(We also talk a bit about my son’s obsession with all 19 seasons of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. In fact, if you listen till the end, you can hear Aidan talk about it himself . . .)

Of course, we managed to forget a few obvious literary journals, but here’s a short list of ones we talked about, and a couple we didn’t:

• Monkey Business

Feel free to send some hate mail about all the journals we skipped over . . .

Also, we’re planning on doing an episode on “Books You Should’ve Read in College,” so if you have any suggestions—or any other comments—email me at chad.post [at] rochester.edu.

This week’s song is by Soft Landing.

As always you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes by clicking . To subscribe with other podcast downloading software, such as Google’s , copy the following link.

Click here for all past and future posts.

Agaat by Marlene Van Niekerk, translated by Michiel Heyns

Language: Afrikaans
Country: South Africa
Publisher: Tin House
Pages: 579

Why This Book Should Win: It explores a complex web of human relationships at a familial and national level without ever leaving a single room; and because, as Liesl Schillinger says in her review of the novel published in the NYT Book Review, 糖心传媒淏ooks like Agaat . . . are the reason people read novels, and the reason authors write them.糖心传媒�

Today糖心传媒檚 entry is from Gwen Dawson, who runs the always excellent blog. And who will be joining the BTBA judging panel for 2012.

At the beginning of this epic novel, seventy-year-old Milla de Wet is confined to her bed. Once the strong and competent owner of a successful farm inherited from her mother, Milla suffers from A.L.S. and now is left with only the ability to blink her eyes and, after a while, not even that. Milla is entirely dependent on the ministrations of Agaat, her devoted house servant, who wordlessly promises Milla 糖心传媒渢he best-managed death in history.糖心传媒� It is 1996 in South Africa, just two years after the demise of apartheid.

From this confined vantage point, Milla narrates her adult life story, beginning with her troubled marriage to the dashing, if agriculturally-challenged, Jak de Wet in 1947. Soon after she and Jak settle on her farm, Milla decides to take in and raise the abused young daughter of a farm laborer, renaming the girl Agaat. Long unable to have a child of her own, Milla eventually gives birth to a son named Jakkie, marginalizing Agaat糖心传媒檚 position in the family. Over time, Milla and Agaat develop a complex co-dependency, as do Jakkie and Agaat, while Jak becomes jealous of Agaat糖心传媒檚 hold over both his wife and his son. Agaat forms the center of a decades-long, multi-dimensional game of tug-o-war: 糖心传媒渁 pivot she was, a kingpin, you糖心传媒檇 felt for a while now how the parts gyrated around her, faster and faster, even though she was the least.糖心传媒�

Agaat is about many things, including marriage, parenting, friendship, sickness, and death. Politically-minded readers will find plenty of support for interpreting the novel as an allegory for apartheid, while those with more domestic interests will appreciate the details on embroidery, ecologically-sensitive farming practices, and home-based nursing procedures. Perhaps _Agaat_糖心传媒檚 most important lesson concerns the importance of communication to achieving lasting change. The best education and carefully constructed systems cannot bridge the gap between master and servant, between white and black. Rather, true understanding is possible only after years of empathetic communication. As Milla nears death, she and Agaat have finally approached this kind of understanding:

[The doctor糖心传媒檚] face looms above mine. He looks at my eyes as if they were the eyes of an octopus, as if he糖心传媒檚 not quite sure where an octopus糖心传媒檚 eyes are located, as if he doesn糖心传媒檛 know what an octopus sees. He shines a little light into my face, he swings it from side to side. I look at him hard, but seeing, he cannot see.

Agaat catches my eye. Wait, let me see, she says.

[The doctor] stands aside. He shakes his head.

Agaat糖心传媒檚 face is above me, her cap shines white, she looks into my eyes. I blink them for her so that she can see what I think. The effrontery! They think that if you don糖心传媒檛 stride around on your two legs and make small talk about the weather, then you糖心传媒檙e a muscle mass with reflexes and they come and flash lights in your face. Tell the man he must clear out.

A small flicker ripples across Agtaat糖心传媒檚 face. Ho now hopalong! it means. Her apron creaks as she straightens up. Her translation is impeccable.

She says thank you doctor. She says doctor is welcome to leave now, she糖心传媒檚 feeling better. She says thank you for the help, thank you for the oxygen, we can carry on here by ourselves again now.

I close my eyes. He must think she糖心传媒檚 crazy.

Again the fingers snapping in front of my face.

She糖心传媒檚 conscious, really, doctor, you can leave her alone now, she糖心传媒檚 just tired, when she shuts her eyes like that then I know. Everything糖心传媒檚 in order, she says, she just wants to sleep now. I know, I know her ways.

Milla糖心传媒檚 disease has the potential to reduce this nearly 600-page novel into an exercise in claustrophobia, but, instead, Van Niekerk has created a work of stunning breadth and emotional potency. Milla糖心传媒檚 second-person narration is liberally broken up by her diary entries, which Agaat has decided to read to Milla during her last days, and by italicized paragraphs of Milla糖心传媒檚 stream-of-consciousness musings. Van Niekerk is a poet as well as a novelist, and her considerable poetic abilities are on display throughout the novel. Likewise, Michiel Heyns糖心传媒檚 masterful work yields an English translation with all the elegant power of the original language. These various elements come together in Agaat to create an unforgettable reading experience that transcends the lives of its four primary characters to implicate the broader world.

Every year since the 1992 publication of her award-winning first novel, Hygi茅ne de l糖心传媒檃ssassin (forthcoming in English, as Hygiene and the Assassin, from Europa Editions in Fall 2010), Am茅lie Nothomb has published one novel a year, brought out in high style each September during la rentr茅e, when the most sought-after books appear on the French market. Her publishing house, Albin Michel, opens its season with her book launch. Her novels have been translated into over thirty languages, including eleven in English, and her awards include the Grand Prix du roman de l糖心传媒橝cad茅mie fran莽aise, the Prix Ren茅-Fallet, the Prix Alain-Fournier (twice), the Grand Prix Jean-Giono, and many others.

She糖心传媒檚 a phenomenon in France. In the tradition of Dead heads, groupies called 糖心传媒渓es P茅plautes糖心传媒� (their name derives from her 1996 novel, P茅plum) devote a good portion of their lives to following Nothomb from reading to reading, attending her lectures, and keeping up with the latest details of her peregrinations. But Am茅lie Nothomb is not French. The daughter of Belgian diplomats, she was born in Kobe, Japan, and spent a large portion of her childhood abroad in China, Laos, Bangladesh, Burma, and back in Japan. Many of these experiences are an integral part of her novels.

And since Tokyo Fiancee is a 2010 Best Translated Book nominee, it only seems fitting to quote this part of the interview:

Heather Hartley: In Tokyo Fianc茅e, you write, 糖心传媒渢he worst accidents in life are linguistic.糖心传媒� You play on the double meaning of the word “尘补卯迟谤别蝉蝉别” [which in French can mean either 糖心传媒渢eacher糖心传媒� or 糖心传媒渕istress糖心传媒漖, the Japanese notion 糖心传媒渢o play糖心传媒� [very different than the French literal meaning of “jouer,” to play], and the difficult, absolutely inescapable concept in French of 糖心传媒測ou糖心传媒�: the informal tutoiement or formal vouvoiement. What is born in the parenthesis between a misunderstanding and the right word?

Amelie Nothomb: Nothing is more difficult than finding le mot juste. And in fact contemplation and reflection are not enough.

[In Tokyo Fianc茅e,] what happens between the first major misunderstanding糖心传媒攖he marriage proposal [regarding the two protagonists] that ends up in a huge misinterpretation糖心传媒攁nd the end of the book [where the two meet up in very different circumstances], is time. It took seven years between these two events.

Nothing replaces the work of time. The biggest discovery in life糖心传媒攁nd I糖心传媒檓 speaking of life in the sense how we live it every day, where each one of us might live, let糖心传媒檚 say, maybe eighty years糖心传媒攖he biggest discovery in life is time.

Time can appear at first to be the principal enemy. When you糖心传媒檙e young, you understand that time is going to go by, pass in front of you, through you. That it will destroy you, destroy your childhood, the things important to you. And it糖心传媒檚 true that time destroys a tremendous amount of things. And to survive this is very difficult.

I remember when I was fourteen I declared that time was the worst enemy of all. And that . . . well . . . and that now, looking down from the heights of my great age, I don糖心传媒檛 think it糖心传媒檚 as easy as that. Yes, time is an enemy, but it is not just the enemy, time is the main, essential discovery we can make in our life, beginning with the moment where you discover this other dimension of it.

You know who your friends are after twenty years. It takes twenty years of friendship with someone to know the worth of friendship. And this, nothing can replace. Not even the most beautiful words or the most important promises糖心传媒攁ll of that is worth nothing. It is only time that can say if it糖心传媒檚 a true friendship.

So what enables you to find le mot juste is time.

HH: Mark Twain said, 糖心传媒渉umor is tragedy plus time.糖心传媒�

AN: Brilliant! That糖心传媒檚 exactly it.

[Via via ]

I highly recommend checking this out, and you can subscribe by

In addition to Chtenia, Russian Life magazine (which is responsible for the publication of Chtenia) is also getting into book publishing by releasing This anthology collects 19 pieces by contemporary Russian writers—and most of these stories have never appeared in English.

(Full list of authors: Vladimir Voynovich, Andrey Gelasimov, Boris Grebenshchikov, Yevgeny Grishkovets, Victor Yerofeyev, Alexander Kabakov, Eduard Limonov, Dmitry Lipskerov, Sergey Lukyanenko, Vladimir Makanin, Marina Moskvina, Victor Pelevin, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Zakhar Prilepin, Dina Rubina, Dunya Smirnova, Vladimir Sorokin, Alexander Khurgin and Leonid Yuzefovich.)

(And because they deserve as much credit as possible, here’s the full list of translators: Alexei Bayer, Michele Berdy, Liv Bliss, Lise Brody, Nora Favorov, Anne O. Fisher, Deborah Hoffman, Marcia Karp, Michael Katz, Peter Morley, Susanna Nazarova, Anna Razumnaya-Seluyanova, Paul E. Richardson, Marian Schwartz, Bela Shayevich and Nina Shevchuk.)

As if that weren’t cool enough, 100% of the profits from the sale of this book will go to benefit Russian hospice. To this end, all royalties were waived and all translation fees were waived.

(And check out at the Center for the Art of Translation blog for a bit more info.)

*

On a related note, in September, Tin House (which has been kicking ass in the international literature department of late, not just with interesting translations, but a lot of good books from South Africa) will release Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia, edited by Mikhail Iossel and Jeff Parker, who also edited a pretty interesting collection we put out at Dalkey some years back.

I’m really curious to check this out, and Margarita Shalina is already planning on reviewing this for the site. But in the meantime, Tin House recently posted the full text of by Vladimir Kozlov.

Unfortunately, there’s no table of contents (that I could find anyway—let me know if I’m just blind/impaired), so I’m not sure which other contemporary writers are in this collection . . .

Regardless, lot of great Russian stuff coming out this fall . . .

I have just sent off the first draft of a translation of a 130,000-word novel, Etienne van Heerden糖心传媒檚 30 Nagte in Amsterdam (30 Nights in Amsterdam). By chance, on the same day, I receive a Call for Papers from the University of Swansea in the UK for a conference on 糖心传媒淭he Author-Translator in the European Literary Tradition.糖心传媒� The call for papers kicks off with the following paragraph:

The recent 糖心传媒榗reative turn糖心传媒� in translation studies has challenged notions of translation as a derivative and uncreative activity which is inferior to 糖心传媒榦riginal糖心传媒� writing. Commentators have drawn attention to the creative processes involved in the translation of texts, and suggested a rethinking of translation as a form of creative writing. Hence there is growing critical and theoretical interest in translations undertaken by literary authors.

The topic interests me, because I have published four novels and three literary translations (not counting this latest, as yet unpublished one), and I have from time to time asked myself, in an informal sort of way, about 糖心传媒渢he creative processes involved in the translation of texts糖心传媒�: is it in fact 糖心传媒渁 form of creative writing糖心传媒�? And if so, how does it differ from the more traditional kind?

Writing this, it occurs to me that the word 糖心传媒渞ecreate糖心传媒� encapsulates the problem: for if it means simply rendering the work in another language, then it糖心传媒檚 more a question of transliteration or transposition than creation; but if it means 糖心传媒渞e-create糖心传媒� as in creating anew, then one is stressing the creative contribution of the translator: the translation, then, carries the stamp of the translator as unmistakably as the original carries the stamp of the author.

But of course translation is also, inescapably, a second-order activity, derived very directly from the creation of the author. If the translation is a creative act, it is yet unlike the writing of a novel in that it does not require that most difficult of creative feats, which is to create from nothing. A novelist creates and peoples a world; a translator reports back on that world to people who wouldn糖心传媒檛 otherwise have access to that world.

I like his take on this (although the bit about author’s craving a “faithful rendering” when their books are translated feels a bit reductive), and his novel, looks really interesting as well.