literature in translation
FICTION
Join our host Adam for In Translation, a book club dedicated to exploring the richness of translated world literature with a focus on contemporary international publishing and recently translated work. This book club will attempt to explore as many parts of the world as we can, always attempting to find work translated from as many world languages as possible. We'll focus mostly on fiction, but who knows, maybe we'll veer off into other genres and forms. We’ll meet every month!
You can find some of Adam’s staff picks here.
The final meeting of 2025 for In Translation will be on Thursday, November 20th, at 7pm. We will be reading THE ARTIFICIAL SILK GIRL by Irmgard Keun, and translated from Kathie von Ankum. You can purchase the book by clicking here.
About the book:
This enthralling tale of a "material girl" in 1930s Berlin is the masterpiece of a literary icon, rediscovered and restored to the same heights as such luminaries as Isherwood and Brecht. In 1931 a young woman writer living in Germany penned her answer to Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the era of cinematic glamour: The Artificial Silk Girl. Though a Nazi censorship board banned Irmgard Keun's work in 1933 and destroyed all existing copies, the novel survived, as fresh and relevant today as the day it was written. The Artificial Silk Girl is the story of Doris, beautiful and striving, who vows to write down all that happens to her as the star of her own life story. But instead of scripting what she hopes will be a quick rise to fame and fortune as either an actress or the mistress/wife of a wealthy man, she describes a slow descent into near prostitution and homelessness. Prewar Berlin is not the dazzling and exciting city of promise it seems; Doris unwittingly reveals a bleak, seamy urban landscape.
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