“People in a hotel” would be a literal translation of Vicki Baum’s groundbreaking novel. It’s nearly a century old now, but when she wrote it, she invented a whole new genre. What sort of people are staying in the hotel?…
Blog Archives
Grand Hotel
Tagged with: Basil Creighton, Berlin, book, Dussmann, German, Grand Hotel, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Margot Bettauer Dembo, Menschen im Hotel, Translation, Vicki Baum
Posted in books, film, history
Posted in books, film, history
Fifty islands I have not visited and never will
This is the subtitle to Judith Schalansky’s Atlas of Remote Islands. I discovered it eleven years late, because this year Marko Niemi translated it into Finnish. I ordered the German original straight away and despite the pandemic it arrived promptly…
Tagged with: Atlas of Remote Islands, books, Christine Lo, Finnish, German, Mare, Marko Niemi, Poesia, Translation
Posted in books, history, Illustration, translation
Posted in books, history, Illustration, translation
Empty Hearts
The year is not that far into the future, near enough that it could almost be now, but far away enough that it really couldn’t, at least one hopes not. A bit like Black Mirror, perhaps. But the location of…
Tagged with: books, Empty Hearts, German, John Cullen, Juli Zeh, Leere Herzen, Penguin, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Thomas Bernhard’s poems
Once he’d written them, he didn’t look back. He moved on to plays and novels, for which he’s much better known. He didn’t write any more poems for decades. Once he’d written them, he kept looking back. He returned and…
Tagged with: books, Collected Poems, German, James Reidel, Poetry, Seagull Books, Thomas Bernhard, Translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Baba Dunja
Baba Dunja is an indomitable woman. She won’t let anything as trifling as a major nuclear disaster move her from her home. So back she moved, in to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and carried on growing her vegetables as if…
Tagged with: Alina Bronsky, Baba Dunja's Last Love, books, Chernobyl, Dublin Literary Award, Europa Editions, German, Tim Mohr, Translation
Posted in books, Dublin Literary Award, translation
Posted in books, Dublin Literary Award, translation
Mascha Kaléko: a new bilingual edition
This new and fully bilingual edition of the Poems of Mascha Kaléko, out in time for the 110th anniversary of her birth, is a good introduction in English to one of my favourite German poets, who deserves to be more…
Tagged with: Andreas Nolte, books, Fomite Press, Gabriele Münter, German, Mascha Kaléko, Poetry, The Poems of Mascha Kaléko, Translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Memoirs of a polar bear
A decade ago, on a visit to Berlin, I bought a small Steiff bear to remind me of the city I used to live in, and of Knut. Knut, if you don’t know already, was a baby polar bear in Berlin Zoo.…
Tagged with: Berlin, books, German, Memoirs of a Polar Bear, Susan Bernofsky, Translation, Yoko Tawada
Posted in books, gender, translation
Posted in books, gender, translation
all Russians love birch trees
In Berlin last week, I walked with friends out of the city, along where the wall used to be – where the birch trees have been growing freely for a quarter of a century. “That should make you feel right at home,…
Tagged with: All Russians Love Birch Trees, books, Der Russe ist einer der Birken liebt, Eva Bacon, German, Olga Gjasnowa, Translation, Women's day
Posted in translation
Posted in translation
the carol that travelled
This is one of the most beloved carols in the Nordic countries, but the tune is from Central Europe and it has travelled across the Atlantic in English translations. So why haven’t you heard of it yet? Maybe it’s because…
Tagged with: Aarberg, Bernhard Ingemann, Christmas Carols, Danish, Dejlig er jorden, Fairest Lord Jesus, Finnish, German, Härlig är jorden, maa on niin kaunis, Schönster Herr Jesu, Swedish
Posted in Christmas, history, international, music, translation
Posted in Christmas, history, international, music, translation
Where do you really come from?
November 9 is a good date to mark German Literature Month; the day the monarchy ended, the day Hitler’s putsch failed, the night of the pogroms he instigated, the day the Berlin Wall came down… It wasn’t as easy as…
