Being read to isn’t only for children. If you, like me, work closely with complicated texts all day, however much you love reading, it can feel like an effort on workday evenings. But great world literature is just within earshot.…
Blog Archives
Europe on Air: Warsaw, Berlin, Istanbul
Tagged with: Antonia Lloyd-Jones, BBC Radio 4, Berlin, Elif Shafak, Entanglement, Finnish, German, Istanbul, Jamie Bulloch, Look Who's Back, Marja-Leena Jaakkola, Polish, Reading Europe, Svetlana Alexeievich, three percent, Timur Vermes, Warsaw, Zygmunt Miłoszewski
Posted in books, literature, radio, translation
Posted in books, literature, radio, translation
“It is time to speak out”: Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Laureate 2015
Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich has been awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature for her “Polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” Born in Ukraine to a Ukrainian mother and a Belarusian father, she worked as…
Tagged with: Belarusian, Jerzy Czech, Julia R Robin Whitby, Literature, Nobel Prize, Polish, Russian, Ryszard Kapuściński, Svetlana Alexievich, Translation, Ukrainian
Posted in books, literature, translation
Posted in books, literature, translation
German Book Prize Shortlisters in Translation
The German Book Prize short list is out today! Three women, three Swiss writers and four with other books published in English in the last three years have made the cut. In my very subjective order of preference, they are:…
Tagged with: Eluned Gramich, Eugene Hayworth, Frank Witzel, German, German Book Prize, Inger-Maria Mahlke, Jenny Erpenbeck, Martin Chalmers, Monique Schwitter, Rolf Lappert, Susan Bernofsky, Swiss, Translation, Ulrich Peltzer
Posted in books, literature
Posted in books, literature
Now and at the Hour of our Death
This beautiful book is published by And Other Stories this week. It isn’t easy to write about the dying and their loved ones without falling into clichés and platitudes, especially in such a beautiful setting as rural northern Portugal: “Grass…
Tagged with: And Other Stories, books, Edinburgh Festival, Julia Sanches, Now and at the Hour of our Death, Portuguese, Susana Moreira Marques, Translation
Posted in books, Edinburgh Festival
Posted in books, Edinburgh Festival
“born of love, not hatred”: Anne Carson’s Antigone
Yes, I did go to see Antigone at the Edinburgh Festival because Juliette Binoche was in the title role (I loved her work with Kieslowski, though unfortunately this time, images from Chocolat kept surfacing in my mind). And I made a discovery: Anne Carson’s new…
Tagged with: Anne Carson, Antigone, Antigonick, Bianca Stone, Bloodaxe, Edinburgh Festival, Greek, Oberon Classics, Sophokles, Translation
Posted in books, Edinburgh Festival, Illustration, theatre
Posted in books, Edinburgh Festival, Illustration, theatre
Women in Translation Month: Menna Elfyn
“Why write? It is so much easier to say when I started to write. I fell in love with words, and wordsmiths such as Dylan Thomas… in the ‘fifties, when I was growing up, the Welsh language was still seen…
Tagged with: Catrin Glyndwr, Gillian Clarke, Joseph P. Clancy, Menna Elfyn, Murmur, Poetry, Translation, Welsh, Women in Translation Month
Posted in books, language, poetry
Posted in books, language, poetry
Tove Jansson 101: Riviera Memories
Tove Jansson turns 101 this Sunday. She was 61 exactly when I was born, so I will be celebrating at a secret location on the day, hence the advance nature of this post. What is there to celebrate this year? For…
Books for everyone
We need diverse books has one of the best summer reading campaigns around. Every day they’ll offer you and the children and young people you know a new perspective on a favourite story to expand your world. The campaign links to sources…
Tagged with: Children's Books, Erich Kästner, German, international, Language, Letterbox Press, Lucie Arnoux, Mantra Lingua, Polish, Pushkin Children's Books, Translation, We Need Diverse Books, Young Adult
Posted in books, international
Posted in books, international
Knausgaard: which translation?
Knausgård’s Min Kamp/My Struggle series are a publishing sensation and I had to see what all the fuss was about. Not being able to read them in Norwegian, I had a choice of four translations to choose from: English, Polish, German…
Tagged with: Don Bartlett, Finnish, German, Gombrowicz, Iwona Zimicka, Karl Ove Knausgård, Katriina Huttunen, Norwegian, Paul Berf, Polish, Swedish
Posted in books, international, literature, translation
Posted in books, international, literature, translation
The Ladyman
The 6th Queer Issue of Words Without Borders is out this month, with a strong showing from Central and Eastern Europe. The Serbian piece by Dragoslava Barzut is heart breaking, the opening of Zuzana Kepplová’s Slovak piece made me laugh,…
Tagged with: Czech, Dragoslava Barzut, Literature, Peter and Julia Sherwood, Polish, Queer, Sean Gasper Bye, Serbian, Slovak, Sylwia Chutnik, Translation, Warsaw, Women, Words without Borders, Zusana Kepplova, Zuzana Brabcova
Posted in books, literature
Posted in books, literature
found in translation 