3 New Foreign Novels Worth Knowing About

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Reading is a great habit to pick up at any age and time. Especially as the colder months are coming up, there’s nothing quite like curling up and escaping to another world.

This month, there are a number of newly translated novels available from foreign authors. These books provide insight into the traditions of other cultures and explore subjects such as feminism, happiness, the outsider experience, and memory.

Here are three of the books that we are most excited to read:

Where The Wild Ladies Are
(Aoko Matsuda, translated by Polly Barton)

Matsuda recalls a number of traditional Japanese folktales with a modern, feminist twist.

Earthlings
(Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori)

In this imaginative story, a child misfit comes to wonder whether she may be an alien. At her home in the city, she is discontent with her place in an unpleasant society, but she discovers an inner power as she remembers trips to the mountains in the summer and questions the mundane reality of life. 

Invisible Ink
(Patrick Modiano, translated by Mark Polizzotti)

A #1 Bestseller in France, this novel is a mystery that tackles the illusions of memory. A private detective, haunted by the clues of his original investigation which proved futile, reopens the cold case thirty years later, compelled by reasons that he cannot explain.