Blog Archives

The Visionaries

Posted on 15 November 2023 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — Leave a comment

These women wrote through the darkest times. As times get darker again, 80 to 90 years later, we need to read them. The Visionaries: Arendt, Beauvoir, Rand, Weil and the Salvation of Philosophy (Allen Lane 2023) in Shaun Whiteside’s English…

What can you see from here?

Posted on 18 October 2023 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — Leave a comment

From here, you can see that dreams can be a nightmare when you wake up. What’s all in your head, and what’s going to happen? From here, you can see everyone you’ve always known. The village is close. From here,…

Tagged with: books, German, Marina Leky, Tess Lewis, Translation, Was man von hier aus sehen kann, What you can see from here
Posted in books, translation

In memory of memory

Posted on 13 September 2023 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — Leave a comment

The way you remember your story is important. Your family’s stories and their ways of telling them tell you about who you are. But there is so much missing. Maria Stepanova comes from a long line of Russian Jews, and…

Tagged with: Fitzcarraldo Editions, In Memory of Memory, Maria Stepanova, Russian, Sasha Dugdale, Translation
Posted in books, history, translation

Back in the USS

Posted on 6 September 2023 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — Leave a comment

A list led me to this one. Mia Spanberg’s 7 contemporary Finnish novels on Electric Literature, to be precise. It’s translated into English by the author herself, Cristina Sandu, who’s also translated Adichie and Rooney into Finnish. At first, I…

Details

Posted on 8 August 2023 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — 2 Comments

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,…

Tagged with: books, Detjalerna, Finnish, Ia Genberg, Jaana Nikula, Kia Josefsson, Swedish, The Details, Translation, Yksityiskohdat
Posted in books, translation

Bolla

Posted on 17 July 2023 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — Leave a comment

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

The Little Pike that Swam Out Of Lapland

Posted on 21 June 2023 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — 2 Comments

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…

The Red Book of Farewells

Posted on 19 April 2023 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — 2 Comments

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…

Annie Ernaux: finding the translations

Posted on 15 March 2023 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — 1 Comment

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…

Love in…

Posted on 12 January 2023 by Kate Sotejeff-Wilson — 2 Comments

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…