Tag: translation

Quivering, like jelly, quivering like a small bird

DoppelgangerDoppelgänger
by Daša Drndić
translated from Croatian by SD Curtis and Celia Hawkesworth

This was my Croatia choice for the EU Reading Challenge. It’s a novella formed of two stories linked by major themes and minor details. There were nice moments but overall I didn’t love this.

In the first story “Artur and Isabella” the eponymous heroes are old and think their days of romance are behind them, until they meet. Drndić doesn’t skimp on the grotesque aspects of ageing, to the point of making me quite uncomfortable. The third person narrative alternates with brief police reports on the two lead characters, the reason for which becomes clear at the end. There’s also a tendency to include lists, which in a longer story can provide nice change of pace, but in something so short it was disruptive. I’m pretty sure this is meant to be a sad tale but I wasn’t at all emotionally involved.

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A language that hasn’t learned to depict reality

The Ministry of PainThe Ministry of Pain
by Dubravka Ugresic
translated from Croatian by Michael Henry Heim

This book started really strong for me and then tailed off. It has a lot of interesting things to say about language, story and identity, but two unfortunate decisions toward the end undermined my pleasure. This is my Netherlands read for the EU Reading Challenge.

Tanja Ludic left her home in Zagreb during the 1990s Yugoslav civil war. A few years later she is teaching Servo-Kroat at the University of Amsterdam, a temporary contract and almost certainly a temporary subject. She quickly realises that all her students are floundering, most of them like her are refugees from a forever-changed homeland. So she expands her course to cover “Yugo” culture, in fact any memories that her students will share with her and each other.

Initially, the novel flits between these recollections and Tanja’s musings on language, on life in Amsterdam, on being a migrant. As she gets to know her students, they become a larger part of her life and the story. But events conspire to prevent this from becoming the cosy situation she craves.

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Someday, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time

Kitchen book coverKitchen
by Banana Yoshimoto
translated from Japanese by Megan Backus

This novella and short story about grief are an excellent demonstration that you can depict dark, devastating emotion without being hyperbolic or overwrought.

“Kitchen part 1”, “Kitchen part 2” and “Moonlight shadow” each follows a young person (college age ish) who has lost a significant person from their lives. The relationship to the deceased is different and on the surface the reactions are different, but at heart the grief is similar.

One of the keys that Yoshimoto taps into is the comfort of specific places, for example a kitchen or a bridge in a park, in helping the process of grief. In “Kitchen”, Mikage doesn’t even need a specific kitchen to help her feel better – any kitchen will do, though she is particularly enamoured by the kitchen of her friend Yuichi, a young man she barely knew before her recent bereavement.

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Life is nothing like a story in a book

tokyo ueno station book coverTokyo Ueno Station
by Yu Miri
translated from Japanese by Morgan Giles

This is an astonishing novella, packing so much insight and commentary and humanity into so few pages. And it taught me snippets of history as well. I’m really not sure how Yu managed it.

The tale is narrated by Kazu, an old man who has spent the last few years homeless, living in Ueno Park in central Tokyo. He tells his life story, but not linearly. An overheard conversation will remind him of his son. A piece of rubbish will remind him of a friend who died. A rain storm will remind him of a certain day in the past. And so on.

Kazu is an ordinary man, which is of course the whole point. He didn’t become homeless because he’s a junkie or had been in prison. Yu doesn’t spell out the reason he ended up in Ueno Park, but as we see his long lonely life getting sadder and lonelier, we can fill in some of the gaps.

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Sorrow rose from memory’s deepest dwelling place

Exemplary Tales book coverExemplary Tales
by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
translated from Portuguese by Alexis Levitin

This is my Portugal choice for the EU Reading Challenge. Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen is best known as a poet but little of her work has been translated into English. This collection of her short stories took me some time to track down but was worth the effort.

The stories tend to have religious or moral themes, which I would usually find offputting, but something about Breyner Andresen’s tone meant they worked for me. It’s a weird tone for stories that are – for the most part – grounded in reality.

The opening story, “The bishop’s dinner”, reads like a Biblical parable. A rich man has two guests in the same evening: a planned visit from the bishop and an unexpected visit from a beggar. The story contrasts how the two visitors are treated, the differing reaction of their host and his staff. The religious undertones are underlined by one character being a bishop and conversations revolving around a local priest, but the tenets of Christianity are far from being on display here.

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The male and female together make the world

One Part Woman coverOne Part Woman
by Perumal Murugan
translated from Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan

This novel is set in early 20th century India, focusing on a couple who are farmers in a rural area, steeped in religion and superstition. So it is perhaps surprising to find that it is one of the most relatable stories I have read in a while.

Kali and Ponna have been married for 12 years. They love each other and their little corner of Tamil Nadu, but their inability to conceive a child has come to overwhelm everything else. Ponna is excluded from the community, and even family flinch if she touches a child. Kali is alternately mocked and advised to take a second wife. They’re not sure they even want a child, but it seems to be all that the rest of the world cares about.

Their simple lifestyle means that the exact date when this is set was unclear to me, though references to British rule give at least some clue. (There are mentions of certain politicians and events that apparently reveal to those with better historical knowledge than mine that this is the 1940s.) So fertility treatment is limited even for those who have money and access to doctors.

For Kali and Ponna there are no doctors to help. Their only recourse is religion. They endlessly pray, visit shrines and temples, perform rituals. They search their family histories for wrongs done by their ancestors that they can put right. They spend their meagre income on offerings to deities. Hundreds of deities.

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The echo of her steps is drowned out by the savage rhythm of walking people

The Night CircusThe Night Circus
by Uršuľa Kovalyk
translated from Slovakian by Julia and Peter Sherwood

This is my Slovakia book for the EU Reading Challenge. It is a short story collection that was sent to me by the publisher after a contact heard about my challenge. I am so grateful to both contact and publisher for helping me with my challenge and for introducing me to a fantastic author I would otherwise not have heard of.

The stories are on the short side – mostly four or five pages – and all have female protagonists, often unnamed. While they have real-world settings, the tone is always slightly weird or off kilter. For instance, in the title story, Eleanora stumbles across a circus tent, and on entry finds herself the star of a very weird show with no audience. It’s a dark exploration of pain, psychology and blame, and it’s completely absorbing.

“Eleanora is irritated by the noise people make as they walk down the street. The sound coming from beneath their shoes is chaotic, restless. It strikes her ears with a vengeance and makes her feel anxious. At times like these Eleanora can’t hear herself. The echo of her steps is drowned out by the savage rhythm of walking people. It makes her feel like she doesn’t exist. Like she’s just a ghost. A fiction. She’s losing her outlines.”

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EU reading challenge

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Flag of Europe

I have spent almost three years feeling pretty low about Britain voting to leave the EU, but I have decided that in this bonus time created by the latest extension, I want to do something to celebrate the EU. So I’m going to try to read a book from every one of the 28 EU countries (yes, that’s including the UK).

Ideally, I’d like every book in the challenge to be written by an author from the designated country and set in that country. But if that’s not possible for every country, then I’ll take one or the other where I need to. I already have several books to get started with, but I’m going to need to do some research/get some recommendations to complete this.

I started by making a pile of books from my TBR that are by EU authors. There are some duplicate countries in here, so I have some decisions to make (again, recommendations will be welcomed). And I’ve only included one book from the UK – the collection of Welsh legends known collectively as The Mabinogion.

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2018 – the halfway point

Emily, Countess of Kildare

It’s a few weeks late, but the end of June seems like a good point to review my reading so far this year. I read 39 books in the first half of 2018, but the overall number isn’t really what matters to me. How am I doing on my reading goals?

Of those 39, I’ve read 13 books by men, 24 by women and two by multiple authors. 12 have been works in translation – two per month, my best rate yet! Six of those were translated from Japanese, so the holiday clearly had a good influence. Our next holiday will be in Italy, so you may see some Italian translations added to that list before long.

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Reading in August: to plan or not plan

Every month there are bookish challenges around and August is no different. My Twitter feed is full of Austen in August and Women in Translation Month, both of which tempt me for different reasons.

I’ve read three Jane Austen books and so far not been blown away, but I keep wondering if she’s a writer I’ll appreciate more as I get older. She’s certainly not flowery, which I have less and less patience for. And she’s smart, which I do like. It’s hard to talk myself into reading a book that I suspect I’m not going to enjoy. But I have heard good things about Mansfield Park, so maybe I’ll give that a go.

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