New Translations in July

Invisible Love by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

Translated by Howard Curtis. Europa Editions.

This newest collection of short stories from Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt examines the facets of love through a variety of short tales. From a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps who finds inner peace in the love of a faithful dog to a mother who rediscovers love for her child when someone tries to take that child from her, the book addresses how love must be desired, pursued, and defended. 

The Elusive Moth by Ingrid Winterbach

Translated by Iris Gouws and the author. Open Letter Books. 

Originally published in Afrikaans in 1994, this award-winning book now available in English follows the story of entomologist Karolina Ferreira as she aims for her father’s approval by going to a small Free State to research the survival strategies of a rare moth species.

Live Bait by Fabio Genovesi

Translated by Michael Moore. Other Press.

 A nineteen-year-old “metalhead” in a small Italian town lives mostly in his imagination until he crosses paths with Mirko, a teenage cycling phenomenon, and Tiziana, the head of a local youth center turned refuge for the town’s hard-drinking seniors. Their fates weave together in a story “that is at once achingly funny, bitter, and full of poetic fervor.”

The Symmetry Teacher by Andrei Bitov

Translated by Polly Gannon. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

This novel by Russian writer Andrei Bitov takes the reader through a curious series of episodes that brings three writers together to start a literary society where books are not read or returned, and new members are only accepted if their work is unwritten. Intertwining fantasy and satire, the result is a book that challenges the boundaries between life and literature through a fiction of interwoven fables.