Somehow I missed the announcement that Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa will be speaking tonight at the Americas Society along with star translator Edith Grossman, who even on her own would be enough to pack the house. The event is sold out – no surprises there – but Americas Society members who’d like to join a virtual waiting list can do so by emailing Valeria Catan.
Readers of this blog already know Edith Grossman, who’s one of our very best translators and also teaches and writes about translation. She’s just published a new translation of Vargas Llosa’s new novel, The Dream of the Celt, which the Americas Society press release describes thus:
A fictionalized biography of Roger Casement(1864-1916), a British hero knighted by the king and an international celebrity for his grueling and unsparing investigations of atrocities committed against the native rubber workers in the Belgian Congo and the Putumayo jungles of Peru. An ardent Irish nationalist, Casement was hanged by the British government for his part in the Easter 1916 uprising. In Grossman’s elegant, precise translation, Vargas Llosa further explores “the cartographies of structures of power” and “the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat,” to quote the Nobel Committee’s assessment of his creative body of work.
This one might be worth standing in line and begging for.