Translated Speculative Fiction
Fantasy, sci-fi, and horror from around the world.
created by SeriousGoose
last updated December, 2025
Comments
so many of these i didn’t know were translations, this is so cool!
i know right!? i've started putting this together for myself (and now everyone else) because i've always wanted to read more translated fiction but am (nearly) incapable of reading anything that could take place in read life lol
Oooh I read this book Fever Dream, originally in Spanish (Distancia de rescate) that truly felt like a fever dream and I'm not sure how much of that was the story and how much was the translation but it was soooo good.
amazing, thank you for the rec! i've added it 🫶
Here is a list of the languages these books were originally written in. I will edit this comment to add books as we go and I'm always open to suggestions. Enjoy!
Korean: The Heart of the Nhaga by Yeong-Do Lee Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-Il Kim The Proposal by Bae Myung-hoon
Spanish: Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez Dark Constellations by Pola Oloixarac Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica
German: The Dwarves by Markus Heitz Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
French: I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman A Winter's Promise by Christelle Dabos
Japanese: The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa
Russian: Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko The Inhabited Island by Arkady Strugatsky
Danish: On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle
Chinese: The Journey to the West, Revised Edition, Volume 1 by Wu Cheng'en
Mandarin: The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
Romanian: Youth Without Youth (Univ. of Chicago) by Mircea Eliade
Polish: The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski Solaris by Stanisław Lem
Indonesian: Beauty Is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan
Hungarian: Eye of the Monkey by Krisztina Tóth
Greek: The Sleepwalker by Margarita Karapanou
Kikuyu: Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Finnish: Secret Passages in a Hillside Town by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen
Arabic: Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi
Welsh: The Blue Book of Nebo by Manon Stefan Ros
Now I’m mad at myself for not getting the French version of I Who Have Never Known Men
the perfect excuse to buy another book and go in for a re-read? 🤷♀️🙂↕️🤣
I haven’t read the English one yet so now I’m at an impasse— I have to read the one I bought already or else it would be wasteful which means I won’t get the true experience of reading it in French for the first time but then again my French isn’t as good as my English so maybe it’s better that I …. 🌀🌀🌀 (welcome to my brain)
i think our brains would be great friends, they have a lot in common 🫣
HONK
ooo fun! this is one of those lists where i wish we could put notes on lists, would have loved to know what the original languages are
so true! i'll compile the info i recorded while putting this together and post a comment with the original languages soon 💜
Ohhh, I can help with this tomorrow💖💖💖 I have a ton of books in originally written in Spanish that would be a great addition
i don't know how i missed replying to this, sorry! thank you, i'd love to add some more books originally written in Spanish 🫶
ayyy what a good list (as someone who loves speculative fiction and is trying to diversify her reading)
i'm the same! i'm glad the list can be helpful for someone else too 💜
Incredible list!!!!! I love this. If I can reccomend:
- The Blue Book of Nebo by Manon Stefan Ros (originally in Welsh)
- Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica (originally in Spanish) And I feel like I know many more but but off the top of my head those are the two I read this year that best fit!
Thank you! Will add 🫶
