Book news, reviews and recommendations
I was drawn to Volker Weidermann’s Summer Before the Dark partly because of its translator, Carol Brown Janeway, who died last year. It was her work which made me understand that the translator is every bit as important as the author when seeking out books in translation. This may well be her last piece of […]
Readers of a certain age may remember Midge Ure moodily singing ‘Vienna’ on Top of the Pops way back when. So embedded in our consciousness did it become for H and me that whenever one says ‘it means nothing to me’ the other pipes up ‘Oh, Vienna’. We both managed to keep it under control
Four Days in Vienna and One Book Read More »
The last of my ‘books of the year’ posts begins with one of my two September favourites, Steven Galloway’s The Confabulist which tells the story of the man who killed Houdini not once, but twice. Far from a straightforward reimagining of the Houdini story Galloway’s novel is a very clever bit of business which didn’t
Books of the Year 2014: Part 3 Read More »
I don’t read as much fiction in translation as I should but when I see a novel translated by Carol Brown Janeway in the publishing schedules I sit up and take notice. It was through her that I first discovered Daniel Khelmann’s fiction, beginning with the very fine Measuring the World about two eighteenth-century German
F by Daniel Kehlmann (transl. Carol Brown Janeway): A match made in heaven Read More »
When I was a reviews editor I tried my best to make sure that translators were credited in the bibliographic information that accompanies reviews. It didn’t always work: sometimes space was tight and the sub-editors had to cut the copy but sometimes the fact that it was a translated work was not immediately apparent. Perhaps
Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann (transl. Carol Brown Janeway) Lost in Translation Read More »