Season 17 of the Two Month Review Brings the Fire

It’s been a minute, but we’re coming back on May 4th with the all new, all fire season of the Two Month Review.

Before getting into the books for this season, we have a couple of announcements. First off, we now have a twitter account just for Two Month Review, so please please follow us.

Also, following the trend of podcasts everywhere, we’ve launched a Patreon with some really fun bonuses for supporters, including access to a Discord channel, a book from my personal library, merchandise, a chance to vote on future seasons, and an opportunity to come on an episode. The funds from this will go to get Brian and Katie microphones, help support them for doing this every week, and, if all goes well, we’ll be able to put on a special TMR event/party this fall. Thanks in advance for your support, and we promise it’ll be worth your while.

Now, on to the books!

Many of you will recognize the man  (or his hands?) in the photo to the left as Daniel Hahn, translator, writer, editor, critic, and literary citizen extraordinaire, who was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2020, won the International Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007 (for José Eduardo Agualusa’s The Book of Chameleons) and the International Dublin Literary Award in 2017 (again for an Agualusa book, A General Theory of Oblivion), and set up the Translators Association First Translation Prize. He was the national program director for the British Centre for Literary Translation, teaches workshops and seminars on a very regular basis, and is affiliated with every great translator-centric organization.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Seriously, Danny is one of a kind, a true ambassador for international literature, and one of the nicest and most talented translators out there. If you ever have a chance to meet him, or watch him on a panel, or attend one of his workshops—do it!

There are any number of books Danny’s translated that would be great for the podcast (like the bio of Arsène Wenger perhaps?! Go Gunners!), but this two-book package that just came out from Charco Press is IDEAL.

When Danny agreed to translate Never Did the Fire by Diamela Eltit, he also agreed to write a “translator’s diary”‘ on Charco’s site about the experience, giving readers the opportunity to get a glimpse behind the curtain as he worked his way through this quite experimental novel. That blog became Catching Fire, which came out at the same time as the Eltit, and is the perfect companion piece for this season.

So, instead of reading one difficult book, we’re going to try an experiment and read both Never Did the Fire and Catching Fire simultaneously. There isn’t a one-to-one correspondence between the novel and Danny’s diary, but I think that we’ll be able to bounce ideas off of the two texts in a very interesting way. Also, given that these books are relatively short, the per-week reading burden for this season is quite low . . . Which is good, because I’ve tried to read Eltit several times in the past and . . . her work was way beyond my comprehension at the time.

That said, Never Did the Fire sounds right up my alley:

A literary icon in Chile and a major figure in the anti-Pinochet resistance, Diamela Eltit gets renewed attention in the English language in a novel of breakdowns. Holed up together, old, ill, and untethered from the revolutionary action that defined them, a couple’s bonds dissolve in their loss of a child and their loss of belief in an idea. What is there left to have faith in when the structures we built, and the ones we succumbed to, no longer offer us any comfort or prospect of salvation?

There are four other Eltit books available in English translation: Sacred Cow, translated by Amanda Hopkinson (Serpent’s Tail, 1995), The Fourth World, translated by Dick Gerdes (University of Nebraska, 1995), E. Luminata, translated by Ronald Christ (Lumen Books, 1997), and Custody of the Eyes, translated by Helen Lane and Ronald Christ (Lumen Books, 2005). She’s received a number of big prizes over the course of her career, including, most recently, the Chilean National Prize for Literature (2018), Carlos Fuentes Prize (2020), and the FIL Award (2021).

I don’t know much more about her, although I’ve always thought of her as a true cult author—one who has had a large influence on the more avant-garde writers, such as Mónica Ramón Ríos and Carlos Labbe. Which is why I’m particularly excited to dig into this. Katie and Brian will explain Eltit to me, I’ll get to learn a lot about an author I feel like I should really love, and we get to talk to and about one of my favorite translation people.

So here’s the schedule! (Dates are for the live YouTube Broadcasts, the audio will be available approximately a day later.)

May 4:  Never Did the Fire 1-20; Catching Fire 1-24

May 11: NF 21-44; CF 25-52

May 18: Bonus Episode

May 25: NF 45-68; CF 53-78

June 1: NF 69-90; CF 79-105

June 8: NF 91-108; CF  106-130

June 15: NF 109-136; CF 131-154

June 22: NF 137-156; CF 155-186

Get your copies now, and get ready! And if you like what we’ve done in the past, please consider supporting us through our Patreon.