14th August Newsletter
What’s On At Veranda
Welcome, welcome! Wherever this newsletter finds you, by the sea, up a mountain or just lounging around in the back garden, we hope you’re enjoying a slower pace, a change of scene, or whatever it is that floats your boat in the summer months. Here at the shop, summertime’s in full flow – holiday books, overseas visitors and maxed-out aircon. But below the surface, Veranda is simmering with Back-To-School energy – we’re ordering books for September and October, and making plans for Autumn events, competitions and our 2nd (!!) birthday party.
We don’t want you to miss out, so keep an eye on the newsletter, our website (link below) and instagram (@verandabookshop). Even better, call in for a browse and a chat – everyone welcome!
This week’s visitors
We had a fantastic afternoon of books, chat and book chat on Wednesday when the team from Bookshop.org descended on us as part of their quarterly get-together. Bookshop.org is an online bookshop which supports independent bookshops in the face of increased online book-buying (especially from don’tmakemesayit.com).
Every purchase on the site benefits indie bookshops – directly, if you specify your favourite shop (Hi), and you can find recommendations from us, from other indie bookshops, and from the exceedingly well-read bookshop.org team themselves. We also recommend their app where you can easily download ebooks and audiobooks.
Veranda is first and foremost a bricks-and-mortar shop, and our website can only reflect what we have in stock. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, then bookshop.org is the best alternative – they’ve got it all, and we’ll still receive a share of the purchase price, which makes a huge difference to us as a small business.
Check them out (link below), or ask us for more info the next time you’re at the shop.
Women In Translation Month
You know we hardly need an excuse to celebrate Translated Fiction – but August is a really special month, dedicated as it is to the championing of Women In Translation (WIT).
In a 2013 article in Words Without Borders, translator Alison Anderson provided statistical evidence to support her hunch that women writers in translation into English were grossly underrepresented. None of this came as a surprise to the literary translation community who rapidly mobilised, creating significant momentum.
Scientist and book blogger Meytal Radzinski took up the cause, creating WITMonth. The launch of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation launched in 2017 to further address the gender imbalance (major literary prizes are still disproportionately awarded to men). So while every day is a WIT day for many writers, translators, academics, agents, publishers, bookshops and crucially, readers, August is THE month to celebrate and discover the breadth, depth and brilliance of female writing from around the world.
Because Women In Translation Month is not just about the numbers, it’s about what those numbers symbolise: what women’s writing contributes to the literary landscape, and what we lose when those voices aren’t heard. If you want to find out more, call into the shop, we’d be happy to recommend women’s writing from around the world.
Impossible to list here all our favourite female writers in translation, but we wanted to spotlight the diversity of the work on offer – and applaud the determination of all concerned to bring these books into the anglophone world.
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I Will Live by Lale Gül (tr. Kristin Gherman) Growing up in a strict Turkish household in Amsterdam, Busra’s rebellious behaviour outrages her family and shines a light on the misogyny and racism that surrounds her. This semi-autobiographical debut was met with intense controversy when published in 2021, and the author was forced into hiding after being subject to continuous death threats
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La Lucha: Latin American Feminism Today (ed. Carolina Orloff) Edinburgh-based Charco Press is at the absolute forefront of contemporary Latin American literature in translation, and this collection of writing from 30 artists, scholars and activists is a great place to start if you want to enhance your understanding of women’s rights on the other side of the Pond.
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Silken Gazelles by Jokha Alharti (tr. Marilyn Booth) A haunting tale of female friendship set in a small community in the mountains of Oman, a country whose literature is underrepresented on Western bookshelves, from a writer who was the first Arab author to win the International Booker Prize (for Celestial Bodies in 2019)
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Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga (tr. Melanie Mauther) Set in an elite girls’ school in Rwanda, several years before the 1994 genocide, this devastating book sheds light on the roots of a national tragedy. Mukasonga is an exceptional talent who writes with a humour that does little to detract from the violence and cruelty of her novels
Now Booking
9th September - Phoebe Greenwood in conversation with Nosheen Iqbal
To get our Autumn events schedule underway, we’re thrilled to welcome writer and journalist Phoebe Greenwood to the shop on the 9th September. Phoebe’s debut novel Vulture has been irresistibly described as ‘Catch-22 on speed’, and is a brilliant, tragi-comic satire of the war news industry, set in the Middle East.
Phoebe knows of what she writes, having spent time as a stringer in Jerusalem, and many years reporting on both British and foreign affairs for the Guardian, Daily Telegraph and France 24 among others.
Phoebe will be in conversation with fellow journalist Nosheen Iqbal, who currently hosts the Guardian’s flagship news podcast Today In Focus, besides writing on culture and politics for Vogue, Elle and the Guardian’s Saturday magazine.
Come and join us, this’ll be a brilliant evening of conversation – with welcome drinks served from 6.30pm
Our Recommended Reads
Gaining Ground by Joan Barfoot
In our modern, ‘no holds barred’ world, a mother abandoning her children is one of the few things which still has the power to shock. Alison’s pick this week is a rediscovered novel, originally published in 1968, and narrated by Abra, who has left her young family in Toronto to start a new life in a remote cabin with no clocks, no mirrors and no trace of her former existence. Her focus is purely on surviving in her harsh, yet beautiful new surroundings – until her daughter comes to find her and memories of past events are unleashed. The writing is breathtaking – particularly the detailed descriptions of nature. And there is much food for thought around how (and why) Abra came to find herself in the cabin. At one point she considers whether she’s had a breakdown, but concludes that “Everything else, everything outside of me, had broken down. I saw that I had not broken down. I had been put together.” A brilliant meditation on womanhood and living authentically in the face of society’s expectations.
The First House by Avni Doshi
What we’re loving this week…
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