It is two years and more since this pandemic began. In March 2020, it hadn’t knocked Europe out yet, but it was going to very soon. The signs were there. In March 2020, this book began. It hadn’t knocked me…
Passio(n)
A tree of life gleams gold, rubies ready to be plucked from its branches. Around the trunk swirls a snake, ready to strike. Not life, then, but knowledge of good and evil. Plucking the rubies out, stripping the branches, is…
Tagged with: books, Finnish, Mia Spangenberg, Passio, Passion, Pirkko Saisio, Translation
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
Waiting for Translation: Why We Matter
It shouldn’t frustrate me so much that a German book has an English title, but it does. This frustration encapsulates some of the struggle for intersectional justice that Emilie Roig exposes. So often concepts and terms are honed in English,…
Tagged with: books, Emilia Roig, German, intersectional, justice, Waiting for translation, Why We Matter
Posted in books, gender
Posted in books, gender
Women in Translation Month: The Map
Is this an adventure novel, war memoir, seven short stories, or one of those new approaches to history through objects? It’s all that and more. The real protagonist is not a person, but a map. Do you know Rembrandt van…
Tagged with: books, Kate Webster, Mapa, Poland, Polish, Rembrandt, Terra Librorum, The Map, Translation, Women in Translation Month, Wydawnictwo Nisza
Posted in books, translation, Women in Translation Month
Posted in books, translation, Women in Translation Month
The Passenger
This book was written on the run. It captures that moment after 9 November 1938 where things got a lot worse for a lot of people, very rapidly. Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, then aged 23, had made it out of Germany…
Tagged with: 9 November 1938, books, Der Reisende, German, Klett-Cotta Verlag, Philip Boehm, Pushkin Press, The Passenger, Translation, Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
Posted in books, history, translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Daughters
Is this a road trip or a journey back in time? The German and English covers of Töchter/Daughters tell the same story in different ways. Just getting into the car and driving south to get away from it all –…
Tagged with: books, Daughters, German, Lucy Fricke, Rohwolt, Sinéad Crowe, Töchter, Translation, V&Q Books
Posted in books, gender, translation
Posted in books, gender, translation
found in translation 