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,…
Details
Tagged with: books, Detjalerna, Finnish, Ia Genberg, Jaana Nikula, Kia Josefsson, Swedish, The Details, Translation, Yksityiskohdat
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Bolla
A mythical creature, she rises from the waters to wreak destruction. Snakelike, dragonlike, unlike anything else you hear in fairytales round here. She’s dangerous. That’s Bolla. But the book is about two men, who love each other, perhaps. Or at…
Tagged with: Bolla, books, David Hackston, Finnish, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Patjim Statovci, Translation
Posted in books, Queer, translation
Posted in books, Queer, translation
The Little Pike that Swam Out Of Lapland
Some books go far. Some have a vast marketing machine behind them. Others have an adoring aunt that’s always inviting them round for coffee and cake, digging around her own bookshelves for that particular edition that might just help, and…
Tagged with: books, Finnish, Finnish Literature Exchange, Pienen hauen pyydystys, Pushkin Press, Restless Books, Siltala, Summer Fishing in Lapland, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
The Book of Desire
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.…
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
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…
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
found in translation 