Books for the Beach, Translated

In honor of the traditional summer journalism ritual to recommend books for beach reading, we thought we'd give you a list of last year's best translated books for your shoreline reading pleasure. 

Fortunately, the weblog Three Percent presents the Best Translated Book Award each year for fiction, and they publish their short list for the top twenty-five, making our job that much easier. 

This year's award winner was Can Xue's The Last Lover, translated from the Chinese by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen.  

The top twenty-five book list contained entries from all over the world, including Russia, France, Mexico, Argentina, Angola, Rwanda, Finland, and more. Titles ranged from Fantomas Versus the Multinational Vampires, to Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. 

So, even if you're not planning an overseas vacation this summer, you can still get a taste of a different culture. To get the whole top twenty-five list and for more information on the winning book and the contest, visit Three Percent's website.