2021 is set to be another great year for world literature becoming available in English. We'll be keeping track of any new books of world literature we come across on this page, though obviously there are many books we'll miss.
Untraceable by Russian novelist Sergei Lebedev is now available in English, translated by Antonina Bouis. It's a thriller featuring a deadly poison used to assassinate state enemies. Yes, it's a work of fiction.
May sees the publication in English, for the first time, of a book by Syrian novelist Faysal Khartash. His book, Roundabout of Death, has been translated by Max Weiss and is set in Aleppo in the midst of the Syrian civil war.
There's also a new and much needed abridged translation of the Chinese classic, The Monkey King.
Untraceable
Sergei Lebedev and Antonina Bouis (translator)
Untraceable, by Russian novelist Sergei Lebedev (born 1981), is a thriller that investigates what leads people to develop lethal poisons and use them on others in the name of the state. In atmosphere, it's a mixture of Death in Venice and John le Carré. Its urgency comes not from its pace, but from the fact that this is going on in the real world: the Russian state really does seem to think that publicly poisoning some of its opponents is a good idea.
Roundabout of Death
by Faysal Khartash & Max Weiss (translator)
To read a novel set in Aleppo, Syria, in 2012, is a glimpse into what it was like to be living there at that time and this book, by Aleppo-born author Faysal Khartash, is an incredible gift. It's about daily life, buying vegetables, visiting your mother, but against a terrible backdrop of a city under constant bombardment. There's also a side trip to ISIS headquarters in Raqqa.
Monkey King: Journey to the West
Wu Cheng'en and Julia Lovell (translator)
Monkey King or Journey to the West is one of the classics of Chinese literature, written at the end of the 16th century. The story is based on a real historical figure, Tripitaka, who in the late 620s travelled to India, bringing back Buddhist manuscripts to China. The 16th century, fantastical version of the story, attributed to Wu Cheng'en, may not correspond with historical reality, but offers a wonderful snapshot of imperial China and its very distinctive worldview.
This is a new, abridged translation by Julia Lovell, one of the West's leading Sinologists. As well as ensuring the book is very funny in modern English, she also gives us a very neat introduction to the book and what it tells us about Ming-era China. "Belying the old cliché of imperial China as self-sufficient, isolationist and xenophobic, Journey to the West—an odyssey out of China, to attain the wisdom of Indian Buddhist civilization—tells a different story: one of Chinese fascination with foreign exotica."
Editor's note: the Penguin clothbound edition of this book is beautiful.
