts to force us to conform.  Yeong-hye’s decision to stop eating meat- and later anything at all- felt like a subversive and rebellious act of autonomy.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (Translator: Ginny Tapley Takemori)

I loved this little book!  I raced through it after it was pressed on me by a friend who knew I would enjoy it.  

The 2016 novel, written by Japanese writer Murata, is set in a convenience store similar to one in which Murata worked part-time whilst writing the book, drawing inspiration from her surroundings.  It was the first of the writer’s novels to be translated into English.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

The story features Keiko Furukura, a thirty-six-year-old woman who has been working part-time at a convenience store (konbini) for the last 18 years.  She has always felt ‘different’ since childhood and that expressing her own views and actions is inexplicable and distressing to other people, leading to problems.

Working at the convenience store allows for a highly regulated world where each action is prescribed by the corporate manual, allowing her to maintain an identity acceptable to those around her and a sense of purpose.  She attempts to model her behaviour, dress style, and speech patterns on her coworkers, maintaining some friendships and a relationship with her sister.  She does, however, find it increasingly difficult to explain why she still works at the store and is still single after so long.

She then meets Shiraha, a man who cannot hold a steady job and lives on the fringes of society.  He does not conform to societal expectations.  Whilst they are not attracted to one another, Shiraha eventually moves in with Keiko, and they decide to pretend to be a couple, thus avoiding issues forced on them by family and society with them not having romantic relationships, children, and stable jobs.

Keiko eventually quits her job, but immediately feels that she has lost her purpose, staying home and doing nothing, whilst applying for steady jobs. However, walking to a job interview with Shiraha, she comes across a convenience store that is not well regulated, and begins to assist the staff and move around the merchandise.  She begins to realise that this is her purpose in life, and that even though she knows that living a more ‘normal’ and acceptable life with Shiraha might be easier, she comes to recognise what she needs to do.

‘The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of.’

I really loved this book!  The way in which Murata relays Keiko’s story allows for an affectionate acceptance of the character’s personality and how sometimes, people have to find their own identity in order to be free.  It feels like a story of acceptance; of Keiko’s acceptance for herself, and of the reader’s acceptance that not everyone can or should conform to the expected order of things within society.

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So those are my top three recommended translated texts.  In all three, I can see that there is a pattern: the themes of standing apart from the crowd; of not fitting in; and of rebelling against societal expectations.

It isn’t surprising to me now that I look back that, as a researcher of women’s stories, that these appealed to me so much.

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