Yearly Archives: 2018

The True Deceiver

Posted on 1 August 2018 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — 1 Comment

To start Women in Translation Month this year, I return to one of my favourite authors, whose birthday is next week. Tove Jansson never fails to make you think. This is about a woman artist who cannot escape her own…

The Ten Thousand Things

Posted on 18 July 2018 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — Leave a comment

The bookseller grinned broadly and actually looked me in the eye. Apparently it’s not often that people looking for books in English go straight for the Dutch literature. But how Dutch is this book anyway? It’s caught between two worlds:…

Tagged with: American Book Center Amsterdam, books, Dutch, Hans Koning, Indonesia, Maria Dermoût, Spice Islands, Translation
Posted in books, history, international, translation

The Emperor of Portugallia

Posted on 3 July 2018 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — Leave a comment

Once upon a time, a hundred years and more ago, there was an ordinary man in an ordinary village, who led a really rather ordinary life. He worked hard, but nothing really excited him; he wasn’t very happy, but he…

Tagged with: books, Norvik Press, Peter Graves, Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish, The Emperor of Portugallia, Translation
Posted in books, literature, translation

They know not what they do

Posted on 19 June 2018 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — Leave a comment

When Jussi Valtonen’s book won the Finlandia Prize for the best novel of 2014, my friend recommended it to me. Her husband had loved it, I would find it really interesting. But it looked so weighty, and back then, my…

Tagged with: books, Finland, Finlandia Prize, Finnish, Jussi Valtonen, Kristian London, Oneworld, They Know Not What They Do, Translation
Posted in books, translation

Thomas Bernhard’s poems

Posted on 5 June 2018 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — Leave a comment

Once he’d written them, he didn’t look back. He moved on to plays and novels, for which he’s much better known. He didn’t write any more poems for decades. Once he’d written them, he kept looking back. He returned and…

Tagged with: books, Collected Poems, German, James Reidel, Poetry, Seagull Books, Thomas Bernhard, Translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation

Ghachar Ghochar

Posted on 22 May 2018 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — 1 Comment

One of the best things about reading books in translation is that they take you to places you might never go, through languages that you might never learn, and make you feel right at home, as if you’ve grown up…

VE Day #73: All that still matters at all

Posted on 8 May 2018 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — Leave a comment

You might have heard of writing for the desk drawer, but what about writing for your jacket pocket when you expect to die, be buried in a mass grave if at all, and the odds of anyone finding what you’ve…

Tagged with: All that Still Matters at all, Hungarian, John M. Ridland, Miklós Radnóti, Peter V. Czipott, Poetry, Translation
Posted in books, history, poetry, translation

Secret passages under my hometown

Posted on 25 April 2018 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — 2 Comments

When someone writes about the streets where you live, you feel immediately predisposed towards them. You want to like everything they say, and even if you don’t like it, you will certainly have an opinion. The woman who translates many…

Brother in Ice

Posted on 11 April 2018 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — Leave a comment

On the ice, time and space are almost impossible to measure. Yes, there might be the sun, but in winter it might not rise for long, if at all, and in summer it might not set for long, if at…

Tagged with: Alicia Kopf, And Other Stories, Arctic, books, Brother in Ice, Catalan, Mara Faye Lethem, Translation
Posted in books, translation

Baba Dunja

Posted on 28 March 2018 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — Leave a comment

Baba Dunja is an indomitable woman. She won’t let anything as trifling as a major nuclear disaster move her from her home. So back she moved, in to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and carried on growing her vegetables as if…