books in translation – Page 4 – Gemma D. Alexander

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Bjork, books in translation, Bookslut, David McDuff, Icelandic authors, Isabel Chiara, poetry, Sjon, Spolia

Looking at the grave of the invisible man

Björk’s new album is deservedly getting a lot of attention, but there is another, much quieter release from an Icelandic artist – literally quieter. It’s not an album, it’s a poetry chapbook. Wait! Don’t go! I know what it sounds like. It sounds like photocopied, stapled pages sold out of a backpack on the sidewalk by attractive yet poorly groomed, self-absorbed youths. If you buy a copy (out of an impulse to support the arts, and greatness might appear anywhere, even in a homeless kid; or you want to help the homeless; or simply because you’re charmed by the poet’s combination of sincerity and homemade tattoos) inside the pages you will find verses without rhyme or meter or quite possibly, meaning. I know. That’s usually what it means. But I’m talking about Sjón here. Read More

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backlist books, book review, books in translation, Cultural Revolution, Hongling Zhang, Jason Sommer, Scribner, Tie Ning

Book Report: The Bathing Women

While helping my daughter navigate the graphic novel section at the International District Library, the cover of The Bathing Women on a nearby shelf caught my eye. I couldn’t resist a story about the intersecting lives of a group of women shaped by the Cultural Revolution. I read it almost in one sitting, gulping down the last chapter hours after my bedtime. Going to bed instead of reading the last chapter would have been a better choice.

Book Report: The Story of the Blue Planet

My latest dive into Icelandic literature is The Story of the Blue Planet by Andri Snær Magnason, translated by Julian Meldon D’Arcy. At first every Icelandic novel I read was infuriatingly opaque. But with this book, I feel like I’m starting to get the Icelandic novel.

Now the dreamlike atmosphere that so confused me in The Children of Reindeer Woods has started to feel familiar; sometimes I can tell when something is supposed to be funny; sometimes I can even decode the symbols. Of course, Blue Planet is a kids’ book.
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101 Reykjavik, backlist books, books in translation, Brian FitzGibbon, Hallgrimur Helgason, Icelandic authors

Book Report: 101 Reykjavík

You’re supposed to read the book first. The movie is never as good and it will limit your imagination when you do read the book. I know this. But I watched Baltasar Kormákur’s movie, 101 Reykjavík, before I knew it was based on Hallgrímur Helgason’s novel. I really liked the movie. It felt a lot like an Icelandic Slackers; that’s the primary difference between the book and the movie. Read More

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backlist books, books in translation, Heaven and Hell, Icelandic authors, Jón Kalman Stefánsson, MacLehose Press, Paradise Lost, Philip Roughton

Book Report: Heaven and Hell

Heaven and Hell is a ghost story. No, that’s not true. Heaven and Hell, by Icelandic novelist Jón Kalman Stefánsson, is merely narrated by ghosts. This tragic chorus of post-mortal souls belonging to an isolated fishing village bear witness to one boy’s tragic loss.

Heaven and Hell is a quiet, internal novel about a few crucial days in the life of a lonely boy who loses his only friend. No, that’s not true. In Heaven and Hell, translated by Philip Roughton, the boy’s friend, Bárður, makes a fatal mistake while preoccupied with the words in a borrowed book, and the boy risks his own life to return the copy of Paradise Lost. These are only the events in the book.

Heaven and Hell, like the book that killed Bárður, is an epic poem revolving around the very central questions of existence: Why bother living, when it is so hard? Why should we who live be allowed to do so when so many others are dead? Is it even possible to be truly alive when we are truly alone?

When there is a choice between life and death, most choose life.

This much is certain. But almost nothing else is. Read More

Tag Archive books in translation

Looking at the grave of the invisible man