Belletrista - A site promoting translated women authored literature from around the world
photo book cover book cover

Roma Tearne: Weaving the Political and the Personal. Joyce Nickel gives us an in-depth look at the Sri Lankan author and her work.

Julie Wakeman-Linn: Kathleen Ambrogi reviews her novel Chasing the Leopard Finding the Lion, and talks with the author.

Sefi Atta's bold new novel is about more than African identity. . . Read chapter one of A Bit of Difference.

`
Reviews
Click on 'Reviews' to see the full list of this issue's reviews...
Book cover
BUILDING WAVES
Taeko Tomioka
Translated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai

First published in Japan almost thirty years ago and now translated into English this year, Building Waves is a fictional and highly symbolic look at the social changes washing over Japan in the early 1980s. These changes include women moving out of their traditional roles…
READ MORE

Reviewed by Joyce Nickel
Book cover
PEDRA CANGA
Tereza Albues
Translated from the Portuguese by Clifford E. Landers

Pedra Canga, the eponymous fictional village, lies in a remote part of Brazil. It is dominated by the Mangueiral, a stone estate separated from the village by walls topped with barbed wire and broken glass on three sides, and the Saranzal River full of snakes and alligators on the fourth.
READ MORE

Reviewed by Jean Hughes Raber
Book cover
MASTER OF THE GRASS
Nina Gabrielyan
Translated from the Russian by Kathleen Cook et al

Master of the Grass is a well-translated collection of one eponymous novella and six short stories by Nina Gabrielyan, a Russian writer of Armenian descent. Motifs of mirrors and dreams run through these stories, and the narratives themselves are more or less dream-like, the boundary between the sleeping and the waking world kept close and permeable…
READ MORE

Reviewed by Tim Jones
Book cover
THE SOMETIMES LAKE
Sandy Bonny

The stories in The Sometimes Lake reflect Sandy Bonny's passion for science. Whether the character is a teacher working with disadvantaged indigenous children in Canada's far north…
READ MORE

Reviewed by Joyce Nickel
Book cover
THE MURDER OF HALLAND
Pia Juul
Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken

With a glut of Scandinavian crime fiction entering English translation it would be easy to overlook Pia Juul's The Murder of Halland. However, Juul is one of Denmark's most celebrated literary writers, and her foray into 'Scandi Crime' is a surprising subversion of the genre, rather than an attempt to jump on a bandwagon.
READ MORE

Reviewed by Andy Barnes
Book cover
DAUGHTER OF SILENCE
Manuela Fingueret
Translated from the Spanish by Darrell B. Lockhart

A caste of murderers. The Nazis gassed, starved, humiliated. Here they insult, torture, rape. Caste of murderers….Am I here or there?
READ MORE

Reviewed by Andy Barnes


Angélica Gorodischer Book Cover
The noted and versatile Argentinian author has a newly translated novel forthcoming in February. Read an excerpt of Trafalgar.
Uzma Aslam Khan Book Cover
A tribute to the nomadic peoples in the mountains of Pakistan and its border neighbors, Uzma's new novel Thinner Than Skin is also a love story. Read an excerpt.
Links We Like
Bookmark and Share