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Featuring — Bookselling in Translation with Emily Tarr ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
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August 2025
The next time you see me in your inbox, I will have the 2025 Cercador Prize finalists in tow. That is, unless I email you for some other unrelated reason before then. That’s entirely possible.
Point being, our bookseller committee have spent the better part of the year eating, sleeping, and occasionally even reading literature in translation — and, yeah, they have a few thoughts on the matter. On September 30th, all will be revealed.
Speaking of the Cercador committee, we’ve got two-time committee member (and 2025 chair) Emily Tarr of Birmingham, Alabama’s Thank You Books dropping by with some exclusive Women in Translation Month recommendations below.
Dig in.
Justin Walls
Cercador Director
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BOOKSELLING IN TRANSLATION
with Emily Tarr
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Margarita Liberaki’s Three Summers, tr. Karen Van Dyck | NYRB
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I love selling this book, pitching it as a Greek Little Women and seeing a young woman’s eyes light up. Three sisters, three summers, coming of age in the pre-WWII Athenian countryside. Gauzy, romantic, full of all the wild and wonderful things of girlhood. |
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Yoko Ogawa’s Mina’s Matchbox, tr. Stephen B. Snyder | Pantheon
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I fell head over heels in love with these characters, most especially sweet Pochiko, the one and only pygmy hippo. Ogawa captures the mind of 12-year-old Tomoko so perfectly, full of marvel, insecurities, and curiosity. A brilliant introspection on wealth, illness, love, and childhood. |
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Brigitte Reimann’s Siblings, tr. Lucy Jones | Transit Books
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This taut, quiet thriller—a cult classic in Germany—was a totally unexpected, bombastic book, one that fell into my hands right at the onset of a reading slump. Elisabeth and Uli are sister and brother, best friends, and comrades at a bitter crossroads in 1960, separate and together in a rigid and confounding new East Germany. The ending broke my brain (and my heart) in the best ways. |
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Elaine Vilar Madruga’s The Tyranny of Flies, tr. Kevin Gerry Dunn | HarperVia
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It feels almost illegal (but also impossible not to) to laugh at this insane book. The humor (the LOLs, if you will) is layered in ways juxtaposed to its horror and political and familial commentary, its juvenilia and mania, unlike anything I'd read before or since. |
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Annie Ernaux’s A Girl’s Story, tr. Alison L. Strayer | Seven Stories Press
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Fifty years after the “summer of ’58,” Annie Ernaux (our greatest memoirist) chronicles a toxic and tumultuous relationship in her youth; her shame and embarrassment evolving into something closer to pride and awe for her ability to survive and grow into an adult. With each of her books, I feel like a new person, a new reader, a new secret friend. She welcomes you into her life and her memories with an embrace so unrepeatable and special, you never want to let go. Where each of her books feels like a deep and satisfying breath, start with A Girl’s Story. |
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EMILY TARR has worked in bookselling and marketing at Thank You Books in Birmingham, AL, for five and a half years. She served on the 2024 Cercador Prize committee and currently serves as the 2025 Cercador Prize Chair. In her free time (beyond reading and deliberating the finest translated books), she enjoys texting her friends, watching tennis, and hugging her small dog.
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Established in 2023, the Cercador Prize recognizes works of literature in translation as selected by a committee of independent booksellers based across the United States.
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