Monday, June 15, 2009

Favorite Translations

Thanks to all of you who entered into the contest to win one of ten galley copies of Filip Florian's Little Fingers. All of the winners have now been notified. Even if you didn't win, I encourage you to check out this book when it's published in July. I'm willing to bet Little Fingers is unlike anything you've read before. I'll be posting my review in a couple weeks, closer to the publishing date.

In conjunction with the contest, some of you answered the question: "Which work in translation has had the most effect on you and why?" I appreciate all the good answers I received. Here's a sampling:

  • Elie Wiesel’s Night - "How [Wiesel] goes from being a star Talmudic student before the war to an almost total rejection of a God who could allow all this horror to occur, but still maintains his humanity was not an enjoyable read, but an essential one.

  • Roberto Bolano's 2666 - "[R]eading the book [is] like scurrying down a million different rabbit holes with diverging and converging paths. While 2666 is probably a love it or hate it book - to me, it was pure genius."

  • Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude "showed me that a novel or story doesn't have to fit into a box, that it can be malleable and cross lines and genres."

  • Isabel Allende's books - "You could see the color of things she described, you could hear things she described and taste as well."

  • Primo Levi's The Periodic Table - "The fitting of the subject of each chapter to elements in the periodic table is done brilliantly, through luminescent prose."

2 comments:

Meytal Radzinski said...

I'd be fascinated to see all the answers. These samplings display such good taste and diversity. It's a great discussion question; thanks for sharing some of the answers. Insightful and interesting.

Lisa said...

Totally love Isabel Allende's books. They are so vivid.

Lisa