Repetition by Vigdis Hjorth

Repetition / Vigdis Hjorth
trans. from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund
NY: Verso Books, 2026, c2023.
144 p.

This is a short novel by Hjorth, featuring a narrator looking back at her 16th year, when her home life is constrained by an overbearing, demanding mother whose extreme anxiety overshadows the narrator's experiences. 

She has a group of girlfriends that she is able to still do normal teenage things with, if she organizes and hides their activities under a shell of studying in 'no-boy' zones. But of course they are really going out to parties and getting drunk and making out with random older boys. 

Our narrator finds herself a boyfriend of a kind, and they make out a few times, with one of the most awkward sex scenes ever concluding their short-lived relationship. This is discovered by her parents, causing a violent, emotional flare-up, and a permanent crack in their family life. She is isolated, even though she still lives at home for a few more years, and kept from a relationship with her siblings as well - there is nobody to talk to and get any sense of their interpretations of the parental behaviours. 

There is a dark secret in the family past that this book circles around, avoiding naming it although it's clear to the reader. This shorter story is another approach to the story told in Will & Testament, and probably has more resonance if you've read that one. But it does stand alone, and the atmosphere of the story really evokes the suffocating sense of being 16 and in uncongenial circumstances, testing things out, trying to find yourself, understand life, and so on. The title is reflected both in the repeated routines of her days, and of the repeated family patterns shown through the story. The writing also reflects this, with certain phrases and images used again and again. 

I found it absorbing, as a real character study with lots of internal movement even if the outer world seemed static and repetitive. Really interesting. 

Translation Thursday

 

It's Translation Thursday! Each Thursday this month I'm going to share the translation I'm currently reading plus a few more on my reading list. Here's today's list:

Currently Reading:

Taiwan Travelogue / Yang Shuang-Zi
trans. from the Mandarin by Lin King

To Read: 

Small Comfort / Ia Genberg
trans. from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson

Heart Lamp / Banu Mushtaq
trans. from the Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi

A System so Magnificent it is Blinding / Amanda Svensson
trans. from the Swedish by Nichola Smalley

She Who Remains

She Who Remains / Rene Karabash
trans. from the Bulgarian by Izidora Angel
Southport, ME: Sandorf Passage, 2026, c2018.
152 p.

This was a shortlisted title on the International Booker list this year, which is how I first came across it. It's a novella written in Bulgarian and set in Albania, in the mountains where the strict rule of the Kanun shapes the lives of families, Bekija escapes an unwanted arranged marriage by becoming a sworn virgin. This is a status in which a woman gives up all her womanly attributes and swears lifelong celibacy, to live as a man. 

This decision destroys up her family, divides her from the person she loves, and creates a dark and lonely life for many years. The story begins as Bekija, now Matija, is telling their life story to a journalist who has travelled to their village to interview the last known Sworn Virgin. The narrative is thus quite stream of consciousness, or confessional, jumping around in time and focusing in on Matija's life and experiences. 

We slowly get a wider picture of everything that led to the present, and in the end get a glimpse into a new future for Matija as well. This story was so unfamiliar, and so beautifully written, that I just couldn't stop reading. It was shocking and eventful, without becoming melodramatic. It was packed with strong feeling and repressed emotion. And I felt that this character was explored deeply, even in the constraints of the short length of the novel. This is the author's debut novel, although she is an experienced screenwriter and actor. You can feel the influence of those here, as the book has sharp and unforgettable imagery along with the narrative line. Really impressed by this one, so much in such a short book. 

The Wax Child

The Wax Child / Olga Ravn
trans. from the Danish by Martin Aitken
TO: Book*hug Press, 2025, c2023.
200 p.

Another book on the International Booker longlist, I wanted to read this because of the author - I've read her speculative novel The Employees and was curious how she'd write a historical novel. 

The Wax Child is inspired by a real-life witch trial in the 17th century. The text incorporates quotes from letters, manuals, court documents and grimoires from that time. The writing is dense, full of imagery and visceral detail, and grounds the reader in the era. 

This is the story of Christenze Kruckow, an unmarried noblewoman who is accused of witchcraft along with a circle of other women. She is accused of all sorts of things, even of making a wax child, a dark magic. The book is narrated by the wax child, observing her maker and all the others before and while they go through the trials. This technique of a removed observer works well here, allowing a broader perspective than just that of Christenze, but it also creates uncertainty in the reader -- if the wax child is telling us this story, how much of the activity of witchcraft that they are accused of actually happened? Was there something going on, or is this just another example of men upset by women finding strength and solidarity together? 

I thought this was a great read. It's dark, and hard to read in parts, but the setting and the writing itself are both so powerful. Ravn recreates the suffocating atmosphere of this trial, and of women's lives, particularly unmarried women's lives, in this era. And she shows how these elements are still relevant to contemporary readers, but not in an obvious or didactic way -- it just comes through in the writing. This was a memorable read, one that has stuck with me. 

 

The Book Censor's Library

The Book Censor's Library / Bothayna Al-Essa
trans. from the Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman & Sawad Hussain
Read by Cindy Kay
Old Saybrook, CT: Tantor Media, 2024, c2019.

I listened to this one; it's a fever dream of a book in which a man in an unnamed dictatorship finds a job as a book censor. But his own young daughter is full of imagination and stories, causing him no end of trouble and angst. Imagination and whimsy is forbidden in this unnamed dictatorship. Only sensible (ie: government approved) information and behaviour is permitted. 

Another novel in an unintended streak of magical realist stories, this one was good but turned in a direction I was really not expecting. Our main character is a government employee who is placed in a book censor position. He must read books, searching out unwanted examples of imagination and other elements that the government thinks will distract citizens from daily reality (or give them ideas...). All history of the 'past world' is to be erased, denied and rewritten. Books that might place readers in the context of a past are considered unhealthy and need to be censored.  

The first job that our book censor is assigned is to read a new edition of Zorba the Greek and make his recommendation for censoring or not. This is considered an easy assignment, after all, many previous editions have already been banned. But our censor discovers through this book that he is after all a reader; the emotions and actions of Zorba inspire him and he can't stop reading. 

The story incorporates other novels, each with their own motifs and meanings that shape the book censor. Alice in Wonderland, The Little Prince, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, even Pinocchio -- many books are read and dissected by this character, even though this is a relatively short novel. The storyline does follow the outlines of 1984 -- if you've read it you may recognize some similar themes and stylistic choices. But it's a bit stranger, for me -- for example there are rabbits everywhere, even in the censorship building, and they seem to have a purpose. Our character finds an underground resistance movement, which even includes a vast subterranean library. But then his young daughter is taken away for reeducation, and everything spirals out of control.

The ending was a bit unexpected, and throws a new light on everything that came before. But the story brought up so many issues of freedom of expression, the power of reading, how a healthy society must include the freedom of the mind, and so on. And of course a book that discusses so many other books is always something I will find interesting. While I found it a little uneven, and a little strange that all the literature discussed is by men, it was still an intriguing read. Written by a Kuwaiti bookseller with experiences of her own of governmental censorship, it feels real, and communicates her love of books very strongly. 

 

Women Without Men

 

Women Without Men / Shahrnush Parsipur
trans. from the Persian by Faridoun Farrokh
NY: Feminist Press at CUNY, 2012, c1989.
192 p.

I picked up this book thanks to the International Booker - a new 2026 edition was on the longlist, and then I found this 2012 edition, and discovered it was first published in 1989. So the subtitle, "a novel of Modern Iran" has to be taken in context. 

It's a tale of a group of five women who all face extreme misogyny in their homes, their towns, their entire setting. So they decide to leave, and all end up in the same place, walking the road to Tehran but finding a place to stay on the outskirts, in the home and garden of one lone woman. They have different roles and different experiences; one is happy to settle in with another man, the gardener, one keeps house, one decides to plant herself and turn into a tree. This is definitely the most unexpected part of the story, and it was a little bit of random magical realism for me -- but looking into the role of trees in Iran, they are one of the oldest cultures to treat trees as sacred beings. So I'm sure that once again I am missing many of the context clues to the deeper meanings in this story. 

In any case, many readers might be familiar with this book because of its Booker nomination, well, at least passingly familiar. I thought it was interesting but unfortunately didn't get drawn in completely. The characters were a bit too sketched out for me, I couldn't quite understand how they fit together in their new setting, and the ending was both unexpected and a bit unsatisfying. So I'm glad I read it but it was a bit difficult, and I think I'd need to study it a bit more closely to really get a lot out of it.

A Hamlet Called America

 

The Hamlet Called America / Khrystia Vengryniuk
trans. from the Ukrainian by Kate Tsurkan & Dmytro Kyyan
South Portland, ME: Sandorf Passage, c2026
224 p.

I was sent an advanced reading copy of this book by the publisher; it will be released mid-October of this year. I'm obviously quite interested in this thanks to it being a Ukrainian novel, newly translated. 

It's an intriguing read, something quite different from my recent reading. It's set in the near past, no mention of the war here, but focuses on the lives of a small group of eccentric villagers. 

I saw someone describe it as a Ukrainian version of the village of Macondo from 100 Years of Solitude, and I guess I could see that connection - it does have an element of magical realism, with a few inexplicable things going on that people seem to just accept. And there is a long history to the hamlet, where time seems a little unreliable.

The hamlet is isolated and sticks to itself; the exception is the priest up the hill, a healer who draws people to area. One of our villagers ends up there herself near the end, with an unusual health status to be managed. 

There are characters who come and go, as well, mainly the younger family members of the residents. A grandson or granddaughter here, a bevy of daughters there, coming for visits from the city. There is even a beautiful stranger dumped on the road at night and taken in by one of them. Lots of intrigue to follow. 

It reads like a heightened folktale, with stock characters who are somehow made into complex people in their own right. There are bits of superstition, folklore, unexplained moments, and a bit too much familial togetherness. In some ways I found it reminiscent of Tanja Maljartschuk's Biography of a Chance Miracle -- that novel also plays with expectations of reality, and it is set in a Ukrainian town named San Francisco. But while that novel has a main character, this one really has a cast of characters all as important as the next. Their stories intertwine and depend on one another's stories to exist. 

It's an unusual, earthy read, with a lot of the story so dependent on the setting and the characters' life stories. I am sure I missed some of the nuance because I'm not as familiar with the context. But it was a compelling read that I had to finish. Look for it in October!