After the Siege of Leningrad, it has taken seven decades for these poems to be published. The blockade was horrific: at least 600,000 civilians had died by the time it was over on 27 January 1944. It’s no surprise the reality of…
Blog Archives
Written in the dark
Tagged with: Anand Dibble, Ben Felker-Quinn, Charles Swank, Elena Marttila, Eugene Ostashevsky, Gennady Gor, Matvei Yankelevich, Pavel Zaltsman, Polina Barskova, Russian, Sergei Rudakov, Siege of Leningrad, Translation, Ugly Duckling Presse, Written in the Dark
Posted in books, history, poetry, translation
Posted in books, history, poetry, translation
Finland 100: The Year of the Hare
Sometimes – especially in January? – it’s all too much, and you just want to get away from it all. Quit the job, leave your partner and home behind, and escape. Just head north and live in the forest, from…
Tagged with: Arto Paasilinna, Finland 100, Finnish, Gasellit, Herbert Lomas, Jäniksen vuosi, The Year of the Hare, Translation
Posted in books, Finland 100, translation
Posted in books, Finland 100, translation
Islands of Protest
This book will make you angry, and sad, and want to act, at least it did me. Coming from a small country where people were made to wear a sign around their neck if they spoke their native language…
Tagged with: Davinder L. Bhowmik, Islands of Protest, Japanese, Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands, Ryukyuan languages, Steve Rabson, Translation
Posted in books, poetry, short stories, theatre, translation
Posted in books, poetry, short stories, theatre, translation
A seed, knocking
A Mordovian winter seems endless, especially if you are going to see seven of them in succession, and not by choice. But under the snow, a seed is knocking: This strong collection of poems from Latvian writer Knuts Skujenieks, could not be…
Tagged with: Bitite Vinklers, Knuts Skujenieks, Latvian, Poetry, Seed in Snow, Translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
The White Islands
This is a book for anyone whose parents or grandparents came from somewhere else, especially if they did not move by choice. White Islands/Las Islas Blancas is a beautiful bilingual edition of Agosín’s poetry and Nanfito’s translations, brimming with memories handed down…
Tagged with: books, Jacqueline Nanfito, Ladino, Marjorie Agosín, Poetry, Sephardic Jews, Spanish, The White Islands, Translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
The Winterlings
A strange tale indeed, this one. If you’ve seen Pan’s Labyrinth, you’ll know that it’s perfectly possible to mix the brutal history of the Spanish Civil War, magical realism, a tight rural community that blends into the wooded mountains and…
Tagged with: Cristina Sánchez-Andrade, Samuel Rutter, Spanish, The Winterlings, Translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Posted in books, history, translation
waiting for Christmas, Japanese style
Sometimes reading a new book is like meeting a new friend. Chika Sagawa was born over a century ago, and this new volume of her writing is slim, but it was enough to seal the friendship for me. It may…
Tagged with: Chika Sagawa, Collected Poems, Japanese, modernism, PEN, Poetry, Sawako Nakayasu, Translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
The city of woven streets
Travel to a world like ours, but different. Where you have to work to survive, but if there is the slightest suspicion that you’re not in your right mind, they’ll take you away, isolate you to stop the ‘disease’ spreading,…
Tagged with: Emmi Itäranta, Fantasy, Finnish, Kudottujen kujien kaupunki, The city of woven streets, The Weaver, Translation
Posted in books, gender, translation
Posted in books, gender, translation
Searching for Sappho
New poems by a woman who died over two millennia ago – of course I was interested. And this book does get off to a cracking detective-like start, which reminded me of a book I loved, Sisters of Sinai: What happens after…
Tagged with: Anne Carson, Greek, Mary Barnard, Philip Freeman, Sappho, Searching for Sappho, Translation
Posted in books, gender, history, poetry, Uncategorized
Posted in books, gender, history, poetry, Uncategorized
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…
found in translation 