Category: Literature
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This week saw the penultimate session of the online Translated Fiction Book club in which we talked about Thirteen Months of Sunrise, a collection of short stories published by Comma Press, written by the Sudanese writer Rania Mamoun and translated by Elisabeth Jaquette. The evening commenced with a conversation with Elisabeth Jaquette on her translation…
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In this week’s Translated Fiction Book Club, we were discussing Restless, published by Nordisk Books, written by Kenneth Moe and translated by Alison McCullough. This week’s discussion was great, as Restless was a book that divided opinions and welcomed some very interesting debates. In brief, Restless is a one-hundred-page letter, or perhaps even a journal…
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This week for the Translated Fiction Book Club, we had the pleasure of reading Fate, from Charco Press, written by Jorge Consiglio, and co-translated by Carolina Orloff. Set in the city of Buenos Aires, Fate follows the lives of a group of very different characters. First, we meet Amer, a taxidermist, who later falls for…
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This Thursday saw the latest translated fiction book club, and this week we were reading Where the Wild Ladies Are from Titled Axis Press, written by Matsuda Aoko and translated by Polly Barton. Once again, it was wonderful to be part of such a lovely discussion with readers from around the world, and so I…
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The last few weeks have been incredibly strange, for reasons we all know too well. I don’t want to dwell on this, as at the moment, this subject seems to be all we are receiving in our newsfeeds and the only topic of conversations with friends. I will say that I have been feeling quite…
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This week I was lucky enough to attend a discussion and reading with renowned Japanese poet and writer, Hiromi Itō, and her friend and translator into the English, Jeffrey Angles. The following day, I also attended the workshop ‘Translating Cultures’, which focused on the difficulties of translating Japanese culture and language specifities into English culture…
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What is the contemporary, and how do we define the contemporary novel? These are two questions that are difficult to answer, two questions that many literary theorists have struggled with. In this post I do not attempt to do the impossible (or incredibly difficult) and define the un-definable, I do however wish to discuss some…
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Written by Patrice Gain, and published by Le Mot et le Reste in 2016, La Naufragée du Lac des Dents Blanches explores serious issues both within France and Canada in a delicate and quite remarkable manner. Patrice Gain takes the dreadful and long-standing issues of the European refugee crisis, and treatment of indigenous Canadians, and intertwines them with a…
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Last week Tash Aw visited the University of East Anglia as part of the UEA Literary Festival. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the wonderful event and thought what better way to start my blog than with a short piece on the talk! The evening was centered mainly on Aw’s new release: We,…
Alice Banks 