What are we missing ?(2) Days of ziklag
16 Oct 2011 4 Comments
in days of ziklag Tags: hebrew fiction, isareli, NEW VOICES, TRANSLATIONS
The second in an occasional series of post about books and writers yet to hit us in English .This is the epic novel by S Yizhar published in 1958 ,I first came across this after reading his novella Khirbet Khizeh that Granta published I reviewed it here .Days of ziklag it also set in the Israeli war of independence and covers six days of that war ,follows a squad of the defence force and is told in a stream of consciousness style of story telling ,and is based oon a real area of conflict in that war .Now the main reason for it not being translated is probably its size that is 1100 pages in its original Hebrew,this means it would be a bit longer in English as it uses more vowels than Hebrew in its written language .Another is the time to translate It took Peter Nadas Translator Imra Goldstein 5 years to translate Parallel stories a book of similar length and like Hebrew from a language not connect to English in its origins .It is considered the greatest book on this conflict and the best in modern Israeli fiction classic so why hasn’t a publisher taken the dive and translated it ? for more info on S Yizhar here is a link to his wiki page .If anyone knows if rights have been sold and a translation is forth coming I be very interested to know .
Winstons coffee and muffins A challenge
07 Nov 2010 6 Comments
in book news, thoughts, TRANSLATIONS, ulrich holbein Tags: 2010, german lit, NEW VOICES, NOBEL LIT, prize winners, TRANSLATIONS
One day last week Meike from peierne press was highlighting a blog post on harvil secker about translation and wondered if any one could suggest some well I suggest one from German book list and also said that ulrich holbein was over due translation ,as I said in my post a few weeks ago. He shot up in Nobel betting which remind me of reading a short piece when I lived in Germany in a magazine about him .well the downshot of this discussion was a challenge from Meike to myself if I could some how generate interest in holbein and that people would want to read and buy this book by Germany’s most avant grade writer ,she will try and publish one of his shorter works in English well I tried to think of ways to highlight him and on the whole have drawn a blank so any one any ideas I d welcome a guest post from one my German friends about him below I ve collect a few pieces from German papers about him .I know Meike has been in touch with his German publishers and she is the first English publisher to show interest so if you want to help and want see Ulrich Holbein in English contact me or do a post about him !! it would be most welcome .
wiki entry from german wiki need use a translator to read in english
A collection of reviews from a german culture magazine
what are we missing ? Ulrich Holbein
06 Oct 2010 2 Comments
in thoughts, TRANSLATIONS, ulrich holbein, what are we missing Tags: german lit, NEW VOICES, prize winners, TRANSLATIONS
A flick through the nobel prize odds ,showed the German writer Ulrich Holbein shooting up the odds ,this made me, go who? So a quick twitter chat to a German friend and a look for him on web turned up some information ,he is experimental ,avant grade writer ,lives like a hermit in a small town near Kassel in the centre of Germany ,in a house full of books .His most famous book is Isis Entscheiert (Isis Unveiled ) a work assembled from other works ,in a clever variation on the cut up technique used by William S Burroughs .he has won a number of awards and has yet to be translated to English .I’m puzzled why a successful writer with at least 20 plus books written has yet to reach us in English ? Like the German book prize it shows how blotchy translation of works from German to English are .
This is a new feature were occasionally I ll highlight writers yet to reach english or need highlighting more
