February 2012
19 posts
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The late Wislawa Szymborska calls for a literary... →
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Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz: An Excerpt
And an excerpt from HMH’s second finalist on the 2012 Best Translated Book Awards longlist, Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz, translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange:
Heirs
The stranger was not quite a stranger. Something in his appearance repelled and yet fascinated Arieh Zelnik from first glance, if it really was the first glance: he felt he remembered that face, the arms...
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Leeches by David Albahari: An Excerpt
In honor of the 2012 Best Translated Book Awards Longlist being announced, I thought I’d post excerpts from the two HMH titles on the list. Here’s the first, from Leeches by David Albahari, translated from the Serbian by Ellen Elias-Bursać:
Now, six years after the fact, I realize things might have gone differently, but back then, on Sunday, March 8, 1998, when it all began, it was...
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Very exciting! The 2012 Best Translated Book Awards Longlist was announced today. Congrats to all the finalists.
The 2012 BTBA Fiction Longlist (in alphabetical order by author):
Leeches by David Albahari Translated from the Serbian by Ellen Elias-Bursać (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
My Two Worlds by Sergio Chejfec Translated from the Spanish by Margaret B. Carson (Open Letter)
Demolishing...
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New York Review of Books' Amazing Winter Sale →
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The Society of Authors in the UK awards literature... →
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“The translator and the polyglot take two very different stands toward the fact...”
– Polyglot Vs. Translator at Publishing Perspectives
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“Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous ‘I don’t know’.”
– Wislawa Szymborska (via harlow)
“Meanwhile you have rolled yourself a cigarette, say, and inserted it with great...”
– “In the Electric Tram” by Robert Walser at the NYRblog, an excerpt from the recently released Berlin Stories, translated by Susan Bernofsky
Find NYRB Classics on Tumblr here.
(Bonus: Bernofsky also translated Walser’s novel The Tanners, published by New Directions.)
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A writer reads Mario Vargas Llosa while traveling in Panama.
“A few days later we gathered our mediocre books and again hiked up to the coffee shop on the hill. My Aguila women’s sandals held up quite nicely. I traded my book of grad-lit essays for Tom Sawyer and our no-longer-necessary Costa Rica travel guide for a paperback copy of The Bad Girl, complete with spots of black mold on the...
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PEN interviews translator Susan Bernofsky and asks basically everything you’d want to know about the process of translating, starting with:
RIBBLE: Are you aware beforehand of the challenges in a particular translation? Or is it a sort of leap of faith?
BERNOFSKY: I always think I know what it’s going to be, and I’m always wrong. First of all, it’s always harder than I thought it was going...
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An Ecstatic Discourse: Metro Column -- An... →
ecstaticdiscourse:
This is the full version of my interview with Edwin Frank, editor of the New York Review of Books Classics series originally posted in truncated form in my weekly metro column.
I was too timid to ask Mr. Frank for a picture so I ended up having to take a shot of some of my favorite NYRB…
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January 2012
11 posts
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Taiye Selasi, Ghanian Writer, talks to the Daily... →
80strand:
At the beginning of 2013, we’re publishing the phenominal Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi. This video gives you an idea why we’re so excited so far in advance…
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Putin's 100 Books That Every Russian Should Read →
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The director of Zephyr Press recommends some literature in translation from 2011:
“Adonis: Selected Poems” translated by Khaled Mattawa. (Excerpted below)Adonis, born in Syria in 1931, is one of the most celebrated poets of the Arabic-speaking world, and is credited with leading the modernist movement in Arabic poetry of the late 20th century. Adonis: Sel
“Kamchatka” by Marcelo Figueras and...
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The Ten Most Difficult Words to Translate →
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What is Victoria Cribb up to these days? Oh, just translating more Icelandic novels (because who else do you know doing that?).
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December 2011
7 posts
Philip Pullman reads his favourite short story,... →
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Grand Central & Little Brown UK start new crime in... →
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The blog Known Unknowns publishes its favorite Literature in Translation titles from 2011.
In many ways, I thought this was a slightly odd year for literature in translation; I read an enormous number of books that I really, really liked, but only a few that I felt were truly classic books that I would return to again and again in the future. Moreover, several “big name” foreign...
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New Directions turns 75 →
Longreads: Anna Clark: My Top 5 World Lit... →
longreads:
Anna Clark is a journalist and the editor of the literary blog Isak. (See more stories on her Longreads page.)
The infamous 3% statistic points to the percentage of publications each year in the U.S. that are translated into English. But even that number is inflated, as it includes…
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Publishing Perspectives wonders if collaborative... →
November 2011
9 posts
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Dalkey Archive Press announced that they will be doing a series of Korean literature in translation in partnership with the Korean Literature Translation Institute.
When we recently published Young-ha Kim’s Your Republic is Calling You, I recall talking to people who lamented the lack of Korean literature represented in the States, so it seems Dalkey’s initiative will be a welcome...
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“What does reading do, You can learn almost everything from reading, But I read...”
– Jose Saramago, “The Cave.” (via crashinglybeautiful)
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From this afternoon’s event with Umberto Eco at Harvard Bookstore:
Q: Can you talk a little bit about what it’s like working with your translators.
Eco: Very intense. Very intense and very erotic.
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PRI’s The World talks to Amos Oz about his...
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Bookforum talks to translator Susan Bernofsky:
Bookforum: The story behind Microscripts is very interesting. I was wondering what it must have been like to translate that book, or rather the excerpts from it.
SB: It was kind of wild. Microscripts was never a book in German—it’s a six-volume edition of Walser’s uncollected, posthumous stories that survived in this very difficult to decipher...
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Welcome to HMH, Lauren Wein!
Senior Editor Lauren Wein talks to Publishing Perspectives about International Literary Publishing:
“‘Every book is a leap of faith,” she says. “It’s like having a child — trusting that the world is worthy of receiving what is most precious to you. Success, to me, is when the world returns your faith. Failure is when the world acts indifferent.’
A story Wein tells about debut...
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The Crimson Profiles Jay Rubin, Murakami's... →
“I’m not saying that people should stop reading translated works; that’d be bad for world culture,” Rubin says. “What they should do is learn more languages—especially Americans. We should learn what it’s like to live in another language.”
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Goodreads: At the heart of The Prague Cemetery is the concept of hatred. What inspired you to explore hatred as a theme for a novel? Umberto Eco: I could say that there are too many novels devoted to love and that it was time to explain hatred, which is a feeling far more diffused than love (otherwise there would not be wars, crimes, and racist behavior). Love is a selective relationship (I love...
October 2011
22 posts
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The longlist for the Man Asian Literary Prize has been announced, but you’ll have to wait until March 15 to learn the winner:
“The Wandering Falcon” by Jamil Ahmad
“The Good Muslim” by Tahmima Anam
“Rebirth” by Jahnavi Barua
“The Sly Company of People Who Care” by Rahul Bhattacharya
“The Colonel” by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi
“River of Smoke” by Amitav Ghosh
“1Q84″ by Haruki Murakami
“The...
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“Q: You’ve assembled some impressive names for this first issue, including a...”
– A new lit mag called The Coffin Factory launches and we’re in it! Full interview here.
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Amos Oz was on All Things Considered last week to...