Once I’d got my teeth into Tergit, I wasn’t going to let go. Käsebier was splendid. Berlin in the twenties is a somewhere, somewhen I wish I had been to, and here was a woman broadcasting live from the thick…
Blog Archives
Effingers
Tagged with: books, Effingers, Gabriele Tergit, German, Sofie Duvernoy, Translation, Waiting for translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Empusium
Empuzjon is Olga Tokarczuk’s made-up word in Polish from two Greek words. Symposium – drinkfuelled philosophical debate – and empusa – a female shape-shifter. Here, you can go down a delightful rabbithole to find empusas: Wikipedia took me to Kipling’s…
Tagged with: Antonia Lloyd-Jones, books, Empusium, Empuzjon, Fitzcarraldo Editions, Olga Tokarczuk, Polish, Translation
Posted in books, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Posted in books, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Pocket Punishment
A colleague raved about Ferdinand von Schirach, and a good friend said he can sure write a story. So when I found this lovely btb pocket edition that’s smaller than most phones these days, I thought, let’s try him. Strafe…
Tagged with: books, Ferdinand von Schirach, German, Katharina Hall, Punishment, Strafe, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Ædnan
I was in two minds about this picture, but I think it fits. I took it on the ferry home from Stockholm. Behind the book, you can glimpse the old royal centre of the self-styled “capital of Scandinavia.” That phrase…
Tagged with: Ædnan, books, Linnea Axelsson, Northern Sámi, Poetry, Saskia Vogel, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Käsebier takes Berlin
Then we take Berlin… But for how long? Gabriele Tergit wrote Käsebier erobert den Kurfürstendamm right after the story unfolded. Berlin in the late 1920s was at its most shimmering, glorious, and frenetic. But pride comes before a fall and…
Tagged with: books, Gabrielle Tergit, German, Käsebier erobert den Kurfürstendamm, Käsebier takes Berlin, Pushkin Press, Rohwolt, Sophie Duvernoy, Translation
Posted in books, history
Posted in books, history
Cursed Bunny
I read this at Easter, but the Easter bunny this is not. If you want to read something nice, don’t read this book. It is often an unpleasantly visceral experience. But if you want to read something incisive, do read…
Tagged with: Anton Hur, books, Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny, Korean, Polish, Short Stories, Translation
Posted in books, International Booker, translation
Posted in books, International Booker, translation
Still raging: Die Wut, die bleibt
A man asks a woman to pass the salt, and she gets up, walks past him out onto the balcony and… jumps. Leaving behind her teenage daughter, two young sons and their father, and her best friend. Was it one…
Tagged with: Austria, books, Die Wut die bleibt, Feminism, German, ITI German Network, Jozef van der Voort, Mareike Fallwickl, New Books in German, Rohwolt, The Rage that Remains, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
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
found in translation 