Reflections on the World of My Father
November 22, 2014
Nina Howe— The experience of editing the book, A Voice Still Heard, a selection of essays by my late father Irving Howe, was for me an exploration into my father’s… READ MORE
Category: Literature
An Interview with Mark Polizzotti
November 11, 2014
We had the privilege of sitting down to talk with Mark Polizzotti, who, among other things, has recently translated a trio of novellas from Nobel Prize–winner Patrick Modiano, Suspended Sentences,… READ MORE
Museum Quality Books: Sculpting with Shadow
November 10, 2014
Mark Polizzotti has translated more than forty books from French, including the newly released Suspended Sentences by this year’s Nobel laureate in literature, Patrick Modiano. Mark wrote a lovely commentary on translating… READ MORE
Bram Stoker’s Birthday and Vampire Lore
November 8, 2014
Paul Barber— On November 8, we celebrate the birthday of Bram Stoker. Stoker’s novel Dracula, published in 1897, had a tremendous influence on vampire-novels although, like other fiction of this… READ MORE
Quiet Resonance: Translating Patrick Modiano
October 22, 2014
Mark Polizzotti— At first blush, the qualities suggested by Patrick Modiano’s fictions do not shout “Nobel.” Unlike Sartre (the laureate malgre lui), with his grand philosophical pronouncements, or France’s previous… READ MORE
What Makes Moby-Dick a Classic?
October 18, 2014
The first edition of Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby-Dick came out in London as The Whale on this day in 1851. But what makes Moby-Dick, or any text, a classic and what do we… READ MORE
Translating Trans-Atlantyk: Behind the Scenes with Danuta Borchardt (Part 3)
October 14, 2014
In the previous installments (part one, part two) of Danuta Borchardt‘s reflections on translating Trans-Atlantyk, she articulated why the variant of Polish Witold Gombrowicz used in the novel was so difficult to render in… READ MORE
A Conversation with Tim Parks
October 13, 2014
Shortly before his death in 1837, Giacomo Leopardi, a prolific Italian writer, translator, and thinker, began to organize a small, thematic collection of his writings in an attempt to give… READ MORE
Translating Trans-Atlantyk: Behind the Scenes with Danuta Borchardt (Part 2)
October 7, 2014
In last week’s post, available here, Danuta Borchardt explained some of the immediate challenges she faced in translating Trans-Atlantyk, a novel by the celebrated Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz. The farcical adventures of a… READ MORE
Translating Trans-Atlantyk: Behind the Scenes with Danuta Borchardt
September 29, 2014
Many consider Polish novelist Witold Gombrowicz one of the greatest writers of the past hundred years and Danuta Borchardt is undoubtedly one of his finest translators. Her rendering of Ferdydurke… READ MORE
China Has Peaked? It Can Still Change World Order