Now I Surrender

By Álvaro Enrigue

Translated by Natasha Wimmer

Harvill Secker

In a novel that roams fearlessly across styles, eras, and countries, one of Mexico’s outstanding storytellers layers an account of a family road trip across the American Southwest onto a retelling of the defeat of legendary Apache warrior Geronimo, in the late 19th century, after years of pursuit by the American and Mexican armies.

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My Women

By Yuliia Iliukha

Translated by Hanna Leliv

Indigo Press

In this delicate collection of short stories, the devastation of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is told through the voices of women – the mothers, wives, widows, daughters, survivors, fighters, evacuees, the ones who left, the ones who stayed behind. A tender and heartbreaking reminder of the human price of war.

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Exemplary Humans

By Juliana Leite

Translated by Zoë Perry

Two Lines Press

Locked in her Rio de Janeiro apartment while an unnamed epidemic rages outside, near-centenarian Natalia pursues small pleasures, remembers a life filled with purpose, and puzzles at the void left by people and things she loved and lost. Memories of Brazil’s dictatorship swirl uneasily in the background as Natalia ponders the only meaningful question: “How to live?”

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I'll Take the Fire

By Leïla Slimani

Translated by Sam Taylor

Faber & Faber

In the final instalment of her semi-autobiographical trilogy, the French-Moroccan author follows sisters Mia and Inès, who leave their native Morocco to study in Paris. Echoing real family stories, including the wrongful imprisonment of Slimani’s father, the novel explores issues of immigration, identity and belonging as the sisters strive to find their foothold.

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Taiwan Travelogue

By Yáng Shuāng-zǐ

Translated by Lin King

And Other Stories

Presented in the guise of a Japanese writer’s account of her travels across Japanese-occupied Taiwan in the 1930’s, and told through the prism of an increasingly complex relationship with her local interpreter, this year’s winner of the International Booker Prize is a richly multi-layered meditation on language and longing.

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Best summer books of 2026: Fiction in translation