“The novel is narrated as an episodic composite, linked by the author’s narrative conceit: a persistent Argentinian journalist has been seeking to interview elusive, reclusive Watanabe.” Ellen Prentiss Cambell reviews Fracture, by Andrés Neuman.
Andre Dubus’s Italian translator, Nicola Manuppelli, describes how he came to work with short story master’s writing, and interviews the author’s son, Andre Dubus III.
“What color is a heartbeat? What does a word taste like? What is the fragrance of happiness?” Julian Anderson reviews Andreas Izquierdo’s recent novel, The Happiness Bureau, translated from the German by Rachel Hildebrandt.
“In Slimani’s novel, the burden placed upon women to care for children balances alongside the treatment and perceptions of immigrant women. And rendering these issues to subtext, rather than treating them head-on and politically, the narrative forces the reader to become complicit in the shoddy treatment of others for the sake of convenience and creature comforts.”
In the introduction to their forthcoming translation of Apollo in the Grass: Selected Poems, by Aleksandr Kushner, Carol Ueland and Robert Carnevale write that “translators simply have to admit that most of the music of most all lyric poetry, and most of its phenomenal presence, stay at home, in the native tongue. But ‘music of language’ is a metaphor.” Ian Singleton examines how this claim plays out in their translation of Kushner’s poetry.
“No relationship is entirely transparent. More important, our understandings of relationships evolve and shift—knowledge dawns on us, bit by bit with new information, context, and different points of view. How two bodies interact in unseeable places and ways can tell an entire story, whether particular…or universal.”
“There is an experience it implies, a weary worldliness with which many writers aspire to imbue their characters.”
Thanks to an unusual collaboration between two translators, Marguerite Duras’ 1971 novel L’Amour has been translated into English for the first time.
Peter Stamm’s collected stories in translation contain brutal—and beautiful—truths.
Hello again, FWR friends. Welcome to the latest installment of our “First Looks” series, which highlights soon-to-be released books that have piqued my interest as a reader-who-writes. We publish “First Looks” here on the FWR blog around the 15th of each month, and as always, I’d love to hear your comments and your recommendations of forthcoming titles. Please drop me a line anytime: erika(at)fictionwritersreview(dot)com, and thanks in advance. Requiem, by Frances Itani: We try to spotlight emerging authors here at FWR, and I thought I was living up to that mission when I began looking into Requiem, by the Canadian […]
Surprising Things Can Happen: An Interview with Kristen Roupenian
Part of a Bigger Conversation: An Interview with Rebecca Makkai
If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi: An Interview with Neel Patel
Sometimes Taking Things Out Counts as Writing: an Interview with Celeste Ng
Influences: An Interview with Tobias Wolff
Stories We Love: “Blue Lenses,” by Daphne Du Maurier
Stories We Love: “White Angel,” by Michael Cunningham
Stories We Love: Donald Barthelme’s “The School,” In Which is Revealed the Meaning of Life
Stories We Love: "A Small, Good Thing" by Raymond Carver
Stories We Love: "The Fall River Axe Murders," by Angela Carter
