{"id":395476,"date":"2018-04-19T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-19T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2018\/04\/19\/radiant-terminus-by-antoine-volodine-why-this-book-should-win\/"},"modified":"2018-05-07T14:13:58","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T14:13:58","slug":"radiant-terminus-by-antoine-volodine-why-this-book-should-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2018\/04\/19\/radiant-terminus-by-antoine-volodine-why-this-book-should-win\/","title":{"rendered":"“Radiant Terminus” by Antoine Volodine [Why This Book Should Win]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s \u201cWhy This Book Should Win<\/a>\u201d fiction entry is from Rachel Cordasco, former BTBA<\/span> judge, and curator of Speculative Fiction in Translation.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Radiant Terminus<\/em><\/a> by Antoine Volodine, translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman (France, Open Letter Books)<\/b><\/p>\n

In Radiant Terminus<\/em>, we have a novel that disturbs and enthralls, sucking us in to a nightmarish void of a world that might be Purgatory or the Buddhist \u201cBardo\u201d or some dystopian point in the near\/far future. Needless to say, in this moment when the \u201cSecond Soviet Union\u201d has fallen and nearly all mammalian life on Earth has died, one wonders if such a distinction even matters anymore.<\/p>\n

Antoine Volodine, author of \u201cpost-exotic\u201d works, has created a cast of characters who move across this wrecked yet lush landscape, seeking some sort of (radiant?) terminus where they can finally find shelter and rest. They converge on a small commune that is slyly named \u201cRadiant Terminus,\u201d run by a man named Solovyei, who spins and declaims his own epic narrative prose poems that tell of his malicious capacity to bring people back\u2014but only partly\u2014from the dead. And then there are people like the Gramma Udgul (and Solovyei himself?), whose exposure to high levels of radiation have rendered them, in some sense, immortal.The title itself suggests a terminal that emits radiation (e.g., energy unleashed by nuclear reaction)\u2014thus an end point that is always in flux.<\/p>\n

Often, the narrative itself starts sounding like Solovyei\u2019s strange and haunting prose poems (or vice versa), the sentences building up momentum as they amble along toward a terminus:<\/p>\n

The time did come when those who had the talent declaimed epic chants, invented poetic or comedic monologues, or recited propaganda texts that had stuck with them in their earlier life, or parts of communist, post-exotic, or feminist romances. The audience accompanied them by approving or voicing speeches, as we did in the old days during Korean pansori performances, when Korea still existed and we still believed in beauty, the future, and the impossibility of death.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Volodine\u2019s deft manipulation of irony and careful weaving together of narrative perspectives and voices, all stage-managed, perhaps, by Solovyei, makes Radiant Terminus<\/em> worthy of the BTBA<\/span> prize. By the end of the book, you\u2019ll feel like you\u2019ve wandered across the bewildering landscape of Volodine\u2019s own mind, and how many authors have you read who can do that<\/strong>? Exactly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s \u201cWhy This Book Should Win\u201d fiction entry is from Rachel Cordasco, former BTBA judge, and curator of Speculative Fiction in Translation. Radiant Terminus by Antoine Volodine, translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman (France, Open Letter Books) In Radiant Terminus, we have a novel that disturbs and enthralls, sucking us in to a nightmarish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":397892,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[49366,66446,48766,56516,28166,64656,64846,37876],"class_list":["post-395476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-antoine-volodine","tag-btba-2018","tag-btba-fiction","tag-jeffrey-zuckerman","tag-open-letter-books","tag-rachel-cordasco","tag-radiant-terminus","tag-why-this-book-should-win"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395476","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=395476"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397902,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395476\/revisions\/397902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}