Translated OKC Upcoming Picks

Oct. 9th, 7pm

The Membranes

Ta-Wei Chi (Author)
Ari Larissa Heinrich (Translator)

It is the late twenty-first century, and Momo is the most celebrated dermal care technician in all of T City. Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor. Momo prefers to keep to herself, and anyway she's too busy for other relationships. But after meeting her estranged mother, she begins to explore her true identity, a journey that leads to questioning the bounds of gender, memory, self, and reality.

Nov. 13th, 7pm

The Wall

Marlen Haushofer (Author)
Shaun Whiteside (Translator)

While vacationing in a hunting lodge in the Austrian mountains, a middle-aged woman awakens one morning to find herself separated from the rest of the world by an invisible wall. With a cat, a dog, and a cow as her sole companions, she learns how to survive and cope with her loneliness.

Jan. 8th, 7pm

The Door

Magda Szabo (Author)
Len Rix (Translator)

An unsettling exploration of the relationship between two very different women. Magda is a writer, educated, married to an academic, public-spirited, with an on-again-off-again relationship to Hungary’s Communist authorities. Emerence is a peasant, illiterate, impassive, abrupt, seemingly ageless. She lives alone in a house that no one else may enter, not even her closest relatives. She is Magda’s housekeeper and she has taken control over Magda’s household, becoming indispensable to her. And Emerence, in her way, has come to depend on Magda.

Feb. 12th, 7pm

The Book of Disappearance

Ibtisam Azem (Author)
Sinan Antoon (Translator)

What if all the Palestinians in Israel simply disappeared one day? What would happen next? Set in contemporary Tel Aviv forty eight hours after Israelis discover all their Palestinian neighbors have vanished, the story unfolds through alternating narrators, Alaa, a young Palestinian man who converses with his dead grandmother in the journal he left behind when he disappeared, and his Jewish neighbor, Ariel, a journalist struggling to understand the traumatic event. Through these perspectives, the novel stages a confrontation between two memories.

Mar. 12th, 7pm

Bad Girls

Camila Villada (Author)
Kit Maude (Translator)

In Sarmiento Park, the green heart of Córdoba, a group of trans sex workers make their nightly rounds. When a cry comes from the dark, their leader, the 178-year-old Auntie Encarna, wades into the brambles to investigate and discovers a baby half dead from the cold. She quickly rallies the pack to save him, and they adopt the child into their fascinating surrogate family as they have so many other outcasts, including Camila.

Apr. 9th, 7pm

House of Fury

Evelio Rosero (Author)
Victor Meadowcroft (Translator)

Nacho Caiciedo, a magistrate of the Supreme Court of Justice, lives with his wife Alma and their six grown daughters. The Caiciedos have planned an enormous celebration in their home. But before the party has even started, the family is shocked by two pieces of news: their teenage daughter Italia is pregnant, and Alma's prodigal brother Jesús is expected at any moment. Guests from all levels of Bogotá society arrive, two earthquakes strike, and the party descends into debauchery.

May 14th, 7pm

The Three-Body Problem

Cixin Liu (Author)
Ken Liu (Translator)

Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.

June 11th, 7pm

Our Lady of the Nile

Scholastique Mukasonga (Author)
Melanie Mauthner (Translator)

Parents send their daughters to Our Lady of the Nile, an elite Catholic boarding school for young women, to be molded into respectable citizens and to escape the dangers of the outside world. Fifteen years prior to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, we watch as these girls try on their parents’ preconceptions and attitudes, transforming the lycée into a microcosm of the country’s mounting racial tensions and violence. With masterful prose that is at once subtle and penetrating, Mukasonga captures a society hurtling towards horror.