6 Translated Short Story Collections You Won’t Be Able to Put Down

Have you ever wished there was a device able to encode all languages in your brain so you could read stories from around the world? Same here. Although there is no such tech (yet!), don’t let it stop you from cracking open a book originally written in another language. With such a wide literary community writing in English, stories in other languages often get overlooked. And these stories have so much to offer—unique perspectives, different topics, and fresh writing styles. These six short story collections are the ideal companion for a quick read at breakfast or before bed, so take a look—there is sure to be something written (and translated) just right for you. 

People from My Neighborhood by Hiromi Kawakami

Translated from Japanese by Ted Goossen

There’s a hell, the old man said, for people who are mean to chickens. If you get sent there, a giant chicken comes and spits fire on you, and pecks you, and tramples you with its claws. And that goes on forever.

The government is overthrown by two students. A small child-creature moves into someone’s home, uninvited, and stays for thirty years. The Lord of the Flies takes over a gambling joint. The whole town moves underground after a visit from a mysterious diplomat.

People from My Neighborhood follows the perspective of one main character, a young girl, and the people around her as they experience strange events in their everyday lives. The stories are not chronological, so you get to see the unexpected trajectory each character’s life takes. Kawakami’s stories in this collection span only a few pages, but the pure imagination of her magical realism allows each story to stretch out and feel so much bigger. From the magic of the word “oops” to a no-gravity alert from the Disaster Preparedness Office, each story is a surprise and a delight.

If you want a short story collection that will haunt you in a good way, this is for you.

The Houseguest and Other Stories by Amparo Dávila

Translated from Spanish by Audrey Harris and Matthew Gleeson

When I hear the rain beating against the windows, their screams return to me once more—those screams that would stick to my skin like leeches. They would rise in pitch as the pot heated and the water came to a boil.

A man grieving the death of his brother finds solace in the two weeping, fickle creatures he left behind. A presence referred to only as “he” invades the house of an unhappy housewife, until she can’t take it anymore. A man sees himself walk by on the street, arm-in-arm with a woman who is not his wife.

In this collection, Amparo Dávila takes painfully human situations and characters and twists an element of the strange and magical into their stories. Each short story follows a different character as they face something new in their lives and are forced to decide about how they will move on. Sometimes the answer is murder. Sometimes the answer is to submit to the monster hiding in the bedroom. Dávila’s attention to detail in these characters’ ordinary lives allows the magic to feel even more like reality, until even you might find it hard to distinguish the two.

If you like stories with a slightly darker tone but all the fun of asking “what if?” this is the collection for you.

Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung

Translated from Korean by Anton Hur

Grandfather used to say, “When we make our cursed fetishes, it’s important that they’re pretty.” And the lamp, shaped like a bunny rabbit sitting beneath a tree, is truly pretty.

A man finds a fox caught in a snare and notices the golden blood that soaks the snow around her. A lump of a head appears in a woman’s toilet and calls her “mother.” A ghost walks the same straight line across a plaza as a woman meets her lover for the first time.

Cursed Bunny takes a different turn as each story finds something new to offer with a range of characters and genres. There are body horrors, unsettling love stories, fantastical tragedies, and even futuristic androids! Regardless of what the story is about, each one will make you feel something more than you expected. Something I really enjoyed about this collection is how it goes to places I don’t see often in fiction. Chung is not afraid to write stories about women’s bodies and their functions without any of the vulgarity or wariness you might expect from the exploration of these subjects.

If you want a short story collection that temporarily makes you forget your position in space and time as your brain is occupied solely with characters on the page, this is one to consider.

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez

Translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell

Was it a nocturnal butterfly or a moth? She had never been able to tell the difference. But one thing was for sure: nighttime butterflies turned to dust in your fingers, as if they had no organs or blood…

A baby’s bones cry from the corner of the yard where she was buried. A hotel ghost searches for a replacement. Memories of a childhood trip to The Woman’s house reveal the roots of a woman’s debilitating anxiety.

If I had to choose one word to describe these stories, it would be “disturbing.” This is not the sort of collection that lets you put it down and walk away—it follows you wherever you go. Will I ever forget the story of the rockstar who flayed himself alive, and what it inspired two fangirls to plan afterwards? (It’s not what you think—this collection is not predictable!) The easy answer is no. The stories in this collection turn the bad things in our lives into monstrosities. It revisits broken girls, lost children, mental illness, anxieties, and ghosts. You traverse these stories as if you were a visitor in a haunted realm.

It’s not for the light-hearted, but if you don’t mind the smell of ghost-children roaming the streets of Barcelona, you will be heavily rewarded through the can’t-stop-reading tension and morally ambiguous characters. 

Evil Flowers: Stories by Gunnhild Øyehaug

Translated from Norwegian by Kari Dickson

We herewith protest that the previous text had such an unhappy ending. Unhappy endings drive us nuts, and we think that people who are let out a back door, without even knowing they’re being shown to the back door, should be given a prize.

A dove turns into a crow and flies off, leaving the person to see it baffled at what they should do next. A short story protests the unhappy ending of the previous one. A woman loses part of her brain when it falls into the toilet. An old woman lies in bed and wonders why you can read her thoughts.

There’s nothing quite like reading a short story that suddenly becomes self-aware and asks how you’re reading it. Or reading a short story whose sole purpose is to complain about the page just before it, where a man’s photo solemnly stares out. This is a book that asks silly questions and answers them seriously. What do you do when you’ve died and come back to life? Visit the White Cliffs of Dover, of course. If everything around a person turned to eels, what then? Well, she would find solace in bird watching. What if everyone’s cell phone was also a gun? I don’t want to spoil this one, so I won’t tell you.

If you are an appreciator of wit and clever humor and don’t mind when a story starts with a miracle and ends with a broken ankle, this is not a collection you should miss.

Flowers of Mold by Ha Seong-nan

Translated from Korean by Janet Hong

The drunken words spewed by a regular of Good Chicken were to blame. The meeting was supposed to take place at the Hanbit Academy of Mental Calculations at exactly seven o’clock. The academy director wrote the words Taewang Tenants Emergency Meeting and waited.

A small girl wants to fly, and so she becomes a gymnast—until her own growing body makes that dream impossible. A man digs through his neighbor’s trash as he thinks of what could have been. The threat of eviction gives way to sinister schemes as everyone thinks about who they would be better off without.

Ha’s stories are rooted in reality yet veiled by a thin shroud of strangeness that doesn’t feel of this world. Is the woman just forgetful, or is the woman next door trying to replace her? What about the clothes hung to dry at the top of a utility pole? When someone climbed into her room at night, was it really a dream? The lines between what is right and wrong, what did and didn’t happen, begin to blur. You cannot help but follow each character faithfully and hope for the best as they make unwise choices and struggle with their obsessions. These stories are intricately developed and always lead to a satisfying (though not always happy) ending.

If you enjoy longer short stories that completely immerse you in a world slightly off kilter, add Flowers of Mold to your TBR list, ASAP. 

Whether you crave horror, absurdity, mystery, fantasy, or everything in between, these translated short story collections do it with a grace and wit sure to capture you from the first page to the last. This list is only a sampling of the incredible books being published in languages other than English. This might mark the beginning of your journey with translated works of fiction. Otherwise, overlooking translated works might cause you to start experiencing FOMOOF (fear of missing out on fun).