Having a book subscription can be a bit hit and miss. The new book can be fascinating, and just right for you, but does it land on your doormat when you’re ready to read it? This week, the right thing…
Blog Archives
The Transmigration of Bodies
Tagged with: And Other Stories, Best Translated Book Award, Spanish, The Transmigration of Bodies, Translation, Yuri Herrera
Posted in Best Translated Book Award, books, translation
Posted in Best Translated Book Award, books, translation
Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets
This woman can tell a story or two. Or a hundred. Svetlana Alexievich writes so well because she knows who to ask and how to listen. She received last year’s literature Nobel for her ‘polyphonic writings’ – but she’s not a…
Tagged with: Bela Shayevich, Belarus, history, Nobel Prize, Russian, Second Hand Time, Soviet Union, Svetlana Alexievich, Translation
Posted in books, history, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Posted in books, history, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Lady Midday
It started with an eight-year-old boy left at the train station by his mother, as the Germans flee the Red Army approaching Szczecin/Stettin in 1945. We need to go back more than twenty years to find out how it came…
Tagged with: Anthea Bell, Die Mittagsfrau, German, German Book Prize, Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, Julia Franck, Lady Midday, The Blind Side of the Heart, Translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Hunted by the fox
Herta Müller is a Nobelist writing in German. Philip Boehm was awarded the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize for translating her The Hunger Angel and has also translated Brecht and Hanna Krall. I’d been meaning to read both their work for a while, and…
Tagged with: German, Herta Müller, Nobel Prize, Philip Boehm, Portobello Books, Romania, The Fox Was Ever the Hunter, Translation
Posted in books, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Posted in books, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Oneiron
When you’ve got a Man Booker International winner (Marlon James) on your books, you could sit back and relax. Or you could find the next big thing before it happens. That’s what Oneworld has done, buying the world English rights…
Tagged with: Finlandia Prize, Finnish, Laura Lindstedt, Literature, Oneiron, Oneworld, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Jamala: Crimean Tatar in translation
Eurovision 2016, almost everyone is singing in English (even the French!!!) and a Crimean Tatar wins, singing the chorus in a language that isn’t even available on Google Translate. Because she sings with passion about her people, who were forcibly…
Tagged with: 1944, Crimean Tatar, Eurovision 2016, Jamala, Meni gamdan azat eyle, The Colour of Pomegranates, Translation, Ukraine
Posted in history, international, language, music
Posted in history, international, language, music
Gathering to scatter the dark
Last weekend I went to a big birthday party. It was a chance to catch up with over a hundred family and friends, and family of family and friends of friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen for some years,…
Tagged with: Bill Johnston, Ewa Elżbieta Nowakowska, Ewa Lipska, Julia Fiedorczuk, Julia Hartwig, Karen Kovacik, Mira Kuś, Poetry, Polish, Robin Davidson, Scattering the Dark, Translation, White Pine Press
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Do you miss your country?
Do you miss your country? If you do, even if you don’t want to go back, it doesn’t matter where you are, but you will understand Monika Szydłowska’s drawings, and you might want to join 13,000 others to see what…
Tagged with: Centrala, Free Word Centre, Monika Szydłowska, Na emigracji, Polish, Translation
Posted in books, Illustration, international, translation
Posted in books, Illustration, international, translation
two hundred thousand lakes
Finland has 1 lake for every 26 or so people, 187 888 in total, and most have marvellous names which look unpronouncable or untranslatable to a non-Finnish speaker. The rather fabulous designers Aamu Song and Johan Olin of http://www.com-pa-ny.com have put some answers on postcard:…
books and roses, bread and roses
It’s books and roses day again tomorrow! Is it even possible to choose one book to celebrate? Elena Ferrante’s The Story of The Lost Child has made both the Man Booker International Shortlist AND the three percent Best Translated Book Award 2016…
found in translation 