Tentatively entitled 100 Best Translations of the Century (So Far), the book will be a sort of guide to the most interesting books that have come out (in their original language) in the past fifteen years and are also available in English translations. We plan on including representatives from as many countries as possible, highlighting titles that appeal to us for one reason or another—this could be because of the book’s structure, it’s political import, or because it has a special connection to our lives.

As you can see in the article, we want this to be fun and personal; a book that’s smart but not elitist or drily academic. I personally want people to argue with our choices of what we decided to include. I also think that readers already immersed in the world of translated literature will discover new things in this—threads connecting works from disparate cultures, ideas from one book that are reflected in another, idiosyncratic juxtapositions that open up various titles.

In addition to these hundred entries, there will be longer framing essays about different topics in international literature: international poetry, crime fiction, women in translation, books from “smaller” languages, etc.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this article/sampler, which does unveil ten of the hundred books we will be including . . . .

First off, DraftKings. I spend way too much of my mental time hating all over this stupid company. I should just stop. Just ignore them. Mute every single commercial interruption. (Because no matter what you’re watching, there’s a 90% chance an ad for DraftKings will show up and crap all over your TV screen. There should be a law.) That said, I really appreciated Drew Magary’s column,

I signed up for DraftKings and was immediately bombarded with dozens of options for wasting my money. There is a baseball game, in case you simply can糖心传媒檛 wait until the weekend and have to lose your money RIGHT NOW THIS INSTANT. There were four million different football pools to join, the most expensive of which had a $5,300 entry fee. And there was a 糖心传媒渓imited time offer糖心传媒� wherein the site offered me extra credit if I put my deposit in before the clock ran down. PRESSURE糖心传媒橲 ON . . . [. . .]

As for the game itself, it糖心传媒檚 like any other casino game: fun right up until the moment you don糖心传媒檛 win. I drafted my two lineups, talked myself into those lineups winning me a million bucks, and eye-banged both lineups all Sunday long.[. . .] You can talk yourself into being a football wizard who knows just the right matchups to exploit for sleeper picks that week, but I can assure you that you are bullshitting yourself, and that DraftKings is counting on you to bullshit yourself.

Yup. As if Fantasy Baseball/Football isn’t already the worst. That game—which I am truly addicted to now, thanks almost entirely to Jacob Knapp of Curbside Splendor who got me into his fantasy baseball league for book people and then bounced me from the playoffs, THANK YOU FOR BEING EVIL—is a game of nightmares. Did I set my lineup correctly? Which order should I set for my waiver wire pickups? Is that guy going to break out, or is his hamstring made of string cheese? Why am I caring about the Jacksonville Jaguars training camp when no one in their right mind cares about the stupid Jacksonville any—ARRGH! It’s like some evil genius invented this to torment his family: “You think you’re so smart and understand numbers and sports, don’t you? Well here, here’s a game mixing exactly that and pitting you against all of your peers—figure it out, puzzle-boy!”

Since I sometimes feel the need to lather up some rage, I wasted four minutes of my life yesterday watching this:

These people are the worst. The way she says, “well, since he’s actually good at his hobby.” The way he poses with the belt and the check. Oh my god, it’s all so awful. My eyes are burning just from thinking about it. This is what DraftKings has created. This couple. Their houses. The “baby machine” that they’re about to start up if he wins another million dollars with his “hobby” and “skills”, which have also “earned” him the “respect” of his “Wifey’s” family.

OK, I’m done. All the DraftDemons have been purged. I will never write of this again. Next week I’ll have some fresh material about some other minor, totally ignorable thing that’s gotten stuck in my brain.

*

But before going onto this week’s books, I have to go back to last week’s post one more time.

As with this week, when I was putting that together, I was looking for some common theme to group the three books. Bola帽o became the thread between Sada’s One Out of Two and Neuman’s The Things We Don’t Do, but Piglia’s Target in the Night was a bit of an outlier. (Aside from being Spanish, which is why I chose it.)

WELL. I started reading that book, and right away found the connection between it and Sada’s book—twins!

Tony Dur谩n was an adventurer and a professional gambler who saw his opportunity to win the big casino when he met the Belladona sisters. It was a m茅nage 脿 trois that scandalized the town and stayed on everyone’s mind for months. He’d sow up with one of the two sisters at the restaurant of the Plaza Hotel, but no one could ever tell with which because the twins were so alike that even their handwriting was indistinguishable. Tony was almost never seen with both at the same time; that was something he kept private. What really shocked everyone was the thought of the twins sleeping together. Not so much that they would share the same man, but that they would share each other.

There. The triangle is complete.

by Naja Marie Aidt. Translated from the Danish by K. E. Semmel (Open Letter)

Naja is just starting her book tour, which will include stops in Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Dallas, and Houston. She’s already done events in Rochester (video coming soon!), at the Brooklyn Book Festival, as part of the Fall for the Book celebration, and, just yesterday, at in Park Slope with Valeria Luiselli. So, if you haven’t already read Naja’s book, this is a perfect time to

At her events here in Rochester, Naja always asked me to “pitch” the book, as she wasn’t sure how exactly to describe it. Since this is a book with a strong plot, I’d generally start there, explaining how it’s about Thomas, a stationery-store owner whose dad died in prison and who left behind a mysterious package that gives Thomas the hope that he can change his life forever, but which ends up bringing about one awful occurrence after another. This is a real page-turner, functioning in some ways like a mystery novel, but also very literary, written in precise, enchanting prose. It’s also very character-driven, with all of these people—each one a little bit awful, but very recognizable—fully-fleshed out, concrete and compelling.

Although the plot totally pulls you along, it’s these characters and the discomfort that they inflict on the reader that really drew me into the book. Thomas is kind of an asshole. You don’t exactly regret that shit falls apart for him—he sort of deserves it. But his girlfriend isn’t that much better, and his sister? Man. That’s that thing that Naja does better than anyone: She creates characters who are a bit too honest with each other about their internal thoughts and feelings. It’s as if she peels back all the layers of niceness that we inhabit in the real world and exposes the underlying desires and reactions we all have, and which aren’t always the most pleasant. In some ways, her writing reminds me of Nathalie Sarraute’s. (Speaking of, I’ll have to feature the sometime soon.)

by Valeria Luiselli. Translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney (Coffee House)

Although I’ve been championing Valeria’s work for a few years (see the original World Cup of Literature championship match), and despite the fact that she literally just did an event with Naja and was on a panel with Andr茅s Neuman a couple weeks ago, I have yet to meet her. Which is why I’m really excited about this year’s conference later this month. Valeria will be there, in conversation with no less. I’m going to fanboy out that entire day, I guarantee it.

Rather than try and explain The Story of My Teeth, I’m going to let Stephen Sparks (from and co-author of the Best Translations of the Century (So Far) book that we’re working on) take it away with he did with her for The White Review:

Valeria Luiselli糖心传媒檚 second novel, The Story of My Teeth, was commissioned by two curators for an exhibition at Galeria Jumex, a Mexico City art gallery funded by Grupo Jumex—a juice factory. Written in a series of weekly installments that were published as chapbooks to be shared with factory糖心传媒檚 employees, the project endeavoured to bridge the gap between the art world and that of blue-collar workers. Several employees gathered to talk informally about the exploits of Gustavo “Highway” S谩nchez S谩nchez, the larger-than-life auctioneer at the heart of The Story of My Teeth, The book club糖心传媒檚 conversations were recorded and subsequently emailed to Luiselli as MP3s, and those conversations informed her subsequent installments. As the author puts it in the afterword, “The formula, if there was one, would be something like Dickens + MP3 梅 Balzac + JPEG.” The following exchange, which typifies Luiselli糖心传媒檚 willingness to lay bare artifice and to expose “the many layers of its making,” captures the spirit of her work—and the charm of the writer herself.

SS: You populate The Story of My Teeth with characters who share names with several contemporary writers. For instance, Yuri Herrera becomes a female police officer, etc. This kind of playful adjustment of reality is one of the more interesting formal elements in a novel full of interesting formal elements, and I wonder just how you came to the decision to blur the boundaries of reality and fiction like this.

VL: I had one question in mind when I decided to, quite literally, drop names of real writers into the narrative tissue of The Story of My Teeth. I wanted to explore how names modify the context into which they are placed, as well as how context re-frames names. In many ways, this was a process akin to using ready-mades in art. I found and used names of people, whose value and meaning both altered and were altered by context. While I was writing the novel, I engaged with procedures common to contemporary art, and looking for narrative or literary analogies to those procedures. Using names the way I did was a kind of narrative transposition of ready-mades. I basically used a series of writers—including myself—as if they were ready-mades or found objects, and did what many have done before me: dislocate them from their traditional context and relocate them to another, or decontextualise them and repurpose them, in order to reflect upon their value—be it use value, exchange value or symbolic value. If a reader has no idea who Yuri Herrera is, to use your example, then nothing in the narrative tissue around that name is altered. Yuri Herrera is just a policewoman. If, on the contrary, the name bears a certain weight by virtue of the many associations it has for the reader, then both the name and the narrative around it suffer a kind of indent. The name weighs more heavily and the narrative around it takes a different shape, and also envelopes the name more tightly. But the mere fact that this effect depends completely on the reader糖心传媒檚 pre-conceptions of a name and its associations says a lot about the ultimate value, content or meaning of names. I see names as objects in this novel: objects that vary in value and meaning depending on a series of circumstances, both intrinsic and exterior to the book itself. The novel is a map, but it takes different readers to very different places, depending on what they bring to it.

Read the full interview

by Marianne Fritz. Translated from the German by Adrian Nathan West (Dorothy Project)

This may well be the most intriguing jacket copy I’ve read in a while. (Should’ve used this in our recent podcast.)

The Weight of Things is the first book, and the first translated book, and possibly the only translatable book by Austrian writer Marianne Fritz (1948糖心传媒�2007). For after winning acclaim with this novel糖心传媒攁warded the Robert Walser Prize in 1978糖心传媒攕he embarked on a 10,000-page literary project called 糖心传媒淭he Fortress,糖心传媒� creating over her lifetime elaborate, colorful diagrams and typescripts so complicated that her publisher had to print them straight from her original documents. A project as brilliant as it is ambitious and as bizarre as it is brilliant, it earned her cult status, comparisons to James Joyce no less than Henry Darger, and admirers including Elfriede Jelinek and W. G. Sebald.

My knee-jerk reaction when I see something referred to as “untranslatable” is to cry Nonsense! and bust out all sort of practical versus theoretical reasons why everything’s translatable, just maybe not in the way the speaker has in mind.

But then I Googled Marianne Fritz’s later works and found this:

Yep. That. Amazing.

I’m going to end with a mini-rant . . . Do you think that if Fritz were a man her “impossible to translate” project would still be considered untranslatable? Given the statistics about gender in translation that we’ll be releasing shortly (spoiler alert! the numbers aren’t very good, with women authors representing just over 26% of all works of fiction published in translation since 2008) I have a feeling that Martin Fritz would have all his works in English and be celebrated as a genius. Stealing from Kaija who stole it from somewhere else, it’s possible this is one of those “great book, Marianne, but let’s see if one of the men will write it” situations. Or maybe not. But when 75% of all books published in translation are by men—a significant percentage of which are garbage—it raises certain questions.

I’ve been on a private rant of late about how the mainstream media will only ever focus on one female literary author (in translation) at a time, something that would never happen to male authors. First it was Ferrante, then Lispector, now Luiselli. I doubt it’s a conscious thing, but I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere, in the back of their minds, editors look at what books they’re reviewing and thing, “well, we have one woman on here—good enough!”

Open Letter won’t be publishing all women anytime soon—our scheduling is impossible that way and we do have some amazing male authors signed on—but I applaud And Other Stories for committing to a Instead, what I can do is spend more of these posts promoting the books by women that do make their way into English. There’s some great stuff out there—in addition to Ferrante, Lispector, Luiselli, etc.—and we should make a concerted effort to highlight it here.

This week’s music is the Flaming Lips rendition of

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This week’s music is by Portugal. The Man. (According to Nate, the lyrics fit with our “disturbing” introduction. So that.)

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One of my favorite moments of BookExpo America was hanging out with Stephen Sparks, who is one of the coolest and smartest booksellers out there, and a great Best Translated Book Award judge.

So here, thanks to the are the two of them together.

Stephen Sparks: You just about stumbled into translating Chinese. Can you tell us a little bit about your history with the language and how coming to it accidentally has shaped your work, if at all?

Howard Goldblatt: Truth be told, I糖心传媒檝e stumbled into nearly every aspect of my relationship with China and the Chinese language. Had I been sent to sea directly from Naval OCS during the early phase of the Vietnam War, like my classmates, instead of Taiwan, none of the rest of my life would have turned out remotely as it did. Had I been accepted into any graduate program in Chinese other than the only one that grudgingly let me in the door, I糖心传媒檇 not have chosen a thesis topic that led to my discovery of a writer, Xiao Hong, practically no one had heard of at the time, who is now one of the giants of the period, and who put me on the map, as it were. And since none of her work was available in English, I ventured into the field of translation and haven糖心传媒檛 stopped since. My critical biography of her (in Chinese) and rendering of her masterwork, Tales of Hulan River, are still in print, 40 years later. Then, 糖心传媒渁ffirmative action糖心传媒� got me a job at that same university in a department that, untill that time, was comprised solely of native speakers of Chinese. Finally, Nieh Hualing, who, with her husband, poet Paul Engle, ran the Iowa Writers Workshop, stumbled upon my translation and recommended me to translate a novel for a large commercial press. I糖心传媒檝e had lots of help along the way and more than a little luck; my indebtedness to those factors manifests itself in my passion (some might call it obsession) for translating literary texts 糖心传媒� mainly fiction 糖心传媒� from Chinese. I simply cannot think of a single thing I糖心传媒檇 rather be doing professionally. [. . .]

SS: You糖心传媒檝e said, without arrogance, that anyone who reads Mo Yan in English is reading Howard Goldblatt. How do you define what a translator does? And how does your understanding of translation relate to your characterization of translators as being eternally apologetic?

HG: I still find it baffling that a reviewer of a translation can credit or fault the author of a book for good/bad writing. It糖心传媒檚 probably wrong to do that with the translator as well, though they are her words, since unless the reviewer knows the original language, he cannot be sure where the merit/fault lies. On behalf of literary translators everywhere, let me declare that we have nothing to apologize for, save screwing up a translation and, maybe, the occasional bad choice of what to translate. And yet, some outlets continue to omit translators糖心传媒� names in published reviews, leading a reader to assume that the work was written in English, and it has taken years to get publishers to prominently display the fact that what the reader has in her hands is a facsimile of the original work. Whenever I begin to question my role in the literary process, I pull out my copy of Robert Wechsler糖心传媒檚 book, Performing without a Stage, for encouragement. He reminds us not only of the perils we face (糖心传媒淭here is no such thing as a good translator.糖心传媒� I.B. Singer) but, importantly, the signal service we provide (糖心传媒淭ranslation is a more advanced stage of civilization.糖心传媒� Borges). One question I糖心传媒檓 often asked is for whom I translate 糖心传媒� the author or the reader. While the choice is more nuanced than that, my answer never varies. The author wrote for his readers, and that is for whom I translate.

There are some prizes given to translated fiction 糖心传媒� the American PEN Center award, the Best Translated Book Award, the Man Asian Prize (also available to works written in English), the Dublin IMPAC Prize, and more. But the only U.S. prize in which the translation is first checked for accuracy is the Translation of the Year Award from the American Literary Translators Association. That means that the other prizes are given for the book, not the translation, since the judges cannot know if in fact the translators have done their job well; I served as a judge for one of the PEN contests, in which a great many languages were included, while we judges were competent in three or four. I loved the book we chose, but to this day can state only that the translation read well. [. . .]

SS: How has translation changed for you as your understanding of Chinese culture and literary practices deepened?

HG: The obvious assumption would be that the process has become smoother, more comfortable, more internalized, while in fact my progression has had a somewhat unsteadying effect; maybe it糖心传媒檚 a case of 糖心传媒渢he more I know, the more I realize I don糖心传媒檛 know.糖心传媒� Or maybe my self-imposed standards have gotten more demanding. I don糖心传媒檛 seek perfection; I just try to ensure that my renderings are, in the end, better than anyone else糖心传媒檚 could be. And when I fail, I grieve (that糖心传媒檚 a bit dramatic, I know). In a recent review of a novel by Mo Yan, which the reviewer absolutely hated (she too is a novelist, a breed that as often as not seems to hate other people糖心传媒檚 novels), she loved the English title, which was not a literal translation of the Chinese, but a homonym of part of it, but then raked me over the coals for 1) exoticizing the text (she wanted me to use 糖心传媒淢um糖心传媒� and 糖心传媒淒ad糖心传媒� for 糖心传媒淒ieh糖心传媒� and 糖心传媒淣iang糖心传媒� 糖心传媒� to each her own, I say), and 2) for the descriptive 糖心传媒渟ick turtle.糖心传媒� Why, she asked, didn糖心传媒檛 I simply say 糖心传媒渟tupid prick糖心传媒�? And she was right; what was I thinking? A bad stumble, in my mind. I don糖心传媒檛 mind so much when I make a mistake; we all do that, authors included. What I hate is fouling a work by translating words and missing their impact or intent or tone. That would not have bothered me 20 years ago, at least not as much as it does now. In some respects, experience has been a boon, in that I糖心传媒檝e learned how to negotiate treacherous semantic waters with the confidence to simply bow to realities and move on when I encounter untranslatable items.

Read the whole interview and then be sure and buy a copy of

by Andr茅s Neuman, translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia and published by FSG

This piece is by bookseller and BTBA judge, Stephen Sparks.

Let me entice you by stating flat out that Andres Neuman糖心传媒檚 Alfaguara Prize-winning Traveler of the Century (trans. Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia) is a 600-page novel in which not much happens. In some ways, it stands, a hulking mass (Andres the Giant?), in the corner opposite Houellebecq糖心传媒檚 Map and the Territory. (Wrestling allusion thrown in for Chad糖心传媒檚 sake.)

There is a plot, yes糖心传媒攖he young traveler of the title stumbles into the neither here-nor-there city of Wandernburg (think of a magic mountain nestled among invisible cities), falls in love with a betrothed woman (you will too), demonstrates the affinities between translation and love (it糖心传媒檚 sexy), fends off the stuffy morality of small town life (no surprises here), all while a mysterious rapist is on the loose (actually, stated like this, a lot does seem to happen)糖心传媒攂ut this is above all a novel of ideas, of heady conversation, of intellect. Which, fortunately, does not make it any less riveting.

Most of the action, for lack of a better word, in Traveler of the Century takes place in a salon, among a set of conversationalists who range from the brash and revolutionary to the staid, the ill-informed, and the amusingly ill-equipped. Ideas are bandied about, poetry is recited, and sexual tension swells until it can no longer be contained. Neumann糖心传媒檚 ability to pace a novel in which conversation is the primary mover is admirable and although some of his efforts early in the novel are a little clumsy, he picks up steam and refinement as he proceeds. This is an interesting phenomenon to watch unfold: Neumann糖心传媒檚 work is by no means perfect. Instead, it糖心传媒檚 one of those novels in which the seams sometimes show, reminiscent of Bolano糖心传媒檚 Savage Detectives, in which the reader gets to watch a writer figure it out as he goes along. The rewards have to be more than sufficient for a book like this to work, and they are, they are.

Fittingly, some of most remarkable moments in Traveler of the Century concern translation. In one memorable scene, the professor, a staid conservative who rests on his laurels, argues against the possibility of translation. As the bore goes on and on, Hans, the traveler of the title, reflects that

everything he said was applicable to the field of emotions糖心传媒攊n short, someone who disbelieved in the possibilities of translation was skeptical of love. This man . . . was linguistically born to solitude.

And, a few moments later, Hans is forced to concede a point as the professor argues

that it is far easier to think in a foreign language than to feel in it . . . and from this one can deduce that any feeling expressed in another language cannot be the same feeling, not even a variant of it. At best it can be inspired by another feeling. Call this an exchange, an influence or what you will. But, I beg you, do not call it translation.

This fruitful dialectic is a prime example of Neumann糖心传媒檚 strategy for moving his novel along. It also brings to mind several questions about the nature of translation, which is of course relevant to anyone reading this blog.

I stated earlier that this is not a perfect book, but I nevertheless believe it deserves to win the BTBA because its merits far outweigh its imperfections: Traveler of the Century is, like the wandering city in which the traveler finds he cannot escape, a place to get lost in.

by Edouard Lev茅, translated from the French by Lorin Stein and published by Dalkey Archive Press

This piece is by bookseller and BTBA judge, Stephen Sparks.

Among the stellar books included in this year糖心传媒檚 BTBA longlist is a slim volume by Edouard Lev茅 called Autoportrait (Dalkey Archive Press). It糖心传媒檚 an uncategorizable book: not a memoir in any traditional sense, not a novel either. Like the best books, it resists the straightjacket of genre, existing outside the bounds of easy classification. I think it糖心传媒檚 the most unusual and daring piece of writing in the bunch.

Autoportrait is a collection of allusively connected declarative sentences, ranging from the mundane to the subtly profound, all reflecting the narrator糖心传媒檚 (let糖心传媒檚 call him Lev茅) physical and mental life. Lev茅糖心传媒檚 tone never rises above a flat monotone, which is unnerving and oddly comforting.

I can open a page at random to provide a sampling of the method of composition:

I am afraid of ending up a bum. I am afraid of having my computer and negatives stolen. I cannot tell what, in me, is innate. I do not have a head for business. I have stepped on a rake and had the handle hit me in the face. I have gone to four psychiatrists, one psychologist, one psychotherapist, and five psychoanalysts. I look for the simple things I no longer see. I do not go to confession. Legs slightly open excite me more than legs wide open. I have trouble forbidding. I am not mature. When I look at a strawberry, I think of a tongue, when I lick one, of a kiss. I can see how drops of water could be torture. A burn on my tongue has a taste. My memories, good or bad, are sad the way dead things are sad.

Page after page of this may strike one as tedious, or interesting only insofar as the reader finds Lev茅 interesting. There are no shocking revelations, no scandalous admissions, no salacious gossip. Instead, Lev茅 takes a more daring risk: he confronts the unexciting self head-on, scrutinizing himself so closely that the resultant text verges on irrelevancy to anyone but its author.

Yet he manages to avoid tedium糖心传媒攖he book inevitably lulls at times, but never bores糖心传媒攁nd somehow even heightens the stakes with a fine balance of facts and feelings. Despite its proliferation of I糖心传媒檚, Autoportrait paradoxically manages to be as much a book about us, each reader, as Lev茅. It sucks us into the whirlpool of another mind and spits us back out in our own, where we confront our own flat feet, our habitual failure to fill up ice cube trays, our discomfort in bathrooms next to kitchens. And while it may ultimately be egotistical to call a book that acts as a mirror one of the most memorable I糖心传媒檝e read this year, I think Autoportrait is a remarkable and unforgettable exploration of all that糖心传媒檚 singular and universal in the self.

SS: You糖心传媒檝e written elsewhere that Chejfec糖心传媒檚 prose 糖心传媒渂oth deflects and draws the reader in,糖心传媒� which I糖心传媒檝e found to be a very apt characterization of his work. That indeterminacy or wavering糖心传媒攁s if Chejfec is inviting the reader in while keeping his foot against the door糖心传媒攊s one of the more compelling (if occasionally frustrating) aspects of his writing. How, then, do you as a translator find your way into the text?

HC: Yes, and I think this is particularly true of The Planets. Sergio wrote a beautiful essay a few years ago called 糖心传媒淪imple Language, Name,糖心传媒� in which he talks about his development as a writer and the way his father糖心传媒檚 difficulty learning Spanish late in life affected his own use of the language, driving him toward a certain stylistic opacity that he was only able to move away from over time. Then there糖心传媒檚 the fact that so much of what糖心传媒檚 going on in The Planets has to do with navigating the space between oneself and another, particularly when that other person exists in an entirely internalized form, that is, only as a memory. This is explored in the prose itself, which often gives the language an air of being borrowed, somehow unnatural. That said, The Planets is a beautiful book, as thorny as it can occasionally be, and an important one in that it approaches the themes of friendship, loss, and memory in an innovative, even startling way.

So, it was never really a question of whether I would try to make my way in . . . the how of it, I suppose, was through certain passages I found particularly moving, and which offered insight into the more abstract sections. For example, during one of the disjointed conversations M and the narrator have as boys, the narrator repeats something M has said as though it were his own thought, though he doesn糖心传媒檛 even fully believe it. It糖心传媒檚 such a simple moment, but that detail seemed so true and really crystallized the dynamic between the two boys for me; it also anticipates what comes later, as the narrator struggles to preserve M糖心传媒檚 memory by keeping his voice alive, in some very surprising ways. There are many moments like this糖心传媒攖he image of the narrator running around an entire city block so that he can have a second chance to acknowledge M糖心传媒檚 mother when their paths unexpectedly cross; the guilt he feels at not having fully invoked M糖心传媒檚 memory in conversation with a mutual friend. Those anchored the story for me, and lent depth and immediacy to the more abstract passages. [. . .]

SS: What is your translation process like? Do you have a particular passage that proved tricky, etc. that you糖心传媒檇 like to discuss? I糖心传媒檓 interested in some of the nitty-gritty of the act of translation here. How many dictionaries do you consult? How many drafts do you go through?

HC: It糖心传媒檚 a little different with each project. I usually start with a period of pre-reading糖心传媒攇oing through the text to be translated once or twice, as well as other works by the writer, interviews when possible, sometimes criticism. Whatever might help me find my way into the narrative voice. Then there糖心传媒檚 the actual translation part. I use the RAE (dictionary of the Real Academia Espa帽ola) and the OED, and often ask search engines or kindly friends about how a word is used colloquially. This has been key with Sergio糖心传媒檚 work, since he tends to slip in phrases that are just a shade off from typical constructions. I end up with a chaotic draft full of notes, and then revise. And revise, and revise. There糖心传媒檚 generally a lot of snacking involved at this stage.

I can糖心传媒檛 recall any one passage that proved particularly tricky (they all were, each in its own way), but I had to pay very close attention throughout to the tension between the narrator糖心传媒檚 philosophical reflections and his reminiscences about his lost friend. It felt to me that there was something underneath that first kind of rumination; while obviously thematically relevant, they also felt like a means of withdrawing from the experience of remembering M and feeling that memory fade. The challenge was to get this across, balancing the concrete and the abstract within a single narrative voice in a way that suggested a deeper connection between the two, without letting them bleed together or pull the narrative apart at the seams (any more or less than they do in the Spanish, that is). It was a similar process with the other voices at work in the novel糖心传媒攊n addition to the first-person narrative, M and his father intervene to tell a series of elliptical, grotesque stories about nomads and eyeballs and a wedding gone awry, and then there糖心传媒檚 the meta-commentary that appears in italics, contesting the first-person narrative at times, corroborating it at others糖心传媒攖hough these were more clearly delineated.

Finally, there’s also an

Bethany W. Pope: Which is more important to you, the literal word-for-word translation of the text or reconstructing the atmosphere of the piece?

George Szirtes: There is no such thing as a literal word-for-word translation, at least not one that will sound anything like literature. There is however a difference between that impossibility and the other, the full rendering of meaning in terms of atmosphere or anything else. In translating you are entering a world with rules and manners that have meanings (plural) for the native reader. You are trying to understand some aspect of those meanings and to transplant it into the receiving language using any means possible, which will include a degree of lexicographical fidelity as long as it works.

B.W.P: In your translation of Gyula Kr煤dy糖心传媒檚 The Adventures of Sindbad I noticed that the atmosphere of the piece糖心传媒攖hat slightly humorous melancholy糖心传媒攈ad a lot in common with the tone and atmosphere of your own work, most recently found in your tweets about the ageless crustacean doctor and his lobsteresque paramour. How much influence does translation have on your own work?

G.S: Sindbad was a pleasure to translate because I felt I understood Krudy糖心传媒檚 world as soon as I entered it. There may be a difference between the person who is primarily a translator and the one who is primarily a writer who translates. The two may overlap, and there are translators who become writers in the act of translating. For me it was a writerly recognition. Krudy糖心传媒檚 Hungary was not my Hungary, not by a long chalk, but it was a real world, particularly in the minds of close friends. The humorous melancholy in Krudy is, as I discovered, an aspect of my own imagination, one that working on Sindbad brought to light. It is possible to hope that any engagement in translation will bring out some latent possibility in the writer-translator.

The Adventures of Sindbad was the second work of fiction I translated (the first was Anna 脡des by Kosztolanyi) but by that time I had translated a good many poems and the verse-tragedy. Sindbad came along at the right time. I think my imagination was ready for it, ready, that is, to render it into English but also to feel it as a voice that might be adapted to my own. Most of my translations have been a kind of enrichment of voice. I have learned a great deal from them.

I should add that the longer poems I wrote as a result of my first 1984 visit, that constituted the backbone of the resulting book, The Photographer in Winter (1986) are not at all Sindbad like. They are darker, heavier, more cavernous things.

Remember, you can read the whole issue of Quarterly Conversation by

Fortunately, for all of its easily identifiable Bernhardian preoccupations—its suicides and murderers, its haunted characters—the previously untranslated story collection Prose provides, in miniature, both an ideal introduction and a refresher to the work of one of the singular European writers of the twentieth century.

A typical Bernhard story (both in Prose and in his novels) takes the form of a report or confession of narrator who witnesses the dissolution of another character糖心传媒檚 mind—as Ben Marcus argues, Bernhard is less a narrative storyteller than an 糖心传媒渁rchitect of consciousness.糖心传媒� The narrator serves as a filter through which the victim¹ pours his defense, which, at this remove takes on a deeply ironic aspect. By keeping the subject at arm糖心传媒檚 length, Bernhard can create an at times unbearable tension: does the distance save the reader from identifying fully with the victim¹ or does it cause us to suffer more due to the fact that Bernhard糖心传媒檚 narrators are themselves sufferers by proxy, thus magnifying the amount of anguish a book can contain?

The sixth of seven stories in this collection, the excruciatingly ironic 糖心传媒淭he Crime of an Innsbruck Shopkeeper糖心传媒檚 Son,糖心传媒� offers a prime example of this technique. The titular character, the narrator糖心传媒檚 fellow student and roommate, is driven to desperation by being different, a dividing line drawn between him and his family:

Georg was an exception. He was the center of attention, but thanks to his worthlessness, thanks to the scandal which he represented for the whole family, always frightened and embittered by him, not least where they tried to cover it up, a horribly crooked and crippled center of attention, which they wanted out of the house at all costs. He was so greatly and in the most dreadful way deformed by nature they always had to hide him. After they had been disappointed down to the depths of their faecal and victual detestableness by the doctors糖心传媒� skills and by medical science altogether, they implored in mutual perfidiousness a fatal illness for Georg, which would remove him from the world as swiftly as possible; they had been prepared to do anything, if he would just die . . .

The 糖心传媒渟candal糖心传媒� Georg causes, we find, is due more to his intelligence than a mysterious deformity: being born into a merchant family, this 糖心传媒渦seless, ever deeper and deeper thinking beast糖心传媒� who 糖心传媒渆ven wrote poems,糖心传媒� deviated too much from the rigid stupidity of the shopkeeping class. As in a fairy tale, Georg糖心传媒檚 murderous family conspires to rid themselves of this nuisance. Despite his perceived monstrosity, Georg proves himself strong enough to overcome his family糖心传媒檚 evil designs and flees to Vienna.

In a fairy tale, such an escape signals a happy resolution. In Bernhard糖心传媒檚 stories it signals the point at which any similarity to a fairy tale falls apart. There糖心传媒檚 no redemption in this universe. Escape is only exchange, in this case one prison, the family cellar at Innsbruck, for another: Vienna, 糖心传媒渢he most dreadful of all old cities of Europe . . . such an old and lifeless city . . . such a cemetery.糖心传媒� And, since Georg once again finds himself claustrophobically entombed, he commits his final, and in the eyes糖心传媒� of his family, unpardonable crime.

糖心传媒淭he Crime of an Innsbruck Shopkeeper糖心传媒檚 Son糖心传媒� and five other of the stories in Prose fall into the basic pattern above: a highly subjective secondhand report on the crime of a hypersensitive character. The irony being, of course, that the perpetrators of the so-called crimes are in fact victims of grave and at times obscure injustices themselves—and justice糖心传媒檚 blindness serves only as a convenient excuse for its idiocy. This is typical Bernhard, surprising only in its relentlessness.

In the two remaining stories—糖心传媒淭he Cap糖心传媒� and 糖心传媒淛uaregg糖心传媒�—Bernhard deviates from his typical distance (if not pattern) by presenting confessions without an intermediary. In 糖心传媒淭he Cap,糖心传媒� the narrator, suffering from a 糖心传媒淿pathological nature_,糖心传媒� is so incapable of action that even the decision to go for a walk proves to be an unrelenting torment. Even more unbearable than action, however, is twilight, at which time he flees the house in terror to walk in either of two directions: toward an ugly town or toward a beautiful town. Imagine then his overwhelming consternation when he finds a cap on the road leading toward the ugly town and assumes the proper course would be to attempt to return it to its owner. But to whom does the cap belong? Is it a woodcutter糖心传媒檚 or a butcher糖心传媒檚 or even a farmer糖心传媒檚 cap? And what if he puts it on? But he has no right to put it on, for he is not a farmer, a butcher, or a woodcutter. And what color is the cap?

These questions cascade over him, inordinately agitating his already fragile mental state. He wants nothing more than a life without complications, but such an eventless existence is impossible for someone in his state. Like many of Bernhard糖心传媒檚 characters, the narrator in 糖心传媒淭he Cap糖心传媒� suffers so much precisely because he is not mad. He believes that by going mad he would manage to escape his anguish:

But the truth is that I want to go mad, I want to go mad, nothing I want more, than really go mad, but I fear that I am far from being able to go mad. I at last want to go mad! I don糖心传媒檛 want to be only afraid of going mad, I at last want to go mad. Two doctors, one of whom is a highly scientific doctor, have prophesied that I shall go mad, very soon I would go mad, the two doctors prophesied, very soon, very soon; now I糖心传媒檝e been waiting two years for it to happen, to go mad, but I still haven糖心传媒檛 gone mad.

This breathless, hysterical desire is merely another form of madness and bars the way to any escape. This is the fate of Bernhard糖心传媒檚 characters: a crazed desire for insanity or suicide, both options being viewed as an end to suffering. To go on living is possible, of course, but always with the awareness that 糖心传媒淲e are at liberty to kill ourselves.糖心传媒�

A friend and I, both booksellers, were recently discussing a curious compulsion we feel when recommending 糖心传媒渄epressing糖心传媒� books: we find that we search, almost unconsciously, to find something palatable on which to focus our enthusiasm. This is natural enough in sales, I suppose, but nonetheless troubling. In the case of Bernhard, for instance, I find myself explaining that while his work is, well, almost unbearably grim, there糖心传媒檚 comedy and pathos in it as well. This is true—Bernhard is a savagely hysterical writer—but highlighting it obscures a fundamental characteristic of his, and many of our best writers糖心传媒�, work: the acknowledgement that life is itself not particularly palatable. This isn糖心传媒檛 to say life, and by extension superior works of art, aren’t graced by moments of remarkable beauty, but by focusing only on the 糖心传媒渘ice糖心传媒� we risk shutting ourselves off from the fullness of experience.

Bernhard offers us such a discomforting vision. In the story 糖心传媒淚s it a Comedy? Is it a Tragedy?糖心传媒� his narrator offers an opinion that 糖心传媒渙ne describes best what one hates.糖心传媒� Our literature is much richer for this assumption.

¹ Everyone in Bernhard糖心传媒檚 fiction is a victim, whether of a bad childhood, failed ambitions, or simply of having been born: 糖心传媒淭he catastrophe,糖心传媒� Prince Sarau reports in Gargoyles, 糖心传媒渂egins with getting out of bed.糖心传媒�