Our essentials in foreign and French literature

Countless translations have arrived in French this year, from well-established authors, but also from new feathers that we can’t wait to reread. And in France, chance made sure that five strong and committed female voices particularly caught our attention. Here are the outstanding titles published in 2021 in French and foreign literature.

Laila Maalouf
Press

Foreign literature

Shuggie Bath, Douglas Stuart

This first Booker Prize-winning novel is our favorite of the year. The story of a boy who grew up in the shadow of an alcoholic mother, in the poor neighborhoods of Glasgow in the 1980s, reminded us of Romain Gary’s great novel, The life ahead, in his way of adopting the point of view of a child who witnesses the decline of the adults around him. Heartwarming and unforgettable.

Globe, 496 pages, translated by Charles Bonnot

Memorial Drive, Natasha Trethewey

It is another heartbreaking portrait of a mother, autobiographical this time, since we discover the tragic fate, told by her daughter, of a woman victim of domestic violence and then murdered, in the southern United States. The author, who has published several collections of poetry in English, will have taken 30 years before being able to tell the poignant story, superbly written, of this drama which still haunts her to this day.

Éditions de l’Olivier, 224 pages, translated by Céline Leroy

Komodo, David Vann

Since Sukkwan Island, David Vann knew how to build a singular and unique work of its kind. We are far from the darkness of his first novels, like Desolations Where Unclean, in this title which rather recalls Aquarium with that glimmer of optimism that points at the end of the tunnel. But as always, the uneasiness is very present when one interferes in the twisted bonds which maintain a mother and her two children, during a brief stay in Indonesia. Magistral.

Gallmeister, 304 pages, translated by Laura Derajinski

The Villains, Camila Sosa Villada

Here is a daring first novel which comes to us from Argentina and which echoes the life of the author. This tells the story of the sorority uniting a group of trans prostitutes who stalk customers every night in a park in Córdoba. The violence and cruelty of which they are victims are described without shame and with a humanity that pays homage to the forgotten, the marginalized and the excluded from society.

Métailié, 208 pages, translated by Laura Alcoba

Under our feet the ocean, Amity Gaige

Alongside Charlotte McConaghy’s first novel, Migrations, also released this year, this title by the American Amity Gaige is one of two fascinating journeys that transported us far to sea in those moments when we needed to escape the most, during the year that has passed. There is nothing heavenly about this sailing trip off the coast of Central America… Bewitching and of great beauty.

Gallmeister, 384 pages, translated by Juliane Nivelt