Going back to my blog writing and reading habits, I just realized that August is #WomenInTranslation Month.

Click here for all titles longlisted for The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.

This is a very cool initiative that has been circulating in the literary blogosphere for a while. It started in 2014 with a blogger named Meytal Radzinski (read an interview with her here) and has been carried on by many other bloggers and organizations ever since.

The goal is to share translated books you have read—or plan to read—that are written by women. I confess that my list is pretty small, even for translated books in general. Of the 43 books I’ve read in English since July last year, just 6 are translations (about 13%). I also read 7 books in Portuguese. Of all the translated books I’ve read, 4 are written by women—and 3 of those books are Isabel Allende’s.

Here’s the list, with some blurbs:

Book’s I’ve read:

Convenience Store Woman

by Sayaka Murata (Japan), translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori

Keiko Furukura had always been considered a strange child, and her parents always worried how she would get on in the real world. So when she takes a job in a convenience store while at the university, they are delighted. For her part, she finds a predictable world in the convenience store, mandated by the store manual, which dictates how the workers should act and what they should say, and she copies her coworkers’ style of dress and speech patterns so that she can play the part of a normal person. (from Storygraph)

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Daughter of Fortune

by Isabel Allende (Chile), translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden

Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of Valparaíso, Chile, by the well-intentioned Victorian spinster Miss Rose and her more rigid brother Jeremy. Just as she meets and falls in love with the wildly inappropriate Joaquín Andieta, a lowly clerk who works for Jeremy, gold is discovered in the hills of northern California. By 1849, Chileans of every stripe have fallen prey to feverish dreams of wealth. Joaquín takes off for San Francisco to seek his fortune, and Eliza, pregnant with his child, decides to follow him. (from Storygraph)

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Portrait in Sepia

by Isabel Allende (Chile), translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden

Aurora del Valle suffers a brutal trauma that erases from her mind all recollection of the first five years of her life. Raised by her ambitious grandmother, the regal and commanding Paulina del Valle, she grows up in a privileged environment, free of the limitations that circumscribe the lives of women at that time, but tormented by horrible nightmares. When she is forced to recognize her betrayal at the hands of the man she loves, and to cope with the resulting solitude, she decides to explore the mystery of her past. (from Storygraph)

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The House of the Spirits

by Isabel Allende (Chile), translated from the Spanish by Magda Bogin

The House of the Spirits, the unforgettable first novel that established Isabel Allende as one of the world’s most gifted storytellers, brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only by his love for his delicate wife Clara, a woman with a mystical connection to the spirit world. (from Storygraph)

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For 2025, I still intend to read:

The Cost of Sugar

by Cynthia McLeod (Suriname), translated from the Dutch by Gerald Mettam

The Cost of Sugar is an intriguing history of those rabid times in Dutch Surinam between 1765-1779 when sugar was king.Told through the eyes of two Jewish step sisters, Eliza and Sarith, descendants of the settlers of ‘New Jerusalem of the River’ know today as Jodensvanne. The Cost of Sugar is a frank expose of the tragic toll on the lives of colonists and slaves alike. (from Storygraph)

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Like Water for Chocolate

by Laura Esquivel (Mexico), translated from the Spanish by Carol Christensen and Thomas Christensen

Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with its winning blend of poignant romance and bittersweet wit.

The number one bestseller in Mexico and America for almost two years, and subsequently a bestseller around the world, Like Water For Chocolate is a romantic, poignant tale, touched with moments of magic, graphic earthiness, bittersweet wit – and recipes. (from Storygraph)

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I’ll post more about this topic soon. There’s a whole literary prize for Women in Translation that’s worth mentioning, and maybe I’ll even start a new list of books!