Adult Fiction in Global Languages: Serving the New Mainer Community
Have you ever wandered through the stacks on the 2nd floor in adult fiction wondering why we don’t own any books in languages other than English? After all, we do have a fairly extensive collection of foreign films downstairs! Are you a first-generation immigrant trying to maintain ties to your ancestral homeland and prefer to read for leisure in your native tongue? Or, are you perhaps studying a romance language and want to challenge your reading comprehension by taking a stab at reading an Allende novel in the original Spanish? (As someone married to a Spaniard with moderately decent knowledge of Spanish, I wouldn’t be brave enough to attempt this, but kudos to anyone who is!) 🙂
Thanks to a small grant we won back in the summer months of 2024, we have the opportunity to build an equally small (but robust) collection of adult fiction titles in three different languages: French, Portuguese, and Spanish. The titles are not limited to literary classics that can be accessed through ILL (interlibrary loan) services from college and university libraries scattered throughout the state. We’ve made an effort to acquire popular, mainstream titles, and relatively current titles (most dated from 2015 and later).
See below a small sampling of titles currently available (with more to come awaiting cataloging) in each of the three target languages:
French
| TITLE | AUTHOR | HOME COUNTRY | CALL NUMBER | GENRE |
| La symphonie des monstres (2023) | Levy, Marc | France | STUDY FRE LEV | Thriller |
| Le bal des folles (2019) | Mas, Victoria | France | STUDY FRE MAS | Historical Fiction |
| Les yeux de Mona (2024) | Schlesser, Thomas | France | STUDY FRE SCH | Literary Fiction |
Portuguese
| TITLE | AUTHOR | HOME COUNTRY | CALL NUMBER | GENRE |
| Mata doce (2023) | Aparecida, Luciany | Brazil | STUDY POR APA | Literary fiction |
| Pāo de açúcar (2018) | Cabral, Afonso Reis | Portugal | STUDY POR CAB | Thriller (True Crime) |
| Todos os santos (2019) | Lisboa, Adriana | Brazil | STUDY POR LIS | Literary Fiction |
Spanish
| TITLE | AUTHOR | HOME COUNTRY | CALL NUMBER | GENRE |
| El viento conoce mi nombre (2023) | Allende, Isabel | Chile | STUDY SPA ALL | Historical fiction |
| La chica de nieve (2022 ed., ©2020) | Castillo, Javier | Spain | STUDY SPA CAS | Thriller (psychological) |
| Diablo guardián (2022) | Velasco, Xavier | Mexico | STUDY SPA VEL | Literary fiction (satirical) |
Finally, if you have any questions, comments, or book recommendations/requests, don’t hesitate to contact Courtney at ckleftis@yarmouthlibrary.org or follow the links below to access book request forms in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.
We also have purchased a handful of super popular 2023 and 2024 titles, like Kristin Hannah’s The Women, in translation. (So far, available here in Spanish!) Stay tuned for more!
Where to locate this collection? Check out the top shelf to the far left of the study on the 2nd floor. See photos below:
Happy reading! Bonne lecture! Boa leitura! Feliz lectura! 🙂
-Courtney
