This book was about the art/science or translation and some of the theories on the subject. If there was a main thesis, it was that translation is a very subjective exercise. There were also interesting chapters on the history of translation and polyglotism (word of the day!). Christopher Colu...
Very good although challenging at times. Bellos looks at translation and the host of issues that come with translation from what is translation to how humour is handled in translation. Some very thought provoking parts; the huge variation in vocabulary and grammar between languages and how thes...
The Successor is one of those rare books that can be read with equal pleasure by lovers of psychological or analytical writings, and by readers looking for “action.” Written in the form of a thriller, the novel manages in some miraculous way to go to the essence not only of Communism, but of all...
Agamemnon’s Daughter is a novella that, together with “The Blinding Order” and “The Great Wall” constitutes the most recent translation into English of Kadare’s books. Agamemnon’s daughter, Suzana, also a protagonist in The Successor, is here the narrator’s lover, though she only appears indirect...
A Man Asleep was published in 1967, and translated in 1990. It is about a young man who gives up his examinations, his friends, and his purpose in life. He does as little as possible, wants as little as possible, takes as little interest in life as he can. He is "asleep."[return][return]The inter...
What is this book? It’s a picture. A picture cut into pieces—like a jigsaw puzzle—for the reader to reassemble. They say “a picture is worth 1,000 words”? Well, Perec’s picture is worth approximately 238,560 words (I counted the words on one page and multiplied by the number of pages, hence t...
The plot of this novel, written in 1981, is set sometime during the 1930s.In a sleepy provincial town near to the foothills of the Accursed Mountains in northern Albania, the Governor's wife is languishing in her bathtub, fantasizing about the two (young, she hopes) Irish scholars who are about t...
I finished Simenon’s (first) Maigret detective novel: somehow I know that I read this one and many others about the inspector from Paris a long time ago. It’s a thrilling tale even though the writing seems often clumsy, take for example the shouting (rather than telling) which is inserted wheneve...
I think I've read enough Kadare now to pinpoint the type of his writing I like the best: books about something he has direct experience with, but not books that border on the autobiographical. When he writes a story about something he has limited or no experience with, like The Pyramid or The Sie...