Spring 2026 Lit in Translation Preview
A new season is here, and with it comes an exciting new selection of translated books. We turned to two of our event partners—The Center for Fiction, in Brooklyn, and Green Apple Books, in San Francisco—to find out what’s on their radar. Bookseller and translator Jacob Rogers and writer and event coordinator Kar Johnson share their most anticipated reads of the season.
Recommendations by Jacob Rogers, Bookseller at The Center for Fiction:
Superstars(opens in a new tab) by Ann Scott, translated from French by Jonathan Woollen | Pub date: April 7, Astra House
I’ve had a couple chances to hear Jonathan Woollen read from his translation of this cult classic of the ’90s Paris club scene and absolutely love this book. His translation is full of verve and punch, and perfectly grounds the reader in the ancient realm of the 1990s (just kidding, just kidding). In all seriousness, this is bound to be one of the translated-lit hits of the year—don’t wait until it sells out to order your copy, smash that link right now!
Sardine(opens in a new tab) by Miriam Reyes, translated from Galician by Laura Cesarco Eglin | Pub date: May 1, Ugly Duckling Presse
I couldn’t be more excited for this collection to be making its way into English, and even more so that it’s coming by way of the always brilliant Laura Cesarco Eglin. Born in Galicia and spending most of her childhood and adolescence in Venezuela, Reyes had already built an impressive career in poetry when she published her Galician-language debut, Sardine, in 2018. It is, among many other things, a collection about finding your own language, full of excisions and contradictions and an unforgettable poetic voice. And this may be a good moment to shout out Cesarco Eglin’s publishing house, Veliz Books, which has just published Sonora(opens in a new tab), the latest collaboration between Galician poet Chus Pato and her longtime translator Erín Moure.
The Mulai(opens in a new tab) by Munir Hachemi, translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches | Pub date: July 14, Coach House Books
This will be the second book in English by the Spanish writer Munir Hachemi. I loved his previous novel, Living Things, a heady, metafictional novel about industrial farming in France, so much that even though I’d already read the Spanish edition, I decided to have another go, because Julia Sanches’s translations always promise to be spectacular, nuanced renditions in their own right, and she absolutely knocked it out of the park with that one. I confess I haven’t gotten to The Mulai yet, and instead of being less heady, or less metafictional, he’s blasted off into space for a speculative fiction novel set on an unnamed planet. I’m obsessed.
Olenka(opens in a new tab) by Budi Darma, translated from Indonesian by Tiffany Tsao | Pub date: July 21, Penguin Classics
Okay, I’ll admit, I haven’t read this one either, but after Tiffany Tsao’s translation of Budi Darma’s People from Bloomington (a book I still recommend and talk about to this day), I was an instant convert. Tsao is a ridiculously good translator, and I’m dying to return to Darma’s rendition of the American Midwest, in all its absurdity and dark comedy. I also have a soft spot for books in translation that can’t be packaged as didactic lessons about an author’s country or context, and that’s how we get gems like these.
Recommendations by Kar Johnson, Event Coordinator at Green Apple Books:
On the Other Side Is March(opens in a new tab) by Sólrún Michelsen, translated from Faroese by Marita Thomsen | Pub date: June 16, Transit Books
Michelsen’s novel maintains a serenity throughout its brief length and sometimes painfully relatable portrait of womanhood and caretaking. This is owed in part to the meditation of its narrator, who seems to understand the cosmic circumstances of life: it goes too fast, it takes forever, it happens all at once, and all of these things are simultaneously true. Our narrator is in something just beyond “sandwich years,” caring for both her elderly mother and her grandchildren. Pasts co-mingle, poke through, stay weighted like the long-kept contents of a junk drawer, which is to say, imbued with meaning we can’t bare to lose. Thoughts on selfhood, motherhood, love, fragility, and mortality weave through. It should be noted that Thomsen’s translation is the first by a woman Faroese writer to be brought to English-language audiences, which is incredibly exciting and why I return year after year to the Transit Books catalog.
City Like Water(opens in a new tab) by Dorothy Tse, translated from Chinese by Natascha Bruce | Pub date: March 3, Graywolf Press
I have come to rely on Dorothy Tse’s work to take me completely out of my element. I’m a reader who does not mind feeling my way in the dark a little bit before finding my footing. This book is solidly for those who feel the same. I am also always deeply impressed by translators like Bruce who can bring these works to English-language readers. City Like Water flows with a sort of dream logic. Students sign a contract saying they won’t kill themselves. One minute your date is in the passenger seat of your car, then it’s your sister, then it’s a stranger. No one seems to remember if there was ever anyone sitting at a now-empty classroom desk. With each entry of the novel—a fair description of its form, I think—we see elements of the current moment of rising global fascism. While it skillfully cuts through the surrealistic elements, it never touches too close to our reality, and that uncanniness, that “almost” feeling, makes the book that much more eerie.
Centroeuropa(opens in a new tab) by Vicente Luis Mora, translated from Spanish by Rahul Bery | Pub date: March 10, Bellevue Literary Press
Mora does one of my favorite things fiction writers can do: make me interested in a time period I have given little thought to in my reading life. I cannot say I have sought out books about turn-of-the-nineteenth-century feudal Prussia. But, of course, place and time are just vehicles for great storytelling. From the beginning, we know our narrator, Redo, has just discovered the frozen corpse of a Napoleonic soldier on his property. And then another. And then…
We come to find that Redo is not who he says he is. He keeps taking us to the beginning of a story already in progress, as he is compelled to pen his life to paper. (As an aside, I have found that all of the books on this list dilate time in interesting ways, albeit by different mechanisms.) The story is peopled by friends and foes, each on their own odd path. Mora’s voice brought to mind the likes of Bohumil Hrabal, Julio Cortázar, and Vladimir Nabokov. Already an award-winner in its native Spanish and for Bery’s translation, this is not one to miss.
Eskatos & The Stretched Necks of Stillness(opens in a new tab) by Mats Söderlund, translated from Swedish by Olivia Olsen | Pub date: February 20, Restless Books
This collection of two book-length poems brings us a completely immersive experience. The sights and scents of Swedish woodlands are alive in these pages, rendered through Söderlund’s keen, cinematic eye. Olsen’s translation seems to capture perfectly the world Söderlund intended to capture, too. What makes this publication particularly special is that the first poem, The Stretched Necks of Stillness, was written over 20 years ago. Its companion, Eskatos, was written in 2023. We as readers have a unique opportunity to see these poems—wrapped in the beauty, politics, and anxiety of shifting climate—side by side, encapsulating their ecological moment. The experience is enhanced by Forrest Gander’s generous and thoughtful introduction and Olsen’s translator’s note. Great care was taken in bringing this work to English-language readers, and you can feel it in its handling. Reading Söderlund’s work made me praise aloud poetry as a whole and I didn’t want the book to end.
Kar Johnson is a writer, performer, and bookseller living in the Bay Area. Their work has appeared in Foglifter, The Los Angeles Press, Santa Clara Review, and elsewhere. They hold an MFA from San Francisco State University and serve as the event coordinator for Green Apple Books.
Jacob Rogers is a bookseller and translator of Galician and Spanish literature. He has translated books by Manuel Rivas, Berta Dávila, and Brais Lamela, with further publications forthcoming from Dorothy(opens in a new tab), World Poetry Books, Veliz Books, Picador, Archipelago Books, and Sublunary Editions.
