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Linguistic surrealism from China to Belgium
On the World in Words podcast, the trials, tribulations and silliness of living in Belgium, where most people define themselves not by nationality but by mother tongue. Also, arrested Chinese artist Ai Weiwei wrote a blog that was, if anything, even more provocative than his art. We hear from his English translator. And the latest children’s TV hit in the UK features Jamaican-British musical mice, with dialects that offend English purists.
World Books Review: An Authoritative Gathering of Modern Chinese Drama
Minor translation issues aside, “The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama”‘s excellent selection, colloquial and stage-friendly translations, and illuminating introduction undoubtedly make the volume the authoritative choice in teaching and reading modern Chinese drama for the foreseeable future.
World Books Review: Lodgings — A Generous Selection of Verse from an Intriguing Polish Poet
A problematic selection of poems from Andrzej Sosnowski, an impressive contemporary Polish poet whose writing combines antic playfulness and insistent earnestness.
World Books Review: Adonis’s Selected Poems — A Giant of Arabic Verse
Syrian poet Adonis has has been compared to both Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot in his modernist sensibility and influence — perhaps both in one person makes a better comparison.
World Books Debate: The Best Translated Book Awards
Here’s the 25 book long list of the fiction finalists for the 2011 Best Translated Book Awards for listeners and readers to comment on, augment, and generally kick around. The point of the BTBA is not simply to recognized high merit (in fiction and poetry), but to expand the consciousness of the reading public. This is one of the few prizes in the country that honors original works in translation; at the very least, it should stimulate conversation about the importance (and neglect) of literature in translation.
What do you think?
World Books Review: A Glimpse of the Heart of Modern Pakistani Poetry
In all, the anthology smacks of the editors’ having taken the bland, easy way out at almost every stage. It takes second, third, closer readings to discern individuality among the Pakistani poets, and there are several lovely and powerful poems that emerge from such close reading, poems of love and politics and of faith — not the mere journal entries of so much Western verse.
World Books Remembrance: Heda Kovaly
Translating what became “Under a Cruel Star” by Heda Kovaly was a labor of love as well as a work of feminism. There were few memoirs around of a life that spanned Nazism and Stalinism. None was written by a woman.
World Books Review: Of Spongy Minds and Award-Winning Books
Call it anarchistic boorishness, an artist chomping on the hand that feeds him. But at least in this book Thomas Bernhard is honest about why he welcomes awards — he wants the money, especially because the amounts, given European largess to its culture-makers, are considerable.
World Books Review: Visitation — Difficulty for Difficulty’s Sake?
That Jenny Erpenbeck’s latest novel, Visitation, is ambitious is unmistakable, for it is undeniably difficult and precisely crafted. Following in the footsteps of T.S. Eliot, who suggested that a difficult world as ours calls for a difficult literature, I think it a moot point as to whether the novel ultimately succeeds in its being difficult. Is it really difficult for difficulty’s sake? After finishing this novel I have to admit my own ambivalence, not based on, admittedly, its philosophical import, but because of the way it reads.
World Books Review: From Iran and Japan, Two Modern Visions of Horror
Thankfully, these fascinating short novels, while they provide plenty of genuine scares, transcend the grisly genre of “ghost stories” or “tales of madness,” partly because their authors self-consciously manipulate staid spine-tingling formulas.
World Books Review: A Masterpiece From Israel
Israeli novelist David Grossman’s new book is rooted in a reality so vivid, is so radiant with life, and is so precise in its delineation of its characters that it would be an important addition to the world’s literature at any time. But its publication now, when leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Territories are trying to broker a lasting peace, makes it required reading in a way few novels ever are.
World Books Review: David Grossman’s Lost Faith
In his most recent collection of essays on the intersection of politics and literature, Israeli novelist David Grossman fears his country is losing its soul, its cultural responses are hardening, its spiritual resources weakening dangerously.
World Books Review: The Early Doom and Gloom of a Spanish Genius
In this story collection mostly made up of tales written early in his career, Spain’s greatest living author, Javier Marías, wears his influences, particularly Jorge Luis Borges, on his sleeve.
World Books Review: Life Under Mao
Bi Feiyu’s satiric novel about village life during the Cultural Revolution is uneven, but he displays an uncanny understanding of young women and the way they use their sexuality to try to take control of their lives.
World Books Review: A Welcome ‘Return’ to Form
What’s impressive about the thirteen stories in this volume is the coherence of Roberto Bolaño’s vision. Though the tales take place in different countries and different time periods, though some are straight fiction, some are vaguely autobiographical, and some even drift towards magical realism, each new yarn feels like a chapter in a continuous narrative.
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