The Best International Fiction of the Month: September 2026

Here are three newly translated works of fiction from across the globe, along with one classic work of true crime (as Capote would say, a “nonfiction novel”). Keep an eye on the site for more lists, including our fall preview. Enjoy!

Kim Bohyun, Mothersucker
Translated by Archana Madhavan
(Vintage)

In Mothersucker, a woman returns from the dead, seeking vengeance against those complicit in her daughter’s death. Meanwhile, a serial killer seems to be targeting those who’ve mistreated women, children, and animals; no evidence is found on the bodies save for two puncture marks on each neck (you see where this is going…) Kim Bohyun’s background in poetry shows throughout the novel, evolving directly into poetic form at the tale’s end. Don’t let the cutesy name fool you – this is a spare and moving story that lingers long after the last page.

Jiro Akagawa, A Game of Cat and Killer
Translated by Haydn Trowell
(Grand Central)

This book is so delightful! In a pairing reminiscent of Rita Mae Brown or Lilian Jackson Braun, a rookie detective who’s terribly awkward with women takes in a murder victim’s cat, only to find his new feline partner pointing him to a variety of evidence he might otherwise have missed, and proving, in the end, not only essential to solving the crime, but pivotal in catching the killer. I would really like for my cat to avenge me like this if I ever get murdered, but sadly, poor Fritzy is more like to vom than to defend mom…Anyway, cat lovers rejoice, for this is the first in a verrrrry large number of books to feature the titular cat and his bumbling human, and if we are blessed by the reissuing deities, we shall soon have access to many more.

Elvira Navarro, Blood Is Dripping onto the Courtyard: Stories
Translated by Christina MacSweeney
(Two Lines Press)

This story collection is full of disturbing little gems of fiction, exploring the horrors of the everyday, side by side with the otherworldly grotesqueries of the speculative and fantastical. The first story involves a washing machine that won’t stop filling with blood, so it’s also a great follow-up to that David Sedaris holiday letter story. You know the one…

Emmanuel Carrère, The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception
Translated by Linda Coverdale
(Metropolitan Books)

I had to include this influential classic of true crime, newly reissued, not only for the author’s beautiful use of language and carefully measured pacing, and but for the depth of his philosophical exploration of monstrosity. In the wake of such crimes as the Murdaugh murders, family annihilation (the killing of an entire family unit, usually followed by the suicide of the killer) has been often in the news. This book is one of the earliest to explore the phenomena, and involved years of correspondance between Carrère and the self-aggrandizing con artist turned killer he’d made the subject of his book, amidst corresponding amounts of shame, self-recrimination, and soul-searching. What did it mean to be so concerned with the mind of a French fabulist, one who faked a career in medicine while fleecing all his relations, then killed his parents, wife, and children as soon as he ran out of funds? The questions of attention, fascination, and corruption, are of perennial concern in the world of literary true crime—just look at In Cold Blood, or the journalist in Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer—but this book explores the tension between curiosity and condemnation, explanation and enablement, better than most. Carrère is unsparing. He is harsh. And his writing both inspires and warns against the thirty years of true crime to follow.