So, even though we’re in danger right now of becoming a blog that only writes about book prizes (or maybe I’m only feeling that way because the Best Translated Book Award has been on my mind for so long), we would be remiss if we didn’t make mention of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Longlist:

• Boris Akunin The Coronation (translated by Andrew Bromfield from the Russian) Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Ketil Bjørnstad To Music (Deborah Dawkin & Erik Skuggevik; Norwegian) Maia Press
• Hassan Blasim The Madman of Freedom Square (Jonathan Wright; Arabic) Comma Press
• Philippe Claudel Brodeck’s Report (John Cullen; French) MacLehose Press
• Julia Franck The Blind Side of the Heart (Anthea Bell; German) Harvill Secker
• Pietro Grossi Fists (Howard Curtis; Italian) Pushkin Press
• Elias Khoury Yalo (Humphrey Davies; Arabic) MacLehose Press
• Jonathan Littell The Kindly Ones (Charlotte Mandell; French) Chatto & Windus
• Alain Mabanckou Broken Glass (Helen Stevenson; French) Serpent’s Tail
• Javier Marías Your Face Tomorrow, Volume 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell (Margaret Jull Costa; Spanish) Chatto & Windus
• Yoko Ogawa The Housekeeper and the Professor (Stephen Snyder; Japanese) Harvill Secker
• Claudia Piñeiro Thursday Night Widows (Miranda France; Spanish) Bitter Lemon Press
• Sankar Chowringhee (Arunava Sinha; Bengali) Atlantic
• Rafik Schami The Dark Side of Love (Anthea Bell; German) Arabia Books
• Bahaa Taher Sunset Oasis (Humphrey Davies; Arabic) Sceptre

There are a few things to note: Although the bigger presses, or big name presses, are well represented, it’s interesting to note how much of the heavy lifting for translation in the UK is done by smaller independent presses (Comma, Maia, Bitter Lemon); there are three books (three!) that are translated from Arabic, which has to be some kind of record; and Humphrey Davies and Anthea Bell have the knack—two nominated titles each.

To complement all the review coverage that Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones has been receiving, Ron Hogan from Beatrice, has posted a piece by Charlotte Mandell about translating this controversial novel:

People talk about ‘free translation’—and they usually mean something that I’d judge sloppy or pretentious. For me, my real freedom as a translator is to follow strictly, alertly, joyfully, the moves and rhythms of the original text. I want the reader to know exactly what the author thought—and when he thought it. That means I want the translation to present ideas, images, events in as close as humanly possible to the order in which those ideas, images, events occur in the original. I want the reader to hear the author think.

And to do that, I have chosen to translate right from the start of the text: I do not read ahead. I don’t read the book before I translate it. I don’t want to know what it means before I go through the actual formation of its meaning word by word. In that way, I not only try to keep the reader in mind (so that if I come to a puzzling passage I can guess the reader will be puzzled too, and I’ll try to find the best words to make the passage clear), but I also have the tremendous experience of, so to speak, accompanying the author in the act of composition. I follow at his pace, and go through his discoveries. [. . .]

As Littell pointed out in an interview, we have heard the victim’s story over and over. Now we need to hear the perpetrator. We need to try and figure out his motives, his excuses. And what a perpetrator Max is—his keen aesthetic sense constantly lures us into his mind. And then again and again we have to make our own choices, our own abstentions. What a moral workout the book puts the reader through—and that is a large part of its greatness, and my own satisfaction in what could otherwise have been a horror show. This is not the One Good Nazi of the sentimental (and to me disgusting) movies. This is the Evil Nazi, and we are in him for a thousand pages, and have to make our own way out. No consolations, no forgivenesses. I think about Paul Celan’s famous question, and realize we have to become the ones who witness the witness.

The whole piece is definitely worth reading, especially since Charlotte knows this book on such an intimate level.

Kakutani takes her shot at Littell’s monster:

No doubt the author intends such remarks to convey the horrors of the Holocaust, but “The Kindly Ones” instead reads like a pointless compilation of atrocities and anti-Semitic remarks, pointlessly combined with a gross collection of sexual fantasies.

After this review, and Michael’s, The Kindly Ones is slowly working it’s way toward the bottom of our reading pile.

The new issue of Bookforum is now out and available online.

Like usual, there are a number of interesting pieces worth checking out, including Leland de la Durantaye’s review of Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones (pretty positive review), Ben Ehrenreich’s review of Ismail Kadare’s The Siege, (not so positive) and Chris Lehman’s piece on Marian Schwartz’s new translation of Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov (which I really want to find the time to read).