“The Teacher” by Michal Ben-Naftali [Excerpt]
There are three more forthcoming Open Letter titles by women that I want to share for Women in Translation Month. First up is The Teacher by Michel Ben-Naftali, translated from the Hebrew by Daniella Zamir. Here's the jacket copy: No one knew the story of Elsa Weiss. She was a respected English teacher at a Tel Aviv high ...
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Releasing Today: THE TRANSLATOR’S BRIDE by João Reis
“A neurotic little gem: fast, fun, frenzied, and feisty.” —Jeremy Garber, Powell's A humorous attempt to get one's life back in order that's part Thomas Bernhard, part Max Frisch At the start of The Translator's Bride, the Translator's bride ...
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The Most Anticipated Translation of 2019
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Riverhead) Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead may well be the most anticipated translation of the season. Olga Tokarczuk’s second novel in as many years is a mystery novel that never declares ...
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Women in Translation by Country
Since I skipped last week, I'm going to post a few WITMonth infographics this week, starting with the three charts below. But first, a bit of methodology and explanation. I was curious about which countries were the most balanced in terms of books in translation written by men and women. We know from the earlier ...
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Reread, Rewrite, Repeat
Some years ago, I was invited on an editorial trip to Buenos Aires, where we were given a walking tour of the more literary areas of the city, including a bar where Polish ex-pat Witold Gombrowicz used to hang out. The tour guide told us a story about how Gombrowicz hated Borges and would frequently, drunkenly, ...
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Percent of Translations Originally Written by Women, 2008-2019
I was planning on posting one of these each week with next to no context, but just to explain what's above, this is a year-by-year breakdown of the percentage of works of fiction in translation originally written by men, by women, and anthologies including both genders. The biggest gap was in 2008 (54.61% ...
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Two Spanish Books for Women in Translation Month
Like usual, this post is a mishmash of all the thoughts I've had over the past week, mostly while out on a 30-mile bike ride. (I need to get in as many of these as possible before winter, which is likely to hit Rochester in about a month.) Rather than try and weave these into one single coherent post, I'm just going to throw ...
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