I asked for suggestions to include in any round up of older women in fiction around the world. I especially wanted translated fiction. Readers I asked and you answered. Here five in translation and ten altogether. Brilliant! Thank you. I will add these to the list on the page on my own blog: Bookword. About the Older Women in Fiction series.

Your suggestions

Alina Bronsky          The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, set in Soviet Russia,German, tr by Tim Mohr

Iain Crichton Smith Consider the Lilies, 1968, Scotland

Anita Diamant          The Boston Girl, 2015, Jewish family

Catherine Finch        Walking Apart, 2017, set in the Ribble Valley in Lancs and looks at a couple’s retirement hopes

Erwin Mantier          While the Gods were Sleeping, 2016 aftermath of WW1

Minae Mizumura     Inheritance from Mother, 2017, tr from Japanese by Juliet Winters Carpenter

Kyoto Nakajima       The Little House, 2019, tr from the Japanese by Ginny Takemori

Sofi Oksanen            Purge, 2008, tr from the Finnish by Lola Rogers

Olga Tokarczuk        Drive your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, 2019, tr from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Anne Tyler                Almost anything she has written has a good older woman character

Elizabeth Von Arnim          Love (1925) and Mr Skeffington (1940)

Cao Xueqin               Dream of the Red Chamber, 1791, Imperial China

My choices

And here is the list of fiction I have considered in my recent posts.

North America (Canada and US)

The Stone Angel  by Margaret Laurence

Two Old Women  by Velma Wallis

Olive Kitteridge  by Elizabeth Strout

Our Souls at Night  by Kent Haruf

Eleanor and Abel by Annette Sanford (guest post)

Europe

The Lady and the Little Fox Fur by Violette Leduc. Translated by Derek Colman

The Summer Book  by Tove Jansson. Translated by Thomas Teal

The Door  by Magda Szabo. Translated by Len Rix

The Little Old Lady who Broke all the Rules by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg. Translated by Rod Bradbury

Africa and the Middle East

The Woman Next Door  by Yewande Omotoso, from South Africa.

Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun by Sarah Ladipo Manyika. Set in San Francisco, USA, the writer is of Nigerian origin.

The Woman from Tantoura by Radwa Ashour, translated by Kay Heikkinen. The story reveals the realities of the Palestinian diaspora.

An Unnecessary Woman  by Rabih Alameddine, by a Amerian-Lebanese writer, and set in Beirut.

UK

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor

Moon Tiger  by Penelope Lively

Elizabeth is Missing  by Emma Healey

All Passion Spent  by Vita Sackville-West

Great Granny Webster  by Caroline Blackwood

China

Dream of the Red Chamber  by Cao Xueqin1791

I make that 32 books. I bet you can find something interesting to read in that list. Happy reading.

Written and posted by Caroline Lodge of  Bookword