It’s too warm. It should be colder – a lot colder. It’s unseasonable. It’s beautiful, delightful, but it all feels wrong. It’s just all a bit too much, not cosy enough, not delicate enough, perhaps? Things should be the same,…
Yearly Archives: 2018
Oh, to be in Finland, now December’s there
Tagged with: Christmas Carols, Finland, Finnish, Karl Collan, Poetry, Robert Browning, Swedish, Sylvian joululaulu, Sylvias hälsning från Sicilien, Translation, Zachris Topelius
Posted in Christmas, music, poetry, translation
Posted in Christmas, music, poetry, translation
Those Whom I Would Like to Meet Again
A hundred years since Lithuania regained independence, all too briefly. Something to celebrate. I passed through in the summer, over sea and land from Helsinki to Warsaw and south-westwards. We didn’t stay long. I wish I had. My Polish grandmother…
Tagged with: 1918, books, Elizabeth Novickas, essays, Giedra Radvilavičiūtė, Lithuania, Lithuanian, Short Stories, Those Whom I Would Like to Meet Again, Translation
Posted in books, literature, translation
Posted in books, literature, translation
People in the Room
The three sisters sit at the window. From the apartment across the way, their faces are lit up, as in a (rather famous, rather older) portrait. The narrator watches them from her living room window is like a spy; she…
Tagged with: And Other Stories, Argentina, books, Charlotte Whittle, Norah Lange, People in the Room, Spanish, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Cold Mountain
Cold Mountain is a both a person and a place. A Buddhist monk, he brings the way to life through stories. He finds stillness inside him where he is. And he shows you, the reader, that you can do the…
Tagged with: Bill Porter, books, Buddhism, China, Cold Mountain, Han Shan, Poetry, Red Pine, Tao, Translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Swallowing Mercury
Wioletta Greg is frankly fantastic, and Eliza Marciniak has rendered her voice in English delightfully. A good friend gave this translation of Swallowing Mercury for my birthday, and her only concern was that I might have it already, but I might not…
Tagged with: books, Eliza Marciniak, National Translation Award, Polish, Swallowing Mercury, Translation, Wioletta Greg
Posted in books, history, literature, translation
Posted in books, history, literature, translation
1918: The Man who Spoke Snakish
A small country with centuries upon centuries of tradition easily falls sway to a new power sweeping in from the west; they seem so much bigger, better, shinier, more skilled and powerful, that it just seems to make sense to…
Tagged with: 1918, Andrus Kivirähk, books, Christopher Moseley, Estonian, The Man who Spoke Snakish, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
The Remainder
“Every now and then a book makes my fingers itch to translate it from the very first pages,” says Sophie Hughes. This is one of those books; her translation of Alia Trabucco Zerán’s The Remainder. Zerán’s generation are the children of Pinochet’s…
Tagged with: Alia Trabucco Zerán, And Other Stories, books, Chile, history, Sophie Hughes, Spanish, Translation
Posted in books, history, literature, translation
Posted in books, history, literature, translation
