Best books of 2019: Fiction in translation

The Society of Reluctant Dreamers , by José Eduardo Agualusa, translated by Daniel Hahn, Harvill Secker, RRP£14.99

When Daniel Benchimol finds a camera containing photos of the woman he has been seeing in his dreams, he sets off on a journey of discovery that will lead him from Angola to Mozambique to Brazil. Meanwhile, his daughter and her friends are vigorously pursuing their own dream: freedom from oppression in Angola.

This Tilting World , by Colette Fellous, translated by Sophie Lewis, Les Fugitives, RRP£13/Two Lines Press, RRP$16.95

In her first work to be published in English, Fellous, the award-winning author of more than 20 novels, blends the public horror of a terrorist attack in her native Tunisia with the deeply personal account of her own losses — of a friend, and of her father. A moving meditation on exile and identity.

Optic Nerve , by María Gainza, translated by Thomas Bunstead, Harvill Secker, RRP£14.99/Catapult, RRP$25

“I know, this is about as far from hard-nosed criticism as you can get, but isn’t all artwork — or all decent art — a mirror?” asks the narrator of this debut work of fiction by Argentine art critic-turned-novelist Gainza, in a delightfully digressive reflection on perception, parenthood and the restorative power of looking at paintings.

Vivian , by Christina Hesselholdt, translated by Paul Russell Garrett, Fitzcarraldo Editions, RRP£12.99/$17.95

“Art is not somewhere you feel comfortable,” explains the protagonist in this fictionalised portrayal of Vivian Maier, a quiet and self-effacing nanny who has been posthumously recognised as a remarkable and prolific street photographer. A playful and affectionate depiction of a complex artist by one of Denmark’s outstanding authors.

Will and Testament: A Novel, by Vigdis Hjorth, translated by Charlotte Barslund, Verso, RRP£10.99/$19.95

Readers pining for a dose of brooding Norwegian writing in the style of Karl Ove Knausgaard may be drawn to this account of a woman’s struggle to achieve reconciliation with a family that refuses to recognise she was the victim of abuse at the hands of her own father.

Fly Already , by Etgar Keret, translated by Jessica Cohen, Nathan Englander, Yardenne Greenspan, Sondra Silverston and Miriam Shlesinger, Granta, RRP£12.99/Riverhead, RRP$27

Surreal comedy and existential tragedy coexist in the award-winning collection of darkly sardonic stories by the Israeli author described as “one of the most important writers alive”. From a couple’s quarrel in the Holocaust Remembrance Centre to a tale narrated by a Hitler clone, Keret’s stories range from the heartbreaking to the absurd.

The Ditch , by Herman Koch, translated by Sam Garrett, Picador, RRP£14.99/ Hogarth, RRP$26

Middle-class malaise was at the heart of the Dutch author’s savagely satirical novel, The Dinner. His latest work mines similar themes in telling the story of Robert Walter, mayor of Amsterdam, whose ungrounded suspicions about his wife’s fidelity call into question his tolerance and open-mindedness, causing his sense of identity to unravel.

The Sun on My Head , by Geovani Martins, translated by Julia Sanches, Faber, RRP£10.99/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, RRP$22

Martins’ literary debut — a collection of 13 short stories set in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro where he grew up — caused a sensation in Brazil. Streetwise youths and petty criminals are depicted in all their bravado and vulnerability, amid the daily terror and the humour of life in the city’s periphery.

The Memory Police , by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder, Harvill Secker, RRP£12.99/Pantheon, RRP$25.95

Things are disappearing on an unnamed Japanese island: birds, flowers, musical instruments, books. Soon after, the words once used to name them are erased from people’s vocabularies. It is the job of the officious Memory Police to ensure that recollections of the vanished objects — or the missing individuals — are expunged.

Will , by Jeroen Olyslaegers, translated by David Colmer, Pushkin, RRP£14.99

Set in 1941, in Nazi-occupied Antwerp, the first novel by the Flemish author to be translated into English tells the story of Wilfried Wils, an “all-too-seldom-celebrated poet”, drafted into the role of auxiliary police officer and finding his loyalties and affections tested as he seeks to get by.

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