This one is desperately sad, and it stays with you. The Door should have prepared me for more the direct emotion, the weight of history, the unflinching look at how the characters – people more like you and me than we’d care…
Blog Archives
Iza’s Ballad
Tagged with: books, Budapest, George Szirtes, Hungarian, Iza's Ballad, Magda Szabo, mothers and daughters, Translation
Posted in books, gender, history, translation
Posted in books, gender, history, 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
Wayward heroes
They came from over the North Sea, and took whatever they could get, and taxed us mercilessly for a long time after. But the noble English fought back, swords gleaming, until the dastardly invaders fled back to Europe from whence they…
Tagged with: Archipilago Books, Halldór Laxness, Icelandic, Nobel Prize for Literature, Philip Roughton, Translation, Vikings, Wayward Heroes
Posted in books, history, translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Finland 100: The midwife
At the gate, I remembered the cover. My bookmark slid over it, obscuring the emblem behind the title text. I was about to board the plane to Berlin – and I had to finish this and put it in my bag before…
Tagged with: David Hackston, Finland 100, history, Katilö, Katja Kettu, Second World War, Suomi 100, The Midwife, Translation
Posted in books, film, history, Suomi 100, translation
Posted in books, film, history, Suomi 100, translation
Just ahead of the revolution
“Moscow. Autumn. Cold. My Petersburg life has been liquidated.” If Twitter had been invented 100 years ago, perhaps Teffi would have had quite a following. She is certainly concise, doesn’t appear to take herself and her craft too seriously, but shares highly entertaining vignettes,…
Tagged with: 1917, Anne Marie Jackson, Elizabeth Chandler, Irina Steinberg, Memories - From Moscow to the Black Sea, Pushkin Press, Robert Chandler, Russian, Russian Revolution, Teffi, Translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Posted in books, history, 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
Citizens of Beauty
If you don’t fit neatly into a particular category, if you’re difficult for people to place, they won’t place you, their eyes might slide right over you and move on to someone else. And if you try to break down those…
Tagged with: Algeria, Citizens of Beauty, French, Jack Hirschman, Jean Sénac, Michigan State University Press, Poetry, Translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Finland 100: The year of the hunger
Leaving everything behind is not always a free choice – this isn’t the year of the hare, the open road doesn’t necessarily lead to freedom. When hunger and death drive you out of your home in the depths of winter, you might…
Tagged with: Aki Ollikainen, Emily Jeremiah, Finland 100, Finnish, Fleur Jeremiah, Nälkävuosi, Peirene Press, Translation, White Hunger
Posted in books, Finland 100, translation
Posted in books, Finland 100, translation
Rumi’s greatest love
Today’s a day to celebrate all kinds of love, and here are some poems for it that you’ve probably never seen. Rumi’s Persian work is very well known and loved in the English-speaking world, but he also wrote in Arabic.…
Tagged with: Anthony A. Lee, Arabic, Love is my Savior, Michigan State University Press, Nesreen Akharkhavari, Persian, Poetry, Rumi, Translation, Valentine's Day
Posted in books, faith, poetry, translation
Posted in books, faith, poetry, translation
At twighlight they return
Time moves in a spiral, as each birth or death is connected to the ones before it and the ones after it. The old stories and the old ways are still very much alive – change is only just about…
Tagged with: At Twilight they Return, David Connolly, Greek, Translation, Yale University Press, Zyranna Zateli
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
found in translation 