Short Stories for Short Attention Spans

I’m sure I’m not the only one whose attention span seems to be shrinking in the last few weeks. Although I’ve embarked upon The American by Henry James and am finding it quite humorous and easy reading, on the whole I seem to spend more time on interruptions rather than on reading. So short story collections are ideal. I can always squeeze one story in between a team meeting and starting to cook supper, or between a Barney/Zoe socialisation project and a game of Cluedo with the boys. (Sadly, that last one is becoming infrequent, as they keep reminding me that they have left such childish pursuits well and truly behind them.) And these two short story collections by women and about women are truly magnificent, highly recommended. Just don’t expect very lengthy, profoundly analytical reviews of them – my writing attention span is likewise very much reduced.

Lucia Berlin: A Manual for Cleaning Women

Everyone was buzzing about it a few years back, and I even bought it for a friend who I was sure would love it, but I somehow never got around to reading more than 1-2 stories from it. I am so glad that I discovered it now. It is so, so good. An instantly recognisable, unique voice, regardless of whether the story is in first person or third person. She reminds me of Jean Rhys, but in a different setting and a few decades later, a working woman rather than a kept one, with not just herself but four boys to look after as well.

Many of her biographical details match with what she shares in the stories, and there is something of the ‘confessional writer’ about her. (She also reminds me of Anne Sexton, with a cool, unflappable veneer hiding tormented depths.) But she twists and exaggerates memories and events, so that they can best serve the story she wants to tell. As one of her sons said: ‘Our family stories… have been slowly reshaped, embellished and edited to the extent that I’m not sure what really happened all the time. Lucia said this didn’t matter: the story is the thing.’

Her stories are never boring, and they are surprisingly humorous (unlike Rhys). Some are brief, mere glimpses into someone’s life, you can’t help feeling like a voyeur at times. Others are longer, building up to… well, sometimes there is a climax, but often the stories are not crescendo all the way. Something seems to be about to happen, and then something far less dramatic happens, and life is just that one shade clearer or foggier, heavier or lighter. But nothing has really changed, you always knew it was going to be this way.

Matsuda Aoko: Where the Wild Ladies Are, transl. Polly Barton

I read this one for the online reading group of literature in translation, organised by Peirene and other independent publishers. Unfortunately, I lost the connection after the first 20 minutes or so and was unable to log back on, but I did enjoy hearing the translator Polly Barton and the publisher Tilted Axis talk about what attracted them to these stories.

Ghost stories are very popular in Japan – I’ve recently reread and reviewed Ugetsu Monogatari – and I certainly spotted that ‘story within a story’ narrative framework in some of the stories in this collection, as well as rakugo, Kabuki and other folktales used as inspiration. But the author does a brilliant job of turning those traditional stories on their head. In Japanese tradition, the vengeful spirit is nearly always a woman (who has been severely wronged, admittedly, but nevertheless seems vengeful beyond any reason). In Matsuda’s stories, the women are free agents, surprising, mainge unexpected choices or comments. The stories are set in the present-day, with modern, often eccentric flourishes, and they often end on an inconclusive note.

They have been hailed as ‘feminist retelling’ of folk tales, but the feminism is often subtle rather than screaming out loudly. The stories have all the joyful creativity, wilful darkness and inventiveness of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber or Anne Sexton herself in her little-known retellings of Grimm’s fairytales Transformations.

 

 

 

Quais du Polar 2 #QDP2020: Ayerdhal – Transparences

I attended Quais du Polar in Lyon in 2016, which was my last year in France. I knew I was going to miss both the festival and the French authors, so I asked one of the booksellers at the festival for a book recommendation. I wanted a book set in Lyon but one that was not too twee, not too much of a ‘cosy crime with lots of recipes’ (although I love that city’s gastronomic culture). They recommended this thriller by an author I’d never heard of, born and bred in Lyon, who had died all too prematurely in 2015.

I later found out that Yal Ayerdhal (born Marc Soulier, but commonly known by the surname of his pseudonym alone) was predominantly a science fiction writer, winner of multiple literary prizes, as well as an eloquent activist for protection of authors’ rights. Transparences was published in 2004 and was the author’s first incursion into thriller territory, although there are some sci-fi elements to it which purists may find disturbing. The action starts off in Lyon (with its Interpol headquarters), but the murders are on a global scale and soon we are traipsing off to the south of France, the US, to Greece, Canada and so on. 

Stephen Ballanger is a criminal profiler working for Interpol in Lyon, originally from Quebec (and therefore perfectly bilingual, which is an important plot point). He becomes obsessed with the case of Ann X, a young girl who was abused by her parents (and their best friends) and murdered all four of them at the age of twelve. She was put in a psychiatric institution but eventually killed someone there and tried to escape across the border. Although over the course of 12-13 years she seems to have engaged in a veritable murder spree (mostly people who tried to sexually abuse her or curtail her freedom in any way), nobody has been able to catch her… or indeed, even remember what she looked like. Details of her name or personal history have been redacted from her case file. Stephen’s collaborators believe she may have been recruited as a professional assassin by various spy agencies, but she also seems to be acting on her own.

So, just like in the Deon Meyer book I reviewed yesterday, we have a case of international spying and assassination, but this time we have a young, attractive female serial killer and a dysfunctional international team attempting to catch her (and none of the members of the team seem to trust each other, unlike Benny’s team). The sci-fi element of this book is that Ann X seems to be ‘perfectly transparent’, i.e. merge into the background, which means no one really knows what she looks like. Of course, she is a mistress of disguises, changing her hair and eye colour, her clothes and posture at will. But it seems that even CCTV and cameras are unable to capture her – and that seems far less plausible.

The book displays signs of what generally irks me about spy thrillers – the repetition. One killing after another, one chase after another, one near miss and then another. It’s only the location or the weapon that changes. I’m also not a great fan of complicated conspiracy theories, which seem to assume that governments and intelligence agencies are really competent. Yet there are some redeeming features, for example, the psychological manipulation between Stephen and Ann X towards the end of the book. Overall though, the book feels like it took on a theme that was a little too ambitious and didn’t quite do it justice. 

Emma and I are blogging every day that this year’s Quais du Polar (our favourite crime festival) was due to take place, 3-5 April. Join us if you like! Emma’s billet for today also is Lyon specific – have a read here.

Quais du Polar 1 #QDP2020: Deon Meyer’s Cobra, transl. K. L. Seegers

I’ve seen Deon Meyer at Quais du Polar a couple of times and he is a larger than life teddy bear of a man, so it’s quite surprising to see how hard-hitting and suspenseful his thrillers are. He once said that he regretted making his detective Benny Griessel an alcoholic loner, as he sometimes felt trapped by this portrayal. However, in this book, first published in English in 2014, Benny works very closely with his whole team, ‘a splendid representation of the Rainbow Nation’, as one of the characters remarks at one point. And he is almost completely happy with the new love of his life, singer/songwriter Alexa. That’s probably as good as it gets.

But not for long. Benny and his team soon get into hot water and have to use subterfuge to conduct their investigations. A British citizen goes missing from a top secret, luxury guesthouse on a wine farm not far from Cape Town. His bodyguards are shot dead. But was Paul Morris an innocent victim: his passport is brand new, as are his suitcase and clothes. The shell casings at the murder scene have a spitting cobra engraved on them – could that be the sign of an elite international assassin? And why are so many foreign intelligence agencies interested in this possible kidnapping?

At the lower end of the crime spectrum, Tyrone is a young pickpocket who is trying to fund his younger sister’s medical studies. It’s a typical case of the wrong place (or picking the wrong pocket) at the wrong time and soon Tyrone finds himself on the run, fearing for his sister’s life. The story culminates in a nerve-wracking chase on the metrorail between Cape Town and Bellville.

What I really like about Deon Meyer’s books is that they are always exciting, not at all preachy, but all the while providing an ample picture of life in post-apartheid South Africa, warts and all. Among all the breathless action, Benny is given to meditating about the place of law and order in society, and his own career in the police force during a time of tumultuous changes

…when you worked at Murder & Robbery, your role was spelled with a capital letter. What you did mattered. Part of his smugness was because he had started to run with the big dogs then. The living legends, the guys whose investigations, breakthroughs, interrogation techniques, and witticisms were passed on in seminars, tearooms and bars, with an awed shake of the head… But the longer he worked with them… the more he realised they had feet of clay.

It was a depressing process. He had tried to fight against it, rationalise it and suppress it. Later he realised that it was partly out of fear of the greater, inevitable disillusionment: if they were fallible, so was he. And so was the system.

Deon Meyer writes in Afrikaans (although he speaks English fluently) and the translation has a lot of Afrikaans expressions, including Cape Flats vernacular. So much so that there is a glossary at the back. (Fortunately, if you speak English and German – or Dutch, many of the expressions will sound familiar and you can deduce them from the context)

March 2020 Summary

Miserable. That’s it. The one word summary.

In fact, I should be grateful, because for me it hasn’t been too bad. I am not one of the brave and dedicated frontline key workers that I so much admire and whom we all depend on for what semblance of a normal life we still have: medical staff, pharmacists, supermarket workers, delivery drivers, public transport, utilities providers and of course teachers.

All I had to worry about, for the three weeks until the actual lockdown was my children still going to school (one of them on the train), and me bringing the disease back into the house, with my commute to London and having my office in a very public building which only closed down on the 20th of March. Of course, I also worry about my parents right at the other end of Europe, stuck in the capital city rather than in their house in the countryside (on the other hand, the hospitals are closer and better equipped in Bucharest), both with underlying health conditions and both approaching 80 very soon. Like any recently divorced parent with a very acrimonious financial settlement that is still hugely resented by the ex, I do worry about the possible practical consequences of me falling seriously ill. I may need to get in touch with a solicitor friend of mine and make a will.

Other than that: I’m used to food shortages, to curtailment of liberties, to being essentially under house arrest… it brings back memories of my childhood. Not fond ones, no: I have no ‘stiff upper lip and carry on’ nostalgia. But I know that we survived those times (some less gloriously than others), so I’m hopeful we can survive this. My boys are fortunately old enough to keep themselves occupied whether the school assigns a lot of work or not. We have adopted a new feline member of the family, sweet, elderly Barney, and we are busy trying to get our ‘only child’ Zoe to accept him.

However, my reading and writing have both dwindled considerably. Not only because I am extremely busy with work during the week and feel exhausted all the time. Not only because of the bouts of insomnia which continue to plague me (and probably everybody else at the moment). Almost certainly because I am scrolling helplessly and fruitlessly on my phone for far too long, but also because I find it difficult to concentrate on anything for longer than half an hour. Add to that the fact that WordPress has decided now is the right time to make changes to their writing and formatting of blog posts and a general sense of feeling ‘what’s the point’, and you can understand why I’ve not even updated my blog regularly.

If I look back at March, however, there have been some lovely moments which seem to be as far away now as if we were seeing them through the wrong end of a telescope. On the 1st of March, I was fortunate enough to see the kimono exhibition at the V&A and on the 11th of March the exhibition on the portrayal of pregnancy in art at the Foundling Museum. I also attended an immersive adaptation of The Time Machine on the beautiful premises of the London Library and reviewed the show just a week or so before it shut down. I’d probably have delayed going to see all of these if I hadn’t been jolted by others. Moral of the story: never put off things you enjoy doing because you ‘don’t have time right now’.

The London Book Fair was cancelled, but I had a meeting on the 11th with my fellow Corylus Books founders and we discussed plans for publishing and promoting books this year and the next. It is possibly the worst time to launch a new publishing house and bring out books in translation by authors that nobody has heard of (yet). We also have problems with the actual printing and distribution of physical copies. So, much as I hate having to link to Amazon, this is the only way to find the two books we already have out now. Perhaps later in the year we will be able to attend all those crime festivals and organise all those book launches that we had planned.

Zodiac by Anamaria Ionescu

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B083737YBC/

Living Candles by Teodora Matei

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Living-Candles-Bucharest-murder-mystery-ebook/dp/B0837YKCLN

 

Last but not least, I did read eleven books, and most of them have been of the lighter, more escapist variety, with quite a bit of armchair travelling.

Crime fiction:

Will Dean: Black River Tuva Moodyson is back in forlorn Gavrik in the north of Sweden at the height of Midsommar madness to try and find her missing friend. With a full cast of dodgy characters, including snakes, the author proves that the Swedish forests can be creepy regardless of the season.

Graeme Macrae Burnet: The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau Set in a sleepy provincial town on the Franco-Swiss border, not far from Strasbourg, this too is a creepy tale of loners, outsiders and personal obsessions.

David Young: Stasi 77 A series that I’ve really enjoyed, but somehow missed reading this particular book. The links to the end of the Second World War and hidden Nazis operating within the East German state were particularly harrowing (and historically accurate, although I wasn’t previously aware of it). Perhaps my favourite of the series thus far.

Murder in Midsummer  A collection of stories set in holiday locations (not always in summer, despite the title). Mostly famous authors, with lesser known stories. As always with such a collection, some of the stories are better than others, but overall a fun book to dip into.

Rebecca Bradley: A Deeper Song  DI Hannah Roberts is back with a bang and a sharp squeal of the brakes. Preoccupied by family problems, she nearly runs over a young man who darts out in front of her car. He is covered in someone else’s blood but cannot tell them anything, as the accident has provoked a temporary (?) amnesia. Soon Hannah herself is in danger and her team need to gather all of their wits and collaborative skills to find her.

Margot Kinberg: A Matter of Motive  A start of a new series by American author Margot Kinberg, featuring rookie murder investigator Patricia Stanley. A man is slumped over the steering wheel of his car, apparently the victim of a heart attack. Or was it? Both family and co-workers seem to have plenty of things to hide, although they keep emphasising what a nice guy Ron Clemons was.

Other:

Debbie Harry: Face It  She does not mince her words, does she? The beautiful, rebellious, cool as anything singer reveals as much as she damn well pleases in this memoir, including her vulnerabilities. Still an icon.

Malorie Blackman: Knife Edge  Second book in the Noughts and Crosses series, which I read to coincide with the TV adaptation. Such an interesting concept, although I did find the writing aimed at a younger audience than me.

Philip Pullman: The Book of Dust  I was smitten with the original trilogy but only got a chance to read this prequel now. An exciting story, even if we know the final outcome (that baby Lyra did end up safely at Jordan College). Above all, I like the rich descriptive, yet never dull style, which offers something for both adults and younger readers.

Tiffany Tsao: The Majesties  The story of a rich Indonesian family of Chinese descent, with a mass murder from the outset and a smidgen of science-fiction added into the mix. A wonderful book – about families, the lies we tell each other and tell ourselves, the differences between perceptions of the Chinese in the east and in the west… and about insects.

David Foenkinos: The Mystery of Henri Pick  An unexpectedly light and humorous offering by Foenkinos, satirizing the pretentiousness of the Parisian literary society. Could a pizza maker who never was seen reading a book truly have written an almost perfect novel? Erudite, charming, delightful.

Meanwhile, if you find my reading concentration anywhere, do let me know, won’t you? As you can see, I have a whole pile of books planned for April!

 

 

 

Paul Auster: Winter Journal

Late for the memoir February, late for the Auster reading week, but I’d borrowed this from the library and was intrigued enough to continue reading. It’s a rather lovely continuation of The Invention of Solitude, this time the mother’s side of the story, as well as more about both his first and second marriage. He certainly seems smitten with his second wife, a companionship and meeting of minds which sounds very appealing – although clearly there was a lot of friendship with the first wife too, but perhaps not quite so much love.

I’m not really in the mood for reviewing, so I’ll just list below a few quotes which stayed with me.

[about his mother] There were three of her, three separate women who seemed unconnected to one another… you never knew which mask she would be wearing on any given day. At one end, there was the diva, the sumptuously decked-out charmer who dazzled the world in public, the young woman with the obtuse, distracted husband who craved having the eyes of others upon her and would not allow herself – not anymore – to be boxed into the role of traditional housewife. In the middle, which was far and away the largest space she occupied, there was a solid and responsible being, a person of intelligence and compassion, the woman who took care of you… competent, genberous, observant of the world around her… At the other end… there was the frightened and debilitated neurotic, the helpless creature prey to blistering assaults of anxiety, the phobic whose incapacities grew as the years advanced

Aren’t we all made up of such contradictory multitudes? He is far less critical of his wife, however:

Little by little… you discovered that you saw eye to eye on nearly everything of any importance… Much to your relief, your personalities were nothing alike. She laughed more than you did, she was freer and more outgoing than you were, she was warmer than you were… you felt that you had met another version of yourself – but one that was more fully evolved than you were, better able to express what you kept bottled up inside you, a saner being.

And his description of their celebration of the 30th anniversary of when they first met sounds like my ideal relationship: they go to a hotel, eat the restaurant, drink champagne and talk and talk and talk ‘the long uninterrupted conversation that started the day you met’. Sharing ideas and feelings, especially about personal and cultural things, are what makes me dreamy… But I was most amused by his rant about the dangers of nostalgia.

You have no use for the good old days. Whenever you find yourself slipping into a nostalgic frame of mind, mourning the loss of the things that seemed to make life better then than it is now, you tell yourself to stop and think carefully, to look back at Then with the same crutiny you apply to looking at Now… Of course you have manifold grievances against the evils and stupidities of contemporary American life… the sacendency of the right, the injustices of the economy, the neglect of the environment, the collapsing infrastructure, the senselss wars, the barabarism of legalized torture and extraordinary renditions, the disintegration of impoversihed cities like Buffalo and Detroit… the ever-gorwing crevasse that divides the rich from the poor, not to speak of the junk films we are making, the junk food we are eating, the junk thoughts we are thinking…And yet, go back to the year of your birth and try and remember what America looked like in its golden age of postwar prosperity: Jim Crow laws in full force throughout the South, anti-Semitic quota restrictions, back-alley abortions… the trials of the Hollywood Ten, the Cold War, the Red Scare, the Bomb… Every moment in history is fraught with its own problems, its own injustices, and every period manufactures its own legends and pieties.

Monthly Summary – Comfort Reading

I know February has got 29 days this year, but I’m ready to end this month early. It’s been soggy and dark and with far too few signs of spring. All the more reason to indulge in escapist reading, not just Mary Stewart but also things such as:

Seishi Yokomizu: The Inugami Curse (aka The Inugami Clan, which would be closer to the original in Japanese) – a sort of And Then There Were None but all in the family, thanks to a rather strange and spiteful will. Much more about psychology than closed room puzzles and therefore more enjoyable to me than last month’s Japanese mystery.

Elizabeth George: A Banquet of Consequences – I used to pounce on each new novel by E. George as soon as it came out, but I somehow lost the plot a little after Careless in Red and have struggled – not very hard – to get back in. I’d previously put up with the suspension of disbelief that class still matters in the Metropolitan Police and the sometimes slightly touristy view of Britain (like Martha Grimes), also with the great length of the novels (because they made for interesting character development). But lately I’d been feeling they were getting too baggy and ever so slightly repetitive. While this one is not perfect (the Havers finding her groove sub-plot seems a little tagged on, for instance), the description of one of the most manipulative mothers in fiction and a truly dysfunctional family meant that I just couldn’t put this down and read it straight in two days.

Louise Penny: The Nature of the Beast – Purists might be shocked that I’ve read Louise Penny all out of order. I just read whichever book I can get my hands on and always enjoy a trip to Three Pines and becoming reacquainted with Gamache and his family and friends. This one came out in 2015/16 and I have a suspicion I had too many other things going on in my life at the time to be fully on the ball. It strikes me that there is a deep, deep sadness at the heart of Penny’s work, which contrasts with the cosy village atmosphere.

Brian Bilston: Diary of a Somebody – Many of you will have enjoyed Brian’s irreverent Twitter poetry. This is his first novel, about a hapless, bumbling middle-aged poet trying to navigate work, divorce and sharing custody of his son, book club and poetry club, and his arch-nemesis, the pretentious rival poet with the completely opaque poetry. It was trying a bit too hard to go for the laughs, so it gets a bit repetitive after all, but in small doses, it is very amusing.

Nicola Upson: London Rain – The mystery series featuring Josephine Tey has always been one of my (not so secret) pleasures, another one that I’ve read out of order. This one is set at the time of the coronation of George VI and features the BBC at the start of its glory period. Not my favourite of the series to date, but the recreation of the period feels very authentic.

Nick Bradley: The Cat and the City – a quirky, strange book with a series of interconnected characters and stories, all showing a rapidly changing Tokyo on the eve of the 2020 Olympic Games. On the whole, it manages to avoid most of the cliches about Japan that foreign authors are prone to fall into and does a good job of conveying the loneliness of the huge, anonymous city. It left me thoughtful and dreamy for a few days after finishing it. But be warned: there is a distressing scene involving a cat getting hurt!

In a way, I’ve continued the Japanese reading challenge theme – although sadly I won’t have time to reread The Makioka sisters with Meredith. If you do get a chance to read it, I’d really, really recommend it: imagine Chekhov’s Three Sisters blended with an unforgettable portrait of a rapidly modernising Japan in the early 20th century.

Helen Phillips: The Need – not strictly speaking the most comforting read, especially when you are a single mother with two children alone in a creaky house (luckily, my children are a bit older than the ones in this book). Less of a ghost or horror story than a sort of postmodern feminist tale, which will probably up your anxiety levels… about almost anything really!

To summarise: I read 16 books this month, of which 7 fall roughly into the memoir theme I had envisaged (if we count Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard and Kate Brigg’s This Little Art as quasi-memoirs too). I took part in #Fitzcarraldo Fortnight with just one book – the beautiful essay on translation as the ‘little art’ – and in the Paul Auster reading week with his early memoir The Invention of Solitude. 9 of the books I read this month were pure escapism, comfort reads, reflecting a much needed break for my poor brain after lots of translation and editing work. 11 of the books were by women authors, and only 2 were in translation (a deliberate choice, so that my head would be full of native English speakers and writers while I was trying to render a Romanian text into colloquial English).

Plans for next month? I’ll have finished editing the translation so can continue with my geographically themed reading. I’m thinking possibly Spain…

#FitzcarraldoFortnight: This Little Art

Kate Briggs: This Little Art

This delightful, quirky essay about literary translation by Kate Briggs, based on her own translation of Roland Barthes’ lecture notes (but moving far, far beyond that) was the perfect book at the perfect time for me, as I myself embark upon a journey as a professional literary translator. I have stuffed it full of little post-it notes, and will probably return to it again and again. It’s the kind of book that you never really finish reading – it is designed to stimulate your thought and your passion for words, language, for finding the right word.

There are far too many ideas here for me to do them justice, but here are some of the things that most resonated with me:

1. The translator is always demanding a suspension of disbelief from the reader – asking you to go along with the fiction that these characters are talking or thinking in English, that what you are reading is in fact the language of Barthes or Thomas Mann or anyone else.
2. Helen Lowe-Porter was Thomas Mann’s first translator into English and at the time her translations were phenomenally successful, but she has since been criticized for making mistakes, for changing things around, misleading the readers. There is a fierce rivalry (as well as comradeship) between translators, especially when it comes to classic writers, because it is quite hard to get funding for a new translation, how hard it is to fight copyright issues and publishers’ interests – and so to see someone else do a far worse translation and thereby block your chances of doing another one for perhaps 20-30 years… But, Briggs argues, who are we to decide what makes a good or bad translation? While it should be possible to correct obvious mistakes and offer alternatives, it should be done in a spirit of improvement – because can we really be sure that we are getting better at translation over time, rather than merely following a current fashion?
3. Translators may wish to transmit the original author’s voice as much as possible, but they will never be entirely neutral and impersonal instruments. They are always putting all of themselves – their background, experience, personality, emotions, associations – into the final work.
4. Yet translators need to be humble – the work itself humbles them every single time. Regardless of how much experience you might have translating, you always start each fresh work from a position of not knowing. You are opening yourself up to learning, to interpreting, to being curious and honest and self-critical.
5. A bit of a reality check: A translator’s work ‘is celebrated if and only if the work she is translating is worth celebrating; there is no celebrating her achievement from that of its original author. As a consequence of this… mediocre translators of successful books sometimes get unduly praised, while those more talented translators translating less visible works hardly get noticed at all.’
6. Some argue that there is one perfect translator for a particular book – or at least the right translator, who can truly get under the author’s skin. (I have the tendency to believe that about myself and Mihail Sebastian and am somewhat miffed that he has already been translated into English, see point 2 above). But Kate Briggs argues that books don’t come with designated translators, they don’t have built-in protocols or rules that you have to obey for success, otherwise you will be a failure. It’s about a million different tiny choices, and the same translator might make different choices a day or two later.

I hope that gives you a flavour of the book – and yes, it does refer to Barthes a lot, but it was never Barthes himself that I objected to, merely the pretentious young men at university who were forever quoting him as scaffolding for their own hastily built, shoddy work. I’ll end with a wonderful plea for more translated work, which chimes so well with my own beliefs:

Yes… do translations, for the simple reason that we need them. We need translations, urgently: it is through translation that we are able to reach the literature written in the languages we don’t or can’t read, from the places where we don’t or can’t live, offering us the chance of understanding as well as the necessary and instructive expereince of failing to understand them, of being confused and challenged by them.