{"id":295776,"date":"2013-12-04T20:06:29","date_gmt":"2013-12-04T20:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2013\/12\/04\/the-big-books-of-the-btba\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:39:27","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:39:27","slug":"the-big-books-of-the-btba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2013\/12\/04\/the-big-books-of-the-btba\/","title":{"rendered":"The Big Books of the BTBA"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is courtesy of BTBA<\/span><\/a> judge, Scott Esposito. Scott Esposito blogs at Conversational Reading<\/a> and you can find his tweets<\/a> here.<\/i><\/p>\n

I like the fact that the BTBA<\/span> has a strong track record for picking not only the massive, monumental doorstoppers that tend to garner the lion\u2019s share of award attention but also the slim, sleek books that are often much richer and better-constructed. The best possible example is our first award, in which we gave the svelte Tranquility<\/em> by Attila Bartis the nod over the imposing 2666<\/em> from, of course, Roberto Bola\u00f1o. 2011 saw us pick the slender The True Deceiver<\/em> by Tove Jansson (beating out sizable finalists Hocus Bogus<\/em> by Romain Gary, Agaat<\/em> by Marlene Van Niekerk, and Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer<\/em> by Ernst Weiss). But we\u2019ve also gone for the bulky books: in 2013 we gave it to the sizable Satantango<\/em> by Laszlo Krasznahorkai, and in 2012 is was Wies\u0142aw My\u015bliwski\u2019s epic Stone Upon Stone.<\/em><\/p>\n

So, in that spirit, here\u2019s my discussion of some of the more sizable books that I both think are strong contenders for the award, and that I think should be left out. <\/p>\n

Contenders<\/b><\/p>\n

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Blinding<\/em><\/a> by Mircea Cartarescu.<\/p>\n

This is, quite simply, one of the most amazing books I\u2019ve read this year. Cartarescu is one of the few authors I\u2019ve read that could legitimately claim the legacy of Thomas Pynchon (now that Pynchon is writing parodies of himself). I\u2019ll have lots more to say about it in an upcoming review at The Kenyon Review, but for now, here are links to a review<\/a> and interview<\/a> at The Quarterly Conversation. Read it.<\/p>\n

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My Struggle: Book Two<\/em><\/a> by Karl Ove Knausgaard<\/p>\n

I have a feeling that when it\u2019s all said and done, this will be many people\u2019s favorite volume of the My Struggle<\/em> sextet. It\u2019s subtitled \u201cA Man In Love,\u201d and that\u2019s just what it is: the story of Knausgaard falling in love with the woman who is now his wife. There are so many passionate, ecstatic moments in here that anyone who has ever been in love will recognize, wrought extraordinarily well by Knausgaard. Plus, the book also has: his on and off feud with his crazy neighbor, who might be a prostitute; why he hates interviews; and the story of the incident in which he turned his face into a bloody mess with a razor blade.<\/p>\n

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Leg over Leg, Volume 1 and 2<\/em><\/a> by Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq<\/p>\n

This is billed as the Arabic world\u2019s answer to Tristram Shandy<\/em> by Laurence Sterne. Apparently it begins with a lengthy list of synonyms for various parts of the male and female genitalia.<\/p>\n

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Seiobo There Below<\/em><\/a> by Laszlo Krasznahorkai<\/p>\n

If the Nobel committee would ever give their award to a writer like Krasznahorkai, this would be the book they would give it to him for. An inquiry into what humanity needs spirituality that is unlike anything I have ever read. Grand in scope, accomplishment, virtuosity. Grand, grand, grand. Read my review in Wednesday\u2019s Washington Post.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

Intrigued<\/b><\/p>\n

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Where Tigers Are at Home<\/em><\/a> by Jean-Marie Blas de Robles\t<\/p>\n

Reviews have made this book sound extremely diverse and remarkably achieved. Could either be incredible or too big for its own good.<\/p>\n

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A Treatise on Shelling Beans<\/em><\/a> by Wies\u0142aw My\u015bliwski<\/p>\n

Okay, the title of this book is not awesome. But it is by the author of Stone Upon Stone<\/em>, a book that seemingly everybody loves (I did enjoy it). And it is reputed to be even more of a masterpiece than that one.<\/p>\n

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City of Angels or, The Overcoat of Dr. Freud<\/em><\/a> by Christa Wolf\t<\/p>\n

An autobiographical look at \u201890s Los Angeles interspersed with memories of the Eastern Bloc where she re-discovers that she was actually a Stasi agent? Might just be crazy enough to work.<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

Maybe Not<\/b><\/p>\n

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In the Night of Time<\/em><\/a> by Antonio Munoz Molina<\/p>\n

Billed as the War and Peace<\/em> of the Spanish Civil War. Mu\u00f1oz Molina is certainly one of Spain\u2019s pre-eminent authors, but I\u2019ve already read War and Peace.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Altai<\/em><\/a> by Wu Ming<\/p>\n

I\u2019m tossing this on because \u201cWu Ming\u201d is an awesome name and it\u2019s a pseudonym for a collective of Italian writers. How cool is that? Apparently not cool enough to make something more than middlebrow Dan Brown. The collective\u2019s previous book, Q<\/em>, was a massive hit: I hope this book makes Verso boatloads of money so they can keep publishing Badiou and Ranciere. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is courtesy of BTBA judge, Scott Esposito. Scott Esposito blogs at Conversational Reading and you can find his tweets here. I like the fact that the BTBA has a strong track record for picking not only the massive, monumental doorstoppers that tend to garner the lion\u2019s share of award attention but also the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[52796,3566,52046,50796,50706,50396,53376,1646,416,37486,54026],"class_list":["post-295776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-ahmad-faris-al-shidyaq","tag-antonio-munoz-molina","tag-btba-2014","tag-christa-wolf","tag-jean-marie-blas-de-robles","tag-karl-ove-knausgaard","tag-mircea-cartarescu","tag-review","tag-scott-esposito","tag-wieslaw-mysliwski","tag-wu-ming"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317906,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295776\/revisions\/317906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}