Hi folks! It’s been a long fall season, and I’m just now catching up on all the good crime fiction in translation. That means the following list is extra-curated, and also, extra disturbing. There aren’t enough content warnings in the world for the following books, but that just makes them all the better a reflection of our current era. If art should disturb the comfortable, then these are Art with a capital A. Enjoy! And don’t read these on a full stomach…
Sulmi Bak, Petty Lies
Translated by Sarah Lyo
(Mulholland)
If you love dogs, stay far away from this book. I mean it. For everyone else, it’s a twisty cat-and-mouse tale of violence, maternal devotion, and vengeance served cold. Nasty, elegant, and vicious.
Darya Bobyleva, Village at the Edge of Noon
Translated by Yazhin Chavasse
(Angry Robot)
Welcome to Nightvale, but make it Russian! In a small village full of former Soviet vacation homes (dachas!), the locals wake one morning to find the road to town has vanished, with all communication networks completely cut off. Many attempt to escape their strange new isolation, but none can find a way through the dense woods surrounding the town. Most vanish entirely, but those who return come back….changed. Claustrophobic, horrifying, and a heck of a good story (or, set of stories, rather)!
Zuzana Ríhová, Playing Wolf
Translated by Alex Zucker
(Catapult)
In this moody Czech gothic, a couple on the outs gets in big trouble in the Czech wilderness. Translated impeccably by Zucker, Playing Wolf should fulfill all your folk horror needs.
Brenda Lozano, Mothers
Translated by Heather Cleary
(Catapult)
Lozano’s latest to be translated joins a host of other works this year dedicated to exploring ambivalence in motherhood. In what reads as a serious version of Raising Arizona, the paths of two very different women intersect, with explosive consequences: a wealthy mother of five children and an impoverished woman desperate for her own child to love. Mothers asks serious questions about natal privilege, and interrogates the spaces between having, wanting, and deserving, for a dark text with no easy conclusions.
Seicho Matsumoto, Tokyo Express
Translated by Jesse Kirkwood
(Modern Library)
A classic Japanese puzzle mystery of Hitchcockian proportions, Tokyo Express is newly available in lovely Modern Library edition featuring an introduction from Amor Towles. In Tokyo Express, a suspicious double suicide leads a hardened detective down a spiraling rabbithole of government corruption, bribery scandals, and the dark underworld of the hostess industry, set against a backdrop of recovering post-war Japan. The descriptions are elegant, the plotting even moreso, with complex characterizations that belie the slim size of the volume. If you read one reissue this year, pick up this one.
You-jeong Jeong, Perfect Happiness
Translated by Sean Lin Halbert
(Creature Publishing)
In this incredibly disturbing take on human nature (I’d expect nothing less from You-jeong Jeong), a central figure with fairytale monster vibes causes pain and suffering wherever she goes, with her family absorbing most of the hurt, and many of the consequences. Perfect Happiness is not for the weak of will (or stomach)—anything with a meat grinder in the first page, I gotta recommend. So messed up, and so good!
