Going to your friends’ cabin in the mountains is a treat. But if even if you know them and the place well, you might be unsure about how it will work out. If they pop into town and leave you…
Blog Archives
The Wall
Tagged with: books, Die Wand, German, Literature, Marlen Haushofer, Shaun Whiteside, The Wall, Translation
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted in Uncategorized
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
The Visionaries
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…
Tagged with: Ayn Rand, books, Feuer der Freiheit, French, German, Hannah Arendt, philosophy, Ros Schwarz, Shaun Whiteside, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, The Vsionaries, Translation, Wolfgang Eilenberger
Posted in books, gender, history
Posted in books, gender, history
What can you see from here?
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
Posted in books, translation
Love in…
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…
Tagged with: books, Daniela Krien, Die Liebe im Ernstfall, German, Jamie Bulloch, Love in Five Acts, MacLehose Press, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Es kommt
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. No, not that one, that’s not for a few weeks yet. Advent, the waiting. And who does Advent best? I’ve said it before – the Germans, of course. I haven’t lived in…
Tagged with: advent, Berliner Solistenchor, Catherine Winkworth, Christmas Carols, Es kommt ein Schiff geladen, George Ratcliffe Woodward, German, Hymns, Translation
Posted in Christmas, music
Posted in Christmas, music
Tasting Sunlight
Autumn fruit. Pears, apples, grapes… the orchards and vineyards are bursting with golden light. Yet the light is fading. The first frost bites. That’s the English title for you, Tasting Sunlight. But in German, Ewald Arenz called it Alte Sorten,…
Tagged with: Alte Sorten, books, Ewald Arenz, German, Orenda Books, Rachel Ward, Tasting Sunlight, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Marzahn, Mon Amour
A podiatrist’s story. She stopped writing to start looking after other people’s feet. She needed to make a living. Her fellow authors were not impressed. But from that experience, she crafted some impressive portraits of people and place. When many…
Tagged with: Berlin, books, German, Hanser Verlag, Jo Heinrich, Katja Oskamp, Marzahn, Peirene Press, Translation
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted in Uncategorized
The German House
Surely, in the sixties, all Germans knew what had happened? Any German you meet in an international context will still, often enough, soon enough, apologise for their existence. Living in Germany in the 2000s, the flags were out for the…
Tagged with: Annette Hess, books, Deutsches Haus, Elisabeth Lauffer, German, The German House, Translation
Posted in books
Posted in books
Go, went, gone
A white, male, comfortably-off, widowed professor at a Berlin university has just retired. He meets Black African men seeking asylum in Europe. He tries to find out about them, and to help them. Not new, perhaps. Isn’t the whole perspective…
Tagged with: Asylum, Berlin, books, German, Jenny Erpenbeck, Susan Bernofsky, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
found in translation 