Translated Fiction Reading Group

Welcome to our Translated Fiction reading group. Reading fiction in translation offers a whole new way of learning about the histories, cultures and literary traditions of different places, all while enjoying well-told stories and engaging with perspectives you might not find in works of non-fiction.

Each month, the group will read a book from a different country, translated into English, and our gatherings will be a chance for you to share your thoughts on the book and translated literature more generally in a relaxed and pressure-free setting.

For our October group, we’ll be reading Elevator in Sài Gòn by Thuận, translated by Nguyễn An Lý.

Registering for the group costs £5 and once you've signed up, you can come into the shop to redeem your voucher against a copy of that month's novel. After that, all that's left is to get reading!

N.B. We have a very limited amount of seats available to our reading groups, if for any reason your plans change, do let us know in advance so that we can offer the seat to the next person on the waiting list.

Winner of the 2024 English PEN Translates Award.

A suspenseful novel that is part detective story, historical romance, postcolonial ghost story and a biting satire of life in a communist state.

A Vietnamese woman living in Paris travels back to Sài Gòn for her estranged mother’s funeral. Her brother had recently built a new house and staged a grotesquely lavish ceremony for their mother to inaugurate what was rumoured to be the first elevator in a private home in the country. But shortly after the ceremony, in the middle of the night, their mother dies after mysteriously falling down the elevator shaft. Following the funeral, the daughter becomes increasingly fascinated with her family’s history, and begins to investigate and track an enigmatic figure, Paul Polotsky, who emerges from her mother’s notebook.

Like an amateur sleuth, she trails Polotsky through the streets of Paris, sneaking behind him as he goes about his usual routines. Meanwhile, she researches her mother’s past – zigzagging across France and Vietnam – trying to find clues to the spiralling, deepening questions her mother left behind unanswered – and perhaps unanswerable.