Going to your friends’ cabin in the mountains is a treat. But if even if you know them and the place well, you might be unsure about how it will work out. If they pop into town and leave you…
Blog Archives
The Wall
Tagged with: books, Die Wand, German, Literature, Marlen Haushofer, Shaun Whiteside, The Wall, Translation
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted in Uncategorized
White Nights
Rather than heralding midsummer, White Nights/Białe noce feels looming and Novemberish. Immersed in darkness and silence (ciemno wszędzie, głucho wszędzie), there’s no way of knowing what’s going to happen next. Very likely, another death… If you love Tokarczuk and want…
Tagged with: Białe noce, books, International Booker Prize, Kate Webster, MTO Press, Polish, Translation, Ursula Honek, White Nights
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Aliss at the Fire
When a Nordic neighbour wins a Nobel, it’s nice to take notice. So last autumn at a book fair, nestling among the Rosebuds, I spotted Jon Fosse, in a deep Fitzcarraldo (Norwegian flag cross?) blue cover, with a gold sticker…
Tagged with: Aliss at the Fire, Damion Searls, Fitzcarraldo Editions, Jon Fosse, Nobel Prize in Literature, Norwegian, Translation
Posted in books, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Posted in books, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Störfall
Accident, incident, malfunction, (power) failure? You could translate Störfall in all of these ways. Accident seems a small word to contain the enormity of it. Christa Wolf brings together two major incidents, personal and political, local and global, in her…
Tagged with: Accident, books, Chernobyl, Christa Wolf, German, Heike Schwarzbauer, Rick Tavorian, Störfall, Suhrkamp, Translation, University of Chicago Press
Posted in books, history, translation
Posted in books, history, translation
When Christmas comes
Christmas means carols. There are some you have to hear or sing, or it isn’t Christmas. And every year, if it’s a good year, you find a new one you haven’t heard before. Do you know this one? Apo Noponen…
Tagged with: Apo Noponen, Christmas Carols, Finnish, Jyväskylän naislaulajat, Kun joulu on, Otto Kotilainen, Translation, When Christmas comes
Posted in Christmas, translation
Posted in Christmas, translation
The Visionaries
These women wrote through the darkest times. As times get darker again, 80 to 90 years later, we need to read them. The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil and the Salvation of Philosophy (Allen Lane 2023) in Shaun Whiteside’s English…
Tagged with: Ayn Rand, books, Feuer der Freiheit, French, German, Hannah Arendt, philosophy, Ros Schwarz, Shaun Whiteside, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, The Vsionaries, Translation, Wolfgang Eilenberger
Posted in books, gender, history
Posted in books, gender, history
What can you see from here?
From here, you can see that dreams can be a nightmare when you wake up. What’s all in your head, and what’s going to happen? From here, you can see everyone you’ve always known. The village is close. From here,…
Tagged with: books, German, Marina Leky, Tess Lewis, Translation, Was man von hier aus sehen kann, What you can see from here
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
In memory of memory
The way you remember your story is important. Your family’s stories and their ways of telling them tell you about who you are. But there is so much missing. Maria Stepanova comes from a long line of Russian Jews, and…
Tagged with: Fitzcarraldo Editions, In Memory of Memory, Maria Stepanova, Russian, Sasha Dugdale, Translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Back in the USS
A list led me to this one. Mia Spanberg’s 7 contemporary Finnish novels on Electric Literature, to be precise. It’s translated into English by the author herself, Cristina Sandu, who’s also translated Adichie and Rooney into Finnish. At first, I…
Tagged with: books, Christina Sandu, Finnish, Helsinki Library Reading Challenge, The Union of Synchronized Swimmers, Translation, Vesileikit
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Details
This book has been winning awards ever since it was published in Sweden last year, and today it’s out in English. I read the Finnish translation. My five-year plan to learn Swedish well enough to be “civilized” (not a juntti,…
Tagged with: books, Detjalerna, Finnish, Ia Genberg, Jaana Nikula, Kia Josefsson, Swedish, The Details, Translation, Yksityiskohdat
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
found in translation 