November 2013 Translations Worth Checking Out: The "ORDNUNG!" Edition
Before getting into this month’s list of recommended translations—which is kind of long, mostly because I couldn’t decide on which titles to cut—I want to follow-up a bit on last month’s post about our trip to the Frankfurt Book Fair. Actually, to be more specific, I want to talk about Germans ...
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Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Longlist
So, even though we’re in danger right now of becoming a blog that only writes about book prizes (or maybe I’m only feeling that way because the Best Translated Book Award has been on my mind for so long), we would be remiss if we didn’t make mention of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize ...
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Charlotte Mandell on Translating The Kindly Ones
To complement all the review coverage that Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones has been receiving, Ron Hogan from Beatrice, has posted a piece by Charlotte Mandell about translating this controversial novel: People talk about ‘free translation’—and they usually mean something that I’d judge sloppy or ...
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More on The Kindly Ones
Kakutani takes her shot at Littell’s monster: No doubt the author intends such remarks to convey the horrors of the Holocaust, but “The Kindly Ones” instead reads like a pointless compilation of atrocities and anti-Semitic remarks, pointlessly combined with a gross collection of sexual fantasies. After this ...
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Feb/Mar Issue of Bookforum
The new issue of Bookforum is now out and available online. Like usual, there are a number of interesting pieces worth checking out, including Leland de la Durantaye’s review of Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones (pretty positive review), Ben Ehrenreich’s review of Ismail Kadare’s The Siege, (not so ...
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