Tag Archives: translated

Review: THE GRAVEYARD APARTMENT by Mariko Koike (trans. Deborah Boliver Boehm, 2016)

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Genre: Adult Horror
Year Release in English: 2016
Source: Kindle Copy

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Content warnings: mention of suicide, a pet parrot dies at the start of the story (aftermath depicted), there is a dog and the dog suffers the same fate as the family

Misao, Teppei, and Tamao have recently moved into an apartment too good to be true: spacious and cheap. The only problem with the complex is that it’s surrounded by a graveyard, hence the title. Shortly after moving in, unsettling happenings escalate to the point that everyone moves out, leaving the fledgling family on their own to deal with supernatural forces beyond their understanding.

If you’re someone who enjoys the tropes and presentation of j-horror, this will be a treat.

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ARC Review: OUR SHARE OF NIGHT by Mariana Enríquez (2023)

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Genre: Adult Horror
Year Release: February 7, 2023
Buy Links: Bookshop.org | Unabridged Books | Libro.fm

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Read a NetGalley eARC
Content warning: AIDS epidemic, child abuse, human sacrifice, murder, human trafficking, gaslighting, mental illness, explicit sexual content, body horror, blood, dead parent (the mother), dictatorship, mentions of political uprising, nonconsensual medical experimentation, suicidal ideation, knives, cutting, there is a dog and terrible things happen to the dog

At its core, this book is a horror. It’s got cults, it’s got something akin to a vampire that fuels the world’s most rich and powerful at the expense of local children, and there’s a heart-wrenching exploration of the ways parental protection can actually cause more harm than good. Gaspar and his father, Juan, are on the run from their family and the terrifying legacy they weave. Upsetting in its horror, heart-wrenching in the depiction of parents trying their best but failing miserably, and the tension between moving on and finding normalcy.

A great cult book, a great family saga, with mysteries and supernatural treats galore.

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Review: DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD by Olga Tokarczuk (trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, 2019)

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Genre: Adult Mystery
Year Release in English: 2019
Source: Physical Copy

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Content warnings: violence against animal, dead pets, hunting, misogyny, blood, bore, vomiting, blood in stool (mentioned), alcoholism

A woman with a deep love for animals is at the center of this mystery where men with violent tendencies towards the local wildlife start appearing dead in her vicinity. The source material for the movie, Spoor (2017), I definitely had to give this one a read, and it’s incredible how well both versions of the story work in their respective media.

Much smaller in scope than The Books of Jacob, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a character study of a recluse who loves animals living among hunters and

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Review: THE BOOKS OF JACOB by Olga Tokarczuk (trans. Jennifer Croft, 2022)

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Genre: Adult Historical Fiction
Year Release: 2022
Source: Libro.fm

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Listened to the audiobook
Content warnings: antisemitism, child death, rape, pogroms, prejudice, discrimination, vomiting, death of a parent

Ambitious is not a big enough word to describe the majesty of this novel. At a whooping 955 pages, this book is not just about Jacob Frank. Tokarczuk paints a mosaic of eighteenth century Europe centering the rise and fall of a messianic cult leader Jacob Frank. Starting in a village in what is now Ukraine and stretching across Poland and Lithuania, this story isn’t just about Frank, but about the people around him as well, from priests to rabbis to princes to village folks and so much more.

Vast in scope, yet this work is simultaneously personal and deeply human, showcasing every possible perspective of class and religion in one narrow slice of Europe.

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Review: DAY OF THE OPRICHNIK by Vladimir Sorokin (trans. Jamey Gambrell) (2012)

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Genre: Adult Speculative Fiction (Translated)
Year Release: 2012
Source: Unabridged Bookstore

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Trigger Warning: gang rape, violence, state-sanctioned terrorism, drug use, a fish swimming up one’s veins into their brain, literal book burning, state censorship, beheaded dogs

Andrei Komiaga, our protagonist, is the fourth-highest ranking member of the oprichnina in a future version of Russia that’s a blend of Ivan the Terrible’s reign with Vladimir Putin’s current policies. We follow a day in Komiaga’s life which involves terrorizing aristocrats, censoring literature, bribery, and not one but two rituals with his fellow officers.

Disturbing, intense, and brilliant, this is one of those books where if the Wikipedia summary is enough to make you not approach this one, I do not blame you.

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Review: REVENGE by Yōko Ogawa (2013)

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Genre: Adult Horror Short Story Collection
Year Release: 2010 (2022 on audio)
Source: Library Audiobook

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Listened to the audiobook
Trigger warnings: death of a child, blood, gore, surgery, mold, vomiting

My introduction to Yoko Ogawa is via this collection of short stories, each one scarier than the one that came before it. We follow a mourning mother, lovers in a quarrel, doctors too committed to their jobs, doctors not committed enough, and scoundrels slithering in the dark.

This short story collection itself reads like a single novel with several narrators, several which appear in different stories. Masterful in the way it amps the terror of otherwise pedestrian life.

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Review: THE ROUTE OF ICE AND SALT by José Luis Zárate (2021)

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Genre: Adult Horror
Year Release: 2021 (1998 in Spanish)
Source: Library Audiobook

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Listened to the audiobook
Content/Trigger warnings: discussion of a hate crime, voyeurism, nightmares, PTSD

Continuing the series of vampire books we, as a culture, were not privy to until very recently (first of which is The Gilda Stories), this novella is a retelling of Dracula’s journey to England from the point of view of the ship’s captain. It originally came out in 1998, but debuted in English last year.

This novella is horny and gothic with all the pricks and discomfort of long months of an icy sea.

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Review: THE RESTING PLACE by Camilla Sten (2022)

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Genre: Adult Thriller
Year Release: 2022
Source: Library Audiobook

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Listened to the audiobook
Content warning: murder, miscarriage, vomiting, gore, suicide, child abuse, child neglect

Eleanor has prosopagnosia – face blindness, which is very convenient when an unknown assailant leaves her grandmother, Vivianne, dead before a routine weekly dinner. She learns from a lawyer that her grandmother left an estate, but the stay turns deadly when accidents start taking place and it’s a race against something to unearth all of Vivianne’s secrets.

This thriller has a tightly knit mystery alternating between past and present within an ancestral manor.

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Review: AT NIGHT ALL BLOOD IS BLACK by David Diop (2018)

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Genre: Adult Historical Fiction (Translated)
Year Release: 2018
Source: Unabridged Bookstore

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Content Warning: gore, violence, murder, trauma, PTSD

Alfa Ndiaye is a Senegalese man and a soldier with the French army during World War I. His more-than-brother, Medemba Diop, begs for death, but Alfa can’t do it. This haunts. What follows is an exploration of trauma and violence and a twist that made me press the book against my face and yell.

This book is hypnotic and another adventure in “the less you know going in, the better.” Like a lot of books that are considered literary fiction, not a lot happens. The event of Alfa failing to mercy kill Mademba takes place both on- and off-screen. There’s no plot, there’s just a lot of processing. There’s also an overt sexual overtone to the seduction of war and the emergent forced proximity that’s appropriately uncomfortable.

It’s brutal and unflinching in places, so if up-close descriptions of violence and dehumanization of enemies and allies isn’t your thing, look elsewhere. War is as much a character as the trauma and the literal players in this story. It’s such a masterful work of prose and translation. This is definitely one of those that I’ll be revisiting because there is so much to chew on.

Review: TENDER IS THE FLESH by Agustina Bazterrica (2020)

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Genre: Adult Literary Fiction Horror
Year Release: 2021
Source: Audible

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Listened to the audiobook
Content warnings: cannibalism, slaughterhouse machinations, humans as sustenance, sexual abuse, rape, blood play, violence against puppies

In the alternate universe in which this book takes place, a virus has made all meat poisonous to humans, except for that certain hunger. The rest is told from the perspective of Marcos, a worker at one of the facilities whose life is falling apart. Until he’s “gifted” with a female, and things get worse from there.

While low on plot and shock value beyond its conceit, the ending punched me in the face on a journey that is very frank with its depiction and high in its interiority.

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