SUGGESTED FICTION IN TRANSLATION

Daniel Anselme, On Leave: A Novel, translated from the French by David Bellos (New York: Faber & Faber, 2014) (From the bookjacket: "Spare, forceful, and moving, [On Leave] describes a week in the lives of a sergeant, a corporal, and an infantryman, each home on leave to Paris. What these soldiers have to say can't be heard, can't even be spoken; they find themselves strangers in their own city, unmoored from their lives. Full of sympathy and feeling, informed by the many hours Daniel Anselme spent talking to conscripts in Paris, On Leave is a timeless evocation of what the history books can never fully record: the shame and terror felt by men returning home from war.").

Alejo Carpentier, The Chase, translated from the Spanish by Alfred Mac Adam (New York: The Noonday Press/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990).

Alejo Carpentier, Explosion in a Cathedral: A Novel, translated from the Spanish by John Sturrock (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1979).

Alejo Carpentier, The Harp and the Shadow: A Novel, translated from the Spanish by Thomas Christensen & Carol Christensen (San Francisco: Mercury House, 1990) (From the "Translators' Preface": "In a Latin American village, Indian dancer put on painted wooden masks with fair skin, blue eyes, and blond beards. They dress in the elaborate Renaissance fashions worn by Spanish conquistadors expecting to meet the Grand Khan of the Indies. So begins, in the eternal present of the festival, a new discovery, a ritual reenactment of the conquest of the Americas. It is an incongruous but not unusual scene, for in Latin America the conquest remains a part of daily life, and signs of it are everywhere: In Mexico, Christian churches rise on the foundation of Aztec temples; in Central America, Mayan people praise the hero Tecun Uman, defeater of the villainous Pedro de Alvarado, and remain largely unconquered; in South America, Inca gold, melted and recast in the form of saints, adorns the most glorious cathedral altars." "In North America, by contrast, the conquest is an abstraction, obscured by Hallmark images of Mayflower-landings and blunderbuss-and-buckle-bedecked forefathers dining thankfully with feathered, moccasined savages who have stepped from the pages of Lamartine and Cooper. We have forgotten our origins, rejected and expunged our native heritage; our imagination only takes hold centuries later, with the pioneer movement west." Id. at xi-xii.).

Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of This World, translated from the Spanish by Harriet de Onis (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989).

Alejo Carpentier, The Lost Steps, translated form the Spanish by Harriet de Onis, introduction by Timothy Brennan (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press,  2001) ("We had fallen upon the era of the Wasp-Man, the No-Man, when souls were no longer sold to the Devil, but to the Bookkeeper or the Galley Master." Id. at 9.).

Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch; Blow-up; We Love Glenda So Much, introduction by Ilan Stavans (New York: Everyman's Library, 2014) (From Hopscotch: "Stopping in front of a pizzeria at 1300 Corrientes, Oliveira asked himself the great question: 'Must one stay in the center of the crossroads, then, like the hub of a wheel? What is it to know or to think we know that every road is false if we don't walk with an idea that is not the road itself? We're not Buddha, and there are no trees to sit under in the lotus position. A cop appears and asks for your identity card.'"Id. at 1, 300-301.).

Nawal El-Saadawi, The Fall of the Imam, translated from the Arabic by Sherif Hetata (London: Saqi Books, 2002) (From the bookcover: "Who will overthrow the Imam? Who will defeat the oppression, the tyranny, the injustice and the killings? . . . Then, who is the Imam? Is he the man, the male, the father, the husband, the ruler, the leader? Bint Allah (the Daughter of God), a beautiful illegitimate girl, a child of sin, looked down upon by those around her is falsely accused by the Imam of adulterous relationships and sentenced to death by stoning. This powerful and poetic novel by Egypt's leading feminist writer reveals the underlying hypocrisy of a male-dominated religious state, and raises awareness of the insufferable predicament of women in a society which will ultimately self-destruct.").

Phyllis Granoff, ed., The Forest of Thieves and the Magic Garden: An Anthology of Medieval Jain Stories, selected, translated and Introduction by Phyllis Granoff (New York: Penguin Books, 1998) (From backcover: "The stories collected in this volume reflect the rich tradition of medieval Jain storytelling between the seventh and fifteenth centuries, from simple folk tales and lives of famous monks to sophisticated narratives of rebirth. They describe the ways in which a path to peace and bliss can be found, either by renouncing the world or by following Jain ethics of non-violence, honesty, moderation and fidelity. Here are stories depicting the painful consequences when a loved one chooses life as a monk, the triumph of Jain women who win over their husbands to their religion, or the rewards of a simple act of piety. The volume ends with an account of vice and virtue, which depicts the thieving and destructive passions lurking in the forest of life, ready to rob the unsuspecting traveller of reason and virtue.").

Gunter Grass, Crabwalk: A Novel, translated from the German by Krishna Winston (New York: Harcourt, 2003) ("The chat room promptly filled with hate. 'Jewish scum' and 'Auschwitz liar' were the mildest insults. As the sinking of the ship was dredged up for a new generation, the long-submerged hate slogan 'Death to all Jews' bubbled to the digital surface of contemporary reality: foaming hate, a maelstrom of hate. Good God! How much of this has been damned up all this time, is growing day by day, building pressure for action." "My son, however, showed restraint. His tone was quite polite when he inquired, 'So tell me, David, is it possible that you're of Jewish descent?' The response was ambiguous" 'My dear Wilhelm, if it will give you pleasure or help you in some other way, you can send me to the gas chamber the next time an occasion arises.'" Id. at 160. "Did my son hate me? Was Konny even capable of hate? Several times he denied hating the Jews. I am inclined to speak of Konny's matter-of-fact hate. Hate turned down low. An eternal flame. A hate devoid of passion, reproducing itself asexually." Id. at 210.).

Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa, The Professor and the Siren, translated from the Italian by  Stephen Twilley, introduction by Marina Warner (New York: New York Review Books, 2014).

Simon Leys, The Death of Napoleon: A Novel, translated from the French by Patricia Clancy & Simon Leys (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1991).

Henning Mankell, An Event in Autumn (A Kurt Wallender Mystery), translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson (New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard,  2013).

Anna Seghers, Transit, translated from the German by Margo Bettauer Dembo, introduction by Peter Conrad, afterword by Heinrich (New York: New York Review Books, 2013).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: TRIBAL VIOLENCE

Larry McMurtry, Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West: 1846-1890 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005) ("Americans' lack of passion for history is well known. History may not quite be bunk, as Henry Ford suggested, but there's no denying that, as a people, we sustain a passionate concentration on the present and the future." "Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look--historical ignorance remains a national characteristic." Id. at 40. "To some extent, perhaps, it is human nature to think the worst about those who are not as we are. Tribalism was an instinct and an organizing principle for so long that it is planted deep in the human psyche. It can rarely be civilized out of us." Id. at 58. Sand Creek, November 29, 1894.  "I an not sure that Sand Creek admits of any conclusions. Two peoples with widely differing cultures were rubbing against each other, constantly and insistently. The Indians were trying to defend their cherished way of life, the whites to make that way of life vanish so they could go on with their settling, farming, town-building, etc." "On a word scale countless massacres have been perpetrated over those and similar issues. land is frequently a principal element in these disputes. It is my land or your land, our land or their land? Time after time, in the Balkans, India, Pakistan, Kashmir, the Middle East, large parts of Africa,the same concerns develop. People don't deem to be good at sharing land, even when there's a lot of it to share. Where land is in dispute massacres are just waiting to happen-it 's only a question of time, and usually not much time at that." Id. at 113.).

A TASTE OF BOLANO

Chris Andrews, Roberto Bolano's Fiction: An Expanding Universe (New York: Columbia U. Press, 2014).

Roberto Bolano, The Romantic Dogs: 1980-1998, translated from the Spanish by Laura Healy (New York: New Directions, 2006).

Roberto Bolano, The Secret of Evil, translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews with Natasha Wimmer (New York: New Directions, 2012).

Roberto Bolano, Tres, translated from the Spanish by Laura Healy (New York: New Directions, 2011) ("El viejo moment denominate 'Nel, Majo.' That age-old moment they call 'Fat Chance, hon.'" Id. at 60-61).

SOME READINGS FROM THE FOLIO SOCIETY

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange, Introduction by Irvine Welsh, Illustrated by Ben Jones (London: The Folio Society, 2014) ("'But the essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man.' . . . 'we shall have a few people in to see you tomorrow. I think you can be used, poor boy. I think you can help dislodge this overbearing Government. To turn a decent young man into a piece of clockwork should not, surely, be seen as any triumph for any government, save one that boasts of its repressiveness.'" Id. at 164.).

Geoffrey Household, Rogue Male, Introduction by John Banville, Illustrations by David Rooney (London: The Folio Society, 2013).

A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, with wood engravings by Agnes Miller Parker (London: The Folio Society, 2014).

Freya Stark, The Southern Gate: A Journey in the Hadhramaut, Introduction by Sara Wheeler (London: The Folio Society, 2014) ("'You were right,' he said. 'The Sultan is the best man in this neighborhood. He is a friend of ours. And as for the Governor, poor man--one does not listen to him: he knows no History.'" Id. at 220. "But there are two impulses stronger than desire, deeper than love of man or woman, and independent of it--the human hunger for truth and liberty. For these two, greater sacrifices are made than for any love of person; against them nothing can prevail, since love and life itself have proved themselves light in the balance; and the creature man is ever ready to refute the Matter-of-Fact Realist and his statistics by sacrificing all he has for some abstract idea of wisdom or freedom, unprofitable in every mercenary scale." "What with popular lectures, compulsory instruction and the belief that one is educated if one can read and write, we sometimes forget that this hunger of our soul exists: but in the Wadi 'And it is difficult to satisfy, and therefore more easily recognized for what it is, and the two Sayyids were not surprised to find that I should travel from Europe to the Hadhramaut in pursuit of their ancient learning. . . . 'Here you must come for months,' they sad, 'to study.'" Id. at 231-232.).

Josephine Tey, The Singing Sands, Introduction by Val McDermid, Illlustrated by Mark Smith (London: The Folio Society, 2014).