Summer books of 2017: Fiction in translation

The 7th Function of Language , by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor, Harvill Secker, RRP£16.99/FSG, RRP$25

As a follow-up to his acclaimed HHhH, about the assassination of Nazi security chief Reinhard Heydrich, Binet has delivered an entertainingly highbrow whodunnit in which ill-humoured detective Jacques Bayard must navigate the café society and intellectual salons of 1980s Paris to find out the truth behind the seemingly accidental death of philosopher Roland Barthes.

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Compass , by Mathias Énard, translated by Charlotte Mandell, Fitzcarraldo, RRP£14.99/New Directions, RRP£26.95

Musicologist Franz struggles to sleep as he remembers his time in the Middle East and pines after historian Sarah. The winner of France’s Prix Goncourt, shortlisted for 2017’s Man Booker International, is an erudite and timely reminder of the myriad linkages and crossovers between the cultures and peoples of east and west.

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Things We Lost in the Fire , by Mariana Enríquez, translated by Megan McDowell, Portobello Books, RRP£12.99/Hogarth, RRP$24

Teeming with death, sex and the macabre, this short-story collection by one of Argentina’s rising literary talents might best be described as Buenos Aires gothic. Her characters are steeped in situations where the lines between reality and morbid imagination begin to blur, and wild revenge fantasies take on a life of their own.

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A Horse Walks into a Bar , by David Grossman, translated by Jessica Cohen, Jonathan Cape, RRP£14.99/Knopf, RRP$25.95

“I’m a bottom-feeder, am I not?” asks Dovaleh Greenstein, the Israeli comic at the centre of this year’s Man Booker International Prize winner. “It’s a pretty pathetic form of entertainment, let’s be honest.” Behind his provocative stand-up routine, however, lie some serious ruminations about the role of art in deeply divided societies.

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The Unseen , by Roy Jacobsen, translated by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw, MacLehose Press, RRP£14.99

“An island is a cosmos in a nutshell”. The cosmos in Jacobsen’s bestselling novel is a speck of land off Norway’s north-western coast on which three generations of the Barrøy family grapple with poverty, isolation and nature. A quiet reflection on resilience and survival, shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker International Prmcize.

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The Last Wolf , by László Krasznahorkai, translated by George Szirtes and John Batki, Tuskar Rock, RRP£12.99/New Directions, RRP$15.95

The hunting of wild animals is the theme uniting this volume’s titular novella and the two short stories published alongside it. In the main tale, an old philosopher — the author of “unreadable books full of ponderously negative sentences” — explains how he was lured to the Spanish region of Extremadura to track down the man who killed the province’s last wolf.

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Men Without Women , by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen, Harvill Secker, RRP£16.99/Knopf, RRP$25.95

Characters are driven by curiosity, unrequited love and unextinguished longings in the first collection of short stories for more than a decade by the perennial Nobel favourite. Moments of melancholy and humour mix with acute observation in the latest offering by Japan’s master storyteller.

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Mirror, Shoulder, Signal , by Dorthe Nors, translated by Misha Hoekstra, Pushkin, RRP£10.99

When feisty forty-something Sonja, a Danish translator of violent Swedish crime novels, is dumped by her boyfriend for “a twenty-something girl who still wore French braids”, she seeks new freedoms and a renewed sense of purpose in learning to drive. A mordant and carefully observed novel.

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Flights , by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft, Fitzcarraldo, RRP£12.99

This ambitious and meandering novel by one of Poland’s most celebrated authors is a meditation on movement and travel, interweaving contemporary tales with historical vignettes about a 17th-century Dutch anatomist, and about the journey made by Chopin’s heart from Paris to Warsaw.

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The End , by Fernanda Torres, translated by Alison Entrekin, Restless Books, RRP£9.99

Set in Rio de Janeiro, this fine literary debut from one of Brazil’s most distinguished actors tells the stories of five men as they approach their inevitable (and in some cases premature) ends. By turns tragic and hilarious, the novel is about friendship, betrayal and excess, and about male fury against the ravages of old age.

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The Explosion Chronicles , by Yan Lianke, translated by Carlos Rojas, Chatto & Windus, RRP£14.99/Grove Press, RRP$26

In this absurdist satire of China’s rapid urbanisation, the ancient village of Explosion is transformed into a megalopolis fuelled by excess and corruption. Daring and often hilarious.