{"id":305076,"date":"2016-12-05T21:43:02","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T21:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2016\/12\/05\/an-education-in-world-literature-btba-2017\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:39:14","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:39:14","slug":"an-education-in-world-literature-btba-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2016\/12\/05\/an-education-in-world-literature-btba-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"An Education in World Literature [BTBA 2017]"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week’s Best Translated Book Award post is by Steph Opitz, who reviews books for _Marie Claire<\/em>, while also working with the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP<\/span>), Kirkus Reviews, the Brooklyn Book Festival, and the Twin Cities Book Festival. For more information on the BTBA<\/span>, “like” our Facebook page<\/a> and follow us on Twitter.<\/a> And check back here each week for a new post by one of the judges._<\/p>\n

I\u2019m so excited to be deliberately reading more work in translation this year. Though, I\u2019d guess my mailperson is less excited about this venture. Boxes of books arrive every day regularly, as I review for some magazines, but the submissions for the BTBA<\/span> right now are tripling the average delivery. As an avid reader, this uptick is awesome. Also, my puppy is really into padded mailers, so it\u2019s kind of a win-win-win at our house.<\/p>\n

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Most of the books have me reading a bit slower than average, and that\u2019s mostly because I\u2019m reading about places and people I haven\u2019t read about before. It\u2019s pretty easy to quickly read about someone more like me in the place that I\u2019m from, but it\u2019s slower, and a different kind of enjoyment to read about something totally new. I find myself googling places more, and relearning, learning more about, or learning for the first time parts of world history that have eluded me. A Spare Life<\/em> by Lidija Dimkovska (Author), Christina E. Kramer (Translator), a story about conjoined twins, for example, filled in a lot I didn\u2019t know about Yugoslavia (psst! In the premise Dimkovska lays out the greatest metaphor for what happened to the country).<\/p>\n

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Then there are books that are less location-relevant and more about the characters and what\u2019s happening to them. I loved reading Moshi Moshi<\/em> by Banana Yoshimoto (Author), Asa Yoneda (Translator), a story about a mother and daughter attempting to grieve the loss of the the family\u2019s patriarch, who might be haunting them.
\nSpeaking of haunting, Erik Axl Sund\u2019s Crow Girl<\/em> (translated by Neil Smith) scared the absolute shit out of me. I\u2019ve been trying my darndest to get more and more books between that one, so I can try to forget it. Which is to say if you love being scared by gruesome crimes: read it. <\/p>\n

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Many of the titles have been alive in the world for decades and yet, for those of us limited to reading in only one language, we haven\u2019t had access until now. It\u2019s wonderful to be able to read something like Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador<\/em> by Horacio Castellanos Moya (Author), Lee Klein (Translator) a book highly praised throughout the world and beloved by Roberto Bola\u00f1o, which was finally published in English this year. <\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t taken a class in literature since, oh, 2007, and being a judge for BTBA<\/span> is a great education in world books. it\u2019s great to have all of these engrossing, diverse \u201cassignments\u201d to read and think about. I feel like I\u2019m reading some truly unique stories, which, I think, says a lot from someone who reads for a living.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s Best Translated Book Award post is by Steph Opitz, who reviews books for _Marie Claire, while also working with the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), Kirkus Reviews, the Brooklyn Book Festival, and the Twin Cities Book Festival. For more information on the BTBA, “like” our Facebook page and follow us on […]<\/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":[35996,64586,48766,1646,64996],"class_list":["post-305076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-btba","tag-btba-2017","tag-btba-fiction","tag-review","tag-steph-opitz"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305076","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=305076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315766,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305076\/revisions\/315766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}