The Book of Desire is a thing of beauty. It arrived wrapped in white and gold tissue, tied with natural string, packed in cardboard. These things matter. I thought someone had sent me a gift. Opening it was a ceremony.…
The Book of Desire
Tagged with: Galley Beggar Press, Kāmattu-p-pāl, Meena Kandasamy, Meena Kandasamz, Poetry, Tamil, Tiruvaḷḷuvar, Translation
Posted in poetry, translation
Posted in poetry, translation
The Red Book of Farewells
We’ve waited twenty years for this. To be scrupulously honest, I haven’t, as when it won the Finlandia Prize in 2003, I couldn’t speak a word of Finnish. But Pirkko Saisio’s Punainen erokirja in Mia Spangenberg’s translation as the Red…
Tagged with: books, Finlandia Prize, Finnish, Mia Spangenberg, Pirkko Saisio, Punainen erokirja, Red Book of Farewells, Translation, Two Lines Press
Posted in books, literature, Queer, translation
Posted in books, literature, Queer, translation
Annie Ernaux: finding the translations
When Annie Ernaux received the Nobel Prize in Literature last autumn, I am ashamed to say I had never heard of her. Some French-speaking friends had loved her work for years. Two had learned French outside France, whereas friends who…
Tagged with: Alison Strayer, Annie Ernaux, books, Finnish, Fitzcarraldo Editions, French, Gummerus, Lotta Toivanen, Translation
Posted in books, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Posted in books, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Love in…
Five women in love. And then out of it. There aren’t going to be happy endings. Until, the author said, she talked to her daughter, and felt that she had to offer a bit of hope. Because what a lot…
Tagged with: books, Daniela Krien, Die Liebe im Ernstfall, German, Jamie Bulloch, Love in Five Acts, MacLehose Press, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Es kommt
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. No, not that one, that’s not for a few weeks yet. Advent, the waiting. And who does Advent best? I’ve said it before – the Germans, of course. I haven’t lived in…
Tagged with: advent, Berliner Solistenchor, Catherine Winkworth, Christmas Carols, Es kommt ein Schiff geladen, George Ratcliffe Woodward, German, Hymns, Translation
Posted in Christmas, music
Posted in Christmas, music
Walesland/Gwaliadir
I bought this because of the translator. Caryl Lewis’s writing is tense and spare and true. I loved Y Gemydd which I read as The Jeweller in Gwen Davies’s translation, and Drift, her first novel in English. Then I found…
Tagged with: Caryl Lewis, Gwaliadir, Nigel Wells, Poetry, Translation, Walesland, Welsh, Y Lolfa
Posted in books, history, poetry, translation
Posted in books, history, poetry, translation
The train that didn’t go to Katyń
In April 1940, over twenty thousand Polish officers were killed by the Soviets in the forest of Katyń. A bare few hundred of those soldiers survived. The way I remember my grandfather telling the story of his capture on Poland’s…
Tagged with: Alissa Valles, art, books, history, Józef Czapski, Memories of Starobielsk: Essays on Art and History, NYRB Classics, Polish, Translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Tasting Sunlight
Autumn fruit. Pears, apples, grapes… the orchards and vineyards are bursting with golden light. Yet the light is fading. The first frost bites. That’s the English title for you, Tasting Sunlight. But in German, Ewald Arenz called it Alte Sorten,…
Tagged with: Alte Sorten, books, Ewald Arenz, German, Orenda Books, Rachel Ward, Tasting Sunlight, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Marzahn, Mon Amour
A podiatrist’s story. She stopped writing to start looking after other people’s feet. She needed to make a living. Her fellow authors were not impressed. But from that experience, she crafted some impressive portraits of people and place. When many…
Tagged with: Berlin, books, German, Hanser Verlag, Jo Heinrich, Katja Oskamp, Marzahn, Peirene Press, Translation
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted in Uncategorized
Russia: knife, fork, and ladle
The Romanovs, Lenin, Gagarin – they all had their cooks. Holodomor, Leningrad, Chernobyl, Afghanistan – sometimes there is nothing (safe) to cook at all. For some people, like the Tatars, cooking is all you have left of home. Others, like…
Tagged with: Antonia Lloyd-Jones, books, How to Feed a Dictator, Polish, Rosja od Kuchni, Russia, Translation, Witold Szabłowski
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Tolkien’s Translator
Finland’s Gandalf is real. She forges fantastic fireworks, the like of which were never seen before. They dazzle the locals who’ve never been over the next hill – or heard of anyone under it. “You shall not pass!” she cries,…
Tagged with: books, Finnish, Kersti Juva, Lord of the Rings, SKS, Speculative fiction, Tolkien, Tolkienin tulkkina, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Aino A!
Living in a building designed by Alvar Aalto is both unparalleled and uncomfortable. I have just moved out of Viitatorni (the “skyscraper” he finally got built in Jyväskylä after years of trying) into Säynätsalo Town Hall, into Säynätsalo Town Hall,…
Tagged with: Aino A!, Aino Marsio-Aalto, architecture, biofiction, books, Finnish, Jari Järvelä, Translation, Wivi Lönn
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Go, went, gone
A white, male, comfortably-off, widowed professor at a Berlin university has just retired. He meets Black African men seeking asylum in Europe. He tries to find out about them, and to help them. Not new, perhaps. Isn’t the whole perspective…
Tagged with: Asylum, Berlin, books, German, Jenny Erpenbeck, Susan Bernofsky, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Lament for the Fallen
I am writing this as Afghanistan descends once more into horror. A tiny Welsh part of me still thinks “the bloody English colonials, look what they started and didn’t finish – again.” And you could read the Gododdin this way,…
Tagged with: Aneirin, books, Cynghanedd, Faber, Gillian Clarke, Gododdin, Hay Festival, Poetry, Translation, Welsh
Posted in books, history, literature, poetry
Posted in books, history, literature, poetry
Words of Welsh Women
Gwerful Mechain was writing in the 1400s but I only discovered her in 2019, in Zoë Brigley Thompson’s glorious, full-on rendering of I’r Cedor for Modern Poetry in Translation. That poem opens this collection of half a millennium of Welsh…
found in translation 