Charlotte Mandell Interview
Our own Charlotte Mandell (she’s doing Zone for us) is interviewed on Maitresse: The translator Charlotte Mandell did the heavy lifting for two of the more exciting imports from France: this year’s The Kindly Ones, by Jonathan Littell, and next year’s Zone, by Mathias Enard. Mandell, who lives in ...
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Ready Steady Book's Books of the Year Symposium
Over at Ready Steady Book Mark Thwaite has posted the “Books of the Year 2008 symposium” featuring recommendations from a host of authors, translators, and reviewers, including Scott Esposito (who recommends Adolfo Bioy Casares and others), Charlotte Mandell (who is all about Flann O’Brien), her husband ...
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Best Translated Book 2008 Longlist: The Lemoine Affair by Marcel Proust
For the next several weeks we’ll be highlighting a book-a-day from the 25-title Best Translated Book of 2008 fiction longlist, leading up to the announcement of the 10 finalists. Click here for all previous write-ups. The Lemoine Affair by Marcel Proust, translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell. (France, ...
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Zone, Zone, Zone
Mathias Enard’s Zone, which we’ve mentioned a few times already, just keeps racking up attention. Thanks to Michael, for pointing out that Zone made Lire‘s 20 best books of 2008 list. According to my pidgin French, they say that it “possesses a scope that is rare in the French novel” and that ...
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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Mathias Enard's Zone
Yesterday afternoon, Publishers Weekly sent out an e-mail alert regarding Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s decision to “temporarily” (their quotes, not mine) pause acquisitions. Which doesn’t sound very good: Josef Blumenfeld, v-p of communications for HMH, confirmed that the publisher has ...
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The Next BIG Translation?
Back a couple years ago, Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes was all the rage. The son of Robert Littell, Jonathan has dual-citizenship here and in France, and, in an unusual move, wrote this 900-page novel of a former Nazi officer in French. In this article by John Litchfield, Littell explains his ...
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Stock Market and Art
Not the most common of connections, but that’s the angle that Bloomberg‘s Robert Hilferty takes in his review of Proust’s The Lemoine Affair: A hundred years ago French novelist Marcel Proust (1871-1922) lost money in the stock market, too. And as he would in the epic In Search of Lost Time, he ...
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