4 must-read translated books by women, picked by Man Booker prize winner Jennifer Croft

Author and translator Jennifer Croft shares her four new must-reads, and explains why a translator is ‘the co-author of the translated book’

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Vernon Subutex 1, by Virginie Despentes, is a perfect marriage of translator and author, says Jennifer Croft. The prize-winning translator shares three other top reads.

Published: 12:45pm, 31 Aug 2024Updated: 1:23pm, 31 Aug 2024

August is a lot of things: it is uncomfortably hot, and it is somehow already time for your kids to go back to school.

August is also Women in Translation Month, a yearly celebration of books by women written in languages other than English.

Jennifer Croft – the award-winning author and translator of writers such as Nobel Prize-winning Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk, with whom she shared the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, and who has translated works from Polish, Ukrainian and Argentine Spanish – says Women in Translation Month has been a good thing.

Croft is also the author of the memoir Homesick and the novel The Extinction of Irena Rey, and a professor at the University of Tulsa, in the US state of Oklahoma.

Jennifer Croft translates works from Polish, Ukrainian and Argentine Spanish. She is also the author of the memoir Homesick and the novel The Extinction of Irena Rey. Photo: Nora Pushkin

“For me, it has been very helpful as a translator. Initially, when I was starting out, my project was specifically to advocate for and translate contemporary women,” says Croft, who focuses on works by Russian, Polish and Argentine writers, including Federico Falco’s A Perfect Cemetery, Romina Paula’s August and Tokarczuk’s 912-page The Books of Jacob.