From the Comments Section

I doubt many people revisit our posts to read the comments—although I check them religiously, so please keep posting!—so I thought it would be worthwhile to highlight some of the really interesting and informative ones that have been submitted over the past week.

First off, in relation to the post on Richard Lea’s interview with Amelie Nothomb, Michael Reynolds of Europa Editions pointed out that they will be publishing Nothomb’s latest book — Ni d‘Ève Ni d’Adam — in January 2009.

Agl1 added some Polish titles to our translation database, and passed along some information about Pawel Huelle’s new book—entitled The Last Supper—which is coming out this fall from Serpent’s Tail.

Finally, discussion of Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translations tend to get people riled up, and our post about Pevear’s letter to the LRB led “nnyhav” to link to a long piece at The Valve on the P&V translation of The Master and Margarita. (I found this criticism of a chapter title particularly funny: “‘The Great Ball at Satan’s’ is awful; it sounds like a ball at a dive like Joe’s or Sam’s . . .”

I also think that Vincent Francone’s comment about viewing the P&V author photo as a step towards a greater appreciation of translators is pretty interesting. I’m a big proponent of publicizing translators, involving them in the marketing of books, and getting more general attention for their work. (All Open Letter books will include a bio of the author and the translator. No translators photos though. At least not yet . . .) I still find it curious that Knopf are promoting P&V in this way, especially when it’s nearly impossible to find even the name of the translator on most of their other books.