My childhood years were spent kneeling before a laptop, biting my nails and ruining my already atrocious eyesight as I devoured fan-translated scans of manga series, called Scanlations, that hadn’t been published in English yet.

To create these scanlations, unpaid ‘fan’ translators would scan thousands of pages of the manga, meticulously scrub out the original Japanese text in the speech bubbles, and input new translated text before re-uploading the pages online. Sometimes, in a badly rendered series, you could see a palimpsest of barely erased Japanese hiragana and Chinese kanji beneath the latest English-language text. Reading these online copies also meant that after every chapter, the poor Japanese-Chinese-English scanlators might hijack a few panels to tragically beg for volunteers to pitch in and help them translate the manga, or at least just clean up the scans for other translators.

Sometimes, there would be random birthday wishes passing between the translators. (Imagine seeing your favourite character being tortured to death by the villain at the end of a chapter, only for the next page to scream out HAPPY BIRTHDAY DARLING COOKIE-POOKIE CHAN!!!!!). Others would leave behind their grumblings, revelations, fan theories, annotations, linguistic musings, etc. in the narrative, much like the internet age reincarnation of medieval monks copying out an endless manuscript.

Here is a (partially censored) example, purely for academic understanding. Read it from right to left:

The process was a beautiful one, because these mostly Asian volunteers had a far better understanding of Japanese culture than an American or a British translator working at a mainstream publishing house, so by the time the licensed English-language versions rolled out a few years later, I had taught myself Japanese in frustration, which led me to see how poorly executed the Westernised versions were.

And this is how I started a love affair with translated literature.

As I slowly outgrew manga, I ran to translated literature in order to escape the MFA-style literary novels and fae folk romances that dominated the English-language bestsellers list. A few years and about 50 literary voyages later, here are the books that not only took me to their lands, but also drove splinters of their countries and people into my heart before snapping off the ends to make sure I would feel them forever.

You can find my ongoing reading list below without any more ado, or read on to better understand my approach and the tools I used.

As far as possible, I tried to read a translated book by an author who was native to their country or region (meaning: not an illiterate white transplant writing about his sexual adventures with the non-white locals). My definition of the word ‘native’ also included refugees, immigrants, and second-generation writers. Whenever possible, though, I also tried to locate and read an English-language novel from the same country; this strategy worked well with India, Turkey, Palestine, and similar countries. You’ll see these titles in the list as well.

It does not fail to make me snort that finding and reading a translated novel that was originally snuck out of North Korea (Friend by Nam-nyong Paek) was easier than accessing translated literature from a number of African countries. This, I believe, eloquently captures the state of the mainstream English-language publishing industry today.

On the other end, numerous independent publishers are doing their best to uplift both international writers and translators. My favourite so far is Peirene Press, whose translated short novels and novellas are a perfect way to explore a new country and gobble up a book that perfectly fits into your evening.

Tilted Axis and Speaking Tiger Books are also great places to start looking for more international novels, apart from university presses (which are admittedly far too expensive).

Furthermore, I love this tool from ‘Which Book’ that quite literally makes you travel the globe to explore a book list from every country, along with a short summary and some commentary for you to judge if the novel would be up your alley.

In my next post, I’ll actually share with you some translated novels that shook me, but for now, I hope you have what you need to start a world tour of your own.

On the other hand, if you are a more seasoned traveller than I am, please do share your own recommendations, and help me fill up the blank spaces in my reading list.

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A Final Note

Though I would never consider myself in any way equal to the authors on these exalted reading lists, I just want to put it out there that I too have written a novel.

If you are ever travelling the world in books and want to sample something from India, please do consider giving my adult fantasy debut Body Traitor’s History a try!

Cover image: Allegory for Translation – Gold flakes on black painted paper by S. Venugopal, 2024