My Parisian ex-step-sister is looking for some advice as to what book she should pick to translate for her 2nd year project. Any and all suggestions would are appreciated. Here is an edited version of her Facebook request.*
The summer's been quite busy for me and... to my disbelief and delight, I have been accepted into the second year of my translation MA.
So I need suggestions, which hopefully some will kindly provide. But there are restrictions: I need to translate a published book, written in English and that has not been translated into French - if it hasn't sold by the gazillions and/or is less than 4 or 5 years old, it shouldn't have been translated. The genre cannot be poetry - it's supposed to be fiction, but very well-written accessible non-fiction can do. Actually, I'd love to work on anthropology, geography or history. Edmund Burke, as much as I hate what he says (and he was f***ing ugly too), writes extremely well, for example, but he's been translated.
In fiction, I'd like to avoid short stories (I already did that last year - "Why Don't You Stop Talking" by Jaclie Kay) and I'm difficult. I open books, read central pages (I find first pages are not representative) and chuck them over my shoulder, just to see how it feels to be thrown out of bookstores. Though there aren't that many English language bookstores in Paris and I can't afford to be thrown out of many more. I'll take all suggestions of books you've enjoyed reading into account and never say whether I chucked it over my left or right shoulder or whether it landed on top of the pile or not. Especially since the chucking reason can be: "wow, three words in a row I don't get... Too hard." 
Also, plays are too short because I need to work on a 100 pages...
Thanks!!!
* bolding of text by me
