Considering how many translations are coming out from university presses these days, and how infrequently these titles receive any attention, I feel like it’s really important to highlight these six books and presses. (I was going to include Michigan State here as well—they’re doing great stuff—but since I had The Knight and His Shadow on a different list I thought I’d focus on some other notable university presses.) To be completely honest, I don’t think I read a single review of any of these titles, which might be due to the media’s dismissal of books from university presses as “too academic,” or possibly because the presses aren’t doing as much outreach to trade outlets as they could. Regardless, it’s a shame these books weren’t more talked about. Hopefully this post can at least connect these books with a handful of new readers . . .

by Li Ang, translated from the Chinese by Sylvia Li-Chun Lin with Howard Goldblatt (Columbia University Press)

Columbia is one of the best sources for interesting works from East Asia, such as Atlas by Kai-Cheung Dung or Horses, Horses, In the End the Light Remains Pure by Hideo Furukawa (one of the 2016 books I’m really looking forward to). In fact, since 2008, they’ve brought out twenty-four works of fiction and poetry from China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Japan, and India. That’s a much better record for diversity than any commercial press . . .

Li Ang has received the Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres award from the French government, and is considered one of the “most sophisticated contemporary Chinese-language writers.” She has a few other titles available in English, but this is the first one to come out since 1995.

The novel features two storylines: one focusing on Zhu Zuyan, who was imprisoned in the early part of the twentieth-century during Chiang Kai-shek’s rule, the other taking place in contemporary Taiwan and featuring a real estate tycoon.

by Hisham Bustani, translated from the Arabic by Thoraya El-Rayyes (Syracuse University Press)

Just as Columbia has a focus on East Asian writers, Syracuse has one on Arabic literature. According to the Translation Database, they’ve brought out fifteen works of Arabic fiction and poetry since 2008, most of those in the last few years.

This book is interesting in part because it’s so of the moment and breaks out of the assumptions of what Arabic literature is like:

This award-winning collection of seventy-eight pieces of flash fiction presents an intense and powerful vision of today’s world seen through the eyes of an alienated and sardonic author. The Perception of Meaning reads like an alternative history to our world—a collage of small nightmares brought to life by a canon of unlikely historical figures, including Mark Zuckerberg, the lead singer of Megadeth, Stanley Kubrick, the Korean activist Lee Kyoung Hae, and the Mayan poet Humberto Akabal, among others. A dazzling exemplar of contemporary experimental Arabic literature, The Perception of Meaning deftly captures a historical moment in which Arab societies are increasingly questioning the status quo and rebelling against it.

“Simone”: by Eduardo Lalo, translated from the Spanish by David Frye (University of Chicago)

There are a bunch of reasons why I’m including this book here. For one, the cover looks like a trade press cover (reminds me of a Quercus books). I also like the bold, almost over-confident phrasing at the beginning of the jacket copy: “Eduardo Lalo is one of the most vital and unique voices of Latin American literature, but his work is relatively little known in the English-speaking world. That changes now.” And the fact that Lalo is one of only five Puerto Rican writers in the Translation Database. Plus, there’s the book itself:

A tale of alienation, love, suspense, imagination, and literature set on the streets of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Simone tells the story of a self-educated Chinese immigrant student courting (and stalking) a disillusioned, unnamed writer who is struggling to make a name for himself in a place that is not exactly a hotbed of literary fame. By turns solipsistic and political, romantic and dark, Simone begins with the writer糖心传媒檚 frustrated, satiric observations on his native city and the banal life of the university where he teaches糖心传媒攆orces utterly at odds with the sensuality of his writing. But, as mysterious messages and literary clues begin to appear糖心传媒攕crawled on sidewalks and walls, inside volumes set out in bookstores, left on his answering machine and under his windshield wiper糖心传媒擲imone progresses into a cat-and-mouse game between the writer and his mystery stalker.

by Ibrahim Al-Koni, translated from the Arabic by William Hutchins (University of Texas)

I just really like this cover. Not to mention that this final volume of Al-Koni’s trilogy opens with, “a meeting of the conspirators who assassinated the community糖心传媒檚 leader at the end of the previous novel, The Puppet.”

by Miljenko Jergovic, translated from the Croatian by Stephen M. Dickey with Janja Pavetic-Dickey (Yale University Press)

Yale—who has been kicking ass on the translation front for years, with Can Xue, Patrick Modiano, Romain Gary, Claudio Magris, and many more—sure isn’t afraid of doing huge books. Cyclops by Ranko Marinkovic is 576 dense pages. Blindly by the aforementioned Magris is only 400 pages, but of knotty, attention-requiring prose. The Last Days of Mankind by Karl Kraus is a 647-page play. By contrast, The Walnut Mansion seems slight at only 429 pages, but you should see this typeface! These are massive, impressive Works. Most translation publishers shy away from books like this because the cost of the translation alone—not to mention the printing bill—more or less makes breaking even an impossibility. I suspect the donation that funds Yale’s “Margellos World Republic of Letters” series makes this moot, but still, they deserve some props for undertaking these massive books that most other presses would run away from. Maybe they’ll be the ones to do those 1,000-page novels by Tokarczuk and Clemens Setz . . .

by Vidar Sundst酶l, translated from the Norwegian by Tiina Nunnally (University of Minnesota Press)

It’s so perfect that University of Minnesota Press published Sundst酶l’s “Minnesota Trilogy,” which concludes with this volume. According to his bio, Sundst酶l lives in Southern Norway, but I assume he has some sort of connection to Minnesota. Otherwise, why would he write a series of crime novels set there, featuring the Twin Cities, Duluth, and members of the Ojibwe tribe? I hope the University of Minnesota sells thousands of copies of all of these to the really nice people of Minnesota . . .

J. T. is a graduate of the University of Rochester’s MALTS program, and is currently in the MFA program at Arkansas. He’s also the translator of two of “Open Letter’s Volodine books”:http://www.openletterbooks.org/collections/antoine-volodine糖心传媒擾Post-Exoticism in Ten Lessons_ (May 2015) and Bardo or Not Bardo (forthcoming April 2016).

Here’s the beginning of J. T.‘s review:

Imagine the most baroque excesses of Goethe, Shakespeare, and Poe, blended together and poured into a single book: That is The Nightwatches of Bonaventura. Ophelia and Hamlet fall in love in a madhouse, suicidal young men deliver mournful and heartfelt soliloquies in miasmic graveyards, a pregnant nun is entombed alive for her sins of the flesh. These events, and a cornucopia more like them, are all delivered to us through the eyes of the watchman Kruezgang as he makes his rounds in a nineteenth-century German town. The sixteen chapters, each comprising a separate nightwatch, and labeled as such (i.e., 糖心传媒淣ightwatch 1. The Freethinker,糖心传媒� etc.), were originally published in 1804, to little public fanfare.

For the rest of the review, go here.

The Nightwatches is more gothic than Robert Smith at a Hot Topic. It糖心传媒檚 more gothic than The Sisters of Mercy playing at Bela Lugosi糖心传媒檚 funeral in an underground crypt. One can easily imagine these stories being read aloud by teenagers who糖心传媒檝e dyed their hair black and call themselves things like Lady Amaranth and Byron von Ravenwing, after downing a bottle of absinthe someone stole from their dad糖心传媒檚 liquor cabinet but before anyone breaks out the Ouija board. The dead mingle with the living, the hypocrisy of the powerful is exposed by the fool, and even Satan Himself makes a cameo appearance, all against a backdrop of eternal night. The translator, Gerald Gillespie, invents a new term to refer to the book糖心传媒檚 style: tantric romanticism. He claims it 糖心传媒渁 special label for the kind of anguish Bonaventura experiences in making the transition from the bright hopes of the Enlightenment into a perplexing new world of subjectivism, and in undertaking a journey into the interiority of the self that finally becomes unfathomable.糖心传媒�

The author of the Nightwatches, “Bonaventura”, as he is known, is a bit of a mystery. In his afterward, Gillespie talks about various theories of authorship: Friedrich Schelling, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert, Clemens Brentano, and August Klingemann have all been posited at one time or another as the writer of this strange collection of tales. Even Big Goethe himself is accused by one scholar, though that particular theory has a bit too much of a conspiratorial element to it for our banal reality, unfortunately.

Gillespie糖心传媒檚 translation is pretty cool. He manages to keep the super-baroque tone running without ever lapsing into parody, which is sometimes an issue when translating across eras. That said, Gillespie makes it quite clear that he is an academic, first and foremost. The text is laden with endnotes, the first appearing on the first line of the first Nightwatch to defend the translator糖心传媒檚 choice of the word 糖心传媒渜uixotic糖心传媒� (the original German, apparently, is abenteurlich, which 糖心传媒渁cquired ironic connotations with the advent of the modern novel糖心传媒�). Thankfully, these are endnotes and not footnotes, and many of the annotations do provide helpful historical and literary context for the Year-of-Our-Lord-2015 reader. Besides, a book that includes lines such as 糖心传媒渟he crept over skulls and dead men糖心传媒檚 bones toward the charnel house, returned with shovel and pick, and dug calmly and mysteriously in the earth糖心传媒� might occasionally need some grounding to keep us from being completely overwhelmed by the tide of grinning corpses and odes to the moon.

I really enjoyed reading the Nightwatches. Bonaventura糖心传媒檚 prose sometimes lapses into the ridiculous, but that糖心传媒檚 part of the fun of the novel. So long as you embrace the grotesque and absurd and everything else the book has to offer, preferably while wearing a silk black cape, you糖心传媒檒l find the novel to be an enchanting piece of work, transporting you to a brilliantly dark world of gargoyles and grave-robbers.

The night seemed endless. The old man felt wide awake. He tried to understand what darkness was, how merciless and absolute it was糖心传媒攏othing could chase it away. You could only ever light up tiny parts of a darkness like that, every light source ridiculous in comparison to the sun. Lamps, even very strong ones, had a light that was limited, its end foreseeable with the naked eye.

This shedding of light onto little spots of darkness is the aim of the novel, even while aware of the impossibility of full light, even finding time to dwell in the dark and find beauty. It goes beyond aesthetics, ideas, or any cultural examination, and instead is the core of the novel; indeed it is the plot. This trick, turning usual extraneous-to-the-plot elements into plot, is exciting, original, and makes a compelling read (I planned to put the book down after sixty pages and go to bed, then promised I would stop at ninety, before finally just finishing it in one read). At the opening, our old man protagonist is in complete darkness, even literally, but also in his place in life. His house is not his home: it is not one he built, bought, or aged in, but inherited, without being able to remember from whom. Disconnected from his present, 糖心传媒減art of him was still living in Berlin;糖心传媒� yet not able to recall enough of his past to bring that to life either.

As Parei builds the setting, there is slight humor in an old newspaper with a picture of Elvis that is not, though contemporary for the novel, a cultural calling from the past, refusing idealization by being not the hip-swinging Elvis, but the aged, fat, soon-to-die-on-a-toilet Elvis. Though humor is not a running current, a keenness of detail is, and Katy Derbyshire糖心传媒檚 translation preserves the wonderful way that states of being and atmosphere intermingle and become the same: 糖心传媒淭oo little sleep was like a blanket that was too thin or too short, something you could not help tugging at, in a constantly restless and alert state糖心传媒� or the menace behind 糖心传媒渢he absence of sound in all the lifeless things that cities consist of, the silence of the mortar, the walls and rail, the aluminum casings, the silence of wood and hewn stones.糖心传媒� This world the old man is walking through, it can leave people behind, it can pass over accomplishment and sin糖心传媒攗nless someone moves against the silence.

The old man is not obviously that someone. His time is spent in silence, watching his neighbors, half-heartedly contemplating his past while avoiding any participation in his present outside of the watching. His re-entry to both is sparked by the first watched neighbor he has contact with, known only as 糖心传媒渢he stranger.糖心传媒� The stranger, a recent arrival in the next-door apartment, becomes the central point for the old man糖心传媒檚 thoughts, and the center of his actions, along with the actions of the others in the neighborhood. The old man is compelled to know the stranger, to find out more, yet also to keep him no more than a stranger; he is both scared for and scared of. Here is where I can struggle with giving too much away, ruining the few 糖心传媒渆vents.糖心传媒� The blank slate that is the stranger allows him to exist with more than one identity, an identity from the Baader-Meinhof Germany of the novel糖心传媒檚 present, given to him by threatening neighbors and by the old man himself, and the unnamed victims of Germany糖心传媒檚 past糖心传媒攁s 糖心传媒淗e糖心传媒檚 one of them. I have to save him,糖心传媒� passes through the old man糖心传媒檚 thoughts.

A struggle between the often separate realities of intellectual, rational understanding of experience, and of immediate physical experience is often played out at the same time as the past vs. present dynamic, one that dominates the old man in simple ways like a reflection on a childhood memory of spinning around and watching objects around dissolve, all while knowing that was only in his eyes and in paralyzing ways, describing the stranger糖心传媒檚 eyes, 糖心传媒渁s though they affected his sight, but he knew that was an illusion. In reality it was him, looking at the stranger, who was distracted by eyes like that, plunged into confusion and overlooking other things.糖心传媒� It at times becomes a fight for sanity, a fight to be able to exist rationally, yet accept one糖心传媒檚 experiences, and for the old man, experiences are not always something he wants to accept. He has a home that was gifted to him by an unknown man except for a last name, and all the men he remembers with the name have as guilty a past as he does, as German men of his age did.

Early on, the old man, seeing a scratch he made in paint as he unlocked a door is 糖心传媒渦nsettled. . . . that he could see across the layers of different coats of paint as if looking back across decades, down to the surface.糖心传媒� Looking at a simple scratch, at such a benign physical marker of the past is too much for him, and during this, the world around him is fogged and scattered, but as he watches more, hears more, tries to act and respond to current events, more and more memories come to him, and more clearly. The physicality of his present as he searches the basement, trying to find out what his neighbors are up to and how the stranger is involved, bring the clearest narrative of his past in the military, culminating in a cold reality that had been until now in that darkness.

This is not to say that What Darkness Was pulls itself into a formal, structured narrative. At the end we are not left with answers, and there is much in the novel that is as unclear to the old man as it is to us, though we are made to wonder if we haven糖心传媒檛 lit our lamp bright enough, pushed it into the right corners, or maybe are simply a little too American and don糖心传媒檛 know 1977 Germany well enough. Or must some things remain in the darkness and all we can do is bring out the most important things, and not, either intentionally or passively, keep the most dangerous things in the dark, for they will dim the present as well.

This book was another one several of our reviewers jumped at, and yet another strong and insanely fascinating sounding piece of German literature, and German literature in translation. That, and Inka Parei has a pretty rad sounding name, and some intriguing titles to boot (, to name another).

Here’s some of Patrick’s review:

Of all the Holocaust novel genres, the most interesting is often the one that doesn糖心传媒檛 describe clearly defined horrors, written with a clarity that brings the events into the present, whether written in present tense or not, but the one grasping at memories, personal or cultural, and even more so the ones of shadow memories, of the gaps that narrators have passed over or lost糖心传媒擾Sebald糖心传媒檚 Austerlitz_ one of the definers of this sub-genre. Inka Parei糖心传媒檚 What Darkness Was takes this forward, acknowledging that history has been made in Germany since the Holocaust, and that it too can be poorly understood and put into a larger continuum of culture, and lost or denied culture. Set in late 1977 in West Germany and within the addled, lost consciousness of an old man, What Darkness Was isn糖心传媒檛 a novel of direct connections, of completeness, of action and reaction, or of explanations for the reader, but instead of gestures toward, of using abstraction, atmosphere to set the reader up to find how it comes together, and what it has to offer from the past and for the future. Its title, embedded in a passage midway through this slim novel, stands as an example, or even a definition of this . . .

At the opening, our old man protagonist is in complete darkness, even literally, but also in his place in life. His house is not his home: it is not one he built, bought, or aged in, but inherited, without being able to remember from whom. Disconnected from his present, 糖心传媒減art of him was still living in Berlin;糖心传媒� yet not able to recall enough of his past to bring that to life either. As Parei builds the setting, there is slight humor in an old newspaper with a picture of Elvis that is not, though contemporary for the novel, a cultural calling from the past, refusing idealization by being not the hip-swinging Elvis, but the aged, fat, soon-to-die-on-a-toilet Elvis. Though humor is not a running current, a keenness of detail is, and Katy Derbyshire糖心传媒檚 translation preserves the wonderful way that states of being and atmosphere intermingle and become the same . . .

For the rest of the review, go here.

Dark Company is marked as a book 糖心传媒渢old in ten rainy nights.糖心传媒� In fact, each of the ten chapters opens with a different facet of a cold, rainy night: the rain itself, the chilling wind, the fog, or the artificial light that shines, but offers no comfort to those outside or inside. Indeed, as the book progresses, the weather and the surroundings糖心传媒攄ifferent every chapter糖心传媒攖hemselves become characters that lead Thomas through the narrative. These elements are personified, as the wind is when it opens the third chapter, finding 糖心传媒渋ts way into the house through the cracks to tear the handle from your hand and send the doors slamming. The wind moans in the chimney, rattles the windows, and when I go out at night I can hear a shrill whistling.糖心传媒� The elements here have agency, indeed more than our protagonist, Thomas, ever really seems capable of. The rain that pulls us through the book blocks out all light; the author, who cites Kafka and Rosendorfer as influences to his own style, must consciously equate this lack of natural light to lack of illumination for the characters and the readers. This, however, does not deter a reader糖心传媒攔ather, she is swept along with the plot as surely as the people in the book are, straight into the flood.

There are few constants in the novel, rain, again, being one, and the vanishing of characters being the other. Early on, Thomas admits to a boyish wonder of Henry Hudson, 糖心传媒渢he explorer I admired above all others for the way he had disappeared. The way he sailed off at dawn (and never returned) spoke to me of true modesty and greatness.糖心传媒� This ominously becomes a veritable tattoo of the novel In almost every single chapter, we are introduced to a person糖心传媒攁 colleague in the German Navy, a former lover, a nameless woman working on an angel statue in a workshop糖心传媒攚ho disappears. The natures of their disappearances are all different: Daniel, a fellow sailor in the British Navy, vanishes after the appearance of an African sailor who joins and introduces voodoo magic to the ship; Katharina, a young woman Thomas shared a night and a tattoo with, seems to melt away with her blood on the pavement after being attacked by some guard dogs, only to appear later in England; her Doppelg盲nger vanishes with a promise on her lips after chasing after somebody who, in a Marquez-like twist, has Thomas’s face. Thomas’s grandfather, continually referenced to but never seen in the novel, has a theory about vanished people:

He believed that all those who had vanished had not really vanished at all but were all gathered somewhere, in designated places. If I have understood correctly what he was saying, they travel in a particular kind of train which carries them across the length and breadth of Europe, unceasingly: that is to say, they never leave the train. . . . Since these trains are not listed on any timetable and never stop糖心传媒攐r stop only in very remote, hidden places糖心传媒攊t is difficult to detect them.

It is, then, this baleful continual movement of the train that pushes the narrative along like the rivers and eventual floods of rain do. Thomas糖心传媒攁nd thus the reader糖心传媒攍earns to expect, and accept, their inevitability.

There does seem to be a striking passivity in Thomas’s acceptance of how the narrative plays out, which is baffling. That is, Thomas is content merely to let things happen to him. He repeatedly follows people into the darkness, once even as far as being led to the meeting of a religious cult in which he is apparently 糖心传媒淭he Promised One.糖心传媒� Thomas yearns to 糖心传媒済o back, back to the rivers, the docks, the warehouses where a man could lose himself walking round, not back to my flat by the river but to a boat, and so what if my license had expired . . .糖心传媒� He never helps himself, and in his yearning eventually ends up a worker on a train. As a former skipper, he deals in transit, and never seems to get anywhere himself. His timeline is all but impossible to figure out糖心传媒攚as he struck from his position as a skipper because he may have killed a woman? did he meet the woman who resembled Katharina after his work on the train? when did he have the affair with the married woman? when did he meet his possible son? is this the titular dark company?糖心传媒攁nd this question of time and madness is what sweeps the reader along as surely as Thomas is pushed forward by his work on the boats and on the train, and his life aboard a bus (a sad parody of Noah’s ark) that takes him away from his flooded house. It becomes apparent that Thomas does not trust the reader and indeed keeps things from her, allowing for gross jumps in logic (one moment he is waiting in a bar till 糖心传媒渮ero hours forty,糖心传媒� and then he admits that 糖心传媒渢his was the place and I had to wait. If she had come at eleven, we could have sailed at twelve,糖心传媒� with no previous mention to waiting for anyone. Perhaps, the readers reflect drily, he doesn’t trust us with his secret). He eventually references his omissions, finally admitting to them and their fatality: 糖心传媒淎dd one more fault to my list of omissions. . . . Everything that I have failed to do leaps out at me from the dark, my failures lurk in the driving rain, in the whistling sound overhead.糖心传媒�

It is impossible to read this book and not notice the beautiful translation from German into English by Willcocks. The text reads absolutely effortlessly in translation, with glittering descriptions of Thomas’s surroundings that are timed to an English pace and sound-set perfectly: 糖心传媒淚nstead [there was] fog, silence and the smell that so often accompanies fog, a smell of fire, a burning smell, a hint of smouldering trees and smoke creeping over the ground at knee height . . .糖心传媒� It is, however, Willcocks’s poetic employ of generally difficult English words that is worth our attention and applause. For example (emphasis mine), Thomas’s 糖心传媒渨orld outside . . . dissolve[s] into a fuzzy stroboscopic fog of impressions,糖心传媒� and Katharina’s dogs, 糖心传媒渢wo deep-chested, powerful beasts . . . stopped at her command (a word? a signal?) and eyed us, obediently, yes, but truculent too, truculent in their obedience.糖心传媒� Willcocks has weighed the very sounds of the words he applied to the English text, resulting in a sensuous, sonorous prose. Ultimately, in the translation itself as in the text, this is a book for a reader looking for a thematic and highly, wonderfully literary challenge, and though the reader is left with gaping questions apathetically unanswered, it can’t be denied that it was worth buckling in for the ride and getting caught up in the flow of the flood with Thomas and the debris of his life.

Rachael (with an “A-E”, thankyouverymuch) I believe it’s been mentioned before, is a former intern-student of Open Letter, and a great friend to and advocate for literature in translation. She won out in the mad grab to get her hands on this book to review: Seagull has been putting out some really exceptional stuff lately (or per usual, I should say), and several of our regular reviewers were pining for Dark Company. And I don’t blame them糖心传媒攊t looks like a pretty rad read . . .

Here’s the beginning of Rachael’s review:

If you open Gert Losch眉tz’s new novel Dark Company expecting a clear answer as to who the titular dark company are, and why the protagonist’s grandfather warned him against them, you are sadly doomed to disappointment. Indeed, if you want a clear linear plotline neatly laid out, a consistent character set, or a steady setting, you’re going to have a rough ride. It is unwise to approach this slender tome anticipating clarity; rather, you’ve got to gird yourself, step warily, and simply go. However, that is a great part of the magic of this new book: the challenge here is to keep up with the narrator, Thomas, in his fluctuating life, and to accept it as impossible. What makes this novel, translated by Samuel P. Willcocks, ultimately satisfying and worthwhile is its glimmering prose, the fascinating and highly changeable life of our protagonist, and the constant rain that ties together every event.

Dark Company is marked as a book 糖心传媒渢old in ten rainy nights.糖心传媒� In fact, each of the ten chapters opens with a different facet of a cold, rainy night: the rain itself, the chilling wind, the fog, or the artificial light that shines, but offers no comfort to those outside or inside. Indeed, as the book progresses, the weather and the surroundings糖心传媒攄ifferent every chapter糖心传媒攖hemselves become characters that lead Thomas through the narrative. These elements are personified, as the wind is when it opens the third chapter, finding 糖心传媒渋ts way into the house through the cracks to tear the handle from your hand and send the doors slamming. The wind moans in the chimney, rattles the windows, and when I go out at night I can hear a shrill whistling.糖心传媒� The elements here have agency, indeed more than our protagonist, Thomas, ever really seems capable of. The rain that pulls us through the book blocks out all light; the author, who cites Kafka and Rosendorfer as influences to his own style, must consciously equate this lack of natural light to lack of illumination for the characters and the readers. This, however, does not deter a reader糖心传媒攔ather, she is swept along with the plot as surely as the people in the book are, straight into the flood.

For the rest of the review and more darkness and rain, go here.

Of the Latin American writers I most admire糖心传媒擬ario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garc铆a M谩rquez, Carlos Fuentes, Roberto Bola帽o糖心传媒攁ll were recipients of an award named after R贸mulo Gallegos. A teacher, writer, and one of the founders of Acci贸n Democr谩tica糖心传媒攁n important political party in the early years of Venezuelan democracy糖心传媒擥allegos became the first democratically elected president of Venezuela in 1947. But in 1929, he was forced to flee the country after publishing a novel critical of the regime of Juan Vicente G贸mez. That novel was Do帽a Barbara.

. . . The story pits an educated, principled land-owner against a beautiful and tyrannical cattle-rustler, Do帽a Barbara, rumored to be a witch. One of the first examples of 糖心传媒渕agical realism,糖心传媒� it is an epic, a love poem to Venezuela: the land, its peoples and their legends. It糖心传媒檚 also a romance, a political parable, a story of cowboys, spirits and hustlers, and the strange magic of history.

From the first page, I was wowed by Robert Malloy糖心传媒檚 beautiful, poetic translation of Gallegos糖心传媒檚 language: an eerie description of the river and the sense of danger hovering over the young Santos Luzardo. By the time I糖心传媒檇 gotten through visions of dawn on the prairie, with 糖心传媒渢he smell of mint and cattle糖心传媒� and encountered Pajarote糖心传媒檚 stories of vampires and ghosts, and the legal/political shenanigans of the gringo bully 糖心传媒淪r. Danger,糖心传媒� I was ready to gallop out onto the Venezuelan llanos myself and lasso the rights. But we still had no leads on whom to contact.

So it was In茅s who ventured to Venezuela, via the Guadalajara book fair, where she left a hand-written note inquiring after the English language rights at the Cuban-Venezuelan stand. A month later, an e-mail from the Cuban Ministry of Culture landed in In茅s糖心传媒檚 inbox, suggesting she get in touch with the CELARG, in Caracas, Venezuela (Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos R贸mulo Gallegos). After several days of phone calls, she finally reached the head of Publications, who referred her to R贸mulo Gallegos糖心传媒檚 daughter. (He had a daughter! We had a phone number!) Encouraged, In茅s kept phoning and writing Venezuela until she managed to negotiate the rights. She even recruited relatives to help us resurrect this Venezuelan masterpiece: her father hand-delivered the license agreement to R贸mulo Gallegos糖心传媒檚 daughter, and Ines糖心传媒檚 uncle, who happened to be in Venezuela at the time for business, transported the signed agreement back to The University of Chicago Press for its countersignature. After almost six months, we had a deal.糖心传媒�

Of course, the book being Venezuelan, the political plays an integral part of this story, as Ines relates to Maggie:

“When your country struggles for democracy and you watch it sink from afar, your only hope is to raise consciousness in the people around you about what is really happening. I think it糖心传媒檚 essential that English-speaking readers discover this literary gem now, so they can draw parallels between the conflicts described by Gallegos and Venezuela糖心传媒檚 current situation糖心传媒攚here frequent clashes between civilization and barbarism are experienced on a daily basis. Do帽a Barbara is a parable of how Venezuela could be saved from a corrupt and backward-thinking regime. Venezuelans saw that in 1929; that糖心传媒檚 why the book caused such a sensation and made them want to elect Gallegos as their president. If the book could do that then, maybe it can help, in some way, now.糖心传媒�

Like Jeff so rightly told us, this is the type of backstory we all love to hear, both as readers and as people in the business of books. It糖心传媒檚 a lot of work, but sometimes the payoff is so rewarding we can get a little misty-eyed糖心传媒ven cowboys cry.

Ha Jin’s journey raises rich and fascinating questions about language, migration, and the place of literature in a rapidly globalizing world—questions that take center stage in “The Writer as Migrant,” his first work of nonfiction. Consisting of three interconnected essays, this book sets Ha Jin’s own work and life alongside those of other literary exiles, creating a conversation across cultures and between eras. He employs the cases of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Chinese novelist Lin Yutang to illustrate the obligation a writer feels to the land of his birth, while Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov—who, like Ha Jin, adopted English for their writing—are enlisted to explore a migrant author’s conscious choice of a literary language. A final essay draws on V. S. Naipaul and Milan Kundera to consider the ways in which our era of perpetual change forces a migrant writer to reconceptualize the very idea of home. Throughout, Jin brings other celebrated writers into the conversation as well, including W. G. Sebald, C. P. Cavafy, and Salman Rushdie—refracting and refining the very idea of a literature of migration.