
In the middle of the twelve days of Christmas, the year is turning. It’s a time to remember the good and bad in the year that’s fading, and perhaps to hope for something better in the year to come. One…
The year is about to turn – it is the shortest day. From here on in, the light returns, the days get longer. But when it’s this dark (for 19 hours a day, where I live), you have a better…
Euridice Gusmao can turn her hand to absolutely anything, and very quickly become quite brilliant at it. But because she’s a woman in 1940s Rio, very few people see it that way. So things don’t turn out quite as they…
Finland turns 100 today. Although it’s the darkest and coldest time of the year, consuming the hottest chilli you can get your hands on might not be the obvious way to celebrate. Until you read this book and understand how horribly…
As Finland’s centenary drew ever closer, I realised I had been neglecting her western neighbour in favour of the eastern one, which also has a big anniversary year. Selma Lagerlöf’s Mårbacka, published in the 1920s, seemed a good place to…
“Listening to the foreign language I was deeply speaking our own, and came to understand how difficult it is to name things truly…” says the Greek poet, Eleni Vakalo (1921-2001). Her translator, Karen Emmerich, describes discovering manuscripts of her poems…
This is one of those books you start reading because you feel you ought to, because everyone tells you you really should, which is actually rather annoying, and you’re pretty sure it’s not your thing, it’s the sort of thing…
It’s a hundred years since the October Revolution. What was it really like at the time, when nobody knew how it would end? Was all the violence worth it? Was a new dawn really breaking? This hugely varied collection of…
The first ever Warwick Prize for Women in Translation short list presents tough competition (not least with Memoirs of A Polar Bear and Second Hand Time) but The Coast Road (The Gallery Press, 2016) is extraordinary. A host of translators offer…