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 August group, we’ll be reading Anomaly by Andrej Nikolaidis, translated from Montenegrin by Will Firth.

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!

New Year’s Eve. The last day of the last year of human existence.

A high-ranking minister criss-crosses the city with blood on his hands, a dying necrophile attempts to go clean before God, and a traumatized nurse is pressured into keeping a powerful secret. With undisguised glee, a nameless narrator unravels these twisted tales of moral turmoil, all of which are brought to an abrupt close by a cataclysmic collision of time and space. What will remain on New Year’s Day? In a cabin in the Alps, the last people on earth – a musicologist and her young daughter – search for a five-hundred-year-old musical score that might explain the catastrophe. Outside the cabin, hidden in shadow, a sinister figure waits for them to accept their fate.

With dark humour and remorselessness reminiscent of Thomas Bernhard and Pier Paolo Pasolini, Anomaly is an exhilarating, provocative carnival of a novel, from one of Europe’s most distinctive literary voices.