The 20 best underappreciated books in translation

Chad W. Post is director of Open Letter Books, which specializes in great books in translation, as well as the Web Site Three Percent. At Publishers Weekly he named his twenty best books in translation, including:

Five Spice Street, Can Xue, translated from the Chinese by Karen Gernant and Zeping Chen

It’s safe to say that there’s no other writer in China like Can Xue. Over the past thirty years she’s produced a ton of work—120 stories, a dozen novellas, five novels—all of which are strange, surreal, and very compelling. Reading Can Xue is like participating in a literary performance as you puzzle out the logic beneath these engrossing dreamscapes. A number of her works are available in English, but this novel is probably the best place to start.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue