From time to time, this blog showcases books in translation to tempt readers to explore writing from countries that do not always make it to the bestseller lists. But we often overlook the work of the translator, who has not only to be fluent in two languages but has to be able to write. The …
Continue reading Recognizing the Talent of the Translator: The Subtle Art of Translating
Published by Amistad, 2003, 400 pages. A little-known fact about slavery in the United States is that a few black people owned slaves. In some cases, freed blacks bought their parents, spouses or children, but there were others who owned slaves for economic reasons.[1] This is the story that Edward P. Jones tells us in …
Translated from Arabic by William Maynard HutchinsPublished by Garnet Publishing, 2012, 94 pages. Original version published in 2008. Over the last year, Yemen has been in the news, its people suffering the ravages of war and famine. I realized that I knew very little about the country, especially what it had been like to live …
Published by Vintage, 2017, 415 pages. Tom Hanks is one of the best actors working today—he slips into the skin of a character, making him completely believable. I’m a big admirer of his acting, so when this book came out, I was curious: is he as good a writer as he is an actor? The …
Published by Henry Holt & Co / Picador, 2012, 240 pages. Memories are not linear; they have a chronology all their own. In Winter Journal, Paul Auster looks back at his life, meandering back and forth in time. He is the 63-year-old man climbing out of bed to look at the snow turning the trees …
Published by Chatto Poetry, 2017, 52 pages. I’ve discovered new poets as part of the reading challenge, and two of them have blown me away. One is Kendall Hippolyte from St. Lucia, and the second is Kayo Chingonyi from Zambia. In north-western Zambia, tribes have an initiation ritual for young boys called kumukunda. During the …
Published by Simon & Schuster / Penguin, 2013, 368 pages. Don Tillman, a geneticist at an Australian university, is not only intelligent and good-looking but a decent cook to boot. He decides that he needs a wife, which you would think shouldn’t be hard. But Don’s manner tends to put women off. He tends to …
Translated from Spanish by Anna KushnerPublished by Bitter Lemon Press / Farrar Strauss & Giroux, 2014, 592 pages. Original version published in 2009. “If the social dream and economic utopia supporting it had become corrupt to the core, what remained of the greatest experiment man had ever dreamed of?” It is easy to forget today …
Published by Picador, 2015, 60 pages.Review by Usha Raman I have several books of poetry on my shelf...and now, on my Kindle. I leaf (or swipe) through them in the spaces between fiction, when I am recovering from an intense or troubling story or when the weather puts me in the mood for contemplation rather …
Published by Minotaur Books / Thorndike Press, 2014, 400 pages. “There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There's power enough in Heaven to cure a sin-sick soul.” On the surface, this seems like a regular whodunit. But it is more than that—a story about losing and finding yourself, about art and …
