Women Faculty Book Club

The Women Faculty Book Club at FIU, like so many others, meets to affirm our membership in a community of book lovers. With each work we discuss, we deepen our shared experience, learn more about each other and ourselves, and honor the heritage of women’s creativity across eras and cultures.

For more information about joining the book club, please contact Joyce Peterson at petersoj@fiu.edu.

Find below a listing of the AY 2018-19 Women Faculty Book Club books, or browse our picks from previous years back to 1991. The past-year publications encompass our chosen record of women’s writing over more than 25 years. We hope you find it a useful guide to leisure reading.

See below for more information about the Women Faculty Book Club!

Summer 2019

The theme for our summer reading is fiction in translation, written and translated by women since the year 2000. Please find 3 summer lists below (in the dropdowns). The first is the short list of 5 works from which you are requested to read at least one.

Should you feel the need for more than the short list there is also a long list below to take you further. In both cases there is a link to a review with each title to help you decide which book or books you might want to choose.

Finally, there is also a third list of "classics," works written before 2000 and considered to be among the best. There are no links to reviews here, but these are well-enough known that you could easily check them out on Google to get an idea. All in all, there is an impressive diversity of languages and countries.

Enjoy your summer and impress your friends with your reading choices.

Women Faculty Book Club bookmark, 3rd edition. Follow link "View or download..." for PDF version of full bookmark or follow the link "Past years" for past book listings.

View or download our bookmark with past books list

1. Summer to September 2019 - Short List of 5 Works
Fiction in Translation by Women Authors with Women Translators:
Originally Published 2000-2019

Short List – Please Read at Least One Book from the Short List

Celestial Bodies, by Jokha Alharthi, first published in 2010 in Arabic, translated by Marilyn Booth in 2018, and nominated for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize.

Celestial Bodies “is a densely woven, deeply imagined tour de force that follows Omani families between the 1880s and the early years of the 21 ^st century.” https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/celestial-bodies-shines-a-light-on-omani-literature-1.842326

The End of Days, by Jenny Erpenbeck, first published in 2012 in German, and translated by Susan Bernofsky in 2016.

The End of Days “opens with the death of an infant in 1902 near the eastern border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and ends with the death, nine decades later, of a woman in an old people’s home in Berlin, but the book, bracketed as it is by death, is so alive that one closes it gently.” https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/04/02/jenny-erpenbeck-impossible-challenge/

The Vegetarian, by Han Kang, first published in 2007 in Korean, translated by Deborah Smith in 2016, Winner of the Man Booker International Prize in 2016.

The Vegetarian “zigzags between domestic thriller, transformation parable and arborphiliac meditation…there is no end to the horrors that rattle in and out of this ferocious, magnificently death-affirming novel.” “All the trigger warnings on earth cannot prepare a reader for the traumas of this Korean author’s translated debut in the Anglophone world.” So, consider yourselves warned. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/books/review/the-vegetarian-by-han-kang.html

Mirror, Shoulder, Signal, by Dorthe Nors, first published in 2015 in Danish, translated by Misha Hoekstra in 2017, short listed for Man Booker International in 2017

Mirror, Shoulder, Signal tells of Sonja and her driving lessons. “We’re locked in Sonja’s consciousness, but the novel never becomes claustrophobic. Opening it feels like opening a window -there’s a bracing freshness and chill to the writing and the unforced ease of a song.” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/books/review-mirror-shoulder-signal-dorthe-nors.html

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga Tokarczuk, first published in 2009 in Polish, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones in 2018, short-listed for the Man Booker International in 2019.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is “murder mystery…a primer on the politics of vegetarianism, a dark feminist comedy, an existentialist fable, and a paean to William Blake. And for one reviewer it is “the most bravura translation performance I have ever seen.” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/21/drive-your-plow-over-the-bones-of-the-dead-review
2. Summer to September 2019 - Long List of Translated Works
Long List of Translated Fiction by Women (for those who want more.) These also have female translators and date in first publication from 2000 on. I have provided a link to a review for each of these works.

The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz ( Arabic) https://www.npr.org/2016/05/05/476048221/the-queue-carries-on-a-dystopian-lineage

This Too Shall Pass by Milena Busquets (Spanish) https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/05/books/review/this-too-shall-pass-by-milena-busquets.html

The Last Lover by Can Xue (Chinese) https://www.ft.com/content/9fe36ebe-5465-11e4-b2ea-00144feab7de

Always Coca Cola by Alexandra Chreiteh (Arabic) https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/book-review/alexandra-chreitehs-always-coca-cola

Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck (German) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/12/books/review/go-went-gone-jenny-erpenbeck.html

Umami by Laia Jufresa (Spanish) https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2016/november/umami-laia-jufresa

The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli (Spanish) https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/books/review/the-story-of-my-teeth-by-valeria-luiselli.html

Seeing Red by Lina Meruane (Spanish) https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-seeing-red-20160424-story.html

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (Japamese) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/books/review-convenience-store-woman-sayaka-murata.html

The Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa (French) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/may/24/featuresreviews.guardianreview11

Mrs. Sartoris by Elke Schmitter (German) https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/08/featuresreviews.guardianreview17

A Greater Music by Bae Suah (Korean) http://www.theliteraryreview.org/book-review/a-review-of-a-greater-music-by-bae-suah/

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk (Polish) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/books/review-flights-olga-tokarczuk.html/

The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya (Russian) https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-slynx?variant=1094932585
3. Summer to September 2019 - Classics Written Before 2000
Published Well before 2000 and Considered Classics
(a few of these slipped by with male translators)

Eileen Chang, Love in a Fallen City, 1943 in Chinese

Simone Schwarz-Bart, The Bridge of Beyond, 1972 in French (Guadeloupe)

Natalia Ginzburg, Family Lexicon, 1963 in Italian

Simone de Beauvoir, The Blood of Others, 1945 in French, also The Mandarins, 1954

Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits, 1982 in Spanish (Chile)

Cora Sandel, Alberta Trilogy, 1926, 1931, 1939 in Norwegian

Nawal el Saawi, Woman at Point Zero, 1975 in Arabic (Egypt)

Marguerite Duras, Abahn Sabana David, 1970 in French

Anne Garreta, The Sphinx, 1986 in French

Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart, 1943 in Portuguese (Brazil)

Elsa Morante, History, 1974 in Italian

Mariama Ba, So Long a Letter, 1981 in French (Senegal)

Marie Vieux-Chauvet, Dance on the Volcano, 1957 in French (Haiti), also Love, Anger, Madness, 1968

Christa Wolf, Divided Heaven, 1963 in German, also The Quest for Christa T, 1968

Merce Rodoreda, The Time of the Doves, 1986 in Catalan

Tove Jansson, The Summer Book, 1972 in Swedish, also The True Deceiver, 1982

Kadya Molodovsky, A Jewish Refugee in New York, 1942 in Yiddish