13 Translated Women-Authored Horror Book Recommendations
August is Women In Translation month, so we’ve curated 13 great horror books written by women and translated into English for your pleasure and enjoyment.
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Table of Contents
Nefando – Mónica Ojeda (Ecuador)
Technology horror
Translated from Spanish by Sarah Booker
The lives of six young artists are upended by a controversial video game.
Six young artists share an apartment in Barcelona: Kiki Ortega, a researcher writing a pornographic novel; Iván Herrera, a writer whose prose reveals a deeply conflicted relationship with his body; three siblings, Irene, Emilio, and Cecilia, who quietly search for ways to transcend their abuse as children; and El Cuco Martínez, a video-game designer whose creations push beneath the substrate of the digital world.
All of them are connected in different ways to Nefando, a controversial cult video game whose purpose remains a mystery. In the parallel reality of the game, players found relief from the pain of past trauma and present shame, but also a frighteningly elastic sense of self and ethics.
Is Nefando a game for horror enthusiasts, a challenge to players’ morals, or a poetic exercise? What happens in a virtual world that admits every taboo?
“To write means renaming the space around you, describing it as if it were something else.”
Tender is the Flesh – Agustina Bazterrica (Argentina)
Dystopian horror
Translated from Spanish by Sara Moses
Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans, though no one calls them that anymore.
His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat – “special meat – is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.
Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost, and what might still be saved.
“He wishes he could anesthetize himself and live without feeling anything.”
Out – Natsuo Kirino (Japan)
Psychological horror
Translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder
A young mother who works the night shift making boxed lunches strangles her abusive husband and then seeks the help of her coworkers to dispose of the body and cover up her crime.
The coolly intelligent Masako emerges as the plot’s ringleader, but quickly discovers that this killing is merely the beginning, as it leads to a terrifying foray into the violent underbelly of Japanese society.
“…there was no cure for the kind of depression that came from working in that factory.”
I Remember You - Yrsa Sigurdardottir (Sweden)
Ghost horror
Translated from Icelandic by Philip Roughton
In an isolated village in the Icelandic Westfjords, three friends set to work renovating a rundown house.
But soon, they realize they are not as alone as they thought. Something wants them to leave, and it’s making its presence felt.
Meanwhile, in a town across the fjord, a young doctor investigating the suicide of an elderly woman discovers that she was obsessed with his vanished son.
When the two stories collide, the terrifying truth is uncovered.
“Apart from the lapping of the waves, the silence was absolute.”
The Good Son – You-Jeong Jeong (South Korea)
Psychological horror
Translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim
Early one morning, twenty-six-year-old Yu-jin wakes up to a strange metallic smell, and a phone call from his brother asking if everything’s all right at home – he missed a call from their mother in the middle of the night.
Yu-jin soon discovers his mother’s murdered body, lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs of their stylish Seoul duplex. He can’t remember much about the night before; having suffered from seizures for most of his life, Yu-jin often has trouble with his memory. All he has is a faint impression of his mother calling his name. But was she calling for help? Or begging for her life?
Thus begins Yu-jin’s frantic three-day search to uncover what happened that night, and to finally learn the truth about himself and his family.
“The smell of blood woke me.”
Pink Slime – Fernanda Trías (Uruguay)
Dystopian horror
Translated from Spanish by Heather Cleary
A port city is in the grips of an ecological crisis. The river has filled with toxic algae, and a deadly ‘red wind’ blows through the city, forcing everyone indoors at the sound of a siren.
Those exposed to the wind fall ill; much of the coast has been evacuated, with rich people migrating inland to escape the wind, while others remain behind, sheltering in abandoned houses as blackouts and food shortages abound, and a black-market economy reigns.
The unnamed narrator is one of those who has stayed, looking after a boy who’s been placed in her care. As the city outside continues to break down, she reflects on the collapse of her emotional ties, the uncertainty of this new world, and the emergence of a radical solitude.
“Everything was rotting. We were, too.”
The Houseguest & Other Stories – Amparo Dávila (Mexico)
Spanish horror collection
Translated from Spanish by Audrey Harris and Matthew Gleeson
With acute psychological insight, Dávila follows her characters to the limits of desire, paranoia, insomnia, and fear.
She is a writer obsessed with obsession, who makes nightmares come to life through the everyday: loneliness sinks in easily like a razor-sharp knife, some sort of evil lurks in every shadow, delusion takes the form of strange and very real creatures.
“There were Moses and Gaspar, but when they saw me they fled in terror.”
Our Share of Night – Mariana Enriquez (Argentina)
Supernatural horror
Translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell
A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.
For Gaspar, the son, this maniacal cult is his destiny. As the Order tries to pull him into their evil, he and his father take flight, attempting to outrun a powerful clan that will do anything to ensure its own survival.
But how far will Gaspar’s father go to protect his child? And can anyone escape their fate?
“The night before, he’d tried to communicate, yet again, with Rosario. He couldn’t.”
Confessions – Kanae Minato (Japan)
Revenge horror
Translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder
After calling off her engagement in the wake of a tragic revelation, Yuko Moriguchi had nothing to live for except her only child, four-year-old child, Manami. Following an accident on the grounds of the middle school where she teaches, Yuko has given up and tendered her resignation.
But first she has one last lecture to deliver. She tells a story that upends everything her students ever thought they knew about two of their peers, and sets in motion a diabolical plot for revenge.
“It may be hard to believe, but there was a time when I was passionate about this work.”
The Hole – Hye-young Pyun (South Korea)
Psychological horror
Translated from Korean by Sora Kim-Russell
Oghi awakens from a coma after causing a devastating car accident that took his wife’s life and left him paralyzed and badly disfigured. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child.
Oghi is neglected and left alone in his bed. His world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his troubled relationship with his wife, a sensitive, intelligent woman who found all of her life goals thwarted except for one: cultivating the garden in front of their house.
But soon Oghi notices his mother-in-law in the abandoned garden, uprooting what his wife had worked so hard to plant and obsessively digging larger and larger holes. When asked why, she answers only that she is finishing what her daughter started.
“It wasn’t until much later that he realized how much better it would’ve been if he’d let her find her own way out of this grief, slowly, without any empty promises or hasty conclusions.”
The Graveyard Apartment – Mariko Koike (Japan)
Supernatural horror
Translated from Japanese by Deborah Boliver Boehm
A young married couple harbors a dark secret, as they and their daughter move into a brand new apartment building built next to a graveyard.
As strange and terrifying occurrences begin to pile up, people in the building start to move out one by one, until the young family is left alone with someone… or something… lurking in the basement.
“When they got up that first morning, the little white finch was dead.”
Strega – Johanne Lykke Holm (Sweden)
Gothic horror
Translated from Swedish by Saskia Vogel
With toiletries, hairbands, and notebooks in her bag, and at her mother’s instruction, a nineteen-year-old girl leaves her parents’ home and the seaside town she grew up in.
Out the train window, Rafa sees the lit-up mountains and perfect trees, and the Olympic Hotel waiting for her perched above the small village of Strega. There, she and eight other girls receive the stiff black uniforms of seasonal workers and move into their shared dorm.
But while they toil constantly to perform their role and prepare the hotel for guests, none arrive. Instead, they contort themselves daily to the expectations of their strict, matronly bosses without clear purpose and, in their spare moments, escape to the herb garden, confide in each other, and quickly find solace together.
Finally, the hotel is filled with people for a wild and raucous party, only for one of the girls to disappear. What follows are deeper revelations about the myths we teach young women, what we raise them to expect from the world, and whether a gentler, more beautiful life is possible.
“Later I learned that Strega was a chamber of horrors, where everything had frozen into a beastly shape.”
Fever Dream – Samanta Schweblin (Argentina)
Psychological horror
Translated from Spanish by Megan McDowell
A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her.
She’s not his mother. He’s not her child.
Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family.
“It’s the worms. You have to be patient and wait.”
Published: 29 August 2024
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