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Francisco Goldman was the MC at the very first Best Translated Book Award ceremony, which took place at the fantastic Melville House offices. He gave a great speech about the importance of translation, and included an anecdote about translating a Gabriel Garcia Marquez story for Playboy . . . As many of you probably know, Goldman’s wife, Aura Estrada, was a translator who was tragically killed in an accident in Mexico back in 2007. Since that time, Frank established the Aura Estrada Prize, which is given out every other year to a woman writer under the age of 35 and who writes in Spanish.
The story of Aura’s death and its impact on Frank’s life is heavy and emotional and touching, and is the basis for his latest book, Say Her Name. This got a lot of good critical attention when it came out earlier this year, and it was announced over the weekend that it also won the Prix Femina Estranger award in France:
Francisco Goldman has won the Prix Femina Étranger for his novel Say Her Name. Created in 1904 by a group of writers for the magazine formerly known as La Vie heureuse, and known today as Femina, the The Prix Femina is a French literary prize that is comprised of three categories. The Prix Femina Étranger is awarded to the best foreign novel. Francisco Goldman is the first American to win this award since Joyce Carol Oates in 2005.
Since being published in April, Say Her Name has been no stranger to high praises. It was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review where it was described as, “Passionate and moving . . . beautifully written . . . the truth that emerges in this book has less to do with the mystery of [Aura’s] death . . . than with the miracle of the astonishing, spirited, deeply original young woman Goldman so adored . . . So remarkable is this resurrection that at times I felt the book itself had a pulse.” Vanity Fair raved, “Say Her Name is exhilarating, a testament to love that questions our suppositions about luck, fate, good fortune, and tragedy, and demands our agency in interpreting the narrative arc of an altered life.” And Entertainment Weekly captured it beautifully calling it, “Extraordinary . . .The more deeply you have loved in your life, the more this book will wrench you
(The press release cuts off at that point . . . )
Congrats, to Frank! This couldn’t happen to a nicer, more giving person.
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,. . .
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. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
French author—philosopher, poet, novelist—de Roblès writes something approaching the Great (Latin) American Novel, about Brazilian characters, one of whom is steeped in the life of the seventeenth century polymath (but almost always erroneous) Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. Eleazard von Wogau, a. . .
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
A rich, beautifully written, consistently surprising satire, Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses boasts an elaborate, engrossing plot with disarming twists and compelling characters both challenged and challenging. It leads the reader on a strange pilgrimage—often melancholy but certainly rewarding—through a China. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
