Satantango - László Krasznahorkai (IFFP)

Satantango, starts in some mouldering Hungarian hamlet, the home of the workers of a collective long since closed and stripped of anything of worth, and like the inhabitants of the hamlet forgotten by the outside world. In fact the only growth market appears to be rot and spiders, very little happens here. Within the first few pages we realise that the rot has spread to all and sundry, there is not a single character of worth, all are, to varying degrees, corrupt, paranoid and full of loathing whether of self or of their neighbours. We also learn that they are waiting for Irimias, who may or may not be Satan, not that this matters as these individuals are so deep into the morass of all that’s bad about humanity, that Satan would be worried about contamination. The villagers wait at the inn for Irimias, who has been seen on the road heading their way with his sidekick Petrina, which is strange because Irimias, is supposed to be dead. Irimias has the ability to charm and mesmerise all to his way, even those who are deeply suspicious of him, still follow his bidding even parting with the collective’s small pot of money. This leads to a series of events that breaks what little bonds they once held and violence erupts, although this is brief as all are so ensnared by Irimias machination, that they can see little else.

In Stu’s (Winstonsdad’s Blog) post, he states that “ I felt this book had a lot of  central European mythology that has been brought to the modern age and also what makes myths..” This wonderful insight of Stu’s, I think rings true, in fact I would go further and state that the character of Irimias, is a great representation of a character not just of European  mythology but of world, Irimias, seems to be a Trickster, who features in a lot of tales from around the world whether as Loki, Syrdon, Veles, Gwydion or as Coyote, Anansi or Crow. The Trickster, is an example of a Jungian archetype, defined as being an  "ancient or archaic image that derives from the collective unconscious" (Carl Jung). The Trickster surfaces in modern literature as a character archetype often acting as a catalyst or harbinger of change, they may reveal unhappiness with the status quo through slips of the tongue or spontaneous and unusual actions, which is pretty much a pen portrait of Irimias.

Although this may be alluded to within the book Krasznahorkai, is not one for spelling things out. Irimias may be the devil/ trickster or just some cheap con man. With the action (?) confined pretty much to the hamlet, this book come across as really claustrophobic, everything cycles through like the seasons, but unlike the seasons nothing is resolved there is no growth everything appears thwarted, even stunted. The dance just goes on with no joy or release – just an increasing heaviness, everything simmers and yet the kettle doesn't boil, the pressure cooker doesn't release its pressure. There is no end.

This book has also been described as an indictment of  Hungarian Collective farming in the dying days of communism and a reaction to the reality of the capitalist dream on a communist utopia. It has also been described as a book on the nature of storytelling. None of this is spelled out in the book, as stated above, very little happens on the page, like the stage direction “Offstage action”, most of what happens here, happens within your head and continues to do so long past the turning of the final page.

This post is a series of reactions to what is basically a very simple story and yet I cannot write a cohesive review of it. The obvious place to start would be that it is divided into 12 chapters, most consisting of a single paragraph, or that the book is split into two with the chapters in the first part going from one to six and in the second part from six to one, also the last chapter is named The circle closes, which is apt. The book is set in the twentieth century, although it’s shading would lends itself to some medieval setting, or anything apocalyptic. Referring back to my kettle analogy and taking it to it’s conclusion, the kettle boils dry leaving only the husks of what was once human, the threshings of humanity.

All that I've written are bullet points, headlining some points yet neglecting others, I guess like storytelling itself, in that you choose a certain path whilst omitting others, and even whilst on that path you do not see, or choose not to see everything -  defining yourself and your tale by what you put forward. Satantango, circles on itself like some mythical serpent and within that circle the characters dance their own isolated geometries like marionettes in some brutal puppet play, whilst the story eats it’s own tail.

 As previously stated, this is a book that happens more in the mind than on the page, this makes it all the more baffling and all the more interesting, what I didn’t state is that I have read three books since Satantango, and it still haunts me - still has me trying to comprehend what this paradoxically simple tale is all about.

"The imagination never stops working but we're not one jot nearer the truth," – Irimias

This book’s translator was George Szirties, whose skill in translating this novel into a language that I could read gets my undying thanks. Although my understanding of Hungarian is somewhere below nil and thus I’m not able to judge how accurate the translation is, I can form an opinion of how it reads in my own language and it reads beautifully.

George Szirties (1948-) is a poet and translator who settled in England after his family fled the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England and is trained as a painter. His poetry has won many awards, including the Faber Memorial Prize (1980), the T.S. Eliot Prize (2005) and the Forward Poetry Prize (2009).

New Directions (László Krasznahorkai)

László Krasznahorkai (Wiki)

New Directions (George Szirtes) 

George Szirtes (Wiki)

@New Directions

@George Szirtes

www.László Krasznahorkai

The Silence And The Roar ~ Nihad Sirees.

In the afterword of this book, Nihad Sirees, asks “Is it possible for the silence and the roar to co-exist?” Going on to state that The answer is most certainly yes, that in countries ruled by people obsessed with supremacy, authoritarians and those who are crazed by power, the ruler or leader imposes silence upon all those who dare to think outside the prevailing norm. Silence can be the muffling of one’s voice or the banning of one’s publication, or it can be the silence of a prison cell… or the grave. 
The roar afflicts Fathi, the protagonist of this book from the moment he wakes and follows him throughout his day, it is in the voice of the hordes chanting their support in some spontaneously orchestrated marches celebrating the leader, it’s the leader, or his underlings, calling from the Television and the Radio and the TV crews filming it all for the leader to watch at his pleasure. It’s in the casting aside of classical Arabic music and replacing it with martial sounds. It is also in the stomp of the boot as it comes crashing down upon some individual deemed a traitor for not marching.
Silence can also be wisdom when all talk is praise for the Leader, as Fathi’s girlfriend says as he lays in  her arms relishing the quiet sanctuary of their love.
The Silence and the Roar follows Fathi, a writer no longer allowed to write, as he makes his way across town to visit  his girlfriend and his mother on the twentieth anniversary of some undisclosed leader. Along the way he meets various characters all trying to make sense of the chaos. Fathi, although silenced, still seems to command respect and this doesn’t sit well with the leader or his cronies.
It seems that Fathi’s own silence is not enough, the government wants more. They want total acquiescence, they want his unconditional and public approval and are quite happy to use any means or anyone to get it…

At one point Fathi describes all that is going on in his country as surrealist, but you quickly realise that farce is just as accurate a description of the world contained within the pages of this book. Somehow Nihad Sirees, has taken all the horror, anger, injustice and sheer terror of a brutal regime and created this slight, slender novel that is funny, in fact totally hilarious, although the anger is still there, still burning.
It says on the back cover that “ The Silence and the Roar is a personal, urgent funny and aggrieved novel. It asks what it means to have a conscience, or to laugh, or to endure in a time of violence, strangeness and roar of tyranny. This is a true statement and one that the writer is constantly seeking to answer, in the afterword, in the last passage Nihad, states that..
“There is another kind of  roar that this author never thought the leader would ever be capable of using: the roar of artillery, tanks, and fighter jets that have already opened fire on Syrian cities. The leader is levelling cities and using lethal force against his own people in order to hold on to power. We must ask, alongside the characters in this novel: what kind of Surrealism is this?”

Nihad Sirees was born in Aleppo, Syria, in 1950.  He is the distinguished author of seven novels, several plays, and numerous screenplays.  His work has been banned from publication in Syria since the 1998 screening of his television drama, The Silk Market, which described social turmoil in Syria in 1956 – 61 and the subsequent rise to power of the Baath Party.   He was branded an opponent of the government and publication of several of his works was forbidden by government censors.  His subsequent novels, A Case of Passion and Noise and Silence, were published abroad.  A historical television drama about the life of Lebanese-born American writer and painter Khalil Gibran, written during a stay at the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa in 2005, was produced in Lebanon and screened in 2007 on Arab satellite channels, but Sirees continued to be excluded from public intellectual and cultural life in Syria and banned from publishing or producing work in his homeland.
He left Syria in January 2012, because he was being watched and followed by Syrian security services.  Since that time he has lived in self-imposed exile in Cairo, Egypt.
Pushkin Press


Nihad Sirees (Banipal UK)
Nihad Sirees (BBC World Service)


Interview (Jadaliyya With Nihad Sirees)
Syrian Writers (BBC) Rana talks to Nihad Sirees &
Malu Halasa about writing in Syria.

The Last of the Vostyachs–Diego Marani (IFFP)

Ivan, is the last of the Vostyachs, the last member of a tribe that connects the language of certain tribes of the North Americas and Finnish, they were also very powerful shamans, with the ability to be understood by most animals. Although he hasn’t spoken a word in years, not since as a child he saw his father shot dead at the slave labour camp they were prisoners at. Shoot forward twenty years and Ivan wanders out of the camp after the guards all left when their wages stopped arriving. He leaves the camp moving out into the woods, then as if led by some occult power, he returns to his place of origin and starts to live as his forebears did, through this mystifying power he also rediscovers his language & the ability to be understood by the wildlife. Winter hits the region and the weather turns harsh forcing him to visit a local village to trade for food.

It is here that Ivan is discovered by Olga, a linguist, stuck in the village because of the weather, her curiosity is roused by this man who speaks this strange language, which she soon realises is an ancient tongue, and possibly one that joins Finland to pre-Columbian North America. She confides this information via a letter to Professor Jaarmo Aurtova, an expert on Finno-Ugric. This turns out to be a bad decision (Understatement Alert!!) as he plans a speech at the 21st Congress of Finno-Ugric, and in that speech he aims to pronounce Finnish as Europe's oldest & purest language, meaning Olga’s news will blow his speech out of the water.

Not knowing this, Olga sends Ivan to Helsinki, and arranges for Jaarmo to meet him. From this point the writer of the book chucks in a couple of murders, a zoo emptied of it’s wildlife, an angry ex-wife trailing around the city & an Estonian folk group, all linked in some way by the professor, as he tries to bury all knowledge of the existence of Ivan & more importantly his language. To find out how the author combines all of this you will have to read this very clever and very funny book. Diego Marani’s book New Finnish Grammar, made the Official Shortlist for the 2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, with the judges stating that..

“This subtle and moving novel shows how much of what we take to be ourselves depends upon the language that we speak and the identity it gives us. It also shows how suddenly that self can be taken away.” 

In the Last Of The Vostyachs, the author’s obsessions are still the same, language, it’s purpose  not merely as an instrument for communication, but also how it relates to the behavioural codes and cultural values that go to construct ones identity and that not only does language define the characteristics of a specific group or community, it is also the means by which an individual identifies themselves and how they identify with others. Although this time he has used them to create a fantastic clever, funny mystery/thriller complete with a wonderful villain, that you’ll love to hate and  whose exploits you’ll be amazed and shocked by, all whilst laughing at him, especially in the end scenes………. but I’ll let you discover the delights of that moment.

This book as with New Finnish Grammar, was translated by Judith Landry, and as with that book, she has my heartfelt thanks for allowing me the opportunity to read this with the ease I did. It has also made the longlist for this years Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, it will be interesting to see if Diego Marani and Judith Landry make the shortlist for the second year running.

 

Diego Marani born in Ferrara (Italy) in 1959 is married with two children and works as a senior linguist for the European Union in Brussels. In 1996, while working as a translator for the Council of the European Union, he invented Europanto, a mock international auxiliary language. Every week he writes a column for a Swiss newspaper in Europanto. He also published a collection of short stories in Europanto, Las Adventures des Inspector Cabillot,  has also been published by Dedalus. In Italian he has published six novels including this .

Judith Landry was educated at Somerville College, Oxford where she obtained a first class honours degree in French and Italian. She combines a career as a translator of works of fiction, art and architecture with part-time teaching. Her translations for Dedalus are: The House by the Medlar Tree by Giovanni Verga, New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani, The Devil in Love by Jacques Cazotte, Prague Noir: The Weeping Woman on the Streets of Prague by Sylvie Germain and Smarra & Trilby by Charles Nodier.

Neuropeans (D.Marani)
Judith Landry(Goodreads)
Diego Marani(Wiki)
Dedalus Books

New Directions Poetry Pamphlets: 1–4

 

A lot of publishers release E-mail newsletters, and I find them a great source of information, although not always relevant to the material I post on The Parrish Lantern, they are, generally, of enough interest to make it worth the signing up. Then sometimes you hit jackpot and you receive something that is totally of interest – for example New Directions has announced the publication of a new series of Poetry Pamphlets, a reincarnated version of the “Poet of the Month” and “Poets of the Year” series published by  James Laughlin in the 1940s. These were responsible for such eclectic hits as William Carlos Williams’s The Broken Span, Delmore Schwartz’s poetic play Shenandoah, and Yvor Winters’s Giant Weapon, amongst many others. The new New Directions Poetry Pamphlets aim to highlight original work by writers from around the world, as well as those forgotten treasures lost in the cracks of literary history.

The first four collections in the series will be winging their way to the stores at the end of March. In the group are:

Two American Scenes, by Lydia Davis & Eliot Weinberger

Two remarkable prose stylists — friends since high school — transform found material from the nineteenth century into mesmerizing poem-essays.

~~~

Sorting Facts, or Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker, by Susan Howe

Poetry and cinema collide in Susan Howe’s masterful meditation on the filmmaker Chris Marker, whose film stills are interspersed throughout, as well as those of Andrei Tarkovsky.

 

 

 

 

~~~

 

The Helens of Troy, New York, by Bernadette Mayer

Profiles of all the women named Helen in Troy, NY, with poems and images, mixing the classical with the ordinary and delightful intelligence with irreverence.

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Pneumatic Antiphonal, by Sylvia Legris

A fun, humming, bio-physiological word-whizzing flight into birdsong penned by the young Canadian poet Sylvia Legris — her first publication in the U.S.

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More details, including how to purchase these pamphlets can be found on the individual links above. You can also, if so interested, purchase the complete set at a discount here.

~~~

New Directions, was founded in 1936, when James Laughlin (1914 - 1997), then a twenty-two-year-old Harvard sophomore, issued the first of the New Directions anthologies. "I asked Ezra Pound for 'career advice,'" James Laughlin recalled. "He had been seeing my poems for months and had ruled them hopeless. He urged me to finish Harvard and then do 'something' useful." Intended "as a place where experimentalists could test their inventions by publication," the ND anthologies first introduced readers to the early work of such writers as William Saroyan, Louis Zukofsky, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Kay Boyle, Delmore Schwartz, Dylan Thomas, Thomas Merton, John Hawkes, Denise Levertov, James Agee, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Soon after issuing the first of the anthologies, New Directions began publishing novels, plays, and collections of poems. Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, who once had difficulty finding publishers, were early New Directions authors and have remained at the core of ND's backlist of modernist writers. And Tennessee Williams first appeared as a poet in the early Five Young American Poets.

 

The Mussel Feast ~ Birgit Vanderbeke.

 

“It was neither a sign nor a coincidence that we were going to have mussels that evening. Yes, it was slightly unusual, and afterwards we sometimes spoke of the mussels as a sign, but they definitely  weren’t; we also said they were a bad omen – that’s nonsense too. Nor were the mussels a coincidence. This evening of all evenings, we’d say, we decided to eat mussels. But it really wasn't like that; you couldn’t call it a coincidence. after the event, of course, we tried to interpret our decision as a sign or coincidence, because what came in the wake of our abortive feast was so monumental that none of us have got over it yet.”

From this opening sentence we are slowly drawn into the world of this family, as told through the narration of the daughter as she, her brother and their mother wait for the head of the family to come home. Sat at the family table around a large pot of now cooling mussels, prepared earlier by the mother -  they wait for the father, not realising they have a long wait ahead.

~

The evening progresses, and we learn more about this family and it’s absent head. Although the absence is only physical as his presence, like some barghest, haunts every page, revealing a patriarchal figure who controls every aspect of family life, through physical and mental violence. A petty irrational despot whose own obsessions are destroying all he seeks to control.

~

Slowly as the mussels go cold and the wine bought for his arrival is opened and drank, the family relax and, though hesitantly at first, they start to open up to each other and in so doing begin questioning everything they’ve been told to believe in. Everything that they were to scared to air in the cold light of day is revealed and as though performing an exorcism, they haltingly lay the spirit that has dominated their lives for so long.

~

After reading this I had to look the author up, as it states on the back cover that it was a modern German classic, and yet I was totally unaware of it. It also turns out that this Novel was published in 1990, won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, is part of the school curriculum in Germany and has never been out of print, not bad for a debut novel. It also turns out that Birgit Vanderbeke has written another twelve books, I can only hope Meike and Peirene Press have got their eye on them, because based on this one, that’s a fantastic collection of books that I would love to read.

Birgit Vanderbeke was born in 1956 in Dahme/Mark in the GDR, and moved with her family to West Germany in 1961. She was brought up in Frankfurt am Main, where she later studied Law and French. Her first novella, Das Muschelessen [The Mussel Dinner] (1990), received the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. In 1993, Vanderbeke moved to the south of France. She is the author of twelve subsequent novellas, a cookbook, and a travel guide. A volume of essays, interviews, and reviews concerned with Vanderbeke appeared in Germany in 2001. She has won several awards including

Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis (1990)

Solothurner Literaturpreis (1999)

Roswitha Prize (1999)

Hans Fallada Prize (2002)

Birgit Vanderbeke

Birgit Vanderbeke

The Translator, Jamie Bulloch is a historian and has been working as a professional translator from German since 2001. His most recent works include The Sweetness of Life by Paulus Hochgatter for Quercus and Ruth Maier's Diary for Harvill Secker. Peirene has selected him for the translation of Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman because his sample translation received unanimous admiring praise from the editorial panel. His self-effacing approach to the original text will undoubtedly allow the rhythm of the sentence to come through in English. He lives in London with his wife and three children.

Quercus – Jamie Bulloch

Cultures in Translation – J.B.

Other Opinions.

“Vanderbeke portrays her calculating anti-hero with chilling precision” Der Spiegel

“Vanderbeke’ s  words draw the reader into a frightening whirlpool of obsession and misfortune. Ultimately , however, they create a beautiful image of hope” Marie France

“I love this monologue. It’s the first Peirene book which made me laugh out loud. The author lays bare the contradictory logic of an inflexible mind. This is a poignant yet hilarious narrative with a brilliant ending” Meike Ziervogel

Peirene Press

Peirene at the Booktrust

2013 International Foreign Fiction Prize

Shadow Jury.

The majority of people who regularly read works of translated fiction, will be aware that last Saturday (02/03/2013) the longlist for the 2013 International Foreign Fiction Prize was published.

~

This Prize honours the best work of fiction by a living author, that has been  translated into English from any other language and published in the UK. Uniquely, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize gives both the winning author and the translator equal status, with each receiving £5,000. The prize was inaugurated by British newspaper The Independent with the first award going to the writer Orhan Pamuk and translator Victoria Holbrook for The White Castle (1990), the prize ran until 1995 before falling into abeyance. The prize was revived at the start of the new century (2000) with the support of Arts Council England, who continue to fund the award. Beginning in 2011 the administration of the prize was taken over by Booktrust, yet retains the "Independent" in it’s title. The 2012 prize was won by Blooms of Darkness, written by Aharon Appelfeld & translated by Jeffrey M. Green.

 

For the second year Stu from Winston’s dad has set up a shadow Jury that will attempt to post on all the books featured on the long list and, eventually, the shortlist. The jurors are Mark, Lisa,  Stu, Tony and myself. The group’s aim is to review all of the books on the list in tandem with the official jury, following the same idea as Nick Barley & play our “part in helping them bring unique stories from other languages to a wider English-speaking audience.” or as Stu says:

“Reading The World One Book At A Time”

Gerbrand Bakker: The Detour (trans - David Colmer) Harvill Secker

A Dutch woman rents a remote farm in rural Wales. She says her name is Emilie. She is a lecturer doing some research, and sets about making the farmhouse more homely. When she arrives there are ten geese living in the garden but one by one they disappear. Perhaps it's the work of a local fox.

Lisa’s Review

 

 

 

 

Chris Barnard: Bundu (trans - Michiel Heyns) Alma Books

In a place near Mozambique where no one knows the boundary, drought is changing everything. Tens then hundreds of people seek refuge in a forgotten outpost where a clinic is run by lonely souls of uncertain training, nuns staunchly determined to serve. But the inundation soon becomes too much for them, and there is no help from outside

 

 

Laurent Binet: HHhH (trans - Sam Taylor) Harvill Secker

Two men have been enlisted to kill the head of the Gestapo. This is Operation Anthropoid, Prague, 1942: two Czechoslovakian parachutists sent on a daring mission by London to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich - chief of the Nazi secret services, 'the hangman of Prague', 'the blond beast', 'the most dangerous man in the Third Reich'.

Stu’s Review

 

 

Dasa Drndic: Trieste (trans - Ellen Elias-Bursac) MacLehose Press

Haya Tedeschi sits alone in Gorizia, north-eastern Italy, surrounded by a basket of photographs and newspaper clippings. Now an old woman, she waits to be reunited after sixty-two years with her son, fathered by an S.S. officer and stolen from her by the German authorities during the War as part of Himmler's clandestine 'Lebensborn

 

 

 

Pawel Huelle: Cold Sea Stories (trans - Antonia Lloyd-Jones) Comma Press

A student pedals an old Ukraina bicycle between striking factories, delivering bulletins, in the tumultuous first days of the Solidarity movement...

A shepherd watches, unseen, as a strange figure disembarks from a pirate ship anchored in the cove below, to bury a chest on the beach that later proves empty

 

 

Pia Juul: The Murder of Halland ( trans - Martin Aitken) Peirene Press

“If you like crime you won’t be disappointed. The book has all the right ingredients. A murder, a gun, an inspector, suspense. But I love the story because it strays far beyond the whodunit norm. In beautifully stark language Pia Juul manages to chart the phases of bereavement.” Meike Ziervogel

Stu’s Review, Tony’s Review,

 

 

Ismail Kadare: The Fall of the Stone City (trans - John Hodgson) Canongate

In September 1943, German soldiers advance on the ancient gates of Gjirokaster, Albania. It is the first step in a carefully planned invasion. But once at the mouth of the city, the troops are taken aback by a surprising act of rebellion that leaves the citizens fearful of a bloody counter-attack. Soon rumours circulate,

 

 

 

Khaled Khalifa: In Praise of Hatred (trans - Leri Price) Doubleday

1980s Syria, our young narrator is living a secluded life behind the veil in the vast and perfumed house of her grandparents in Aleppo. Her three aunts, Maryam, the pious one; Safaa, the liberal; and Marwa, the free-spirited one, bring her up with the aid of their ever-devoted blind servant. Soon the high walls of the family home are unable to protect her from the social and political changes outside.

 

 

Karl Ove Knausgaard: A Death in the Family (trans - Don Bartlett) Harvill Secker

Karl Ove Knausgaard writes with painful honesty about his childhood and teenage years, his infatuation with rock music, his relationship with his loving yet almost invisible mother and his distant and unpredictable father, and his bewilderment and grief on his father's death.

Stu’s Review

 

 

Laszlo Krasznahorkai: Satantango (trans - George Szirtes) Tuskar Rock

In the darkening embers of a Communist utopia, life in a desolate Hungarian town has come to a virtual standstill. Flies buzz, spiders weave, water drips and animals root desultorily in the barnyard of a collective farm. But when the charismatic Irimias - long-thought dead - returns to the commune, the villagers fall under his spell. The Devil has arrived in their midst.

Stu’s Review

 

Alain Mabanckou: Black Bazaar (trans - Sarah Ardizzone) Serpent's Tail

This is a riotous account of a Black dandy trying to cut it in Paris today. Buttocks Man is down on his uppers. His girlfriend, Original Colour, has cleared out of their Paris studio and run off to the Congo with a vertically challenged drummer known as The Mongrel. She's taken their daughter with her.

 

 

 

Diego Marani: The Last of the Vostyachs (trans - Judith Landry) Dedalus

As a child, Ivan and his father worked as forced labourers in a mine in Siberia, the father having committed some minor offence against the regime. He is then murdered in front of his young son, after which Ivan - who is a Vostyach, an imaginary ethnic group of whose language he is the last remaining speaker - is struck dumb by having witnessed his father's murder

 

 

 

Andrés Neuman: Traveller of the Century (trans - Nick Caistor & Lorenza Garcia) Pushkin Press

In my interview with Andrés Neuman, he said about this book, “the novel tells a love story between two translators, Sophie and Hans, who can’t stop translating everything: words, gestures, intentions, silences. In the beginning, they don’t know that the other is a translator too, but they connect through their obsessively translating approach to reality

Tony’s Review, Stu’s Review

 

 

Orhan Pamuk: Silent House (trans - Robert Finn) Faber

In an old mansion in Cennethisar, a former fishing village near Istanbul, an old widow Fatma awaits the annual summer visit of her grandchildren. She has lived in the village for decades, ever since her husband, an idealistic young doctor, first arrived to serve the poor fishermen. Now mostly bedridden, she is attended by her faithful servant Recep, a dwarf and the doctor's illegitimate son

Lisa’s Review, Marks Review

 

 

Juan Gabriel Vásquez: The Sound of Things Falling (trans - Anne McLean) Bloomsbury

No sooner does he get to know Ricardo Laverde than disaffected young Colombian lawyer Antonio Yammara realises that his new friend has a secret, or rather several secrets. Antonio's fascination with the life of ex-pilot Ricardo Laverde begins by casual acquaintance in a seedy Bogotá billiard hall and grows until the day Ricardo receives a cassette tape in an unmarked envelope.

Stu’s Review

 

Enrique Vila-Matas: Dublinesque ( trans - Rosalind Harvey & Anne McLean) Harvill Secker

Samuel Riba is about to turn 60. A successful publisher in Barcelona, he has edited many of his generation's most important authors. But he is increasingly prone to attacks of anxiety - inspired partly by giving up alcohol, and partly by his worries about the future of the book. Looking for distraction, he concocts a spur-of-the-moment trip to Dublin,

Stu’s Review

 

 

A shortlist of six books will be announced on Thursday 11 April and the overall winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2013 will be announced at an awards ceremony in central London in May at the Royal Institute of British Architects. I guess the Shadow Jury will scatter Emails to the corners of the planet we inhabit & come up with our own favourite'.

  It will be interesting to see how our separate lists tally. Also if you want to get involved but don’t fancy scaling the complete list, The Booktrust has organised a readers project

 

The Readers' Project will consist of three elements:

300 Readers will shadow the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize six shortlisted titles.

The readers will gather together at the Free Word Centre in Farringdon on 18 May 2013 to vote on their favourite title, crowned the Independent Foreign Fiction Readers' Prize (IFFRP) winner, and enjoy a programme of activities, such discussion with a range of the shortlisted authors and translators, a translation duel and a talk from IFFP judge and author Elif Shafak.

A bespoke piece of research will provide a detailed study of the barriers to readers' engagement with foreign fiction and make recommendations and strategies for the trade to overcome them. The research will be promoted nationally and internationally in the second half of 2013.

For More Info

Poetry Of The Second World War

An International Anthology,

         Edited With An introduction

                    By Desmond Graham

*****************************

Hast Du Dich Verirrt?* – Stevie Smith.

My Child, my child, watch how he goes

The man in Party coloured clothes.

 

*************************************************

At one point in time it was considered that the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust had left poetry silenced, almost tongue-tied, as though the sheer monstrosity that man was capable of could not, or should not, be expressed in this art form. Like with most things, time has rendered that view obsolete, in fact revealed a necessity to bear witness, to lament and question all that was done by man to man. Whether this was Primo Levi, writing “You who live secure/ In your warm houses/ Who return at evening to find/ Hot food and friendly faces: Consider whether this is a man/ who labours in the mud”**, or  Tamik Hara, who wrote “this is a human being/ look what an A-bomb has done to it/ the flesh swells so horribly/ and both men and women are reduced to one form”*** who survived Hiroshima only to commit suicide at the confirmation of the symptoms of “Atoms Disease” poetry not only found it’s voice, but found itself more than capable of conveying the “the vast and terrible sweep of the war”.

****************

Horoscope – Vladimir Holan

Early evening…. Cemetery…. And the wind sharp as

bone splinters on a butcher’s block.

Rust shakes its model out of tortured form.

And above it all, above the tears of shame,

the star has almost decided to confess

why we understand simplicity only when the heart breaks,

and we are suddenly ourselves, alone and fateless.

                                                       Trans: Jarmilla & Ian Milner

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The poetry in this anthology highlights the utter abhorrence and sheer mundanity of conflict, whether on the frontline or the home front, Auschwitz or Hiroshima, the experience of war is apparent and central. From Osip Mandelshtam, writing in 1937 (a year before his death in Siberia), through Keith Douglas, killed in Normandy or Miklos Radnoti murdered on a forced march, this collection charts the course of the Second World War, through the voices of these poets.

What  makes this a great book is its sheer scope, it truly is an international compilation. One hundred and thirty poets from about twenty countries, from Australia, Japan, Europe, America and Russia show the scope of this collection and also reveal how universal is the need to articulate their experience, to record their thoughts and feelings – to witness.

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The Second Eclogue – Miklos Radnoti.

Pilot:

Last night we went far; in rage I laughed, I was so mad.

Their fighters were all droning like a bee-swarm overhead.

their defence was strong and friend, O how they fired and

    fired!

Till over the horizon our relief squad appeared.

I just missed being shot down and scraped together below,

But see, I am back! And tomorrow, this craven Europe shall

know

Fear in their air-raid shelters, as they tremble hidden

away…

But enough of that, let’s leave it. Have you written since

  yesterday?

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Poet:

I have. the poet writes, as dogs howl or cats mew

or small fish coyly spawn. What else am I to do?

I write about everything – write even for you, up there,

So that flying you may know of my life and of how I fare

When between the rows of houses, blown up and tumbling

down,

The bloodshot light of the moon reels drunkenly around,

when the city squares bulge, all of them stricken,

Breathing stops, and even the sky seems sicken,

And the planes keep coming on, then disappear, and then

All swoop, like jabbering madness down from the sky again!

I write; what else can I do? If you knew  how dangerous

A poem can be, how frail, how capricious a single verse…

For that involves courage too – you see? Poets write,

Cats mew, dogs howl, small fish…. and so on; but you who

  fight,

What do you know? Nothing. You listen, but all you hear

Is the plane you have just left droning on in your ear;

No use denying it, friend. It’s become part of you.

What do you think about as you fly above in the blue?

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Pilot:

Laugh at me: I’m scared. And I long to lie in repose

On a bed beside my love, and for these eyes to close.

Or else, under my breathe, I would softly hum her a tune

In the wild and steamy chaos of the flying-men’s canteen.

Up there, I want to come down; down here, to be back in

  space:

In this world moulded for me, for me there is no place.

And I know full well, I have grown too fond of my

aeroplane,

True; but, when hit, the rhythm both suffer at is the same….

But you know and will write about it! It won’t be a secret

that I,

Who now just destroy, homeless between the earth and the

  sky,

Lived as a man lives. Alas, who’d understand or believe it?

Will you write of me?

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Poet:

If I live, if there’s anyone left to read it.

                                                Trans: Clive Wilmer & George Gomori

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This book also offers biographical notes on all the poets, with a reference for further reading given for each writer.

* Have you lost yourself?

**  Shema – Primo Levi

*** This is a human being – Tamiki Hara