South Asian Translations, and the Lack of Them
Over the past few weeks, Mahmud Rahman/Asymptote has been publishing a four-part series “On the Dearth of South Asian Translations in the U.S.” The whole series is worth reading, and below are a few key bits to whet your appetite . . . First off, from Part I: A small percentage of literary books published ...
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Selected Stories
To call Kjell Askildsen’s style sparse or terse would be to understate just how far he pushes his prose. Almost nothing is explained, elaborated on. In simple sentences, events occur, words are exchanged, narrators have brief thoughts. As often as translators are praised for their work with complex, tangled sentences, I ...
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Juan Marsé and French Women [A Month of a Thousand Forests]
Today’s entry in the Month of a Thousand Forests series is Juan Marsé, who has a few book available in English translation: Golden Girl, Lizard Tails, and Shanghai Nights. In this excerpt he talks a bit about this background and his time in Paris, which led to Últimas tardes con Teresa. __All this month, if you ...
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Ana María Matute and the Shadow Children [A Month of a Thousand Forests]
Next up in our Month of a Thousand Forests series is Ana María Matute who has one book already available in English—School of the Sun, which was translated by Elaine Kerrigan and published by Columbia University Press. The piece that’s excerpted below is from Olvidado Rey Gudú which is “the book I wanted ...
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"De Potter's Grand Tour" by Joanna Scott [Weekend Reading]
Usually, I try and feature a work of translation as part of the “weekend reading” series, but I’m making an exception this week in order to highlight Joanna Scott’s new novel, which just came out this week. Aside from being an outstanding novelist and short story writer (Arrogance and The Manikin ...
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José María Merino and Heidi [A Month of a Thousand Forests]
The second author to be featured in our overview of the new collection A Thousand Forests in One Acorn is Jose María Merino, a Spanish master of microfictions. Merino is one of the authors in this volume whose work is appearing in English for the first time. You can read other excerpts from Thousand Forests by clicking ...
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Letter from an Unknown Woman and Other Stories
After a mysterious woman confesses to an author simply known as “R” that she has loved him since she was a teenager, she offers the following explanation: “There is nothing on earth like the love of a child that passes unnoticed in the dark because she has no hope: her love is submissive, so much a servant’s love, ...
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