Jim Kates on Translation on "Here & Now"

Yesterday, Jim Kates (former American Literary Translators Association president, and director of Zephyr Press) was on the NPR show “Here & Now” to talk about Bringing the World’s Literature to an American Audience.

Super-awesome that he namechecks us, but what’s really interesting is his list of recommendations:

Short stories

Snow Plain by Duo Duo, translated by John Crespi (Chinese) (Excerpt here available)

Moscow Noir, (stories) edited by Natalia Smirnova and Julia Goumen (Russian)

The Rest is Jungle: Short Stories from Uruguay, by Mario Benedetti, translated by Harry Morales (Spanish)

Poetry

The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry, a bilingual anthology of poetry, edited by Mark Weiss (Spanish) (Excerpt chinatown available)

Desolation of the Chimera, by Luis Cerneda, translated by Stephen Kessler (Spanish)

Forest of Eyes: Selected Poems of Tada Chimako, translated by Jeffrey Angles (Japanese)

69, by MLB [Milosz Biedrzycki] translated by Frank L. Vigoda (Polish)

Flash Cards, by Yu Jian, translated by Wang Ping and Ron Padgett (Chinese)

Novels

All This Belongs to Me, by Petra Hulova, translated by Alex Zucker (Czech) (Excerpt this available)

To the End of the Land, by David Grossman, translated by Jessica Cohen (Hebrew)

Visitation, by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated by Susan Bernofsky (German)

In the United States of Africa, Abdourahman A. Waberi, translated by David and Nicole Ball (French) (This is the second reference to Waberi on Three Percent in as many days . . .)

Agaat, by Marlene van Niekerk, translated by Michiel Heyns (Afrikaans)

And remember, you can listen to the complete conversation here.