- Open Letter Books
- Three Percent Problem
- Translated Book Award
- Translation Studies
- Translation Database
The International Rivers Interview Series was born of two unrelated events. The first was a Roni Horn exhibit I saw some years back in New York featuring the work Still Water (The River Thames, For Example). Horn framed multiple close-up shots of the Thames passing through central London and approached the river with a number of questions. I remember Horn asking, ‘What is the color of water?’ and the elegant simplicity of that question struck me. One answer is that it has no color, that water is a body that either reflects its surroundings by throwing back a visual reply or absorbing organic matter. Water is, Horn later said, “a master chameleon. Or the ultimate mime.” Could rivers like the Thames, I wondered, reflect more than mud, trees and bridges, but history and culture too?
They’ll be interviewing four writers: Sasa Stanisic, György Dragomán, Dumitru Tsepeneag, and our own Dubravka Ugresic. The first interview, with György Dragomán, is up now.
An idea that’s definitely worth keeping up with.
The longlist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize has (finally!) been announced. Here you go:
- Voice Over by Céline Curiol (trans. Sam Richard)
- A Blessed Child by Linn Ullman (trans. Sarah Death)
- The Blue Fox by Sjon (trans. Victoria Cribb)
- Friendly Fire by A.B. Yehoshua (trans. Stuart Schoffman)
- My Father’s Wives by José Eduardo Agualusa (trans. Daniel Hahn)
- The White King by Gyorgy Dragoman (trans. Paul Olchvary)
- The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vasquez (trans. Anne McLeane)
- Homesick by Eshkol Nevo (trans. Sondra Silverstein)
- Beijing Coma by Ma Jian (trans. Flora Drew)
- The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa (trans Stephen Snyder)
- Novel 11, Book 18 by Dag Solstad (trans. Sverre Lyngstad)
- The Director by Alexander Ahndoril (trans. Sarah Death)
- The Armies by Euelio Rosero (trans. Anne McLean)
- How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone by Saša Stanišić‘ (trans. Anthea Bell)
- The Siege by Ismail Kadare (trans. David Bellos, from the French of Jusuf Vrioni)
- Night Work by Thomas Glavinic (trans. John Brownjohn)
There’s only two points of contact with the Best Translated Book Award longlist, Celine Curiol’s Voice Over (which made our shortlist) and perennial Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlister, and sometime prizewinner, José Eduardo Agualusa, whose Book of Chameleons we nominated—My Father’s Wives has yet to find an American publisher, I think.
Overall, it’s a strong list, and if you want more info we have reviews of a few of the books from the longlist:
Only two! Looks like we have some work to do.
Reviewed by Chad W. Post
When I was about two-thirds of the way through Neuman’s very ambitious, very engrossing novel, Bromance Will Evans asked me what I thought the purpose the rapist had in this book. Not who the rapist was—something that’s held in suspense. . .
Reviewed by Jennifer Marquart
“At night Amarâq is coated with a darkness as viscous as unmixed colors, neither the fjord nor the mountains, valleys, lakes, or the river exist, there is only a black mass, a void that spreads across the landscape sporadically, pressing. . .
Reviewed by John Thomas Mahany
If you’ve been following any of the recent Antoine Volodine talk going around Three Percent—both on the blog or on the podcasts—and have heard his fans wax obsessive over all his alter author-egos, you’re probably starting to feel some Volodine. . .
Reviewed by Aleksandra Fazlipour
Muireann Maguire’s Red Spectres is a stunning and engaging collection of eleven Russian gothic tales written by various authors during the early Soviet Era, all but two stories of which are featured in English for the first time ever. These. . .
Reviewed by Jeremy Osner
“The small stone plaza was floating in the midday heat. The Christ of Elqui, kneeling on the ground, his gaze thrown back on high, the part in his hair dark under the Atacaman sun—he felt himself falling into an ecstasy.. . .
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
This slender, uncanny volume—the second, best-selling collection of stories by Russian author Ludmilla Petrushevskaya to appear in the U.S.—has already received considerable, well-deserved praise from many critics and high profile publications. Its seventeen short tales, averaging ten pages each, are. . .
Reviewed by Rachael Daum
The Urdu word basti refers to any space, intimate to worldly, and is often translated as “common place” or “a gathering place.” This book by Intizar Husain, who is widely regarded as one of the most important living Pakistani writers,. . .
