Whenever we are spending time at our home in France I enjoy browsing the bookshops, and in Nice there are at least three good independents that I know of. Not that I buy many books when I’m there because my French isn’t really good enough. I can just about manage a crime novel if I’m prepared to take my time with it and have a dictionary to hand. Books with a lot of dialogue are easier for me than anything with long, convoluted sentences. Proust is a no-no.

But what always strikes me is the range of general fiction that is available in translation. Particularly books translated from English to French. And it’s not just the classics – Austen, Dickens and so on – but many recently published books, from contemporary literary fiction to more mainstream writers, and plenty of genre fiction: crime, SF/Fantasy, romance and YA. All this is laid out on tables for easy browsing, not hidden away in a special section on the third floor. I even have a friend in England whose first novel was published in its French translation before it came out in the UK.

This is a remarkable openness to foreign literature, all the more impressive (perhaps even surprising?) coming from a country that is justly proud – and indeed protective – of its own culture, and I wonder whether in the UK we have the same interest in writing from other languages? To a degree perhaps, certainly Murakami and Knausgaard are easy to find in Waterstones, but less celebrated writers? Genre writers? No doubt there are others that I’ve missed, but apart from the piles of increasingly derivative Scandi noir, I’m not so sure. Where is the French science fiction or the Portuguese crime?

If in the UK mainstream publishers and retailers hesitate to offer books in translation, what we do have instead are some excellent small indies that specialise in bringing the best writing from wherever to Anglophone readers. Pushkin Press and nordisk books (the lower case is not a typo) are two examples, but one that I would like to celebrate here is Peirene Press. Over the last few years, they’ve introduced me to novels by writers from Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Chile, Egypt, France, Sweden and Norway. You can buy their books individually, but what I appreciate is their subscription model where for a single annual payment I get three books a year. I don’t think I save much (if anything) this way, but what it means is that I read books I probably would never have considered buying normally.

I’ve just finished Imagine Breaking Everything (Imagina que rompes todo) by the Colombian writer Lina Munar Guevara, beautifully translated by Ellen Jones. Link here Peirene Press – award-winning independent publisher. This tells the story of the 18-year-old Melissa and a weekend she spends with her slightly estranged mother.  Melissa is hoping to graduate from high school and go to college (there are complications) and is such a well-written character. She is deeply flawed and prone to acts of violence – and we learn why, it’s not really her fault – but her honesty and self-awareness mean that we root for her nevertheless. She is also very funny. There is terrific writing from Lina Munar Guevara; one sentence in particular impressed me in the way that in a mere six words the reader is very cleverly told a key (and quite unexpected) plot point. I was left gasping in admiration for the skill with which that was done – but of course I can’t tell you more. Too much of a spoiler!

There’s nothing like literature to show you other people’s lives, we all know that, but it is even more the case with books in translation. Perhaps I don’t need to know what it is like to be a young woman in Bogotá and what daily life is like in a less than salubrious suburb, but my life is richer for having spent time in Melissa’s company.

I hope she did make it to college in the end.