Finland turns 100 today. Although it’s the darkest and coldest time of the year, consuming the hottest chilli you can get your hands on might not be the obvious way to celebrate. Until you read this book and understand how horribly…
Blog Archives
Finland 100: The Core of the Sun
Tagged with: books, Dublin Literary Award, Finland 100, Finnish, Finnish Weird, Johanna Sinisalo, Lola Rogers, Suomi100, The Core of the Sun, Translation
Posted in books, Finland 100, gender, translation
Posted in books, Finland 100, gender, translation
Lu Xun: Jottings under Lamplight
It takes a translator to transport you both ways. Lu Xun’s Jottings under Lamplight, edited by Eileen Cheng and Kirk Denton with a host of other translators, is an extraordinary portrait of an era that I knew almost nothing about… until…
Tagged with: books, China, Chinese, Eileen Cheng, Harvard University Press, Hu Ying, Jottings under Lamplight, Kirk Denton, Lu Xun, Translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Mårbacka
As Finland’s centenary drew ever closer, I realised I had been neglecting her western neighbour in favour of the eastern one, which also has a big anniversary year. Selma Lagerlöf’s Mårbacka, published in the 1920s, seemed a good place to…
Tagged with: books, Mårbacka, Nobel Prize for Literature, Sarah Death, Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish, Translation
Posted in books, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Posted in books, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Eleni Vakalo
“Listening to the foreign language I was deeply speaking our own, and came to understand how difficult it is to name things truly…” says the Greek poet, Eleni Vakalo (1921-2001). Her translator, Karen Emmerich, describes discovering manuscripts of her poems…
Tagged with: books, Eleni Vakalo, Greek, Karen Emmerich, Poetry, Translation, Ugly Duckling Presse
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
1917
It’s a hundred years since the October Revolution. What was it really like at the time, when nobody knew how it would end? Was all the violence worth it? Was a new dawn really breaking? This hugely varied collection of…
Tagged with: 1917, books, Boris Dralyuk, Josh Briggs, Martha Kelly, Poetry, Pushkin Press, Robert Chandler, Russian, Russian Revolution, Translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Finland 100: Norma
“The past is the past. No good will come of digging it up.” The story starts with a funeral. Norma Ross’s mother is run over by an underground train in the middle of Kallio, Helsinki’s Kreuzberg. Was it suicide or…
Tagged with: books, Finland 100, Finnish, Norma, Owen Witesman, Penguin, Sofi Oksanen, Suomi100, Translation
Posted in books, Finland 100, gender, translation
Posted in books, Finland 100, gender, translation
Things that Happen
Poems from the heart of the city, written in a language that doesn’t get translated nearly often enough, Bengali. Bhaskar Chakrabarti writes about the ordinary life he sees from his window in Kolkata, and Arunava Sinha’s is the first major…
Tagged with: Arunava Sinha, Bengali, Bhaskar Chakrabarti, books, India, Kolkata, Poetry, Seagull Books, Translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
The Gurugu Pledge
The stories start long before they even try to cross the Mediterranean Sea. Telling them on the mountain takes time and trust. Sometimes it’s better to wait until the lights go out, but then the griots to get going: This…
Tagged with: And Other Stories, Barcelona, books, Equatorial Guinea, Jethro Soutar, Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, Morocco, Spanish, The Gurugu Pledge, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
The private lives of Barcelona
Barcelona is changing. The socialists are on the rise, the ruling class is in decline, and the Catholic Church with it. Modern women are doing things their mothers would never have dreamed of doing, let alone in public. More and…
Tagged with: Archipelago Books, Barcelona, books, Catalan, Josep Maria de Sagarra, La Central, Literature, Mary Ann Newman, Private Life, Spanish, Translation
Posted in books, literature, translation
Posted in books, literature, translation
The Unwomanly Face of War
Svetlana Alexievich’s first book is the latest to be (re-)translated into English, in the wake of her Nobel Prize win. It tells a story that stretches back over a century – Russian women fought against Napoleon too, as Alexievich notes…
Tagged with: Belarus, books, Larissa Volokhonsky, Richard Pevear, Russian, Soviet Union, Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
found in translation 