August is Women in Translation Month. It was started in 2014 by Meytal Radzinski in 2014 to honor women writers and translators from around the world and how women have shaped the international exchange of literature. To celebrate, we’re highlighting 5 brilliant women The New Press has published in translation over its nearly thirty-year history.

 

 

 

 

 

Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Duras is the internationally known author of the Prix Goncourt–winning novel The Lover, as well as The War, The North China Lover, Moderato Cantabile, and the screenplays of Hiroshima Mon Amour, India Song, and other works. The New Press has published translations of her books The North China Lover, The War, Wartime Writings. The Impudent Ones, Duras’s first novel, was unavailable in English translation until The New Press published the first earlier this year. 

 

 

 

Marie Darrieussecq

Once called France’s “best young novelist” by The New Yorker, Marie Darrieussecq became an overnight sensation in France with the publication of her debut novel Pig Tales, the story of a young woman who lands a position at Perfumes Plus, a beauty boutique/“massage” parlor. She enjoys great success until she slowly metamorphoses into a pig. It immediately topped the bestseller list in France and was translated into forty languages. This was followed by My Phantom Husband and Undercurrents, both resounding successes. She is essential reading for fans of Virginie Despantes and Annie Ernaux. 

 

 

 

Simone de Beauvoir

The legendary feminist writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir is perhaps best known for The Second Sex, her sweeping examination of the treatment of women across history and society, wherein she states, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”  She was also author of The Mandarins (winner of the Prix Goncourt), The Coming of Age, and America Day by Day. Editor of the monthly Paris review Les Temps Modernes with her lifelong companion, writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, she was thrust into the intellectual life of the post-war Left Bank Paris. Her affair with writer Nelson Algren spanned twenty years and four continents. The New Press has published her astonishing, vivid and passionate love letters to him, of which Studs Terkel said, “Boy, oh boy.” 

 

 

Monika Fagerholm

Monika Fagerholm was born in Helsinki, Finland. She has published two collections of short stories, Sham and Patricia, and is the award-winnning author of four novels, including Wonderful Women by the Sea, which the New York Times Book Review termed “radiant.” Fagerholm explores the world of Rosa and her friend Isabella. Though they seem to embody the American “good life,” dark undercurrents threaten to undermine the sanctity of their domestic oasis by the sea. As Tupperware parties give way to the women’s movement, Rosa and Isabella can’t avoid the social and political upheaval that explodes across the world in the turbulent summer of 1968. Fagerholm has been praised for her “ability to encompass complex emotions in one snapshot” (The Times, London). 

 

 

Julia Deck

Julia Deck was born in Paris in 1974, the daughter of a French father and a British mother. Her award-winning debut novel Viviane took France by storm, and was published in English by The New Press. Viviane is a murder mystery which was praised for its gripping plot and psychology.  Deck is currently a freelance editor. 

 

Women in Translation of course could not happen without translators. Most of the books featured here were translated from the French by the brilliant Linda Coverdale, who has translated over sixty books. She is the recipient of several awards for her translations, including the prestigious International Dublin Literary Award. 

 

Our most recent Duras publication is a remarkable translation of her debut novel Les Impudents  (The Impudent Ones) by Kelsey Haskett- the first ever translation of the book into English. You can read an excerpt in Lithub here: https://lithub.com/the-impudent-ones/