Susan Bernofsky's Blog, page 31
August 18, 2016
Words Without Borders’s Women in Translation Month Recommended Reads
Words Without Borders is the oldest major online journal out there devoted exclusively to literature in translation, and still one of the very best. And now WWB’s Liz Cettina has provided a list of recommended books for Women in Translation Month, most of them by authors who have previously been published in WWB’s virtual pages, allowing you to graze before you pick the book that will be your ideal beach-towel companion next weekend. Thank you, Words Without Borders, for publishing all these wonderful women writers this month and all year round!
Here’s the list, or, if you prefer, read it directly on the WWB website.
Rock, Paper, Scissors by Naja Marie Aidt
Translated from the Danish by K. E. Semmel
Open Letter Books, 2015
Naja Marie Aidt is a Danish author who has published eight volumes of poetry, three volumes of short stories, and the novel Rock, Paper, Scissors. Shortly after the death of his criminal father, Thomas discovers a secret that changes his life for the worse. Time writes, “The emotions unleashed in this tale . . . are painfully universal. Yet you know exactly where in the universe you are,” and Tony Malone calls it “a story you’ll want to keep reading until the bitter (very bitter) end.”
Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich
Translated from the Russian by Bela Shayevich
Penguin Random House, 2016
Svetlana Alexievich is a Belarusian journalist. She won the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature for “her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” In Secondhand Time, Alexievich provides a history of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia. Sara Danius, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, noted, “[Alexievich is] offering us a history of emotions, a history of the soul.”
Read Svetlana Alexievich in WWB
T
he Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz
Translated from the Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette
Melville House, 2016
Basma Abdel Aziz is a psychiatrist, writer, and sculptor from Cairo, Egypt. Her English PEN Translates Award-winning novel The Queue is set in an unnamed city where a centralized authority known as the Gate has taken power in the aftermath of a failed popular uprising. Citizens are required to obtain permission from the Gate for even the most basic of their daily affairs, yet the building never opens, and the queue in front of it grows longer and longer.
Read an excerpt from Basma Abdel Aziz’s The Queue
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Translated from the French by Alison Anderson
Europa Editions, 2006
French writer Muriel Barbery portrays the unlikely friendship that develops between a French concierge, Renee (who is secretly learned and highly intelligent), and Paloma, the precocious daughter of a wealthy family who lives in the apartment building. The two protagonists, the New York Times writes, “create eloquent little essays on time, beauty, and the meaning of life.”
Read an excerpt from Muriel Barbery’s The Life of Elves
Before by Carmen Boullosa
Translated from the Spanish by Peter Bush
Deep Vellum Publishing, 2016
Carmen Boullosa is one of Mexico’s leading novelists, poets, and playwrights. Before is a coming-of-age story that explores the end of one woman’s innocence in childhood. Of her writing Juan Villoro says, “I don’t think there’s a writer with more variety in themes and focuses . . . The style and range of Carmen Boullosa is unique for its versatility and its enormous courage.” Before was shortlisted for the 2015 PEN Translation Award.
The First Wife by Paulina Chiziane
Translated from the Portuguese by David Brookshaw
Archipelago Books, 2016
In Mozambican writer Paulina Chiziane’s novel, Rami discovers that her husband, Tony, is cheating on her with five other women, each of whom tries to get whatever she can (money, security, social standing) from him. Carolyn Silveira writes, “While the book opens with the epigraph, ‘A woman is earth. If you don’t sow her, or water her, she will produce nothing,’ ultimately, it is a passionate testament to the life, love, creativity, and resilience all women can produce.”
Read WWB’s review of The First Wife
Always Coca-Cola by Alexandra Chreiteh
Translated from the Arabic by Michelle Hartman
Interlink Publishing, 2012
Alexandra Creiteh is a Lebanese author known for her frank portrayals of contemporary life in Beirut. Always Coca-Cola is the story of three different women attending university and their seemingly trivial “female” problems. Emma Garman writes that these “chick-lit” problems embed “a razor-sharp commentary on how young women in Beirut today are buffeted by the alternately conflicting and conspiring forces of hegemony, capitalism, and patriarchy—without, vitally, ever using such dry terms.”
Read WWB’s review of Always Coca-Cola
Sworn Virgin by Elvira Dones
Translated from the Italian by Clarissa Botsford
And Other Stories, 2007
Elvira Dones is an Albanian novelist, screenwriter, and documentary filmmaker. After writing seven novels in Albanian, Dones wrote two in Italian, one of which is Sworn Virgin. The protagonist, Hana, is unwilling to accept the arranged marriage her uncle has proposed. But to remain independent, she must follow tradition and vow to live the rest of her life in chastity as a man. Ismail Kadare says, “The protagonist of this novel passes through all the tribulations of this frightening transformation like the actor . . . in a classical drama that hurtles toward its dénoument.”
Kite by Dominique Eddé
Translated from the French by Ros Schwartz
Seagull Books, 2012
Lebanese author Dominique Eddé blends memoir and fiction as she explores the passionate and tragic relationship between Mali and Farid in the context of the decline of Egyptian-Lebanese society. Beginning in the 1906s and ending in the late 1980s, Kite explores social and cultural tensions and the human casualties of war. The novel was longlisted for a 2013 Best Translated Book Award.
Read WWB’s 2008 issue: The Groves of Lebanon
The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck
Translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky
New Directions Publishing, 2016
German author Jenny Erpenbeck’s fiction includes The Book of Words and Visitation. The End of Days recounts five different stories about the same unnamed woman, each of which results in her death and begs the question, “What if things had happened differently?” Nicole Krauss says, “The brutality of her subjects, combined with the fierce intelligence and tenderness at work behind her restrained, unvarnished prose, is overwhelming.”
Sphinx by Anne F. Garreta
Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan
Deep Vellum Publishing, 2016
Anne F. Garreta is the first member of the Oulipo to have been born after the group was founded, and Sphinx is the first novel by a female member of the Oulipo in English. The novel is a love story in which the genders of the lovers are never specified. Quoting queer linguistic theorist Anna Livia, Jane Yong Kim writes, “Sphinx falls into the cadre of literary works that ‘problematize the traditional functioning of the linguistic gender system.’”
What are the Blind Men Dreaming? by Noemi Jaffe
Translated from the Portuguese by Julia Sanches & Ellen Elias-Bursac
Deep Vellum Publishing, 2016
Noemi Jaffe is an award-winning Brazilian author of novels, short stories, poetry, and literary nonfiction. Jaffe’s nonfiction book, What are the Blind Men Dreaming?, portrays three generations of women—their reflections on the Holocaust and how these reflections are influenced by their Brazilian and Jewish identities.
Read an excerpt from What are the Blind Men Dreaming?
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith
Penguin Random House, 2016
South Korean writer Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian won the 2016 Man Booker Prize for International Fiction. In this allegorical tale about a woman’s confrontation with violence, Yeong-hye decides to become vegetarian. Her husband and family members try to change her mind, but she stands by her decision. The New York Times says, “Like a cursed madwoman in classic myth, Yeong-hye seems both eerily prophetic and increasingly unhinged.”
Read an excerpt from Han Kang’s The Vegetarian
Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector
Translated from the Portuguese by Alison Entrekin
New Directions Publishing, 2012
Clarice Lispector was born in the Ukraine to a Jewish family who fled to Brazil in 1922. Her first novel follows the interior monologue of its protagonist, Joana, who wants to live, “near to the wild heart of life,” and Lispector’s writing follows suit. The New York Times describes her work as “enigmatic, mystical, confounding and philosophical.”
Read WWB’s review of Clarice Lispector’s stories
The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli
Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
Coffee House Press, 2015
Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City and grew up in South Africa. The protagonist of The Story of My Teeth is Highway, an auctioneer (read: storyteller (read: liar (read: legendary auctioneer))) whose most precious possessions are the teeth of the “notorious infamous,” including Plato and Virginia Woolf. Luiselli wrote the book, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, in installments for workers in a juice factory in Mexico.
Seeing Red by Lina Meruane
Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell
Deep Vellum Publishing, 2016
Lina Meruane is a Chilean author whose work, written in Spanish, has been translated into English, Italian, Portuguese, German, and French. Seeing Red is based on Meruane’s own experience of blindness—the novel follows a young Chilean writer who moves to New York for doctoral work and suffers a stroke that leaves her blind. Of her prose, Roberto Bolaño said, “it emerges from the hammer blows of conscience, but also from the ungraspable and from pain.”
Last Words from Montmartre by Qiu Miaojin
Translated from the Chinese by Ari Larissa Heinrich
NYRB Classics, 2014
Qiu Miajin was one of Taiwan’s most innovate literary modernists and the country’s most renowned lesbian writer. The posthumous publications of her novels Last Words from Montmartre and Notes of a Crocodile made her one of the most revered countercultural icons in Chinese letters. Last Words from Montmartre unfolds in a series of letters written by an unnamed narrator that reveal the story of a passionate relationship between two young women.
Read an excerpt from Last Words from Montmartre
History by Elsa Morante
Translated from the Italian by William Weaver
Steerforth Press, 2000
Elsa Morante is an Italian novelist whose work Elena Ferrante has called “unsurpassable.” History recounts Italy’s wartime years through the eyes of a poor Roman family, portraying history’s violent and pitiless effects on the lives of common people. Esquire describes the book as “One of the few novels in any language that renders the full horror of Hitler’s war,” and the New York Review of Books calls Morante “A storyteller who spellbinds.”
Now and at the Hour of our Death by Susana Moreira Marques
Translated from the Portuguese by Julia Sanches
And Other Stories, 2015
Susana Moreira Marques is a writer and journalist who lives in Lisbon. Accompanying a palliative care team, Moreira Marques travels to Trás-os-Montes, a forgotten corner of northern Portugal. She visits villages to listen to families facing death and grants us their stories, accompanied by her own musings.
Read an excerpt from Now and at the Hour of our Death
So Much for that Winter by Dorthe Nors
Translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra
Graywolf Press, 2016
Dorthe Nors is the first Dane ever to have a piece of fiction published in the New Yorker. So Much for That Winter contains two novellas, both of which chronicle the aftermath of two twenty-first century romances with humor and empathy. The Los Angeles Times writes, “Nors’s writing is by turns witty, gut wrenching, stark, and lyrical . . . That she achieves all this while experimenting with form is something of an impossible feat.”
Read an interview with Dorthe Nors on WWB
Extracting the Stone of Madness by Alejandra Pizarnik
Translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert
New Directions Publishing, 2016
When Argentinian poet Alejandra Pizarnik committed suicide at the age of thirty-six, she left behind a huge collection of poems documenting her inner life. Of Extracting the Stone of Madness Emily Lever writes, “Pizarnik concisely alludes to the torments of artistic creation through the depiction of suffering that is specific to the female body.”
Read WWB’s article on Alejandra Pizarnik
The Attempt by Magdaléna Platzová
Translated from the Czech by Alex Zucker
Bellevue Literary Press, 2016
Emma Garman describes Czech author Magdaléna Platzová’s The Attempt as “a powerfully distilled meditation on the meaning of freedom.” Based on the lives of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, the novel follows a Czech historian convinced that he is the illegitimate great-grandson of an infamous anarchist. He travels to New York to investigate during the height of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Read Magdaléna Platzová in WWB
Mrs. Sartoris by Elke Schmitter
Translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway
Penguin Random House, 2004
German author Elke Schmitter’s Mrs. Sartoris is a modern retelling of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Like Emma Bovary, Margarethe Sartoris has fallen into a life of numbing monotony with her pleasant husband in a provincial town. Then she meets a married man named Michael who offers the opportunity for a life filled with excitement, eroticism, and desire.
Read an excerpt from Elke Schmitter’s Mrs. Sartoris
The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon
Translated from the Japanese by Meredith McKinney
Penguin Classics, 2007
Sei Shonagon was a Japanese writer who lived among the nobility in tenth-century Japan. The Pillow Book is comprised of witty and intimate observations and descriptions of Shonagon’s life as a gentlewoman at the height of the Heian period. Michael Dirda describes it as “a mixture of diary, aide-memoire, naturalist’s journal, gossip column, and oral history . . . memorializing in its daring, quicksilver fashion the wonderful dailiness of life.”
Facing the Bridge by Yoko Tawada
Translated from the Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani
New Directions Publishing, 2007
Yoko Tawada’s provocative and original work explores the ways that nationhood, languages, and gender affect people in our world of shifting, fluid boundaries. Facing the Bridge contains three tales that float between cultures, identities, and the dreamwork of the imagination. The New York Times writes, “Tawada’s stories agitate the mind like songs half remembered or treasure boxes whose keys are locked within.”
Subtly Worded by Teffi
Translated from the Russian by Robert Chandler
Pushkin Press, 2014
Teffi is often called the female Chekhov, which, while laudatory, is sexist in its implication that any female writer is only relevant when granted a male equivalent. Teffi herself would likely have scorned such a comparison. In Subtly Worded, Pushkin Press has collected works that show Teffi at her most wry and scathing. She is a relentless observer, and critic, of prerevolutionary Russian society. The New Yorker writes, “there are few human weaknesses she did not relate to with compassion and understanding.”
The Museum of Unconditional Surrender by Dubravka Ugrešic
Translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth
New Directions Publishing, 2002
Dubravka Ugrešic is a post-Yugoslav writer, who has lived in both Croatia and Amsterdam. This fragmented nationality is the subject of this book, in which she confronts her past through themes of art, history, aging, and loss. Susan Sontag calls her work a “brilliant, enthralling spread of story-telling and high-velocity reflections . . . She is a writer to follow. A writer to be cherished.”
The Country Road by Regina Ullmann
Translated from the German by Kurt Beals
New Directions Publishing, 2015
Swiss-born Regina Ullmann was a contemporary of Thomas Mann who once said, “Her voice is something holy.” The Country Road is Ullmann’s English-language debut and consists of stories set in the Swiss countryside. The stories are fantastical and mysterious, almost as obscure as Ullmann herself.
Read WWB’s review of The Country Road
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk
Translated from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns
Tin House Books, 2010
Marlene van Niekerk is a prominent South African author whose novel Agaat Toni Morrison hails as “the most extraordinary book I have read in a long, long time”. The Times Literary Supplement describes it as “The most important South African novel since Coetzee’s Disgrace.” The novel portrays the relationship between a sixty-seven-year-old white woman, Milla, and her black maidservant turned caretaker, Agaat.
Read an excerpt from Marlene van Niekerk’s Agaat
Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs by Lina Wolff
Translated from the Swedish by Frank Perry
And Other Stories, 2016
The first novel of Swedish author Lina Wolff, Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs portrays a run-down brothel in Caudal, Spain, where the prostitutes collect stray dogs, each of which they name after a famous male writer. Meanwhile in Barcelona, a teenager tries to trace her life back to one woman: Alba Cambó, a writer of violent short stories.
Read an excerpt from Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs
Empty Chairs by Liu Xia
Translated from the Chinese by Ming Di and Jennifer Stern
Graywolf Press, 2015
Liu Xia is a Chinese poet, artist, and photographer, and the wife of an oft-imprisoned activist, Liu Xiaobo. She wrote Empty Chairs while she was under house arrest and her husband was incarcerated. As the title suggests, Liu confronts themes of isolation, domesticity, and loneliness. The Washington Post calls the collection “A testament to the human spirit when that spirit is confined . . . bold and vital.”
By the way, some of the books recommended here are currently on sale (40% off) for WIT Month. Hope you have a great time #readingwomen!
The post Words Without Borders’s Women in Translation Month Recommended Reads appeared first on TRANSLATIONiSTA.
August 14, 2016
Jen Campbell’s Women in Translation Month Recommendations
Happy sweltering August, everyone! Since it’s perfect weather for cowering beside a fan with a book, I thought I’d share this set of great Women in Translation Month recommendations from author, reader, and vlogger Jen Campbell, who provides a brief explanation for why she thinks each of the books she presents here is worth reading. Some of them are even on sale from their publishers in honor of #WITMonth. Thanks so much for weighing in, Jen!
The post Jen Campbell’s Women in Translation Month Recommendations appeared first on TRANSLATIONiSTA.
August 7, 2016
2016 National Translation Award Longlists Announced
The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) has just announced the longlists for the 2016 National Translation Awards (NTA) in Poetry and Prose. The NTA has been around for 18 years, though this is only the second year in which the separate prizes have been offered for poetry and prose. Unlike most translation awards, the NTA judging process includes a round in which the translation is compared to the original by an expert proficient in the language in question.
The NTA comes with an award of $2500 in each category (to be announced at the ALTA conference). Shortlists will be published in September. This year’s judges are Adriana Jacobs, Karen Kovacik, and Cole Swensen (poetry) and Karen Emmerich, Andrea Labinger, and Marian Schwartz (prose). Over the next few weeks, the judges will be publishing brief reports on the longlisted books on the ALTA blog.
Here are this year’s longlists:
Poetry:
Blackbirds in September: Selected Shorter Poems
By Jürgen Becker (Germany)
Translated from the German by Okla Elliott
(Black Lawrence Press)
I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky
By Arseny Tarkovsky
Translated from the Russian by Philip Metres and Dimitri Psurtsev
(The Cleveland State University Poetry Center)
Minute-Operas
By Frédéric Forte (France)
Translated from the French by Daniel Levin Becker, Ian Monk, Michelle Noteboom, Jean-Jacques Poucel
(Burning Deck)
Rilke Shake
By Angélica Freitas (Brazil)
Translated from the Portuguese by Hilary Kaplan
(Phoneme Media)
Selected Poems from Les Fleurs du Mal
By Charles Baudelaire (France)
Translated from the French by Jan Owen
(Arc Publications)
The Black Flower and Other Zapotec Poems
By Natalia Toledo (Mexico)
Translated from the Isthmus Zapotec and Spanish by Clare Sullivan
(Phoneme Media)
The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa
By Chika Sagawa (Japan)
Translated from the Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu
(Canarium Books)
The Country of Planks
By Raúl Zurita (Chile)
Translated from the Spanish by Daniel Borzutzky
(Action Books)
This Blue Novel
By Valerie Mejer Caso (Mexico)
Translated from the Spanish by Michelle Gil-Montero
(Action Books)
White Blight
By Athena Farrokhzad (Sweden)
Translated from the Swedish by Jennifer Hayashida
(Argos Books)
Prose:
Adventures in Immediate Irreality
By Max Blecher
Translated from the Romanian by Michael Henry Heim
(New Directions)
Leg over Leg
By Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (Lebanon)
Translated from the Arabic by Humphrey Davies
(Library of Arabic Literature/NYU Press)
Lovers on All Saints’ Day
By Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Translated from the Spanish by Ann Maclean
(Riverhead Books)
Stammered Songbook: A Mother’s Book of Hours
By Erwin Mortier (Belgium)
Translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent
(Pushkin Press)
The Blizzard
By Vladimir Sorokin (Russia)
Translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector
By Clarice Lispector (Brazil)
Translated from the Portuguese by Katrina Dodson
(New Directions)
The Hotel Years
By Joseph Roth
Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann
(New Directions)
The Meursault Investigation
By Kamel Daoud (Algeria)
Translated from the French by John Cullen
(Other Press)
The Physics of Sorrow
By Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria)
Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel
(Open Letter Books)
The Story of My Teeth
By Valeria Luiselli (Mexico)
Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
(Coffee House Press)
Tristano Dies: A Life
By Antonio Tabucchi (Italy)
Translated from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris
(Archipelago Books)
Congratulations to all the longlisted translators!
The post 2016 National Translation Award Longlists Announced appeared first on TRANSLATIONiSTA.
August 1, 2016
Translation on Tap in NYC Aug. 1 – 31, 2016
I’d like to say there were lots and lots of translation events happening in the city this month, but as far as I can tell, everyone’s on vacation. If you hear about something, let me know. The first-ever Queens Book Festival is happening this weekend, and that’s exciting, though there’s no translation programming on the roster; maybe next year; and if you go out and hit the book exhibits, you’ll find at least one publisher specializing in translations hawking their books at a discount. So you might just have to spend the month reading. And since August is Women in Translation Month, guess what sorts of books I’m going to suggest you pick up to while away the dog days? See you in September!
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Read These Women in Translation Now!
Photo © Richard Gehr
In celebration of Women in Translation Month, Translationista invited a number of publishers to select one book each by a female author to be offered as part of a special WIT Month promotion at a 40% discount. Details on each book and ordering information below. Huge thanks to all the publishers (see below) who took me up on the invitation to join in celebrating this month of reading women from around the globe! Please check out the books they recommend, purchase via the links provided to receive the discount, or from your local bookseller, and tweet your reads with the hashtags #WITMonth and #readwomen. Books by gals make great beach companions too – perfect for August! So here are the books these publishers thought you might enjoy:
Burning Deck suggests Heiligenanstalt by Friederike Mayröcker, translated by Rosmarie Waldrop, Burning Deck Press, published 1994.
Friederike Mayröcker is one of the most original (and prominent) Austrian writers, famous for the baroque, “hallucinatory” quality of her poetry and prose. Born 1924 in Vienna, where she continues to live, she was associated with the experimental “Vienna Group” in the 1960s. She has received many prestigious literary prizes in both Austria and Germany.
Heiligenanstalt contains four fictions “around” the composers Chopin, Bruckner, Schubert, and the trio of Brahms, Clara and Robert Schumann. All presided over by Beethoven whose “Heiligenstadt Testament” is evoked by the title (literally: “Saints’ Asylum”: a reference to Robert Schumann’s years of insanity). Mayröcker has worked from biographical material, but has above all, “looked into the eye of the hurricane.”
To buy, request a PayPal invoice (discount already applied).
Canarium Books suggests The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa, translated by Sawako Nakayasu, published April 1, 2015.
The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa is the first comprehensive collection of one of Japan’s foremost modernists to appear in English translation. It won the 2016 PEN Award for Poetry in translation, and the project received a grant from the Japan Foundation.
Buy here (discount already applied, no code required).
Coffee House Press suggests The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli, translated by Christina MacSweeney, published Sept. 1, 2015.
Highway is a late-in-life world traveller, yarn spinner, collector, and legendary auctioneer. His most precious possessions are the teeth of the ‘notorious infamous’ like Plato, Petrarch, and Virginia Woolf. Written in collaboration with the workers at a Jumex juice factory, The Story of My Teeth is an elegant, witty, exhilarating romp through the industrial suburbs of Mexico City and Luiselli’s own literary influences.
Buy here, using the discount code WITM.
Deep Vellum suggests Seeing Red by Lina Meruane, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, published Feb. 23, 2016.
Seeing Red describes a young Chilean writer recently relocated to New York for doctoral work who suffers a stroke which leaves her blind. It charts her journey through hospitals and an increased dependency on those closest to her to cope. Fiction and autobiography intertwine in an intense, visceral, and caustic novel about the relation between the body, science, and human relationships. Seeing Red is the haunting English-language debut by one of Latin America’s most renowned authors, praised across the world for her psychological and linguistic mastery.
Buy here (20% discount already applied).
Graywolf Press suggests Karate Chop by Dorthe Nors, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken, published by Graywolf as A Public Space Book Feb. 4, 2014.
The fifteen stories of Karate Chop are meticulously observed glimpses of everyday life that expose the ominous lurking under the ordinary: while his wife sleeps, a husband prowls the Internet, obsessed with female serial killers; a bureaucrat tries to reinvent himself, exposing goodness as artifice when he converts to Buddhism in search of power; a woman sits on the edge of the bed where her lover lies, attempting to locate a motive for his violence within her own self-doubt. Shifting between moments of violence (real and imagined) and mundane contemporary life, these stories encompass the complexity of human emotions, our capacity for cruelty as well as compassion.
Buy here (discount already applied).
New Directions suggests The Iraqi Nights by Dunya Mikhail, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, published May 27, 2014.
The Iraqi Nights is the third collection by the acclaimed Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail. Taking The One Thousand and One Nights as her central theme, Mikhail personifies the role of Scheherazade the storyteller, saving herself through her tales. In this haunting collection, the nights are endless, seemingly as dark and as endless as war. Yet the poet cannot stop dreaming of a future beyond the violence — of a place where “every moment / something ordinary / will happen under the sun.” Unlike Scheherazade, however, Mikhail is writing not to escape death, but to summon the strength to endure. Inhabiting the emotive spaces between Iraq and the U.S., Mikhail infuses those harsh realms with a deep poetic intimacy.
Buy here (discount already applied).
New Vessel Press suggests Who is Martha? by Marjana Gaponenko, translated by
Arabella Spencer, published Oct. 7, 2014.
In this rollicking novel, 96-year-old ornithologist Luka Levadski foregoes treatment for lung cancer and moves from Ukraine to Vienna to make a grand exit in a luxury suite at the Hotel Imperial. He reflects on his past while indulging in Viennese cakes and savoring music in a gilded concert hall. Levadski was born in 1914, the same year that Martha – the last of the now-extinct passenger pigeons – died. Levadski himself has an acute sense of being the last of a species. He may have devoted much of his existence to studying birds, but now he befriends a hotel butler and another elderly guest, who also doesn’t have much time left, to share in the lively escapades of his final days.
Buy here, using the discount code WomeninTranslation.
Yale University Press (Margellos World Republic of Letters series) suggests France, Story of a Childhood by Zahia Rahmani, translated by Lara Vergnaud, published May 24, 2016.
An intimate, heartbreaking autobiographical novel of an Algerian Muslim family’s exile from home and unwelcoming reception in France—a tale ofimprisonment and escape, persecution and loss, narrated by the daughter of an alleged Harki, an Algerian soldier who fought for the French during the Algerian War for Independence. It was the fate of such men to be twice exiled, first in their homeland after the war, and later in France, where fleeing Harki families sought refuge but instead faced contempt, discrimination, and exclusion. Zahia Rahmani blends reality and imagination to offer a fictionalized version of her own family’s struggle. Lara Vergnaud’s beautiful translation from the French perfectly captures the voices and emotions of Rahmani’s childhood in a foreign land.
Buy here, using the discount code FSCTM.
Finally, two honorary additions to this list:
And Other Stories, a publisher that maintains a U.S. outpost and participates in the literary life of this country (as well as being a leader in pro-woman publishing projects) suggests Now and at the Hour of Our Death by Susana Moreira Marques, translated by Julia Sanches, published Oct. 22, 2015.
Accompanying a palliative care team, Moreira Marques travels to Trás-os-Montes in half-deserted rural Portugal. In this book she gathers the voices and stories of those affected by terminal cancer.
Blending the immediacy of oral history with the sensibility of philosophical reportage, Moreira Marques’ book speaks about death in a fresh way.
Buy here (no discount available).
OR Books suggests the bilingual anthology Gay Propaganda (with over 50% female authors), co-edited by Masha Gessen and Joseph Huff-Hannon, with translations into English by by Bela Shayevich, and into Russian by Andrei Borodin, Dmitry Karelsky, and Svetlana Solodovnik, published March 20, 2014.
Gay Propaganda brings together original stories, interviews and testimonial, presented in both English and Russian, to capture the lives and loves of LGBT Russians living both in Russia and in exile today. The stories gathered in Gay Propaganda offer a timely and intimate window into the hardships faced by Russians on the receiving end of state-sanctioned homophobia. Here are tales of men and women in long-term committed relationships as well as those still looking for love; of those trying to raise kids or taking care of parents; of those facing the challenges of continuing to live in Russia or joining an exodus that is rapidly becoming a flood.
Buy here, using the discount code PROPAGANDA.
Happy Women in Translation Month, everyone! Happy reading!
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July 28, 2016
2016 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Winners
The 2016 PEN/Heim Translation Fund’s Advisory Board has met and deliberated – which must have been a lengthy undertaking, there were a whopping 171 entries this year – and has selected fourteen translators, each of whom will receive a $3,670 grant to assist in the completion of their project.
The PEN/Heim Translation Fund, now in its thirteenth year, was made possible by a generous donation from translator Michael Henry Heim and his wife, Priscilla Heim. For more information about the translators and their books, see the PEN American Center website.
2016 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant Recipients:
Gabriel Amor for his translation of Juana I by Ana Azourmanian. (Spanish)
Ellen Cassedy for her translation of On the Landing: Selected Stories by Yenta Mash (Yiddish)
Chris Clarke for his translation of Imaginary Lives by Marcel Schwob (French)
Sharon Dolin for her translation of Book of Minutes by Gemma Gorga (Catalan)
Kaiama L. Glover for her translation of Hadriana in All My Dreams by René Depestre (French)
Anita Gopalan for her translation of Simsim by Geet Chaturvedi (Hindi)
Amanda Lee Koe for her translation of Ten Years of Marriage by Su Qing (Chinese)
Karen Leeder for her translation of Thick of It by Ulrika Almut Sandig (German)
Rachel McNicholl for her translation of Operation Hinterland: Tales from the Silver Scrapheap by Anita Augustin (German)
Alicia Maria Meier for her translation of The Sky According to Google by Marta Carnicero Hernanz (Catalan)
Emma Ramadan for her translation of Les Persiennes by Ahmed Bouanani (French)
Corine Tachtiris for her translation of Dark Love by Alexandra Berková (Czech)
Russell Scott Valentino for his translation of Kin by Miljenko Jergović (Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian)
Jeffrey Zuckerman for his translation of The Complete Stories of Hervé Guibert (French)
If you’re a publisher, please note that some of these books haven’t yet been snapped up for publication – details on the projects and their status on the PEN website.
Big congratulations to all the hard-working translators whose work is being honored with these grants.
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July 22, 2016
August is Women in Translation Month
So my sisters who’ve been working on the important task of getting more attention paid to female authors in translation – who historically have been direly underrepresented vis-a-vis their literary brethren – have now declared August to be Women in Translation month (following the lead of @Biblibio) and are enlisting bookstores far and wide to spend the month featuring books in translation that were written by women. Ink84 in London is on board, as is Ocelot in Berlin. How about a local bookstore near you? As I’m sure you’ll recall reading on this blog last year, studies show that women get translated at a much lower rate than men, and that even if they do get translated, their books are statistically much less likely to be selected for translation prizes than those of their male counterparts. Biblibio just released a new set of crunched numbers, showing no improvement at all over previous years. We’re looking to change these lousy percentages, because we assume that unconscious bias (to make the charitable assumption) has a lot more to do with the imbalance than any differential in literary quality. As someone who translates some extraordinary female authors (Jenny Erpenbeck! Yoko Tawada!) and loves to read others (e.g. this one right now), I have no doubt whatever when it comes to the ability of female authors to knock one’s proverbial socks off with their on-the-page prowess. If you want to start (or continue) reading your way into the wonderful world of international literature by woman, here are a few suggestions assembled by the inimitable Katy Derbyshire, who’s done so much to draw attention to the gender gap in translation over the last couple of years: she’s just put together a list of translated books by female authors published in English since 2010. Please don’t tell me you were going to hit the beach with just a magazine. Take a novel! Tweet your read with #WITMonth! And next time you’re in your favorite bookstore, ask them to put up a Women in Translation Month sign and assemble a little altar of beautiful translated books.
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July 13, 2016
Submit Now for the 2016 Gulf Coast Prize in Translation
It’s time to submit for the 2016 Gulf Coast Translation Prize, which comes with a purse of $1000 and publication in the journal Gulf Coast, published out of the English Dept. at the University of Houston. The $18 reading fee gets you a year’s subscription to the journal, and this year’s judge will be Idra Novey.
Last year’s prize, which I didn’t see announced before now, was judged by Ammiel Alcalay and went to Samantha Schnee for The Romantic’s Conspiracy by Carmen Boullosa, with two honorable mentions (Rebeca Velasquez and Brad Fox) and two “commendations” (Jonathan Larson and J. Bret Maney). Congratulations!
This year’s application deadline is Aug. 31, 2016. More information on the Gulf Coast website.
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Apply Now for a 2017 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant
If you’re a younger or emerging translator, the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants (named for Michael Henry Heim, who funded these awards thirteen years ago now with his wife Priscilla) are one of the best ways out there for you to draw attention to your work and possibly even find a publisher as well as receiving financial support. I’ve written about the ins and outs of them before. These grants are explicitly open to those early in their careers – though everyone is welcome to apply. Usually the deadline is in the fall, but this year there’s been a reorganization, and applications are due in August. So if you’re thinking about a book-length project and have a sample translation already in progress, time to sharpen your pencils. You’ll find more information and full application instructions on the PEN America website. Deadline for the receipt of applications: Aug. 15, 2016.
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July 1, 2016
Translation on Tap in NYC, July 1 – 31, 2016
Look, I wish I could offer you some translation events this month, I really do, but so far I have nothing. Nichts, nada, niente, ничего. So maybe you should just read a book instead, or go to the beach, or, I don’t know, translate something? (If I hear of any events later, I’ll of course let you know.)
Here’s a picture of what I’m reading right now. You can also get it in English. It’s fantastic.
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