Favourite Chunksters from 10 Years of #WIT Month

2024 marks 10 years of WIT Month! I've been participating since its second year, so it's 9 active years for me. To celebrate a full decade of hard work promoting women in translation, I thought I would share a few of my own favourites discovered over the past ten years. 

Today I'm sharing some of the big ones, the lengthy books that take some commitment, and all proved worth the time! 

First is The Museum of Abandoned Secrets by Oksana Zabuzhko (trans. from the Ukrainian by Nina Shevchuk-Murray). This is an energetic mix of history and contemporary Ukraine, dealing with secrets of the past, war, family legacies and romantic relationships. 

Cross-Stitch by Jazmina Barrera (trans. from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney) is a Mexican story, which explores the role of female friendship, interspersed with the history of embroidery, to create a resonant feminist narrative.

The Seamstress of Sardinia by Bianca Pitzorno (trans. from the Italian by Brigid Maher) is one of my favourite kinds of historical reads -- ones that travel alongside a woman over her whole life, and this is a great example.

Another sewing related read (you can see my tastes!) is The Time in Between by Maria Duenas (trans. from the Spanish by Daniel Hahn). It's a sprawling saga about Sira Quiroga, a young woman who grows up as a dressmaker's apprentice alongside her mother, in prerevolutionary Spain, and gets involved in wartime intrigue. 

The Time of Mute Swans by Ece Temelkuran (trans. from the Turkish by Kenneth Dakan) is a beautiful, heart-breaking book. It's set in the tumultuous 70s & 80s in Turkey, and told from the perspective of two children. Sometimes this style doesn't work, but here it was perfect, and powerful. 

And my final favourite chunkster of the day is the stylistically challenging Flights by Olga Tokarczuk (trans. from the Polish by Jennifer Croft). Made up of smaller stories that eventually interlock in thematic ways, I'd say pick it up if you are interested in translated works that are thoughtful, philosophical, and challenging in a manageable way.