As the lazy days of August tee up the frenzy of back to school, grab one last turn at summer reading with novels in translation. These five selections will move you across the globe and back in time.

• A New Sublime: Ten Timeless Lessons on the Classics by Piero Boitani; tr. from Italian by Ann Goldstein (Europa).
  The masterly Boitani shows how classic Greek and Roman literature still has power today.
• The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa; tr. from Japanese by Stephen Snyder (Pantheon).
  The latest from Ogawa (Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales) revolves around some of the darkest themes of the modern era mixed with today's most pressing issues—truth, privacy, surveillance, safety, loss—as objects begin to disappear and the Memory Police reign.
   
• Käsebier Takes Berlin by Gabriele Tergit; tr. from German by Sophie Duvernoy (New York Review Books Classics).
  Set in Weimar Berlin, this satire explores overnight celebrity, the easy allure of fame, and the ways mass media manipulate the masses—all against the backdrop of a country teetering on the brink of collapse.
   
• Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk; tr. from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Riverhead).
  Having won the coveted Man Booker Prize in 2018 for her acclaimed novel Flights, Tokarczuk returns with a detective story that involves far more than a whodunit, delighting critics and making this year's Man Booker short list.
   
• The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán; tr. from Spanish by Sophie Hughes (Coffee House).
  This debut, which focuses on the second generation after General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, is generating lots of buzz and is also short-listed for this year’s Man Booker  Prize.