On a Woman’s Madness is a National Book Award Finalist
Astrid Roemer’s On a Woman’s Madness, translated by Lucy Scott, is a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature!
Lucy Scott’s translation is remarkable for its attentiveness to Roemer’s thicket-like sentences, each of which swells with complexity and difference, and when pieced together expand our sense of the world. Amazingly, the translation marks the first-ever English-language edition of Astrid Roemer’s work available in the United States. It’s a long-overdue introduction to a world-class writer compared to both Toni Morrison and Alice Walker.
On a Woman’s Madness tells the story of Noenka, a courageous Black woman trying to live a life of her own choosing. When her abusive husband of just nine days refuses her request for divorce, Noenka flees her hometown in Suriname, on South America’s tropical northeastern coast, for the capital city of Paramaribo. Unsettled and unsupported, her life in this new place is illuminated by romance and new freedoms, but also forever haunted by her past and society’s expectations.
Praise for On a Woman’s Madness
“As Roemer pushes at the boundaries of the senses, she melds biting postcolonial social commentary with a lush dreamscape. Scott’s translation is a gift to English-language readers.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A stunning tale of love and survival anchored by Noenka’s unflagging honesty and Roemer’s embrace of the contradictions, ambiguity, and mystery that characterize real life.”
—Southwest Review
“Difficult, fragmentary, gorgeous, and at times unpredictable…The novel is saturated with pain, drama, pleasure, and violence, which may rightly invite comparison to classics by Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, although Roemer’s writing style is remarkable in its own right…”
—Harvard Review
Other National Book Award for Translated Literature Finalist titles
Cursed Bunny
Author: Bora Chung
Translator: Anton Hur (from Korean)
From an author never before published in the United States, Cursed Bunny is unique and imaginative, blending horror, sci-fi, fairy tales, and speculative fiction into stories that defy categorization. By turns thought-provoking and stomach-turning, here monsters take the shapes of furry woodland creatures and danger lurks in unexpected corners of everyday apartment buildings. But in this unforgettable collection, translated by the acclaimed Anton Hur, Chung’s absurd, haunting universe could be our own.
Beyond the Door of No Return
Author: David Diop
Translator: Sam Taylor (from French)
From International Booker Prize-winning author David Diop comes a love story like few others. Drawing on the richness and lyricism of Senegal’s oral traditions, Diop has constructed a historical epic of the highest order. Renowned botanist Michel Adanson has died and left his unpublished memoir of the years he spent in Senegal on a search for a young woman known as “the revenant” who escaped from slavery, a journey that reveals the savagery of the French colonial occupation but also the unlikely transports of the human heart.
The Words That Remain
Author: Stênio Gardel
Translator: Bruna Dantas Lobato (from Portuguese)
Exploring Brazil’s little-known hinterland as well its urban haunts, this is a sweeping novel of repression, violence, and shame, along with their flip side: survival, endurance, and the ultimate triumph of an unforgettable figure on society’s margins. The Words That Remain explores the universal power of the written word and language, and how they affect all our relationships.
Abyss
Author: Pilar Quintana
Translator: Lisa Dillman (from Spanish)
In this strikingly vivid portrait of Cali, Colombia, 8 year-old Claudia’s acute observations remind us that children are capable of discerning extremely complex realities even if they cannot fully understand them. In Abyss, Quintana leads us brilliantly into the lonely heart of the child we have all once been, driven by fear of abandonment.
Read an in-depth interview with Astrid Roemer on our blog.
Meet all of the 2023 National Book Award finalist authors(opens in a new tab) over on Literary Hub.
Words Without Borders has interviews with the National Book Award for Translated Literature longlisted and finalist author-translator partners(opens in a new tab) on their website.
Astrid Roemer and other finalists will read from their work at the Finalists Reading(opens in a new tab) on November 14 and winners will be announced at the National Book Awards ceremony(opens in a new tab) on November 15.
The new paperback edition of On a Woman’s Madness is coming out on November 28, but you can pre-order your copy now!
Erin Branagan has a lifelong interest in languages, literature, and the interrelation of countries and cultures. She speaks Spanish, French, and Japanese and has lived and traveled extensively outside the U.S.
