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Feriel 🍋 فريال

@translatedgems

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October Theme: Island Nation + Minority Language
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TGBC 2026 - Part 1 ~
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With the end of 2025 slowly approaching, it is time to announce the #translatedgemsbookclub picks for 2026. Just as in 2025, we will be reading two books per months that fit a chosen theme.
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In addition to the monthly picks, TGBC will be running a year-long read along for a classic book translated from Tamil available in six volumes, Ponniyin Selvan by Kalki which was inspired by @vishytheknight who recommended it. We will be discussing one volume every two months.
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If you are interested in joining the book club, check out the slides to learn about how you can.
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Without further ado the picks ^^
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JANUARY - SOMETHING ODD THIS WAY COMES

- The Competition of Unfinished Stories by Ozmen Şener, tr. Nicholas Glastonbury

- Pandora by Ana Paula Pacheco, tr. Julia Sanches
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FEBRUARY - ANTHOLOGIES

- Other Moons: Vietnamese Short Stories of the American War and Its Aftermath, translated and edited by Quan Manh Ha and Joseph Babcock

- Tsunami: Women’s Voices from Mexico, edited by Gabriela Jauregui and Heather Cleary, translated by Heather Cleary, Gabriela Jauregui, Juliana Neuhouser, Gabriela Ramirez-Chavez, and Julia Sanches

YEARLY READ-ALONG: Ponniyin Selvan 1 by Kalki (any translation available to you)
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MARCH - BULGARIAN LIT BY WOMEN

- The Case of Cem by Vera Mutafchieva, tr. Angela Rodel

- She Who Remains by Rene Karabash, tr. Izidor Angel
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APRIL - NONFICTION BY ARAB WOMEN

- Inside the Battle of Algiers: Memoir of a Woman Freedom Fighter by Zohra Drif, tr. Andrew G. Farrand

- The Stillborn: Notebooks of a Woman from the Student-Movement Generation in Egypt by Arwa Salih, tr. Samah Selim

YEARLY READ-ALONG: Ponniyin Selvan 2 by Kalki (any translation available to you)
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Long live translated lit ^^
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#bytranslatedgems
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• by @translatedgems

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10 months ago

TGBC 2026 - Part 2 ~
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Today, sharing the second part of the #translatedgemsbookclub picks for 2026. Just as in 2025, we will be reading two books per months that fit a chosen theme.
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In addition to the monthly picks, TGBC will be running a year-long read along for a classic book translated from Tamil available in six volumes, Ponniyin Selvan by Kalki which was inspired by @vishytheknight who recommended it. We will be discussing one volume every two months.
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If you are interested in joining the book club, check out the slides to learn about how you can.
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MAY - MOTHERHOOD
- The Cracks We Bear by Catalina Infante Beovic, tr. Michelle Mirabella

- Mothers Don't by Katixa Agirre, tr. Kristin Addis

JUNE - QUEER LIT
- Don't Whisper Too Much and Portrait of a Young Artist from Bona Mbella by Frieda Ekotto,tr. Corine Tachtiris

- Unlove Story by Sudipto Pal, tr. Arunava Sinha

- Ponniyin Selvan 3 by Kalki (pick any translation available to you)
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JULY - SCI-FI
- Technology and Barbarism: Or: how Billionaires Will Save Us from the End of the World by Michel Nieva, tr. Rahul Bery and Daniel Hahn recommended by Dan @the_poisonwood_reader

- I Want Golden Eyes by Maria Dadouch, tr. M. Lynx Qualey and Sawad Hussain recommended by Induk @indukisreading
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AUGUST - BLACK WOMEN
- Sin Is a Puppy That Follows You Home by Balaraba Ramat Yakubu, tr. Aliyu Kamal

- There's a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem, tr. Laëtitia Saint-Loubert and Karen Fleetwood

- Ponniyin Selvan 4 by Kalki (pick any translation available to you)
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10 months ago

TGBC 2026 - Part 3 ~
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At last, the final part of the #translatedgemsbookclub picks for 2026. Just as in 2025, we will be reading two books per months that fit a chosen theme.
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In addition to the monthly picks, TGBC will be running a year-long read along for a classic book translated from Tamil available in six volumes, Ponniyin Selvan by Kalki which was inspired by @vishytheknight who recommended it. We will be discussing one volume every two months.
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If you are interested in joining the book club, check out the slides to learn about how you can.
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SEPTEMBER - KID LIT
- Treasury of Vietnamese Folk Tales: Volume 1 by Nguyễn Đổng Chi, illustrated by Jeet Zdũng, edited and curated by Kim Trần, tr. Lan Võ and Nguyễn Bình

- The Wildcat Behind Glass by Alki Zei, tr. Karen Emmerich
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OCTOBER - MINORITY LANGUAGE + ISLAND NATION
- Journeys and Flowers by Mercè Rodoreda, tr. Nick Caistor and Gala Sicart Olavide recommended by Dan @the_poisonwood_reader

- Return by Jean-Luc Raharimanana, tr. Allison M. Charette

- Ponniyin Selvan 5 by Kalki (pick any translation available to you)
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NOVEMBER - CENTRAL EUROPE: SLOVENIA & HUNGARY
- The Door by Magda Szabó, tr. Len Rix

- The Masterpiece by Ana Schnabl, tr. David Limo
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DECEMBER - POEMS & PLAYS
- No Gods Live Here: Poems by Conceição Lima, tr. Shook

- The Magpie at Night: The Complete Poems of Li Qingzhao (1084–1151) by Li Qingzhao, tr. Wendy Chen

- Latin American Plays in Translation: Modern Stories of Gender, Class and Society in Latin America, edited by Zhui Ning Chang and Global Voices Theatre
> La Jana by Juan Pablo Aguilera Justiniano, translated by William Gregory (Chile)
> A Ranch for the Lost Boys, written and translated by Sebastián Eddowes (Perú)
> The SAD Summers of Princess Diana by Carla Zuñiga, tr.Fran Olivares (Chile)
> She by Susana Torres Molina, tr. Gilda Bona (Argentina)
> Nezahualcóyotl Dreams in Mictlan York by Xavier Villanova, tr. Roberto Cavazos (México)
> Extraordinary Life by Mariano Tenconi Blanco, tr.Catherine Boyle (Argentina)

- Ponniyin Selvan 6 by Kalki (pick any translation available to you)
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10 months ago

TGBC - ISLAND NATION + MINORITY LANGUAGE ~
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This month we're doing something a bit different again... two themes ^^
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We will be reading a novel from Madagascar and a short story collection translated from Catalan.
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If you want to join the video chat on Saturday, October 24th at 11pm KST, you can leave a comment or dm me.
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- Return by Jean-Luc Raharimanana, tr. Allison M. Charette

"This evocative novel from a giant of Malagasy literature tells the story of Hira, a writer who was born on the seventh anniversary of Madagascar’s independence. He is wandering through different cities on a book tour, but the experience is amnesiac and confusing. There is a past he is trying to reckon with, a turbulent past filled with violence against both his family and his country. He runs from his wife and represses his memories until it all explodes in fever dreams and a vomit of words. But in order to write the rebirth that he yearns for, Hira must write of his father’s torture, his tortured island, and how both were juxtaposed to his own happy childhood. And in combing through these various pasts, he might make the same mistake his father did: trying to change the world but leaving his own family broken. What will he return to in the end? His family or his island, history or exile? Or, perhaps, to her . . ." from publisher

- Journeys and Flowers by Mercè Rodoreda, tr. Nick Caistor and Gala Sicart Olavide

"A mesmerising and enigmatic collection of short stories, haunted by the horrors of war, and divided into two parts: journeys and flowers.

A lone traveller with no endpoint in sight finds himself journeying through villages where the dead walk at solstice, silkworm-like women live in cocoons and a thousand men in gleaming armour play at being soldiers. Reality blurs, shimmers and darkens; unease grows.

Stories of invented flowers follow and allow nature to bloom, vivid and intoxicating, to the fore. Absurd, lush and dreamlike, they capture different truths of humanity." from publisher
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• by @translatedgems

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10 days ago

KID LIT SEPTEMBER ~
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A book that begins with summer childhood nostalgia, then delves into much deeper themes effortlessly.
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- The Wildcat Behind Glass by Alki Zei, tr. Karen Emmerich
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" That’s not Byzantine, it’s a language we made up that only the two of us know. VE-HA means very happy. VE-SA means very sad. We ask each other every night, otherwise we can’t fall asleep. I don’t know why, but on Sundays we almost always answer, VE-SA, VE-SA."
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• by @translatedgems

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a month ago

TGBC - SEPTEMBER ~
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September is World Kid Lit Month, and to celebrate the initiative led by the people of @worldkidlit, the #translatedgemsbookclub will be reading two kid lit books: one from Greece and another from Viêtnam.
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To join us for the video chat on September 26th at 10:30pm KST, you can leave a comment on this post ^^
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- The Wildcat Behind Glass by Alki Zei, tr. Karen Emmerich

"For Melia and her sister Myrto, summer means a break from Grandfather’s history lessons and weeks of running free at the seaside with their ragtag group of friends. Best of all, cousin Nikos will visit and tell his fabulous stories about the taxidermied wildcat, which opens its blue glass eye when it wants to do good deeds and its black one when it makes trouble. The black eye must be open lately because all the adults have been acting strangely, arguing about politics and fearful of the police. Soon even the children are divided―who can Melia trust? And can the wildcat help keep her family safe?

Set in Greece during the 1930s, when the nation was torn apart by fascism, The Wildcat Behind Glass is an unforgettable tale of family, humanity, and what it means to be free." from publisher
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- Treasury of Vietnamese Folk Tales: Volume 1 by Nguyễn Đổng Chi, illustrated by Jeet Zdũng, edited and curated by Kim Trần, tr. Lan Võ and Nguyễn Bình

"The Treasury of Vietnamese Folk Tales series is the most complete and indispensable text collection when it comes to Vietnamese folk tales. Gathering over 200 stories from across the Vietnamese people, this collection is a celebration of cultural heritage, storytelling traditions, and the enduring power of myth.

The stories in Volume 1 shine a spotlight on the women of Vietnamese folklore—not damsels in distress, but as heroes, tricksters, warriors, and sometimes even villains.

Each tale comes with hand-drawn illustrations by award-winning artist Jeet ZDũng. Evoking the craftsmanship of folk Vietnamese artisans, each artwork offers a rich, immersive window into the spirit and texture of the past." from publisher
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• by @translatedgems

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a month ago

TGBC - AFRICAN WOMEN ~
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This August in honor of women in translation month the #translatedgamesbook will be reading two books written by African women.
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We will discuss these two books via Google Meet on Saturday, August 29th at 11pm KST.
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You can leave a comment or dm me to join ^^
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- There’s a Monster Behind the Door by Gaëlle Bélem, tr. Karen Fleetwood and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert

"The name Dessaintes is one to reckon with. A bombastic, violent and increasingly dangerous clan, little do they know that their downfall is being chronicled by one of their own.

This is La Réunion in the 1980s: high unemployment and low expectations, the legacy of postcolonialism. One little girl makes a bid for escape from her sadistic parents’ reign of terror and turns to school for salvation.

Rich in the history of the island’s customs and superstitions, and driven by a wild, offbeat humour, this picaresque tale manages to satirize the very notion of freedom available in this French territory, and perhaps even the act of writing itself and where it might lead you." from publisher
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- Sin Is a Puppy That Follows You Home by Balaraba Ramat Yakubu, tr. Aliyu Kamal

"Beginning in the late 1980s, northern Nigeria saw a boom in popular fiction written in the Hausa language.

Known as littattafan soyayya ("love literature"), the books are often inspired by Hindi films—which have been hugely popular among Hausa speakers for decades—and are primarily written by women. They have sparked a craze among young adult readers as well as a backlash from government censors and book-burning conservatives.

Sin Is a Puppy That Follows You Home is an Islamic soap opera complete with polygamous households, virtuous women, scheming harlots, and black magic.

It's the first full-length novel by a woman ever translated from Hausa to English.

And it's quite unlike anything you've ever read before." from publisher
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• by @translatedgems

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2 months ago

IRAQ ~
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Do you enjoy reading books that complement each other?
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After reading A Plan to Save the World which I reviewed recently, I was reminded of No Windmills in Basra a short story collection I have loved reading that is also set in Basra.
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- No Windmills in Basra by Diaa Jubaili, tr. Chip Rossetti
' Shalash the Iraqi by Shalash, tr. Luke Leafgren
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Some quotes ^^
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" The characters in Diaa Jubaili’s No Windmills in Basra have a confounding habit of turning themselves into something else: a eucalyptus tree, a dung beetle, a lighthouse, a butterfly, even water. The stories read at times like modern folktales or urban legends, presenting the reader with inexplicable, sometimes magical events, even as they foreground the violence and war that have overshadowed Iraqis’ daily lives for the past several decades. It’s what first drew me to Jubaili’s work." from the Translator's Note
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"The first time Mubarak flew was during the withdrawal of the Iraqi army at the end of the 1991 Gulf War. He flew for a few seconds the moment a bomb hit an IFA W50 truck carrying more than forty soldiers, including him, as they fled from American air bombardments."
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"Nasir was leaving behind him a trail that showed where he’d been. He was naked and torn when the dead found him sprawled on a large gravestone in the cemetery of the world. Ever since then, as soon as he passed by a place or sat down there, you could see the dirt he left behind him, a damp, reddish, sorrowful dirt that made death loathsome to those who are already dead."
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"Only his mother, whose life and cooking had lost all their flavor, spent the rest of her days repeatedly going to the Red Cross headquarters in Basra to ask what had become of her son, whose remains had never been found in that salty area, as though he had come from salt and to salt he returned. She would stay all day there, asking everyone who came and went about Jamal and holding his picture up to passersby, as she repeated the phrase she became known for: “My son Jamal! He was a lump of salt and he dissolved!"
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(continues in the comments)
• by @translatedgems

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3 months ago

Just some bookish memes feat stalker cat Ollie ~
#bytranslatedgems by @translatedgems

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3 months ago

IRAQ ~
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- A Plan to Save the World by Hassan Akram, tr. Ibrahim Fawzy
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"I was born in the midst of an endless war. I grew up and reached the height of a tall sunflower, and the war was still going. Or if it had ended, another one must have taken over. I couldn’t tell."

This serves as the introduction to Hassan, the narrator of A Plan to Save the World, a perceptive young boy who offers a grimpse into the daily lives of the residents in his neighborhood of Basra, Iraq.

From the outset, we learn that Hassan's World is characterized by endless conflicts, a reality in which people seem to exist within a timeline defined by war: "The saga of the long war haunts me. It follows me everywhere. It eats my food. It nests in my head. I find it difficult to sneak away from it. This saga clings to me, woven into the fabric of my very being, from my very first days in this world."

Sadly for the people of Basra, war is omnipresent, nonetheless life goes on.

Hassan equipped with a tape recorder, endeavors to dicover a way to save the world. "The yam story and the tender way my mother looked at my father made me think that a child of war could still be a child of love. That meant I could save the world. But where to start?"

Will he succeed in finding an answer? And is this world truly worth saving?

A Plan to Save the World made for a short read, but despite its brevity, I found little Hassan's voice lingering, a book I will not forget anytime soon.
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I voluntarily read and reviewed a gifted copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
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#bytranslatedgems
• by @translatedgems

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3 months ago

TGBC - SCIFI ~ part 2
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... and the final pick of July for the #translatedgemsbookclub a dystopian young adult novel translated from Arabic by two of my faves ^^
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We will discuss these two books via Google Meet on Saturday, August 1st at 11pm KST.
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You can leave a comment or dm me to join ^^
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- I Want Golden Eyes by Maria Dadouch, tr. M. Lynx Qualey and Sawad Hussain

"I Want Golden Eyes is set on the Comoros Islands at the end of this century in a futuristic city called Quartzia, the home of a genetically privileged minority called the Golden Eyes. The rest of the population, the Limiteds, live in a cavity called the Hive beneath the city. Dalia is a sixteen-year-old girl who lives in the Hive but works with her family in Quartzia at Professor Adam’s house, where she cleans, her sister grows organic food in the garden, and her deaf father works as the cook.

Because books are forbidden in the Hive, Dalia secretly borrows math texts from the professor’s library and smuggles them to read in the Hive. When Professor Adam, who is famous for engineering embryos with enhanced genes, discovers Dalia’s crime, he enslaves her for two years in his library. Dalia seeks to flee the city with her family after overhearing the professor being ordered to design genetic traits for the president’s expected baby and realizes that Golden Eyes are not privileged by nature’s selection, as she was led to believe, but by authority and money."
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• by @translatedgems

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3 months ago

ALGERIA ~
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What better way to celebrate Algeria's Independence Day than to pick the latest book by Lakhous?
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- The Fertility of Evil by Amara Lakhous, tr. Alexander E. Elinson
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It is July 5th in Oran, Independence Day, and the body of a former FLN fighter was found dead. Colonel Soltani is tasked with swiftly closing the case. The criminal investigation will require him to delve into the victim's past, uncovering hidden secrets.
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" Oran’s bewitching light, an effect of the sea and the sun, gave his heart a measure of tranquility."
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Happy Independence Day to us 🇩🇿 and may all those still under the yoke of oppression be liberated 🙏🏽
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#bytranslatedgems
• by @translatedgems

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3 months ago