Around the world, single households are on the rise. People are moving to cities, they’re living longer, and, not unlike Greta Garbo, they want to be left alone. Hana Kim and Sunwoo Hwang thought they’d buck the trend. Rather than be by themselves—or find partners and get married, caving in to “sociocultural influence”—the two South Korean friends decided to move in together, buying an apartment in Seoul. “I think of single-person households as atoms,” Kim writes in the delightful memoir she co-authored with Hwang: Two Women Living Together (Ecco/HarperCollins, Jan. 20). Instead, the friends created their own “molecule”: W₂C₄. For those who forget their high school chemistry, that’s two women and four cats. “As of now,” Kim writes, “I’d venture we’re a very stable configuration.” Two Women Living Together was a bestseller when it was published in Korea in 2019, and now English-language readers can enjoy it as well, thanks to Gene Png’s sprightly translation.
Foreign books get short shrift in the U.S., a large and inward-looking country, but many books in translation are available if one seeks them out. Another recent title with Asian roots is Long Take (Univ. of Minnesota, Feb. 3), by the celebrated Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998). Translated by Anne McKnight, the book collects essays by and interviews with the director of The Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and Ran. “Film doesn’t really care about national borders,” Kurosawa writes. “It plays an important role by enabling people to understand each other, actually.” The sentiment holds true for books, too.
Two new important books take stock of what’s going on in a nation that sits across the Sea of Japan from Kurosawa’s homeland. One is Volga Blues: A Journey Into the Heart of Russia (Norton, Jan. 20), by Italian journalist Marzio G. Mian. Translated by Elettra Pauletto, the book offers a shocking view of the former empire, a land, in the words of our reviewer, “where drugs, alcohol, despair, and roving Clockwork Orange–ish youth gangs rule, and where death is everywhere: not just the incalculable deaths in battle in Ukraine, but also death by vodka, car crashes (with death rates a staggering 60 times higher than in Britain), suicide, and industrial pollution.”
In his short but powerful If Russia Wins (Atlantic Monthly, Jan. 6), translated by Olena Ebel and Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, German scholar Carlo Masala examines Vladimir Putin’s strategy of trying to make Russia, as it were, great again. Our critic called the book “a worrisome thought experiment that projects disaster if current geopolitical trends—notably U.S. isolationism—prevail.”
That bleak prospect might have you craving solace from Albert Camus, an eloquent anti-totalitarian and humanist. Translated by Ryan Bloom, The Complete Notebooks (Univ. of Chicago, Dec. 5) is full of pithy observations. One reads: “The stars twinkle in tune with the cicadas’ chirp. The world’s music.”
Can’t get enough Camus? You’ll be rewarded this spring with the publication of Mon Cher Amour: The Love Letters of Albert Camus and Maria Casarès, 1944-1959 (Knopf, April 21). Translated by Sandra Smith and Cory Stockwell, it’s a mammoth volume totaling 1,200 pages. That’s a whole lotta love.
John McMurtrie is the nonfiction editor.
