24 Must-Read 2022 Books in Translation

This book collects the short stories of Malika Moustadraf, a feminist icon in Morocco, who lived from 1969 to 2006. She was known for her writing on gender and sexuality. These stories explore the body, class, illness, desire, life on the margins, and more.

Jawbone, from Ecuadorean writer Mónica Ojeda, explores female relationships through the lens of the horror novel. It tells the story of Fernanda and Annelise, two very close friends, and their teacher, Miss Clara. It’s a story of adolescence, obsession, violence, love, and pop culture.

This novel is dystopian futuristic climate fiction, but also cheerful in tone. It describes an ever-growing group of friends who travel around Europe exploring languages and learning about themselves and each other. It’s a novel about, among other things, the power of community.

Set in and around a luxury housing complex, Paradais tells the story of two teenaged boys acting out on their unhappiness with their lives. Like Melchor’s earlier novel Hurricane, this one explores violence, racism, and classism in contemporary Mexico.

Leylâ Erbil lived from 1931 to 2013 and was the first Turkish woman to be nominated for a Nobel. Her novel A Strange Woman, published in 1971, is an important feminist landmark. It tells the story of Nermin, a woman who struggles to be an intellectual in a resistant society.

This novel begins with Domènec walking on a mountainside. A storm comes, he gets hit by lightning, and dies. It’s a novel about tragedy and loss within one family, and also about the land and everything that lives in and on it.

Like Gainza’s earlier book Optic Nerve, this new one dives into the world of art. This time Gainza has written a kind of detective novel that also meditates on the nature of art and authenticity. It tells the story of a legendary art forger and the art critic/auction house employee who tries to uncover her identity.

After her novel The Remainder, a finalist for the International Booker prize, Alia Trabucco Zerán is now publishing a work of true crime. When Women Kill explores four homicides committed by Chilean women during the twentieth century. Trabucco Zerán looks at violence, gender, and transgression.

Song for the Missing takes place in 2011 in Beirut in the midst of the Arab Spring. With unrest occurring around him, Amin writes down memories of Lebanon. This is a novel of friendship, loss, and secrets, with insights into the present and past of the Middle East.

Diamela Eltit is a well-known Chilean author. This novel tells the story of two revolutionaries dealing with the loss of their ideals and the loss of a child. It’s a story about everyday working class life and an exploration of family and political action.

This novel tells the story of a family who moves into a house near the woods. Then strange things begin happening. The eerie woods, inexplicable occurrences, and grim news on the television add up to an unsettling, eerie novel of alienation and catastrophe.

Violets tells the story of San, who works in a flower shop in Seoul. During one summer, she meets a wide range of people and becomes obsessed with a photographer. The novel explores desire, violence, and misogyny through one woman’s search for autonomy.

This novel tells the story of Laurence Barraqué, a French girl, born in 1959. She struggles with her place in a society that sees girls as inferior to boys, first as a girl herself and then as a mother of a daughter. It’s a biographical novel about the lessons we pass down to the next generation.

Belgian writer Jacqueline Harpman lived from 1929 to 2012. This reissue brings her novel back into print for the first time since 1997. It’s a post-apocalyptic tale about 39 women imprisoned in a cave underground and the 40th woman who can rescue them.

This nonfiction book explores pregnancy, birth, early motherhood, and the mysteries of the body. It’s also a philosophical book that draws on artists and writers as it contemplates its subject. It makes an impassioned case for more books on pregnancy and motherhood.

From the author of Breasts and Eggs, this new novel tells the story of a woman who wants to change her life. A copy editor in her 30s, Fuyuko Irie lives in isolation in Tokyo. Her decision to make changes brings painful memories from the past.

Jokha Alharthi’s earlier novel Celestial Bodies won the International Booker Prize. This new novel tells the story of Zuhour, an Omani student in Britain, as she attempts to build a life for herself there. It also looks back to the story of Bint Amir, a woman Zuhour had always thought of as her grandmother.

This collection of journalistic essays tell stories of life in the rain forest and indigenous resistance to environmental destruction. The book explores deforestation, wildfires, climate change, environmental justice, and more.

Bad Handwriting is a collection of stories by the author of Four by Four. The stories explore psychological states, looking at guilt, rebellion, power, abandonment, and loneliness. Many of them are about the complexities of childhood and adolescence.

This novel tells the story of a Swedish writer who travels to Madrid on a three-month stipend. There, she meets a man with an astonishing story. Hearing this story begins an adventure through underground society and leads to an important moment of decision.