The Easy Life in Kamusari is by Shion Miura, whom you may remember from her earlier work, The Great Passage. (I loved Andrew Blackman’s review of it here.)
Amazon Crossing, which publishes translated literature from around the world, describes The Easy Life in Kamusari this way:
From Shion Miura, the award-winning author of The Great Passage, comes a rapturous novel where the contemporary and the traditional meet amid the splendor of Japan’s mountain way of life.
In this warm and lively coming-of-age story, Miura transports us from the trappings of city life to the trials, mysteries, and delights of a mythical mountain forest.
(back cover)
Japan…mountains…mythical forests. I can’t wait to begin this book which will be on sale November, 2021.
I’m also eager to begin Waiting for the Waters to Rise by Maryse Conde, translated from the French by Richard Philcox. It was sent to me by World Editions, who describes it as thus:
A mesmerizing novel from the winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize in Literature.
Babakar is a doctor living alone, with only the memories of his childhood in Mali. In his dreams, he receives visits from his blue-eyed mother and his ex-lover Azelia, both now gone, as are the hopes and aspirations he’s carried with him since his arrival in Guadeloupe. Until, one day, the child Anaïs comes into his life, forcing him to abandon his solitude. Anaïs’s Haitian mother died in childbirth, leaving her daughter destitute—now Babakar is all she has, and he wants to offer this little girl a future. Together they fly to Haiti, a beautiful, mysterious island plagued by violence, government corruption, and rebellion. Once there, Babakar and his two friends, the Haitian Movar and the Palestinian Fouad, three different identities looking for a more compassionate world, begin a desperate search for Anaïs’s family.
(back cover)
It would hardly feel like August, now that I am no longer preparing my classroom, if it wasn’t for Women in Translation Month. How I love these blogging traditions which enrich my world view so much. Do you have anything planned for WIT Month?
Dolce Bellezza 
I hope to get to four or five books for WITMonth, but we’ll see. That first book looks especially appealing.
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I had a good start to WIT this month, reading and reviewing three books (Greenland, Japan and Germany), but then I stalled on a French one which everyone seemed to like, but I just struggled with, and finally abandoned at about 50-60% through. Am now reading a Portuguese one, Violeta Among the Stars, which should in theory be much harder than the French one, but which I actually like more.
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I’m very late this year due to a reading hiatus, but I am going to try and read the Maryse Condé since I read one of her novels every year, but I guess it doesn’t matter if I don’t make it before the end of August.
I had already read two of the three novellas in Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s Love, Anger Madness (Haiti) in early July, so I just finished the final novella, so I can count that for WIT Month. It was thought provoking indeed.
i also picked up Brenda Lozano’s wonderful and surprising Loop (Mexico) my first fiction read for some time and loved its meandering, contemplative style.
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