Read More Foreign Literature

Guest: Marlene Hansen Esplin, PhD, Assistant Professor, Comparative Arts and Letters, Brigham Young University Twenty years ago, you’d be hard-pressed to find quinoa, gelato or Indian naan bread in most mainstream US grocery stores, but now they’re all favorites in our home kitchens. Turns out it’s good to try new foods! And the same concept applies to literature. Americans rarely read literature translated from other languages, but we are missing out on real treats. Recommended Books in Translation: Muriel Barbery, “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” Clarice Lispector, “The Hour of the Star” Carlos Ruiz Zafón, “The Shadow of the Wind/The Angel’s Game/The Prisoner of Heaven” Valeria Luiselli, “Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions” Hideo Yokoyama, “Six Four” Edgogawa Rampo, “Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination” Mikhail Shishkin, “Maidenhair” Sabahattin Ali, “The Madonna with the Fur Coat” Abdelfattah Kilito , “Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language” Halldor Laxness, “Paradise Reclaimed”  Nellie Campobello “Cartucho” Oliver Pötzsch, “The Hangman’s Daughter”  Sources for finding more books in translation: http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/, https://www.asymptotejournal.com/, https://www.dalkeyarchive.com