- Open Letter Books
- Three Percent Problem
- Translated Book Award
- Translation Studies
- Translation Database
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.
One of the several mammoth translations released this year that’s on my “to read for the Best Translated Book Award” shelf—along with The Kindly Ones, News of the Empire, The Loop, Brothers, etc.—is Rafik Schami’s The Dark Side of Love. Clocking in at over 850 pages, Interlink Publishing deserves some recognition simply for being brave enough to publish something like this.
Claire Hopley’s review in the Washington Times makes it sound pretty interesting:
Novels from Syria rarely come our way, and novels from the Syrian emigre community of Europe are scarcely more frequent, so Rafik Schami’s “The Dark Side of Love,” first published in Germany where it was a best-seller, comes with preoccupations that are new to most of us.
Its form, however, is a lot like those 19th-century novels that trace their hero’s plight for hundreds of pages, 853 pages in this case. “Loose, baggy monsters” was Henry James’ description of classic English novels. Readers of “The Dark Side of Love” will often feel they are grappling with just such a monster – one that seems to ramble off, even get away, at times.
The novel is framed as a detective tale in which Inspector Barudi seeks to discover the murderer of an important, and, as it turns out, sadistic secret service agent. But Barudi soon fades into the background as the novel focuses on Farid Mushtak and the love of his life, Rana Shahin, before finally coming together as a history of Syria in the middle decades of the 20th century. It’s a history that is rivetingly full of incident, awash in despair, yet not without dignity as exemplified by Farid.
What’s funny—was pointed out by the Literary Saloon’s Michael Orthofer—is the claim that this book was “Translated from the Syrian by Anthea Bell,” which is clearly wrong. We all make mistakes (I’m sure there are a minimum of three typos or grammatical errors in this post along), and I’m sure WT will have this corrected on their website in the very near future. But for the record, Schami moved to Germany in 1971 and this novel was first published in German in 2004. And Anthea Bell just happens to be one of the most respected translators working today, and is most well known for her translation of the French Asterix comics and her translation of W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz. And although she does translate from German, French, Polish, and Danish, she doesn’t actually translate from “Syrian.”
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,. . .
Reviewed by Vincent Francone
The Whispering Muse, one of three books by Icelandic writer Sjón just published in North America, is nothing if not inventive. Stories within stories, shifting narration, leaps in time, and characters who transform from men to birds and back again—you’ve. . .
Reviewed by Camila Santos
Luis Negrón’s debut collection Mundo Cruel is a journey through Puerto Rico’s gay world. Published in 2010, the book is already in its fifth Spanish edition. Here in the U.S., the collection has been published by Seven Stories Press and. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
“South”
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bank of shadow to have watched
the scattered lights
my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the ring of. . .
Reviewed by Larissa Kyzer
When Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason first published LoveStar, his darkly comic parable of corporate power and media influence run amok, the world was in a very different place. (This was back before both Facebook and Twitter, if you can. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
When starting Hi, This Is Conchita and Other Stories, Santiago Roncagliolo’s second work to be translated into English, I was expecting Roncagliolo to explore the line between evil and religion that was front and center in Red April. Admittedly, I. . .
Reviewed by Josh Billings
Christa Wolf’s newly-translated City of Angels is a novel of atonement, and in this way the work of art that it resembles most to me is not another book, but the 2003 Sophia Coppola film Lost in Translation. Like that. . .
