Greetings from a snowy Manhattan where I sit among many hundreds of books rendered peaceful and silent by being encased in cardboard boxes from my move last week; I’m just starting to let them out so they can chatter once more. And I’m hideously behind with blogging, but didn’t want to leave unmentioned the fact that World Literature Today has produced a lovely best-of-2012 list of translations worthy of your attention, so if you didn’t find a few of these stuffed in your stocking yesterday morning, you might should go about getting yourself some of the best possible gifts. I’m happy for all the friends and colleagues whose books are included here (as is the one I happen to be reading at the moment, Mikhail Shishkin’s Maidenhair, which was translated by Marian Schwartz).
For the complete list, see below or visit the WLT website, which has kindly provided links to reviews of each of the books. Congratulations to all these wonderful translators (oh, and to the authors too, of course).
75 Notable Translations 2012
Zeina Abirached, A Game for Swallows, Edward Gauvin, tr.
César Aira, Varamo, Chris Andrews, tr.
Roberto Ampuero, The Neruda Case, Carolina De Robertis, tr.
Jorge Amado, The Double Death of Quincas Water-Bray, Gregory Rabassa, tr.
Fabio Bartolomei, Alfa Romeo 1300 and Other Miracles, Antony Shugaar, tr.
Lutz Bassmann, We Monks & Soldiers, Jordan Stump, tr.
Mario Benedetti, Witness: The Selected Poems of Mario Benedetti, Louise B. Popkin, tr.
Attilio Bertolucci, The Bedroom, Luigi Bonaffini, tr.
Marcel Beyer, Kaltenburg, Alan Bance, tr.
Laurent Binet, HHhH, Sam Taylor, tr.
The Bird That Swallowed Its Cage: The Selected Writings of Curzio Malaparte, Walter Murch, tr.
Roberto Bolaño, Woes of the True Policeman, Natasha Wimmer, tr.
Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets, ko ko thett, James Byrne, et al. tr.
Giovanni Boteri, On the Causes of the Greatness and Magnificence of Cities, Geoffrey Symcox, tr.
Chico Buarque, Spilt Milk, Alison Entrekin, tr.
Sergio Chejfec, The Planets, Heather Cleary, tr.
Jacques Chessex, The Tyrant, Martin Sokolinsky, tr.
Artur Domosławski, Ryszard Kapuścinśki: A Life, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, tr.
Mouloud Feraoun, Land and Blood, Patricia Geesey, tr.
Manuela Fingueret, Daughter of Silence, Darrell B. Lockhart, tr.
The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry, Geoffrey Brock, ed.
Carlos Fuentes, Vlad, E. Shaskan Bumas & Alejandro Branger, tr.
Santiago Gamboa, Necropolis, Howard Curtis, tr.
Juan Gelman, Dark Times Filled with Light, Hardie St. Martin, tr.
Viola Di Grado, 70% Acrylic 30% Wool, Michael Reynolds, tr.
Michèle Halberstadt, La Petite, Linda Coverdale, tr.
Liliana Heker, The End of the Story, Andrea G. Labinger, tr.
Simonetta Agnello Hornby, The Nun, Antony Shugaar, tr.
I Lived on This Earth: Hungarian Poets on the Holocaust, George Gömöri & Mari Gömöri, ed., George Gömöri, Mari Gömöri, et al., tr.
Yusuf Idris, Tales of Encounter, Rasheed El-Enany, tr.
Pia Juul, The Murder of Halland, Martin Aitken, tr.
Bilge Karasu, A Long Day’s Evening, Aron Aji & Fred Stark, tr.
Etgar Keret, Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, Miriam Shlesinger, Sondra Silverston, & Nathan Englander, tr.
László Krasznahorkai, Satantango, George Szirtes, tr.
Teddy Kristiansen & Steven T. Seagle, The R[e]ad Diary
Louise Ladouceur, Dramatic License: Translating Theatre from One Official Language to the Other in Canada, Richard Lebeau, tr.
Liu Xiaobo, June Fourth Elegies, Jeffrey Yang, tr.
Amara Lakhous, Divorce Islamic Style, Ann Goldstein, tr.
Nicolas Mahler, Angelman, Kim Thompson, tr.
Osip Mandelstam, Stolen Air, Christian Wiman, tr.
Diego Marani, The Last of the Vostyachs, Judith Landry, tr.
Ibrahim Abdel Meguid, The House of Jasmine, Noha Radwan, tr.
Rosa Montero, Tears in Rain, Lilit Žekulin Thwaites, tr.
Quim Monzó, A Thousand Morons, Peter R. Bush, tr.
Fuminori Nakamura, The Thief, Satoko Izumo & Stephen Coates, tr.
Andrés Neuman, Traveller of the Century, Nick Caistor & Lorenza Garcia, tr.
Harri Nykänen, Nights of Awe, Kristian London, tr.
Shizue Ogawa, A Soul at Play, Donna Tamaki, Soraya Umewaka, and the author, tr.
Kristín Ómarsdóttir, Children in Reindeer Woods, Lytton Smith, tr.
Olga Orozco, A Talisman in the Darkness, Mary G. Berg & Melanie Nicholson, tr.
Octavio Paz, The Poems of Octavio Paz, Eliot Weinberger, et al, tr.
Jerzy Pilch, My First Suicide, David Frick, tr.
Alessandro Piperno, Persecution: The Friendly Fire of Memories, Ann Goldstein, tr.
José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Selected Works, Guillermo Parra, tr.
Asko Sahlberg, The Brothers, Asko Sahlberg, Fleur Jeremiah & Emily Jeremiah, tr.
Magdy El Shafee, Metro: A Story of Cairo, Chip Rossetti, tr.
Adania Shibli, We Are All Equally Far from Love, Paul Starkey, tr.
Mikhail Shishkin, Maidenhair, Marian Schwartz, tr.
Diego De Silva, I Hadn’t Understood, Antony Shugaar, tr.
Christoph Simon, Zbinden’s Progress, Donal McLaughlin, tr.
Nichita Stănescu, Wheel with a Single Spoke and Other Poems, Sean Cotter, tr.
Luan Starova, My Father’s Books, Christine E. Kramer, tr.
Benjamin Stein, The Canvas, Brian Zumhagen, tr.
Walid Taher, A Bit of Air, Anita Husen, tr.
Abdellah Taïa, An Arab Melancholia, Frank Stock, tr.
Mutsuo Takahashi, Twelve Views from the Distance, Jeffrey Angles, tr.
Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Reticence, John Lambert, tr.
Nicoletta Vallorani, Camera Obscura, John Gatt, tr.
Juan Gabriel Vásquez, The Sound of Things Falling, Anne McLean, tr.
Enrique Vila-Matas, Dublinesque, Anne McLean and Rosalind Harvey, tr.
Richard Weihe, Sea of Ink, Jamie Bulloch, tr.
Franz Werfel, Pale Blue Ink in a Lady’s Hand, James Reidel, tr.
The World Record: International Voices from Poetry Parnassus , Neil Astley & Anna Selby, ed.
Xi Chuan, Notes on the Mosquito: Selected Poems, Lucas Klein, tr.
Samar Yazbek, A Woman in the Crossfire, Max Weiss, tr.