Translated from French by Shaun WhitesidePublished by W&N, 2022, 144 pages. Original version published in 2011. Giverny: a beautiful, picturesque village in France, known for its most famous resident, the impressionist painter Claude Monet, who is famous for his paintings of water lilies. Artists and tourists flock to the village to see the beautiful gardens …
Category: Books in translation
Tyll: Daniel Kehlmann
Translated from German by Ross BenjaminPublished by riverrun, 2020, 352 pages. Original version published in 2017. The jester or trickster is a ubiquitous figure, popping up in mythologies, literature, street theatre, and in playing cards and tarot. He (it’s almost always a man) is an entertainer, mentally and physically agile, and able to speak truth …
Please Look After Mom: Kyong-Sook Shin
Translated from Korean by Chi-young KimPublished by W&N, 2011, 272 pages. Original version published in 2009.Review by Susanne Karine Gjønnes South Korea has gone through an unprecedented journey from a developing country to one of the world's largest economies in only a few decades. This transformation has led to generations growing up and living completely …
The Desert and the Drum: Mbarek Ould Beyrouk
Translated from French by Rachel McGillPublished by Dedalus, 2018, 170 pages. Original version published in 2015. “There was no moon, no stars. The light has been drained away, the sky left mute. I could distinguish neither colours nor shapes. Dunes and trees had been engulfed by the universe, sucked into its sidereal blackness. … I …
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Dissipatio H.G.—The Vanishing: Guido Morselli
Translated from Italian by Frederika RandallPublished by The New York Review of Books, Inc., 2020, 168 pages. Original version published in 2012. What would happen to the planet if the entire human race was to disappear? In this novella, Guido Morselli imagines a world empty of people. The book is narrated by the one man …
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The Baltimore Boys: Joël Dicker
Translated from French by Alison AndersonPublished by MacLehose Press, 2017, 448 pages. Original version published in 2015. Marcus Goldman is a successful writer who has moved to Florida to write his next book. But he is haunted by his past: his point of reference is a “tragedy”, and he measures time from the event. Ever …
The Shape of the Ruins: Juan Gabriel Vásquez
Translated from Spanish by Anne McLeanPublished by MacLehose Press / Riverhead Books, 2018, 508 pages. Original version published in 2015. "There are truths that don’t happen in those places, truths that nobody writes down because they’re invisible. There are millions of things that happen in special places… they are places that are not within the …
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The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from A Secret World: Peter Wohlleben
Translated from German by Jane BillinghurstPublished by Greystone Books, 2016, 288 pages. Original version published in 2015. One day, Peter Wohlleben, a forester, stumbles across what he thinks are mossy stones but turn out to be old wood. But not just old wood, which would normally decompose, but the roots of a tree that no …
Small Memories—A Memoir: José Saramago
Translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull CostaPublished by Harvill Secker, 2009, 200 pages. Original version published in 2006. José Saramago was born in 1922 in Azinhaga, a village in Portugal. The village has a charter that dates back to the thirteenth century, “but nothing remains of that glorious ancient history except the river that passes …
The Last Will and Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo: Germano Almeida
Translated from Portuguese by Sylvia GlaserPublished by New Directions; 2004, 152 pages. “The reading of the last will and testament of Sr. Napumoceno da Silva Araújo ate up a whole afternoon. When he reached the one-hundred-and-fiftieth page, the notary admitted he was already tired…[H]e complained that the deceased, thinking he was drafting his will, had …
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