However, below is a selection of some of the best translated African books written by women, from novels to short story collections, covering what is hopefully a wide range, both geographically and thematically.

Must-Read Translated African Books by Women Writers

To date, most African literature that has been translated into English is translated from Arabic and colonial languages (such as French, Spanish, or Portuguese) rather than Indigenous languages.

While this will hopefully change in the future, these literary gems are still few and far between. But there is, I’m happy to say, some representation of that group to be found in the below list of African books in translation.

Straight from the Horse’s Mouth by Meryem Alaoui (Morocco)

Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan

I have loved every Moroccan book I’ve ever read, and Straight from the Horse’s Mouth was no exception!

Jmiaa and Halima are roommates, living in a working-class Casablanca neighbourhood. They are both also working as prostitutes to make the rent and pay the bills, thanks in no small part to Jmiaa’s deadbeat husband.

But whereas Halima worries and frets about her profession, Jmiaa sees it more as a daily grind, with her main problem being her struggle to present a more “respectable” front to her conservative mother.

However, that daily grind is disrupted — and not in a bad way — when she is enlisted to help in a film project by an aspiring young director. It’s initially just as a behind-the-scenes authenticator. But somehow Jmiaa ends up as the lead, very much in front of the camera, and on a collision course with an incredible opportunity.

Considering the work situations Jmiaa describes, this could be a dark, unsettling book. But as she handles these struggles with wit and resilience, you can’t help but enjoy – and root for – this very likeable protagonist.

La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono (Equatorial Guinea)

Translated from the Spanish by Lawrence Schimel

La Bastarda is the first novel by a female author from Equatorial Guinea to be translated into English. It is also banned in Equatorial Guinea, which speaks volumes about its importance in the world of LGBTQ+ literature.

Okomo is an orphaned teen, born out of wedlock and as such a “bastard”, who lives in the oppressive and patriarchal Fang community. Under the watchful and disapproving eyes of her grandmother, she dreams of finding her father, though she is forbidden to do so.

Teaming up with fellow societal outcasts — including Okomo’s uncle Marcelo, who is shamed by the Fang villagers for being a “woman man” due to his homosexuality — Okomo eventually feels herself drawn to one of the female members of her new acquaintances. Together, they rebel against the heteronormative constraints of the Fang community.

This is a superb coming-of-age story about challenging and overcoming traditional ideas about family structure, gender and sexuality.

Sin is a Puppy That Follows You Home by Balaraba Ramat Yakubu (Nigeria)

Translated from the Hausa by Aliyu Kamal

From Nigerian writer Balaraba Ramat Yakubu comes this searing and damning exploration of an unfortunately common familial situation: when a husband engineers circumstances so that he eats very well and dresses in finery, while his wife and children live in neglect and poverty.

One such husband is Alhaji Abdu, who lives a life of luxury while his wife Rabi and their nine children struggle to get by on scraps and one new item of clothing per year. Eventually he marries for a second time, and Rabi and the children are left to fend for themselves.

As the first ever full-length novel translated from Hausa into English, Yakubu’s book can be seen as a gateway into a whole new world of literature. And while it may appear that this book offers only a bleak glimpse into that world, it is not all doom and gloom. Rabi is a strong character, who perseveres as events unfold towards a satisfying outcome.

Also, can we just reflect on how perfect this title is?

Aya: Life in Yop City by Marguerite Abouet (Côte d’Ivoire)

Translated from the French by Helge Dascher

Brightly coloured, sharply written and with some very wry humour, this award-winning collection comprises the first three volumes of Abouet’s six-part series Aya of Yop City.

Aya is the 19-year-old oldest child in a large family living in working-class Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire during the late 1970s.

Her friends Adjoua and Bintu are easygoing, a refreshing counterpoint to her meddling relatives and the other members of the community she lives in. Together, they attempt to navigate the complexities of adulthood, as they try by turns to study, marry, and perhaps raise a family.

Loosely based on the experiences of the author, this colourful omnibus covers themes of family traditions, friendship, patriarchy and French colonisation, with some excellent observations thrown in.

Dark Heart of the Night by Léonora Miano (Cameroon)

Translated from the French by Tamsin Black

In this dark and disturbing African novel, we follow Ayané, a young woman whose parents were ostracised by her community in Cameroon, and who returns from France to visit her old home. But now she is seen as an outsider, and is shunned and distrusted by those who were once her neighbours.

As she deals with this new alienation, a rebel militia invades and takes over the village, committing unspeakable acts of ritualistic violence, all for the “benefit” of Africa. Now the villagers must deal with the consequences of these actions, and Ayané must face the grim reality she has found herself in.

Dark Heart of the Night stands as an exploration of the concept of African identity, and the consequences of being made complicit in traumatic actions carried out under the thin veneer of righteousness.

Please note: some copies come with a foreword by Teresa Svoboda that the author vehemently disagrees with. If this is the case with your copy, please skip over the foreword and read instead just the author’s intended words.

The Madwoman of Serrano by Dina Salústio (Cape Verde)

Translated from the Portuguese by Jethro Soutar

Not only is this African novel the first by a woman to be published in Cape Verde, but it’s also the first by a Cape Verde woman to be translated into English.

When a woman falls from the sky near the village of Serrano, she is found by Jeronimo, who falls in love with her. After they have a daughter, Filipa, the woman disappears.

Filipa eventually befriends the local “madwoman” of the title, who rambles prophetically about those who live in Serrano.

But Filipa is then taken from the village under mysterious circumstances, and grows up in the city with only memories of her parents and her mad friend. Will she ever see her father again? And what will happen if the madwoman’s prophecies begin to come true?

Salústio manages to blend everyday issues, such as the role of women in society and the battle between rural and urban life, with magical realism in this very inventive and engaging story.

Eve out of Her Ruins by Ananda Devi (Mauritius)

Translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman

This short but powerful novel follows the lives of four main protagonists in the poverty-stricken Port Louis district of Troumaron.

At the heart of the book is the titular Eve, a young woman who allows men to “use” her body, and while they take without giving anything back she still derives power from them.

Then we have Saadiq, Savita and Clelio. Saadiq believes himself in love with Eve, almost as much as he is in love with books, poetry and Rimbaud.

Savita is Eve’s best friend, and Saadiq’s main obstacle in his pursuit of Eve, as she and Eve can share moments of quiet freedom he will never be a part of. Clelio is part of Saadiq’s gang, and he waits with diminishing hope for his brother to send for him from France, and provide him with some direction in life.

At times unsparing, sensual, heartbreaking and lyrical, this slice of Mauritian life leaves a lasting impact, and serves as a good starting point for Mauritian literature beginners.

If you love the Mauritius setting, another [translated] Mauritian author you should check out is Nathacha Appanah.

Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Saadawi (Egypt)

Translated from the Arabic by Sherif Hetata

On visiting a women’s prison, a psychiatrist becomes intrigued by Firdaus, an inmate awaiting execution, who she is told rarely eats or sleeps, and who does not talk to anyone. After several unsuccessful attempts to speak with Firdaus, the psychiatrist is stopped as she is leaving the prison by a message that Firdaus will speak with her.

With the two of them in her prison cell, and the window closed, Firdaus tells the story of her life, from her childhood, through all her abysmal and horrific encounters with patriarchal men who mistreat and betray her at every turn, up to the point where she commits the murder for which she is imprisoned.

This literary indictment of society’s treatment of women, not just in Egyptian Africa but in the world at large, is – as you might imagine – fiercely feminist, and still maintain’s its importance to this day.

If you love El Saadawi’s writing, she has several other books worth checking out. And if you love the Egyptian setting, luckily translated Egyptian literature has one of the highest percentages of female authors!

The Strange Bride by Grace Ogot (Kenya)

Translated from the Dhulou by Okoth Okombo

I have not actually read this one, though I have read Grace Ogot’s fable-esque collection Land Without Thunder, which I quite enjoyed. However, the collection, like most of her books is originally written in English. So I wanted to give a shout out to The Strange Bride, which is one of only a few books [currently] translated into English from an Indigenous African language, in this case Dhuluo.

So what’s it about?

The Strange Bride is a retelling of a Luo myth set in the fictional African village of Got Owaga. Things really pick up when Nyawir, a girl from a neighbouring village returns from the underworld (where she was taken as a child), and is married to Owiny, the son of Got Owaga’s chief.

However, what happened to her as a child is unknown to the residents of Got Owaga.

Soon Nyawir begins to undermine the routines that the villagers have worked so hard to establish in order to survive…

Thirteen Months of Sunrise by Rania Mamoun (Sudan)

Translated from the Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette

This collection of Arabic short stories by the author, journalist, and activist Rania Mamoun is one of the first ever translations of a Sudanese female author into English – calling into question just how much world literature exists out there, especially by women, that we in the Anglophone world have never had access to.

Thirteen Months of Sunrise is a captivating collection of Arabic short stories that burst with vibrancy. Here is a colourful cast of characters that simply exist in their world – they do not begin or end; they merely are.

As a reader, you feel privileged to have shared a day, or maybe just a moment, with them, utterly convinced by the notion that they’re carrying on their daily life in Sudan long after you’ve closed the book.

Mamoun plays with a variety of literary styles throughout and expertly blends scenes that are grounded in reality with surrealist episodes that never once feel out of place — reflecting the always off-kilter daily lives we all live.

Themes of colonialism, war, immigration, urban alienation, love, loss, and grief abound in these tales. Every story is a snapshot of something that makes life unique and special – not just life in Sudan but life as a citizen of Earth.

Sudan is one of the largest and most diverse states in Africa and Mamoun effortlessly paints a picture of the various communities and individuals that live together, often passing like ships in the night but inevitably sharing their commonalities while learning from one other.

Here, you’ll find lesbian romances, gay experiences, transgender stories, tales of ace existence, and more. We have done our best to represent a broad spectrum of LGBTQ experiences here.

Must-Read LGBTQ Books from Around the World

The writers on this list identify as multiple different orientations and genders, and the list has been assembled by a transgender writer. It is not a definitive list, by any means; simply a list of important, impactful LGBTQ books by queer writers.

We hope you enjoy this list of queer books by queer writers from Argentina, France, Sweden, Korea, Cameroon, Japan, and more!

Read More: Queer Comic Books & Manga

Bad Gays: A Homosexual History by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller

Bad Gays is a daring and exciting collection of biographies that detail the lives and exploits of some of history’s worst gay men and women: kings, tyrants, gangsters, fascists, and so much more.

From the Roman leader Hadrian to the British gangster Ronnie Kray via legendary figures like King James I, and Lawrence of Arabia, we take a detailed look at the lives of these awful people, who all happened to be members of the LGBTQ community.

One chapter focusses on the Bad Gays of Weimar Berlin. Another on the fascistic Japanese author Yukio Mishima. These are strange, complex people who did great and terrible things. All the while, their orientations and gender expressions were inexorably tied to who they were and what they did.

One repeated theme is the definition of what it means to be gay, and the clash between the unacceptable feminine expression of camp men and the acceptable bonds between two burly, manly men. Put simply, it’s not ok to be effeminate but it is ok to screw your bros.

Bad Gays is a detailed, wonderfully well-researched, hilariously well-expressed book on the gays that we love to hate throughout history, and how they left their mark on the world.

Buy a copy of Bad Gays here!

Read More: LGBTQ Bedtime Stories for Children

Bored Gay Werewolf by Tony Santorella

At times, Bored Gay Werewolf reads like an explicitly queer Fight Club for the new millennium. A novel about themes toxic masculinity and capitalism, expressed with charm, humour, and a few splatters of blood.

Our protagonist, Brian, is a twenty-five-year-old waiter with two close friends whom he works with. His life is aimless and uninteresting, except for the fact that he’s a werewolf who was cursed with lycanthropy while at college.

Soon enough, Brian meets Tyler (Fight Club reference?), a young cishet guy with inherited wealth who talks a big game about alpha males and grind culture.

Brian sees Tyler’s talk for what it is: toxic bullshit. But Tyler is also a werewolf, and that bond between them goes a long way. Tyler has come to understand things about this curse that Brian wishes to grasp.

And so, despite himself, Brian is suckered into this scheme of capitalising on werewolf culture; developing a brand, an app, and a brotherhood around the idea of alpha male werewolf men.

Bored Gay Werewolf is a savvy book that exposes the shallow, empty, meaningless believes and behaviours of toxic men. As well as exposing the lack of fulfilment that comes with choosing aggression, dominance, and selfishness over community; something that queer people understand better than most.

Bored Gay Werewolf is one of the most fun, refreshing, unique, and best LGBTQ books of recent years.

Buy a copy of Bored Gay Werewolf here!

Solo Dance by Li Kotomi

Translated from the Japanese by Arthur Reiji Morris

Taiwanese-born, Japan-based bilingual author Li Kotomi delivers here a powerful queer novel about identity and belonging.

Solo Dance tells the story of a young Taiwanese woman who suffered alienation and trauma growing up as a lesbian. When she moves to Tokyo to start again, she must continue to hide who she is.

Fear, depression, and thoughts of suicide mar Cho Norie’s entire existence, and she turns to the books written by similarly depression-haunted authors for comfort.

In spite of how much Solo Dance deals with trauma and dark thoughts, there is a lot of hope to be found beneath the surface, and as the novel goes on.

First and foremost, this is one of those LGBTQ books that empathises with the reader. It offers comfort and understanding. It makes us feel less alone and able to see a light at the end of our struggles.

Cho Norie goes through so much, and she feels frequent pain. She comes close to giving into that pain, but she doesn’t. We see her at Pride events, getting therapy, and making friends. She tries.

Solo Dance is a beautiful novel, beautifully translated, and beautifully gifted to those of us who need empathy and understanding in our darkest moments.

Buy a copy of Solo Dance here!

Violets by Kyung-sook Shin

Translated from the Korean by Anton Hur

Violets is a feminist Korean novel by one of the country’s greatest modern writers: Kyunk-sook Shin.

We begin with protagonist San, living in a small village in 1970. San is close friends with a girl called Namae, and one day, while the two of them are playing in a minari field, they kiss.

For San, this kiss is a moment of intimate awakening of her orientation that she immediately cherishes. She is electrified and she feels alive; connected to her friend. For Namae, though, this moment — this kiss ‚ is disgusting. She flees, and refuses to speak to or see San again.

From here, we move to San as a young adult in Seoul, taking on a job at a florist. She befriends and eventually moves in with a female colleague, and the two of them form a tight connection.

However, this is also a novel about men and the male gaze; about how men intrude on women’s spaces simply by looking at or touching them.

This is a novel that looks at seemingly innocent acts committed by men every day, acts that are actually subtly intrusive, and signs of dominance.

Violets is a Korean novel about men’s self-appointed right to touch and look at women, publicly and without shame. But it’s also about the female gaze by comparison. It looks at how women treat one another with greater respect, kindness, and intimate understanding.

While it’s not one of the most explicitly LGBTQ books out there, Violets shines a light on heteronormativity and patriarchy, and asks us to question these things.

Buy a copy of Violets here!

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

Translated from the Japanese by Megan Backus

Japanese author Banana Yoshimoto has seen incredible international fame, and for good reason. She is an author intimately attuned to the quiet threads between love, life, and death. Her books and stories explore love and tragedy in all their forms.

Kitchen begins with Mikage, who was raised by her grandparents after her parents died. After her grandmother’s dead, she meets Yuichi and his mother. And so begins a romance between Mikage and Yuichi.

In Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto broke new ground. Published in 1988 in Japan, Kitchen is a Japanese novel that features a prominent transgender character.

Though the novel is a queer love story, the mother of Yuichi, a woman named Eriko, is a trans woman. This thoughtful and considered trans representation, especially as far back as the late ‘80s, is inspiring, and our trans character is given full attention, agency, and a personal arc.

Eriko is not entirely defined by her existence as a token trans character. She is a woman with depth, defined by her love for her son and her dedication to protect him and raise him right.

Kitchen was a novel ahead of its time and, for that reason, remains one of the most important LGBTQ books from Japan.

Buy a copy of Kitchen here!

Read our full review of Kitchen here!

The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

Translated from the Spanish by Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre

A thrilling lesbian novel from Argentina, The Adventures of China Iron is a joyously hilarious and thrilling story of self-discovery and personal freedom.

China Iron was never given a name. At the beginning of the book, her backstory is established quickly and succinctly.

We learn a little about her parentage, her working for and being raised by two cold abusers, her marriage to a singer who is eventually drafted, and her having given birth at the age of fourteen.

As her story gets underway, China is picked up on the road by a woman named Liz, a Scottish woman looking to make her fortune in this late 19th Century Argentina. Liz is the beginning of China’s freedom, in more ways than one.

Soon after their journey begins, China begins to crave Liz. She has an intense longing for her, demonstrated by some visceral, erotic language that enforces the heat at the heart of China. She is a woman who feels a great deal – she lusts and yearns; she wants to love and be loved.

“She was my North and I was the quivering needle on a compass: my whole body was pulled towards her, dwarfed by the strength of my desires.”

The Adventures of China Iron is a novel about queer freedom. A romance between two women with a lust for life. They turn their noses up at patriarchy and those who reinforce it.

They laugh in the face of normalcy. They explore, they journey, and they love. As a celebration of queerness and lesbian love, this is one of the best LGBTQ books out there.

Buy a copy of The Adventures of China Iron here!

Read our full review of The Adventures of China Iron here!

The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei

Translated from the Chinese by Ari Larissa Heinrich

Chi Ta-wei is a renowned and celebrated scholar of LGBTQ books and literary history. His queer, speculative sci-fi novel The Membranes was written in 1995 and wasn’t translated into English until 2021.

Looking at this book through a time-travel lens, it is remarkable to consider how revolutionary the themes and ideas of this short novel were.

The Membranes tells the story of Momo, a woman living around the turn of the 22nd Century. Momo is a dermal care technician with some very prestigious clients.

The world of The Membranes is a post-climate-change one, in which every lives in bubbled cities at the bottom of the ocean, protected from the sun and the scorched Earth.

Despite its setting, The Membranes is a very intimate tale, focussing on Momo’s personal history and lived experiences, especially her relationship with her mother.

We experience much of this book through flashbacks to Momo’s childhood and specific moments that lead to her life now, age thirty.

What makes The Membranes one of the most profound LGBTQ books of our time is how it explores gender relationships.

Momo was a test tube baby, born from a decision made by two women. This is also a transgender story (though including the hows and whys of this would be to spoil the story).

Chi Ta-wei wrote this novel at a time of punk art revolutions in a newly politically free Taiwan. This was a period of change where artists bent and broke the rules of gender, and The Membranes reflects this.

Buy a copy of The Membranes here!

Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Alison Rumfitt is a transgender writer based in Brighton, UK. Her debut novel, Tell Me I’m Worthless is an unflinching, punk trans novel about the UK’s treatment of trans people.

It’s an unpleasant, twisted, gothic nightmare of a novel, and it’s also a work of literary genius; one of the finest LGBTQ books of the past few years. Tell Me I’m Worthless follows two former friends: Alice and Ila. Alice is a trans woman who is haunted by ghost.

Ila is a vocal TERF who was radicalised after the two spent a night at a haunted house together. Each of them believes the other assaulted them in that house.

Rumfitt’s novel is a revolutionary piece of gothic horror that wears its pain on its sleeve. This is a novel that attacks transphobic Britain (or “TERF Island” if you’d prefer). It ponders what the UK is doing to trans people, rallying transphobes against us and leaving us to live in fear.

Beyond being an important and angry transgender novel by a fierce trans voice, Tell Me I’m Worthless is also, very simply, a wonderful piece of modern gothic fiction.

Buy a copy of Tell Me I’m Worthless here!

To the Warm Horizon by Choi Jin-young

Translated from the Korean by Soje

In this harrowing post-apocalyptic novel that brings to mind others of its kind — The Road, Oryx and Crake, I Am Legend (the book, not the film) — Choi Jin-young shows us how, against all odds, love can win out in the end.

Set after a disease has ravaged the planet, To The Warm Horizon follows two young Korean women who have met on the road in the cold wilds of Russia.

Dori has lost her parents to the disease and is now in charge of her deaf and mute sister. Jina is travelling with her extended family and childhood friend Gunji.

Dori and Jina’s encounter leads to some raw and chilling events, exactly the kind you’d expect to see in a disease-wrought, post-apocalyptic wasteland. But against all of this, the love and dedication that these two women find for each other keeps the reader hopeful.

This is a beautiful lesbian love story that uses this hook to set it apart from the less hopefully novels that populate the same genre, making it one of the most unique LGBTQ books out there.

Buy a copy of To The Warm Horizon here!

An Orphan World by Giuseppe Caputo

Translated from the Spanish by Juana Adcock & Sophie Hughes

Of all the LGBTQ books on this list, An Orphan World is one of the most angry. A Columbian novel about the unfair treatment of gay men from youth to adulthood.

In An Orphan World, Caputo writes with his pen on fire; furious at the threatening beast of a world that young gay men are thrust into. An Orphan World begins in two places.

One is a part of the past, where our protagonist draws us a picture of his optimistic but penniless father: a man who scrawls on the walls of their shell of a house like a naughty child or a caveman, in a cheap, coarsely creative attempt to bring art and colour to their lives.

The other place is a gay club, a little later on, as our protagonist is in the thralls of self-discovery. The club, through Caputo’s description, feels like being inside a drum as it is relentlessly beaten at from the outside.

There is little friendship to be found here; little safety; little comfort. The world is deadly and aggressive, and it revels in that aggression. Even personal exploration is painful and unfair.

This fear and anger is explored with dizzying allure in An Orphan World, as the story is melted down and then folded over itself again and again like the liquid steel of a blade — a blade that Caputo himself is forging to take on an unjust world, teeth bared and both hands on the blade as he goes. Few LGBTQ books are as raw, angry, and impactful as An Orphan World.

Buy a copy of An Orphan World here!

Read our full review of An Orphan World here!

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

Detransition, Baby made history when it became the first book written by a trans woman to appear on the longlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Beyond this, Detransition, Baby also happens to be a bold and human novel that explores the dark and the light sides of being a trans woman in the twenty-first century, written by one of the foremost trans authors of our time.

The novel’s story, set in Brooklyn, centres around Reese and Ames (formerly Amy). Reese is a trans woman in her mid-thirties who desperately longs to be a mother.

Ames is now living as a man but lived for six years as a trans woman named Amy, and much of that time was spent in a lesbian relationship with Reese.

Detransition, Baby is, unquestionably, one of the most important LGBTQ books written in recent years. A novel by a trans woman about the murky waters of transness.

Lesbian relationships; tearing the mask of heteronormativity; rejecting the patriarchal status quo with regards to relationships, having children, and building a family.

Detransition, Baby explores so many facets of queerness, all while being a complex character drama. One of the great LGBTQ books of our time.

Buy a copy of Detransition, Baby here!

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

She Who Became The Sun is a genderqueer retelling of the origin story of one of China’s most iconic historical figures: Zhu Yuanzhang, founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty.

Set in the 14th Century, She Who Became The Sun takes the story of Zhu Yuanzhang — the story of a peasant who became a monk, then a rebel leader, and finally an emperor — and makes it into a beautiful fantasy-inspired genderqueer epic. In its first chapter, She Who Became The Sun shows us a peasant family on the brink of starvation.

Though a fortune teller has told the father that his son will find greatness, the father and son are soon killed, and all that’s left is the fateless daughter.

This daughter takes the name Zhu Chongba, the name of her brother, disguises herself as a man, seeks refuge at a monastery, and from there rises up through the ranks of a rebel army as they gain power against the mongols who currently occupy China.

As a piece of non-binary fiction, She Who Became The Sun explores the life of someone who is at first a woman disguised as a man, but who later finds their identity as both and neither.

Zhu Chongba is a truly inspiring non-binary protagonist, and this is one of the coolest LGBTQ books on shelves right now.

Buy a copy of She Who Became the Sun here!

An Apartment on Uranus by Paul B. Preciado

Translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell

An Apartment on Uranus is a collection of chronological essays which begin in March 2013 in Paris, one of Paul’s three great geographical loves, and ends in January 2018 in Arles (captured by Van Gogh’s alluring painting Café Terrace at Night).

Blending personal observations — both inward and outward — with musings on borders, laws, patriarchy, capitalism, Marxism, and issues surrounding trans rights and the lives of trans people, An Apartment on Uranus is enormous in terms of the ground that it covers and the concepts which it discusses.

An Apartment on Uranus often reads like a call-to-arms. It brings to the surface issues of safety for women’s rights to their own bodies, the rights of trans people to do what it takes to survive and exist in this world, and so many more issues besides. It is not entirely and inescapably political, however (although, as we know, everything is, in fact, political).

Paul is also, throughout An Apartment on Uranus, tracing his own transgender journey. He mentions near the book’s end that he has lived his entire life as a lesbian woman, and the last five years as a transgender man.

One of the most exhilarating books by a trans man, as well as one of the most emboldening LGBTQ books on the shelves, An Apartment on Uranus is a must-read.

Buy a copy of An Apartment on Uranus here!

Read our full review of An Apartment on Uranus here!

We Are Made of Diamond Stuff by Isabel Waidner

Written by UK-based German non-binary author Isabel Waidner, We Are Made of Diamond Stuff is a punk and radical novel that tackles intensely philosophical themes: empire, cultural and national identity, the class system, migrant experiences, and more.

Set on the Isle of Wight, We Are Made of Diamond Stuff mostly takes place in a hotel and follows the surreal episodic lives of two queer migrants who work there. Queer and migrant experiences, as well as issues created by class disparity, about throughout.

This is one of the most exciting LGBTQ books available right now, shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize alongside Lucy Ellman’s Ducks, Newburyport. There is no writer in the world like Isabel Waidner and no queer book quite like We Are Made of Diamond Stuff.

Buy a copy of We Are Made of Diamond Stuff here!

Loveless by Alice Oseman

Alice Oseman is an ace author of queer YA fiction and queer comic books. Her novel, Loveless, loosely inspired by her own lived experiences, follows a teenager who moves to Durham University, is thrust into the queer world of her peers, and goes on a journey to understand her own orientation.

As YA novels go, Loveless is wonderful for representation. It features non-binary characters, lesbian romances, as its protagonist’s gradual understanding of her own ace identity.

There aren’t many LGBTQ books that do so much for queer representation in literature, while also being an engaging and moving tale.

Loveless is a very poignant but direct story of queerness, featuring a colourful cast of characters, set in a place where many of us undergo a journey of experimentation and self-discovery, and it succeeds at every turn.

Buy a copy of Loveless here!

Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park

Translated from the Korean by Anton Hur

Love in the Big City is a gay Korean novel about friendship, youth, self-discovery, hedonism, and romance.

Our protagonist, likely based on the author himself, is a young gay man in Seoul who is best friends with a woman; they drink and party and have fun and meet people together.

We begin with this lovely, charming example of youth and friendship and fun. But eventually Young’s friend “grows up” and gets series, and so Young has to do the same. We watch him become a published writer, enter into a relationship, deal with family troubles, and even health issues of his own.

We spend so much time with Young’s experiences and feelings. We sympathise with his struggles: family relationships, homophobia in public, break-ups and heartbreak.

He’s a wonderfully likeable, honest, broken protagonist that we grow to love and understand and appreciate. Love in the Big City is a kind and sweet novel; one of the most charming and warming LGBTQ books around.

Buy a copy of Love in the Big City here!

A Long Way From Douala by Max Lobe

Translated from the French by Ros Schwartz

Max Lobe is an author from Douala, Cameroon who moved to Switzerland for university and has remained there ever since.

His novel A Long Way From Douala tells the brutal and harrowing journey of a young gay man, depicting the realities of modern-day Cameroon along the way.

After their father dies, Jean’s brother Roger disappears. He leaves Douala and heads north, following a dream of becoming a successful footballer. He will likely head to Nigeria and, from there, to Europe. With the help of their friend Simon, Jean gives chase after his head-in-the-clouds brother.

As they travel, threats of terrorism and violence are every present, and Jean spends time musing on and trying to understand his own queer identity as a young gay man, which is at odds with his own society and the religion in which he was raised.

This is a touching story that paints a vivid picture of modern-day Cameroon from a religious, socioeconomic perspective, and this makes it one of the more unique LGBTQ books avaialble right now.

Buy a copy of A Long Way from Douala here!

Girls Lost by Jessica Schiefauer

Translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel

Girls Lost is the tale of three teenagers, exhausted and confused by the system that divides boys and girls and the young men who abuse it, who find the chance to see, for a time, through the eyes of a man in a man’s world. Girls Lost also escalates into a deep exploration of primal urges, aggression, and the forms that freedom can take.

While it isn’t one of the most out-and-out LGBTQ books, Girls Lost is a YA novel that asks poignant questions about gender; the blurred lines and fluidity that exists between both.

If you were to label it in some way, this is a YA novel about gender binaries. As a queer reader/writer, I found the questions and topics explored in this novel immensely satisfying.

Girls Lost is eager to discuss the walls between genders, as well as the journey to womanhood and the relationships we build with our friends and lovers. It’s a frightfully clever book with an ambitious philosophy that is entirely well-executed. It wants you to think, consider, and reconsider your position orientation and gender. And you will, over and over again.

Buy a copy of Girls Lost here!

Read our full review of Girls Lost here!

100 Boyfriends by Brontez Purnell

Like many of the LGBTQ books on this list, 100 Boyfriends is an unfettered punk book. In fact, by their very nature, most LGBTQ books are punk: going against the grain, fighting the heteronormative state of our society, and celebrating an alternative way of living and loving. 100 Boyfriends is a collection of twenty-five stories about gay love.

Funny, bleak, twisted, horny, heart-warming, heart-rending; these stories stretch across the entire emotional spectrum, entering into taboo and surreal territory.

Rarely is gay love depicted with this much humour, rawness, and volume. This is a book that shows queer relationships in their brightest and their darkest moments.

If you want an untamed collection of queer stories, written by a gay, Black, American author with a punk and sardonic attitude, you need to check out 100 Boyfriends. It is a diamond amongst LGBTQ books.

Buy a copy of 100 Boyfriends here!

Memorial by Bryan Washington

Bryan Washington is another gay, Black American writer making waves in the world of LGBTQ books, first with his short story collection Lot, and now with his debut novel Memorial.

Set in both Texas and Osaka, Japan, Memorial traces the troubled lives of two men in love: a Black American named Benson and a Japanese migrant named Mike.

When Mike learns that his estranged father, back in Osaka, is dying, he immediately drops everything to go see him. Meanwhile, Mike’s mother has just turned up at their flat and must now spend time living in an awkward situation with her son’s boyfriend.

The narrative flits between Ben and Mike, between Texas and Osaka, tracing the stories of these two men as individuals and as a couple. We see how their relationship has become so rocky, and we see how they will choose to move forward from here.

Memorial is another raw, angry, but ultimately uplifting novel about queer love and gay relationships. One of the most impactful LGBTQ books of today.

Buy a copy of Memorial here!

If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

Meredith Russo’s novel, If I Was Your Girl, is a joyous narrative piece of transgender fiction that puts the focus on not being a tragedy.

So much trans representation in fiction brings the trans character’s story to a tragic ending, which is not the kind of narrative we want to be ingrained in the public discourse. That’s why this particular queer novel is so important. It’s a TA trans novel written by a trans author that is full of hope.

If I Was Your Girl, full of highs and lows, but it reminds its trans readers that their own ending can and should be a happy one, making this one of the most vital pieces of transgender fiction, and will go down as one of the great transgender stories and LGBTQ books.

Buy a copy of If I Was Your Girl here!

Cleanness by Garth Greenwell

A sequel to Garth Greenwell’s original What Belongs to You, Cleanness is a novel about a nameless protagonist, as torn and broken as the city in which he resides.

Set in the exciting but troubled city of Sofia, Bulgaria (one that captured our own hearts), Cleanness follows the fragmented journey through the troubled waters of love by an American teacher living and working in Bulgaria.

Split into three parts, Cleanness transcends nations and nationalities, ages and generations, as it explores the fraught and sometimes toxic relationships of the men we meet.

Cleanness is a dark and honest novel that holds nothing back; it is often bleak in its discussion of gay relationships, mental health, and existential trouble. It is one of the darker LGBTQ books written in recent times, but a small masterpiece nonetheless.

Buy a copy of Cleanness here!

Both today and throughout history, people have died to preserve their culture, their language, their birthright. Language is a science and an art form, and every year thousands of those art forms come under the threat of extinction. This is what makes this new collection of Poems From the Edge of Extinction such an invaluable and powerful language capsule.

In this collection, gathered by Chris McCabe, we have been given a gift: the change to read and enjoy fifty poems from languages around the world that have been classified as endangered in 2019 (as identified by UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger).

These are fifty artists who “defy, distort and transform their everyday language into the acts against-extinction that run through these pages”. It’s an incredible journey that takes the reader deep into the woods of our global history, the history we should know, our shared commonalities, and our rich and beautiful linguistic diversity. It’s a celebration of “the fundamental role verbal art plays in human life around the world”.

The preservation of endangered languages is something I have personal experience with as a Welsh national. Welsh, by the way, is one of the languages featured in the Poems From the Edge of Extinction collection, along with several other languages close to home – Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish, and Faroese).

Only a single generation ago, Welsh was on the verge of dying out: dropping to 18.5 percent of the population in 1991. As the New York Times reported: “Welsh went into rapid decline in Victorian times, when schoolmasters bent on Anglicising the Welsh beat the language out of the country, often literally”.

One harrowing anecdote reported in The Times explained: “In some Welsh schools in the 19th century, any child who was heard speaking Welsh was made to carry a small piece of wood, which they passed to the next child thus overheard. Whoever was left holding this badge of shame (known as a Welsh Not) at the end of the lesson was severely punished.”

Measures were quickly put into place. In the year 2000, when schools implemented compulsory Welsh lessons up until the age of sixteen, bilingual signs and announcements also became part of the Welsh government’s plans to get one million people speaking Welsh by 2050.

How different the story could have been considering “about 3,500 languages – half of the 7,000 languages spoken today – linguists estimate will fall silent by the end of this century.” – Mandana Seyfeddinipur

This story is far from unique in Wales. China might technically have one unified language now (Mandarin – based on the dialect of Beijing), but in fact it has always been a collection of disparate languages, roughly divided by provincial borders.

In recent years, these local languages have come back into popularity through mandatory lessons in schools, much in the same way that Welsh has. But the same cannot be said for most endangered languages across the world. And so we must thank Chris McCabe for collecting these incredibly valuable poems.

Poems From the Edge of Extinction

We were lucky enough to do more than just purchase this book. We were also able to be audience to an event at the Southbank Literary Festival. For the event, Chris McCabe gathered several poets and translators, all featured in Poems From the Edge of Extinction, and invited us to enjoy an evening of their poems in their original languages and in translation. One such poet was Nineb Lamassu.

Nineb Lamassu is an Assyrian-Iraqi poet who writes in the endangered language of Assyrian, a language spoken predominantly in Iraq and Iran (and is purportedly the language spoken by Jesus Christ).

On his language, Lamassu states: “it keeps me alive and I keep it alive.” His poetry has been translated into a number of languages, including English Turkish, Kurdish Arabic, Spanish and Swedish. He’s a UK citizen but has recently returned to Iraq to work as a peace-building advisor for INGO.

In Choking Smoke, Lamassu writes a harrowing account of his home country of Iraq:

“My country

Is a beautiful young woman

Enchanting you simply by her sight

And then disappeared of a sudden

& you search in vain for her in the slaughterhouse”

Choking Smoke, translated by Stephen Watts

Speaking of the 1913 genocide, Lamassu explains that men traditionally take the mother’s name in his culture since most of the men/fathers were lost to the genocide, “although I like to see empowerment in that” he states. “We as poets need to be a voice for the voiceless”. – Lamassu poignantly dedicates his poem to those protestors who are risking their lives daily, especially those who are detained.

This was a poignant thought as we moved on to the Rohyinga language, a language silenced within its own home state of Myanmar. 650,000 Rohingya were forced over the border into Bangladesh in 2017 and continue to be persecuted to this day.

In Bangladesh they live in refugee camps that today resemble shanty towns and even cities. I Am a Rohingya – written with James Byrne, a poet, editor and translator, and co-edited by Shehzar Doja, poet and founder of The Luxembourg Review – is officially the first anthology of Rohingya poetry in the West and has been described by Forrest gander as ‘gulping firewater shots of the world.’‘

Rohingya poets have to pretend they’re someone else if they want education, Shezar Doja tells us, a basic human right. It’s a powerful moment as he explains that you’ll find that most Rohingya poetry is written by poets using a pseudonym for their own protection against further persecution.

The poets in the collection are trying to preserve their own language and identity in the face of genocide – it’s a language that’s in danger of being systematically wiped out.

Vaughan Rapatahana, who is published in both his main languages, Te Reo (Maori) and English, is a Kiwi poet who spends half his life in Hong Kong. His poetry blends Maori, English, and Cantonese languages poignantly and beautifully.

Onstage, Rapatahana tells us of the Te Awa Tuapa river in New Zealand, sacred in the Maori culture. Recently, a historic law was passed in New Zealand, giving the river protected status. He argues that language, likewise, is just as imperative to our lasting culture: “language needs to be sanctified”.

In his powerful poem, he talks of colonisers, of the past, and of the continued arrogance of those English speakers who make no efforts to speak the languages of the countries they visit, live in and eventually colonise.

Valzhyna Mort, the final speaker of the evening, is the author of two poetry collections: Factory of Tears and Collected Body. She writes in English and her native Belarusian, and lived in the US where she works as a poet and professor.

During her time with us, Mort recounts a harrowing moment in Belarusian history: the night of the murdered poets in 1937 where 130 Belarusian poets were murdered by order of Stalin, and over 1000 manuscripts were burnt. She talks of the mass graves of the Soviet era that are still unacknowledged by the government: the history pages are blank.

It’s a bleak and harsh reminder of how the victors write the history books and how easily a culture can be wiped out. We’re reminded of how powerful words are and why those who write them are often the first to go when under the fist of an authoritarian regime. “Tongues were removed; we talked with our eyes”.

This evening of poetry and storytelling from poets of endangered languages was a powerful and vital introduction to reading the poems we walked out with, and we hope this will prove as valuable an insight for you as well when you, too, read Poems From the Edge of Extinction.

Thank you to The Southbank Centre for our tickets to this event.

This riveting novel, more than any other I’ve read in recent memory, cemented for me the true value of translated literature. I write predominantly about translated literature because it’s the most valuable, intimate way of learning true empathy for another culture, especially one we may know next-to-nothing about.

Through Woman of the Ashes, the first in a trilogy of books, I learned about the disparate peoples and cultures of Mozambique, the impact of Portuguese influence, the wars and struggles of the 19^th century, and the rifts and tears which ran through its soil and its families. All in a well-researched package that perfectly marries myth and history to great effect.

“The difference between war and peace is as follows: in war, the poor are the first to be killed; in peace, the poor are the first to die. For us women, there’s another difference too: in war, we get raped by those we do not know.”

War and Peace

I was reminded of another piece of historical fiction I read, the Russian novel The Goose Fritz; an ambitious story which aimed to deliver on dark themes of nationalism and nurtured hatred, but ultimately came up short. In everything The Goose Fritz failed to do, Woman of the Ashes gloriously succeeds. It is a complex power-play of national, social, political, and familial strife at the height of European global invasion.

“Wretched are those who, having killed, look at themselves in the mirror and still believe they are people.”

The titular woman is Imani, a fifteen-year-old daughter and sister who must watch her father and brothers either lose themselves to their own emotional turmoil as their land becomes a ghost of itself, else choose a side that they may not truly understand, and might not truly mean much to them in their heart of hearts.

As Imani’s one brother chose the side of Ngungunyane, former vassal of the Portuguese empire turned traitor and emperor of Gaza, and the other – a simple boy – sided with the Portuguese soldiers, I was reminded of the phrase, ‘If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything.’

Yet here, two brothers have chosen to take firm, opposing stances, yet neither truly has a handle on what is at stake, as the land that they once knew no longer truly exists.

Love and Hate

Another story I was reminded of was the wonderful Irish play Translations by Brian Friel. The play is concerned with cultural imperialism: the power of one culture to invade another’s, down to its very food, language, art; the marrow of its bones.

Woman of the Ashes tackles these same themes, as the people of Gaza speak in Portuguese and are quite happy, in many respects, to be in the palms of the leaders from Lisbon. Beyond that, I couldn’t help but think, as I read on, that this book would have done well as a play.

I can only hope that it might, one day, be adapted for the stage. Its static settings and dramatic but rhythmic dialogues and subtly and brilliantly theatrical.

“War is a midwife: from the insides of the world, it causes another world to emerge. It doesn’t do it out of anger or any feeling whatsoever. It does it because that is its profession.”

The book’s blurb honed-in on the relationship between Imani and the Portuguese sergeant, Germano. It discusses their love story and the madness he succumbs to. I felt this to be a little disingenuous, if only because the love story does not really become anything of substance until the book’s half-way point. What is far more interesting is the game of tennis being played by the chapters.

The odd-numbered chapters are written in a lyrical but emphatic tone from Imani’s perspective; they are far more traditionally narrative. But the even chapters are given to Germano, whose chapters are written as letters to the real-world 6^th president of Portugal.

The uncomfortable disparity between the tone, content, and context of her narrative chapters and his militant letters is simple but effective. The aim of clarifying the vast difference between their characters, stations, and cultures certainly succeeds.

Conclusion

While it might not have been Couto’s vision to educate those beyond his nation’s borders about its history, its relationship with war, and the impact of colonialism – I don’t believe many authors aim specifically to educate their readers – it definitely succeeds nonetheless.

I came away from this book feeling fragile; like my skin had been cut and I was left with a vulnerable open would. To have a book with no fluff, a book that is direct and assured of its own impact, it feels damn good. I felt smarter, wiser, and more empathetic having lived the lives of these two war veterans for a little while. I’m grateful for it; very grateful, indeed.

If you like the sound of this novel then you might also like The Court Dancer by Kyung-Sook Shin.