Coming up in the first half of 2026, we have some wonderful translated fiction including exciting new releases from Mario Vargas Llosa and Mieko Kawakami. Enjoy Most Anticipated Translated Fiction 2026 Part 1 (Jan – June)!
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Most Anticipated Translated Fiction 2026 Part 1 (Jan – June)
The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Pedro the Vast by Simón Lopez Trujillo
Everyday Movement by Gigi L. Leung
The Fertility of Evil by Amara Lakhous
Give You My Silence by Mario Vargas Llosa
Now I Surrender by Álvaro Enrigue
Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami
Mrs. Shim Is a Killer by Kang Jiyoung
If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light by Kim Choyeop
Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun by Mónica Ojeda
The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Release Date: January 13, 2026
Translator – from Norwegian by Martin Aitken
London. 1985. A city rife with possibility and desire. One young man who wants it all.
Kristian Hadeland, newly arrived in the city, seethes with ambition and contempt. His family in Norway never understood him; his fellow photography students bore him. But he knows he and his art are destined for more.
Then he meets Hans, an eccentric Dutch artist. With Hans, the future Kristian yearns for is tangible. All art is possible. Any line can be crossed.
But success comes at a price. And when Kristian does the unthinkable, will he be prepared to pay it?
Electrifying and unflinching, The School of Night is a singular novel about artistic creation and human corruption. It is the story of one terrible man’s rise and fall, and a reckoning with the darkest parts of human nature.
Pedro the Vast by Simón Lopez Trujillo
Release Date: January 13, 2026
Translator – from Spanish by Robin Myers
In the disorienting, devastatingly tense world of López Trujillo, a eucalyptus farm worker named Pedro starts coughing. Several of his coworkers die of a strange fungal disease, which has jumped to humans for the first time, but Pedro, miraculously, awakes. His survival fascinates a foreign mycologist, as well as a local priest, who dubs his mysterious mutterings to be the words of a prophet.
Meanwhile Pedro’s kids are left to fend for themselves: the young Cata, whose creepy art projects are getting harder and harder to decipher, and Patricio, who wasn’t ready to be thrust into the role of father. Their competing efforts to reckon with Pedro’s condition eventually meet in a horrifying climax that readers will never forget.
Everyday Movement by Gigi L. Leung
Release Date: February 10, 2026
Translator – from Chinese by Jennifer Feeley
On a weekend morning, college roommates Ah Lei and Panda wake up with very different reactions to the night before. They have been chased and tear-gassed in the streets of their city after joining tens of thousands of others to protest a national security law that would effectively spell the end of democracy in Hong Kong. Ah Lei can’t get out of bed, her heart heavy with the lingering images of the police and the violence on the streets, and her worries about the future of her hometown. Panda, whose resistance is no less ardent, puts on a sundress, lines her eyes, and urges Ah Lei to join her for brunch.
While the demonstrations rage, the routine of life also persists for Ah Lei, Panda, and people in their orbits. They attend family gatherings, fight with their mothers, try and fail to focus at work on Mondays, and make time for dinner dates and app hookups. But the looming political tension and anxiety for the future transform such everyday encounters. In the span of a few months, life as they know it seems to become a mirage: the comfort of air-conditioned shopping malls is disrupted by bloodshed; tear gas and the sounds of rubber bullets amid neon signs strangely evoke happier memories of summer night fireworks.
The Fertility of Evil by Amara Lakhous
Release Date: February 17, 2026
Translator – from Arabic by Alexander E. Elinson
Oran, July 5, 2018. Independence Day. Colonel Soltani of the Anti-Terrorism Unit reluctantly gives up his holiday after his superior officer tracks him down at his girlfriend’s home. A former National Liberation Front fighter and Algerian power broker has been found dead, his throat slit and face mutilated. Pressured to close this high-profile case quickly, Soltani and his team delve into the victim’s past from the 1950s, uncovering the secrets of a revolutionary cell whose three remaining members have become prime suspects.
Set in a post-independence era marred by corruption, this dark, captivating novel unfolds in contrasting landscapes of dilapidated historic quarters and opulent new districts, revealing Algeria’s struggle against deceit and betrayal.
Give You My Silence by Mario Vargas Llosa
Release Date: February 24, 2026
Translator – from Spanish by Adrian Nathan West
Toño Azpilcueta, writer of sundry articles, aspirant to the now defunct professorship of Peruvian studies, is an expert in the vals, a genre of music descended from the European waltz but rooted in New World Creole culture. When he hears a performance by the solitary and elusive guitarist Lalo Molfino, he is convinced not only that he is in the presence of the country’s finest musician, but that his own love for Peruvian music, as he has long suspected, has a profound social function. If he could just write the biography of the man before him and tell the story of both the vals and its attendant inspiring ethos, huachafería (Peru’s most important contribution to world culture, according to Toño), he might capture his country’s soul and inspire his fellow citizens remember the ties that bind them. Through music, the populace might unite and lay down their arms and embrace a harmonious and unified Peruvian culture.
Both a send-up of parochial idealism and a love song to the culture of his homeland, Mario Vargas Llosa’s I Give You My Silence is the final novel of the Peruvian Nobel Prize winner, whose enduring works captured a changing Latin America. His tragic hero Toño, a man whose love for a democratic, proletarian music is at odds with the culture and politics of a modern Peru scarred by violence, is the writer’s last statement on the revelatory, maddening, and irrepressible belief in the transformative power of art.
Now I Surrender by Álvaro Enrigue
Release Date: March 3, 2026
Translator – from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
In the contested borderlands between Mexico and the United States, a Mexican woman flees into the desert after a devastating raid on her dead husband’s ranch. Meanwhile, a lieutenant colonel of the fledgling Republic, sent in pursuit of cattle rustlers, will soon discover he’s on the trail of a more dramatic abduction.
Decades later, with political ambitions on the line, the American and Mexican militaries try to manoeuvre Geronimo, the most legendary of Apache warriors, into surrender. And in our own day, a family travels through the region in search of a truer version of the past.
Now I Surrender is Álvaro Enrigue’s most impassioned novel yet. Part epic, part alt-Western, it weaves past and present, myth and history, into a searing elegy for a way of life that was an incarnation of true liberty – that still sparks in us the thrill of almost unimaginable freedom.
Hooked by Asako Yuzuki
Release Date: March 17, 2026
Translator – from Japanese by Polly Barton
Eriko really wouldn’t mind being savaged, if it was her best friend doing the savaging …
Eriko’s life appears perfect – devoted parents, spotless apartment and a job in the seafood division of one of Japan’s largest trading companies. Her latest project, to reintroduce the controversial Nile perch fish into the Japanese market, is characteristically ambitious. But beneath her flawless surface she is wracked by loneliness.
Eriko becomes fascinated with a popular blog written by a housewife, Shoko. Shoko’s posts about eating convenience store food and her untidy home are the opposite of the typical Japanese housewife’s manicured lifestyle. When Eriko tracks Shoko down at her favourite restaurant and befriends her, Shoko is at first charmed by her new companion. But as Eriko’s obsession with Shoko deepens, her increasingly possessive behaviour starts to raise suspicion. As Eriko’s carefully laid plans begin to unravel, how far will she go to hold on to the best friend that she’s ever had?
Beautifully translated by Polly Barton, Hooked is a thrilling and unsettling story of the line between friendship and dangerous obsession. A delicious exploration of food, loneliness and womanhood in contemporary Japan, Hooked brings together all the ingredients for which Asako Yuzuki is so adored.
Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami
Release Date: March 17, 2026
Translator – from Japanese by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio
Hana has nothing but she’s hopeful. She’s fifteen years old. She lives in a tiny apartment in a suburb of Tokyo with her young mother, a hostess at a local dive bar. They have no money, no security. Then Kimiko appears.
Kimiko is older, a bright light in Hana’s dark world. Together they set up Lemon, a bar that, despite its shabby setting and seedy clientele, becomes a haven for Hana. Suddenly Hana has a job she loves, friends to share her days with, and the glittering promise of money. She feels like a normal girl. She feels invincible.
But in the narrow alleys of Sangenjaya, nothing is as it seems. Soon all of Hana’s hope, her optimism, and her drive, will be tested to the limit . . .
Twenty years later, Kimiko is on trial. Now Hana must wrestle with her own actions, and face their devastating consequences.
A story of enduring friendship and deep betrayal, Sisters in Yellow is a masterpiece of teenage dreams and adult cruelties that confirms Mieko Kawakami as one of the great writers of her generation.
The Witch by Marie NDiaye
Release Date: April 14, 2026
Translator – from French by Jordan Stump
Lucie comes from a long line of witches, powers passed down from mother to daughter. Her own mom was formidable in her powers, but ashamed of her magic. Perhaps as a result, Lucie’s own gift is weak: she can see into the future, sometimes-but more often, she can only see the present of some other location. Not very useful. And the worst part? All she can ever see are insignificant details – a scrap of outfit, the colour of the sky. Lucie’s own children are initiated into their family’s peculiar womanhood when they reach twelve years of age, and in a few short months, Maud and Lise are crying the curious tears of blood that denote their magical powers. Having learned, they take off quickly and fly the nest. Literally.
Witty, dreamlike, vaguely unsettling, and utterly enchanting (pun intended), The Witch brings the mysteries of womanhood and motherhood into sharp relief and leaves us teetering on the edge, unbalanced by questions as seemingly unbreakable relationships break down left and right.
Who is to blame for family failures? And how can you – can you? – build a nest that no one wants to fly?
Mrs. Shim Is a Killer by Kang Jiyoung
Release Date: April 21, 2026
Translator – from Korean by Paige Morris
When Mrs Shim – widowed, unemployed, with two children at home and a fridge to fill – answers a job ad at the Smile Detective Agency, she boosts its fortunes forever. For Mrs Shim is sharp as a blade, handles business cleanly and is like a padlock when it comes to keeping secrets.
By day, she prepares kimchi for her family and her neighbour with dementia; by night Mrs Shim is out on a contract.
But what starts as a need for survival escalates into a thirst for vengeance. For Mrs. Shim is done with being everyone’s doormat.
Diving headfirst into her new career among petty criminals, crooked cops, ghosts and assassins, Mrs Shim’s past comes hurtling towards her.
Savage and unexpectedly moving, Kang Jiyoung presents a kaleidoscopic tale of twisted love, unhinged loathing and hopeful reinvention. Her world of endearing misfits, dead bodies and good food marks the exuberant arrival of a major new international literary voice.
If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light by Kim Choyeop
Release Date: April 28th, 2026
Translator – from Korean by Anton Hur
Kim Choyeop became an instant literary sensation in Korea with her debut short story collection. Each of these bitesize speculative masterpieces represents a journey into the unknown, guided by a writer blessed with a boundless imagination.
From alternative futures to distant alien planets, in the company of scientists, space explorers and ordinary citizens in extraordinary situations, Kim Choyeop revels in making the impossible seem not only possible but somehow inevitable.
Each story focuses on an specific issue of discrimination against women or other marginalised groups, adding a mind-bending twist to hold a mirror to modern society and its everyday iniquities.
All Flesh by Ananda Devi
Release Date: April 28th, 2026
Translator – from French by Jeffrey Zuckerman
A child is born with an insatiable hunger. As a ravenous infant she is the undoing of her mother; under her father’s adoring gaze, her body grows and grows.
Her father claims she devoured her twin sister in the womb. Her classmates delight in tormenting her for her size. And inside this girl, so alone and so enraged, another hunger is born-for revenge.
Bizarrely poetic and grotesquely humorous, All Flesh is a twisted fairy tale that tears apart hypocrisies around beauty, gender and a culture that relentlessly consumes the marginalized.
Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun by Mónica Ojeda
Release Date: May 12, 2026
Translator – from Spanish by Sarah Booker
In the near future, best friends Noa and Nicole flee their home in Guayaquil, Ecuador to attend the Solar Noise Festival, a week-long, retro-futuristic gathering at the foot of an active volcano. While Noa fully embraces the haze of narcotics and hedonism in an effort to obscure her true reason for attending, Nicole senses something darker at play behind the festival’s so-called “celebration of life.” Amid technoshamanic poetry, collective hallucinations, and ritualistic dances, each girl navigates her own path in an effort to escape her past and reclaim her right to a future.
Vivid, terrifying, and celebratory, Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun blends the primal with the supernatural, solidifying Mónica Ojeda as one of the most singular and exciting voices in Latin American and world literature today.
Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir
Release Date: May 26, 2026
Translator – from Icelandic by Mary Robinette Kowal
Unnur was living a normal, if lonely, life until a black cat showed up at her door.
Trying to do the right thing, Unnur reunites the lost pet with its owner—a young woman named Ásta who is in desperate need of some help. Unnur reluctantly agrees to take in the cat until Ásta is able to care for it again herself.
Soon, Ásta becomes a fixture in Unnur’s life and the two form an unlikely friendship. But like a black cat, trouble is tailing Ásta, and Unnur is the only one there when things take a violent turn.
The Summer of the Serpent by Cecilia Eudave
Release Date: June 30, 2026
Translator – from Spanish by Robin Myers
Guadalajara, Mexico, 1977. In a quiet residential neighborhood, children witness things they can never forget: a serpent girl weeping in a carnival glass box, a neighbor who dangles his dog from a tree, and a ghost who returns night after night, desperate to tell its story. Meanwhile, the grown-ups drift through the season half-oblivious, their spirits eroding as the relentless summer wears on.
Told in colliding voices—children and adults, ghosts and the haunted, the living and the almost-invisible—The Summer of the Serpent is a prismatic portrait of the past, where memory is shot through with myth. Each narrator offers a fragment of the truth, until the stories twist together into a shape as elusive and mesmerizing as the boa constrictor that winds its way through the neighborhood.
Strange yet deeply human, this brilliantly fragmented novel captures the moment when childhood innocence begins to corrode—and how those memories can coil through a lifetime.
If you enjoyed our Most Anticipated Translated Fiction 2026 Part 1 (Jan – June), check out Read Around the World 2025 Edition