Found in Translation is a brand new book club for 2025.

The group meets on the third Wednesday of every alternate month from 6pm to 8pm in the bookshop.

Books will be chosen in advance and will rotate around the globe; specifically with the aim of looking at how words are interpreted in translation.

JOIN THE CLUB

The book club meetings are seated events, so places are limited, and events can get pretty full. Please email Jules on jules@northbooks.co.uk to add your name to the list. Participation is free and if the book is purchased in advance from North Books a 10% discount is offered.

At North Books, 4 Castle Street, Hay-on-Wye on Wednesday 16 July, 6–8pm.

THE BOOK

A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler is the first book on FIT’s 2025 reading list

The first novel of 2025 up for discussion on Wednesday 16 July is The Whole Life by Robert Seethaler. This book is available from North Books.

Shortlisted for the Booker International Prize.

Like John Williams' Stoner or Denis Johnson's Train Dreams, A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler is a tender book about finding dignity and beauty in solitude. An exquisite novel about a simple life, it has already demonstrated its power to move thousands of readers with a message of solace and truth. It looks at the moments, big and small, that make us what we are.

Andreas lives his whole life in the Austrian Alps, where he arrives as a young boy taken in by a farming family. He is a man of very few words and so, when he falls in love with Marie, he doesn't ask for her hand in marriage, but instead has some of his friends light her name at dusk across the mountain. When Marie dies in an avalanche, pregnant with their first child, Andreas' heart is broken. He leaves his valley just once more, to fight in WWII – where he is taken prisoner in the Caucasus – and returns to find that modernity has reached his remote haven . . .