# The 34 Best Translated Novels of the 2020s

> Translators carried a lot this decade, bringing prize-winners out of Hindi, Bulgarian, Catalan and Korean alongside cozy bookshop bestsellers. Some arrived with major awards attached; others found readers through word of mouth.

*By YPB Team · Published November 3, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-34-best-translated-novels-of-the-2020s*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **When We Cease to Understand the World** — score 1000/1000
   Benjamín Labatut's fictionalised portraits of scientists such as Haber, Heisenberg and Schrödinger, translated from Spanish by Adrian Nathan West.
2. **Days at the Morisaki Bookshop** — score 942/1000
   Satoshi Yagisawa's Japanese novel about a young woman living above her uncle's secondhand bookshop in Tokyo's Jimbocho, translated by Eric Ozawa.
3. **Breasts and Eggs** — score 826/1000
   Mieko Kawakami's novel about three women in Osaka and Tokyo, translated from Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd and published in English in 2020.
4. **Heaven** — score 826/1000
   Mieko Kawakami's novel about a bullied 14-year-old boy and his friendship with a classmate, translated from Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd.
5. **Still Born** — score 753/1000
   Guadalupe Nettel's Mexican novel about two friends facing opposite choices about motherhood, translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey and shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker.
6. **At Night All Blood Is Black** — score 668/1000
   David Diop's French novel about a Senegalese soldier in the First World War, translated by Anna Moschovakis; it won the 2021 International Booker Prize.
7. **Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982** — score 668/1000
   Cho Nam-joo's Korean bestseller about the everyday sexism faced by an ordinary woman, translated by Jamie Chang and published in English in 2020.
8. **Our Share of Night** — score 668/1000
   Mariana Enríquez's Argentine horror novel about a father and son bound to an occult Order, translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell.
9. **The Employees** — score 667/1000
   Olga Ravn's Danish novel told through staff statements aboard a spaceship, translated by Martin Aitken and shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker.
10. **Butter** — score 667/1000
   Asako Yuzuki's Japanese novel about a journalist interviewing a gourmet cook accused of killing several men, translated by Polly Barton.
11. **Greek Lessons** — score 667/1000
   Han Kang's Korean novel about a woman who has lost her voice and her Greek teacher who is losing his sight, translated by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won.
12. **Elena Knows** — score 565/1000
   Claudia Piñeiro's Argentine novel about a woman with Parkinson's disease investigating her daughter's death, translated from Spanish by Frances Riddle.
13. **Scattered All Over the Earth** — score 565/1000
   Yoko Tawada's novel about a woman whose homeland, Japan, has vanished, translated by Margaret Mitsutani and a finalist for the 2022 National Book Award for Translated Literature.
14. **Boulder** — score 565/1000
   Eva Baltasar's novel about a ship's cook drawn into motherhood with her partner in Iceland, translated from Catalan by Julia Sanches and shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker.
15. **Kairos** — score 565/1000
   Jenny Erpenbeck's German novel about an affair in 1980s East Berlin, translated by Michael Hofmann; it won the 2024 International Booker Prize.
16. **The Anomaly** — score 565/1000
   Hervé Le Tellier's Prix Goncourt-winning novel about the passengers of an Air France flight who land twice, translated from French by Adriana Hunter.
17. **Crooked Plow** — score 565/1000
   Itamar Vieira Junior's Brazilian novel about two sisters on a Bahia plantation, translated from Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz and shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker.
18. **Hurricane Season** — score 439/1000
   Fernanda Melchor's Mexican novel about the murder of a village witch, translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes and shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker.
19. **Winter in Sokcho** — score 439/1000
   Elisa Shua Dusapin's French novel set in a South Korean seaside town, translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins; it won the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature.
20. **The Books of Jacob** — score 439/1000
   Olga Tokarczuk's Polish epic about the 18th-century messianic leader Jacob Frank, translated by Jennifer Croft.
21. **The Words That Remain** — score 439/1000
   Stênio Gardel's Brazilian novel about an elderly man who learns to read a letter from his first love, translated by Bruna Dantas Lobato; it won the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature.
22. **Taiwan Travelogue** — score 439/1000
   Yáng Shuāng-zǐ's Mandarin novel about a Japanese writer and her Taiwanese interpreter in the 1930s, translated by Lin King; it won the 2024 National Book Award for Translated Literature and the 2026 International Booker.
23. **Not a River** — score 439/1000
   Selva Almada's Argentine novel about three men on a fishing trip, translated from Spanish by Annie McDermott and shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker.
24. **We Do Not Part** — score 439/1000
   Han Kang's Korean novel about the 1948 Jeju massacres, translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris and published in English in 2025.
25. **Solenoid** — score 439/1000
   Mircea Cărtărescu's sprawling Romanian novel narrated by a Bucharest schoolteacher, translated by Sean Cotter.
26. **On the Calculation of Volume I** — score 439/1000
   The first book of Solvej Balle's Danish series about a woman trapped in a repeating 18 November, translated by Barbara J. Haveland and shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker.
27. **A New Name: Septology VI–VII** — score 439/1000
   The closing volume of Jon Fosse's Septology, translated from Norwegian by Damion Searls and shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker.
28. **We Are Green and Trembling** — score 439/1000
   Gabriela Cabezón Cámara's Argentine novel about the 17th-century soldier Antonio de Erauso fleeing into the South American jungle, translated by Robin Myers; it won the 2025 National Book Award for Translated Literature.
29. **Tender Is the Flesh** — score 0/1000
   Agustina Bazterrica's Argentine dystopia in which humans are farmed for meat, translated from Spanish by Sarah Moses.
30. **Minor Detail** — score 0/1000
   Adania Shibli's Arabic novel linking a 1949 crime in the Negev to a Ramallah woman's search decades later, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette.
31. **Tomb of Sand** — score 0/1000
   Geetanjali Shree's Hindi novel about an 80-year-old widow travelling to Pakistan, translated by Daisy Rockwell; it won the 2022 International Booker Prize.
32. **Love in the Big City** — score 0/1000
   Sang Young Park's Korean novel following a gay man's life and loves in Seoul, translated by Anton Hur.
33. **The Discomfort of Evening** — score 0/1000
   Marieke Lucas Rijneveld's Dutch novel about a grieving farm family, translated by Michele Hutchison; it won the 2020 International Booker Prize.
34. **Time Shelter** — score 0/1000
   Georgi Gospodinov's Bulgarian novel about a clinic that recreates past decades for people with Alzheimer's, translated by Angela Rodel; it won the 2023 International Booker Prize.

Tags: books, 2020s, fiction, translation, world literature