Best Translations of 2007 (Another Update)

Listed below is the latest list of recommendations for the best translated works of 2007. Thanks again to everyone who has posted or e-mailed a suggestion. It’s a pretty impressive list, and, as Angela said in the comments, a bit daunting.

If there are any titles anyone would like to add, please post them in the comments or e-mail me (chad.post at rochester dot edu) by Saturday. At that point, we’re going to take the list and together with the help of a few other international literature experts, we’re going to narrow this down to a “Top 10” list. And after that, we’ll try and set up a poll so that everyone reading this blog can vote on their personal favorite . . .

So for now, here’s the complete list:

• How I Became a Nun by Cesar Aira, translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews (New Directions)

• A Voice from Elsewhere by Maurice Blanchot, translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell (SUNY)

• Amulet by Roberto Bolano, translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews (New Directions)

• The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer (FSG)

• Christ versus Arizona by Camilo Jose Cela, translated from the Spanish by Martin Sokolinsky (Dalkey Archive Press)

• Autonauts of the Cosmoroute by Julio Cortazar, translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean (Archipelago)

• Missing Soluch by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, translated from the Persian by Kamran Rastegar (Melville House)

• Ravel by Jean Echenoz, translated from the French by Linda Coverdale (New Press)

• Novels in Three Lines by Felix Feneon, translated from the French by Luc Sante (NYRB)

• Guantanamo by Dorothea Dieckmann, translated from the German by Tim Mohr (Soft Skull)

• The Little Girl and the Cigarette by Benoit Duteurtre, translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell (Melville House)

• The Collected Poems: 1956-1998 by Zbigniew Herbert, translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz, Peter Dale Scott, and Alissa Valles (Ecco)

• The Exception by Christian Jungersen, translated from the Danish by Anna Paterson (Nan A. Talese)

• Today I Wrote Nothing by Daniil Kharms, translated from the Russian by Matvei Yankelevich (Overlook)

• Sunflower by Gyula Krudy, translated from the Hungarian by John Batki (New York Review Books)

• Dark Paradise by Rosa Liksom, translated from the Finnish by David McDuff (Dalkey Archive)

• The Flying Camel and the Golden Hump by Aharon Megged, translated from the Hebrew by Vivian Eden (Toby Press)

• In Her Absence by Antonio Munoz Molina, translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen (Other Press)

• Day In Day Out by Terezia Mora, translated from the German by Michael Henry Heim (HarperCollins)

• Lost Paradise by Cees Nooteboom, translated from the Dutch by Susan Massotty (Harcourt Inc.)

• The Unforeseen by Christian Oster, translated from the French by Adriana Hunter (Other Press)

• Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born (Graywolf Press)

• Spring Tides by Jacques Poulin, translated from the French by Sheila Fischman (Archipelago)

• Delirium by Laura Restrepo, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer (Nan A. Talese)

• Ice by Vladimir Sorokin, translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell (New York Review Books)

• Vain Art of the Fugue by Dumitru Tsepeneag, translated from the Romanian by Patrick Camiller (Dalkey Archive)

• The Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition by Cesar Vallejo, translated from the Spanish by Clayton Eshleman (Univ. of California Press)

• Omega Minor by Paul Verhaeghen, translated from the Flemish by the author (Dalkey Archive)

• Montano’s Malady by Enrique Vila-Matas, translated from the Spanish by Jonathan Dunne (New Directions)

• The Assistant by Robert Walser, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (New Directions)

• I Have the Right to Destroy Myself by Young-ha Kim, translated from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim (Harcourt Inc.)