Here you can find a selection of my published work, including full-length novel translations, excerpts and short stories published in anthologies and online magazines, and features and reviews published in print and online magazines…
FORTHCOMING TRANSLATION…
The City, by Lara Moreno, translated by Alice Banks & Katie Whittemore
In a single apartment building in Madrid, the lives of three women intersect. On the fourth floor, Oliva’s passionate relationship has given way to abuse, her lover seeming more and more like an animal, her apartment more and more like a cage. On the third, Damaris, who emigrated from Colombia after a devastating earthquake, spends each day working as the nanny to two privileged children while hoping her efforts will provide a better life for her own. And in the tiny, disused apartment on the ground floor, Horia, a Moroccan woman who first came to Spain as a seasonal agricultural laborer, works as the building’s caretaker while searching for her missing son. Through the stories of these women, award-winning author Lara Moreno paints a vivid portrait of urban isolation and societal marginalization.
With unflinching, propulsive prose, The City plunges down the paths that led these women to and through a metropolitan landscape shaped by inequality and cultural division. With three closely-drawn character portraits and the pacing of a thriller, Moreno’s novel offers a geographyof resilience and despair in a city marked by social and cultural division..
NOVEL…
Double Room, by Anne Sénès, translated by Alice Banks
London, late 1990s. Stan, a young and promising French composer, is invited to arrange the music for a theatrical adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The play will never be staged, but Stan meets Liv, the love of his life, and their harmonious duo soon becomes a trio with the birth of their beloved daughter, Lisa. Stan’s world is filled with vibrant colour and melodic music, and under his wife and daughter’s gaze, his piano comes to life.
Paris, today. After Liv’s fatal accident, Stan returns to France surrounded by darkness, no longer able to compose, and living in the Rabbit Hole a home left to him by an aunt. He shares his life with Babette, a lifeguard and mother of a boy of Lisa’s age, and Laïvely, an AI machine of his own invention endowed with Liv’s voice, that he spent entire nights building after her death.
But Stan remains haunted by his past. As the silence gradually gives way to noises, sometimes even a burst of laughter, and Laïvely seems to take on a life of its own, memories and reality fade and blur … and Stan’s new family implodes…
Read more about the novel in The Bookseller.
‘A book that will haunt you with what is said and what is left unsaid … simply brilliant’ – Jill Johnson
‘Every page contains a mystery, a twist, a doubt. We don’t follow the characters, we travel alongside them, turning the pages in an ever-increasing frenzy.’ – Jean-Paul Delfino
‘Told in an achingly beautiful voice, Double Room drew me into a world full of mystery, music and bittersweet love. Every sentence is poetic, every page is captivating. I could picture, taste and smell every scene…’ – Katie Allen
‘A beautiful, heartfelt and sensual story, written with style and grace.’ – Doug Johnstone
‘This spellbinding novel takes readers on a multi-sensory journey through love and loss, grief, frustration and lust … One of my favourite reads of the year.’ – Gill Paul
‘Enchanting, beautiful, poetic … evokes the most indescribable feelings.’ – Babelio
‘Spellbinding, disconcerting and hypnotic … an amalgamation of Shakespearean tragedy, the spirit of Lewis Carroll and the vivid descriptions of Wuthering Heights.’ – Aurélie Dye-Pellisson
‘Double Room is a beguiling tale of happiness, acceptance, love and grief that will sweep you away with its exquisite prose.’ – Books By Bindu
‘Melodic, haunting, achingly beautiful, sensual and heart-wrenching, Double Room is like nothing I’ve ever read before. Anne Sénès has a style that is all her own; a lyrical and moving prose that is enthralling.’ – Biblio Treasures
Read the full review here.
‘Double Room by Anne Sénès, translated into English from French by Alice Banks for Orenda Books, sounds like a ballet aire and reads like an impressionist painting. For a very long time I haven’t had the occasion of breathing so many different impressions while reading.’ – Wild Writing Life
Read the the review here.
‘Anne Sénès’ writing is exciting and surprising, Alice Banks’ translation captures all the fragility and musicality of this splendid work.’ – Mary Picken
Read the full review here.
NOVEL…
Madrid Will be Their Tomb, by Elizabeth Duval, translated by Alice Banks, Fum d’Estampa Press
Two occupied buildings: one the former headquarters of the NO-DO (a Francoist propaganda outlet) that has been taken over by a small group of fascists, the other the ruins of some abandoned film studios that have been converted into the barracks of a Marxist-Leninist cell. Drifting between these two spaces are Santiago and Ramiro; two characters who cross paths and change each other’s lives. Discursive and devastating, Duval’s first novel is imbued with the same traits as the era she portrays. A sad, passionate, and all too real portrait of an ever more divided world, Duval’s story, in her powerful, shocking, yet considered prose, reminds us of the uncomfortable, but somewhat comforting similarities we may find with the “enemy”.
‘What I tell here, after all, is a rather small story of love and violence, comments Elizabeth Duval in the author’s note to her scorching, exhilarating Madrid Will Be Their Tomb (fluently translated by Alice Banks), a novel of deep political and philosophical engagement, indelible imagery and great energy.’ – Catherine Taylor, The Irish Times
Selected for the Irish Times’ Best Fiction in Translation of 2023
‘Duval narrates disorder and subversion with a writing that is sometimes contained, sometimes runaway, sometimes ironic and sometimes poetic. Modest and powerfully beautiful, this is writing that illuminates human mystery and lifts the reader into the air, leaving them on an edge where their convictions tremble and shake.’ – Juan Manuel de Prada, ABC
‘A marvellous novel.’ – Nadal Suau, El Español
FEATURE ARTICLES…
Assistant editor of The Spanish Riveter and contributor of several articles…
Highlighting the Indies An overview of Spanish literature in translation published by UK and US independent publishers.
Grants, grants, grants: Translating and Promoting Spain’s Literature in English An informative article about the grants available for funding translation costs and promotional activity for books translated from Basque, Catalan, Galician and Spanish.
Translation of the Postcard from Galicia, by Inma López Silva
Read the articles, and the magazine in full here.
NOVEL…
Deranged As I Am, by Ali Zamir, translated by Alice Banks, Fum d’Estampa Press
Set on the island of Anjouan, Comoros, Deranged As I Am tells the story of a humble docker. With his ramshackle cart and patched-up clothes, he spends his days trying to find enough work to feed himself. This whirlwind of a novel takes place over just a few days, yet Zamir’s poetic and energetic prose transports us to the docks, its noises, colours, and smells, and the dynamism of his language along with his powerful mix of genres, and the cleverness of his verbal invention perfectly serve this tragicomedy that makes us feel both joy and pity. Yet this lively and often darkly humorous prose does not draw away from the more serious themes of class, poverty, and exploitation that Zamir explores. A rich and significant text that questions literature and language itself, Deranged As I Am confirms the very original place Zamir occupies in French literature.
‘In Zamir’s French, the language features rare words and is linguistically fascinating, traits that Alice Banks’s superb translation also possesses.’ – Areeb Ahmad, Asymptote
Read the full review here.
‘Drenched in sunshine, dripping with sweat and blood, and resembles an island fable and a philosophical tale. Ali Zamir revitalises the French language…’ –Jérôme Garcin, L’Obs
‘Twisting, breaking, and subverting the rules of the French language from its disregarded fringes, in order to question it and open it up.’ –Gladys Marivat, Le Monde
‘A little gem of cruel, yet humorous poetry… the work of a wordsmith.’ –Caroline Sauvage, L’essor des idées
‘Once you are immersed in it, it will carry you along in its underdog’s journey and its comic tragic scenarios and set pieces.The translation by Alice Banks was outstanding and read very easily and naturally.’ – Alan Teder
INTERVIEWS WITH WRITERS AND TRANSLATORS…
Interviews with writers and translators for the Hablemos, escritoras podcast
In my collaboration with Hablemos, escritoras, I have recorded interviews with writers and translators working with Spanish and Latin American literature.
TRANSLATION OF INTERVIEWS…
Hablemos, escritoras interviews in Latin American Literature Today
A selection of Hablemos, escritoras interviews I have translated into English are available to read on the Latin American Literature Today website:
Interview with Gabriela Wiener
More interviews are available to read in English and Spanish on the Hablemos, escritoras website.
ANTHOLOGY…
An Island of Stories: An Anthology to Travel through Gran Canaria is a short story collection published by the Biblioteca Insular de Gran Canaria. The project was brought together in the silence of lockdown, woven patiently in the following months and finally, sewn into the folds of the book through the eyes, bodies and voices of renowned artists from the island. All push the limits and boundaries of their own knowledge through this map of stories.
‘I was the happiest girl in the world‘, by Paula I. Nogales Romero, translated from Spanish by Alice Banks
‘Kain with a C‘, by Alicia Llarena, translated from Spanish by Alice Banks
REVIEWS AND FEATURE ARTICLES…
Contributions to the translation journal, Asymptote
Poetry & Prose, by Jordi Llavina, translated from Catalan by William Hamilton, is a stunning collection of, as the title suggests, poetry and prose. The book opens with one astounding long-form poem—its English translation parallel to the original Catalan—and ends with an equally beautiful short prose piece. Themes of memory, time, and nature are prevalent in both, and Llavina’s lyricism flows effortlessly throughout the whole collection. Poetry & Prose—as well as the only other publication of Llavina’s work in English, London Under Snow—makes clear that this award-winning writer is an expert at blurring the lines between reality and fiction, and bringing reader and writer closer together than ever…
Read more here.
REVIEW: WHAT’S NEW IN TRANSLATION REVIEW, Zabor or the Psalms, by Kamel Daoud, tr. Emma Ramadan
Zabor, or the Psalms is an exhilarating novel, a saga, a journey through literature, language, and postcolonialism. As the spiraling and lyrical prose proceeds, it becomes clear that Kamel Daoud did not intend for this novel to be straightforward. Daoud—in Ramadan’s exquisite translation—makes the reader work, immersing them deep into Zabor’s plagued mind and troubled thoughts on language, literature, and his gift. I can only imagine the huge challenge that Ramadan has conquered in translating this incredibly lyrical prose that jumps back and forth between times, flits between thoughts, and sits upon layers and layers of metaphor. Her translation is impeccable, allowing the reader to easily immerse themselves into Zabor’s strange world. The text explores themes of rejection, abandonment, isolation, and death, but most importantly, Daoud subtly unpicks the power of language and literature in a postcolonial setting, presenting these charged topics through the lens of filial piety…
Read more here.
Alice Banks 