Being a teenager is often awful, sometimes amazing, but rarely, if ever, dull. The emotions are too huge. At least that’s how I – and Saisio – remember it. Vastavalo/Backlight tells it as a girl at the end of her…
Blog Archives
Backlight
Tagged with: Backlight, books, Finnish, Mia Spangenberg, Penguin, Pirkko Saisio, Translation, Two Lines Press, Vastavalo
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
On the calculation of translated volumes
Solvej Balle’s Om udregning af rumfang, published by Pelagraf, won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2022. Then, she’d written three of her seven volumes of speculative fiction in Danish. Barbara Haveland’s English translation, On the Calculation of Volume, is…
Han Kang: finding the translations
The journey from Korea to the northern fringes of Europe is a long one. To get there, you have to go on a TV show, or stir up a storm in a translators’ teacup. Or you could miss the bus,…
Tagged with: books, Deborah Smith, English, Finnish, Han Kang, Korean, Man Booker International Prize, Nobel Prize, Taru Salminen, Translation
Posted in literature, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Posted in literature, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
When Christmas comes
Christmas means carols. There are some you have to hear or sing, or it isn’t Christmas. And every year, if it’s a good year, you find a new one you haven’t heard before. Do you know this one? Apo Noponen…
Tagged with: Apo Noponen, Christmas Carols, Finnish, Jyväskylän naislaulajat, Kun joulu on, Otto Kotilainen, Translation, When Christmas comes
Posted in Christmas, translation
Posted in Christmas, translation
Back in the USS
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…
Tagged with: books, Christina Sandu, Finnish, Helsinki Library Reading Challenge, The Union of Synchronized Swimmers, Translation, Vesileikit
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Details
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
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 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
found in translation 