As you all will probably know by now, I live in the Netherlands. While I read a portion of my books in English and I am more active in the international bookish community I do always have my eye on the dutch releases (which is mostly YA and Adult Fantasy). In recent years there have been more diverse books translated and published to the Dutch book market which is of course a great thing.
With this post I just wanted to share with you these books that have been getting attention in my country as well. I’m not going to be talking about books like Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunters or Rick Riordan’s series. Next to not mentioning the overly popular, I am also trying to look more at books that are by diverse creators. I don’t think I got everything but these are some of the more prominent ones.
Middle Grade
Furthermore and Whichwood by Tahereh Mafi
2016 and 2018
Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi
2018
Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper
2019
Young Adult
Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
2016
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
2017
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
2018
A Very Large Expanse of Sea by Tahereh Mafi
2018
They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera
2018
What If It’s Us by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera
Shadow of the Fox and Soul of the Sword by Julie Kagawa
2018 and 2019
All American Boys by Jason Reynolds
2019
Internment by Samira Ahmed
2019
More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera
2019
History is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera
2019
On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
2019
Nocturna by Maya Motayne
2019
Adult
The Fifth Season, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin
2018 and 2019
The more I look at this list the more it shows why I don’t read as much in Dutch as I could. Most of these translated works are YA contemporary and that is not my genre. As I try to diversify my reading the dutch fantasy market is not the place to find it unfortunately. And ‘diverse’ books by white, cishet, able bodied authors is just not cutting it anymore. Even looking at diverse dutch fantasy I can only think of Rima Orie’s book, released in 2019.
I do think that the publisher Blossom Books is the publisher that does its best. They are the ones that published a lot of the books on this list and have started trying to uplift diverse Dutch authors like with the booklet about autism by Bianca Toeps.
I envy and admire anyone who is reading in more than one language. At least it is slowly getting easier to find diverse authors in English but maybe as English readers we should be also reading more books in translation.
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Very true. I was very pleased to see that the author from Three-Body Problem has his books getting translated to English. But it does need to happen more often. Some authors also write straight to English like Dutch authors Marieke Nijkamp and Corinne Duyvis so they don’t have to deal with that (their books were later translated to Dutch lol).
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Ik ben zelf heel blij dat ik vlot Engelse boeken kan lezen want mocht dat niet het geval zijn dan zou ik heel wat fijne werelden niet ontdekt hebben. Maar je hebt wel helemaal gelijk wat die diversiteit betreft. Dat viel me onlangs weer op toen ik in de boekhandel de fantasy-rubriek bekeek en er amper 10 boeken stonden bij de volwassenen.
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Ja volwassen fantasie is momenteel echt heel jammer, het ondergeschoven kindje, maar ze halen het er blijkbaar ook niet echt uit? Het is veelal de bekende auteurs die worden vertaalt in deze groep en weinig nieuwe dingen. Wat echt jammer is want ik denk dat bijvoorbeeld Steel Crow Saga het ook super goed zou doen op onze markt.
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