Spotlight on Translation: August Edition

In this, our sixth monthly spotlight, you’ll find deeply engaged reviews of novels translated from Arabic of Sonallah Ibrahim, the German of Heike Geissler, the Japanese of Mieko Kawakami, and the Italian of Marina Jarre; considerations of Alfred Döblin’s pioneering climate fiction and of Marguerite Duras’s film project The Darkroom; a profile of the French feminist punk author Virginie Despentes; a look at the complicated history of Jewish Bible translations; richly contextualized takes on two recent renditions from Argentine Spanish, a novel by Betina González and a collection of poems by Susana Thénon; as well as meditations on aging and sexuality in Clarice Lispector’s short stories and on the young Billy Wilder’s longing for American kitsch.

— Boris Dralyuk, Editor-in-Chief

This digest is part of our year-round celebration of our 10th anniversary. To celebrate with us, please visit our anniversary page!

Photograph of mural in Prior Health Science Library, Ohio State University, by Ehschnell.

Love and Revolution: On Sonallah Ibrahim’s “Warda”
Informed by extensive historical research, this complicated political tale is told as a personal quest.
Aug 5, 2021
Work in the Age of Amazon: Heike Geissler’s “Seasonal Associate” and Other Low-Paid Toilers
Recent events in the American labor movement make Geissler’s 2014 book newly relevant.
Aug 7, 2021
Punishment Is Coming: On Mieko Kawakami’s “Heaven”
Mieko Kawakami’s novel “Heaven” explores the sufferings and cruelties of adolescence.
Jul 19, 2021
Tiny Pinpoint Glimmers: On Marina Jarre’s “Distant Fathers”
This elliptical memoir is the first English translation of a major modern Italian author.
Jul 30, 2021
Alfred Döblin’s Anthropocene
Alfred Döblin’s 1924 futuristic dystopian novel “Mountains Oceans Giants: An Epic of the 27th Century” is really a history of the present.
Jul 9, 2021
The Need to Talk: On Marguerite Duras’s “The Darkroom”
“The Darkroom” is a critique of aesthetics and politics, and a meditation on the end of the world.
Jul 30, 2021
Community as Protagonist: Talking with Virginie Despentes
In Virginie Despentes’s Vernon Subutext Trilogy, the hero is the posse.
Jul 27, 2021
The Fallacies of “Progress”: On Leonard Greenspoon’s “Jewish Bible Translations”
The “literal meaning” of a sacred text does not exist separate from rabbinic opinion.
Jul 25, 2021
The Passion of the Taxidermist: On Betina González’s “American Delirium”
A psychedelic, absurdist parable about getting in touch with our animal selves.
Jul 9, 2021
Resistance and Rhetoric in Susana Thénon’s “Ova Completa”
The Argentinian feminist poet had a harsh, yet oddly hopeful, view of humanity.
Aug 1, 2021
The Stolen Joys of the Body: Aging and Sexuality in Clarice Lispector’s Short Stories
Lispector confronts the pleasures and perils of the aging female body with startling honesty.
Jul 13, 2021
Billy Wilder Longs for American Kitsch
Billy Wilder imagined America in writing before he ever set foot in Hollywood.
Jul 10, 2021