Category Archives: World Literature

BOOKS: “Language” by Xiaolu Guo

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LanguageLanguage by Xiaolu Guo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site

This book is excerpted from a full-length novel entitled, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, and it conveys what it’s like to be a stranger in a strange land — particularly when one has only a rudimentary grasp of the local language. Specifically, the story revolves around a young Chinese woman who moves to London to pursue her studies. In London, the young woman becomes involved with an older man, and much of the story looks at how culture — and particularly language — impacts the nature of the relationship. (And, also, how being in a relationship with a native of her new home impacts her language learning.)

Perhaps the most important factor influencing whether a reader will like or loath this book is how one feels about reading broken English. Like the dialectic poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, this book isn’t written in grammatically correct standard English. The broken – “learner’s” – English is quite effective at conveying the struggle of language learning and how culture and language are intertwined. But if reading grammatically incorrect writing gives you a headache, then this book is not for you.

As for why this book consists of excerpts, it’s part of a series called “Vintage Minis” that consists of short (or excerpted) works from prominent authors from around the globe, generally with a straightforward unifying theme. [Vintage Classics is an imprint of Penguin Random House.] The fact that the book was an excerpt didn’t create a problem for me. The origin material is a literary fiction novel and doesn’t seem to be significantly plot-driven. It’s much more character-driven, and thus getting a limited picture doesn’t open up a lot of unanswered questions about what will come next. In other words, it felt like it could have been a full piece of short, character-driven literary fiction.

I enjoyed reading this slim volume. I think it offers interesting insight into being a language learner abroad. If you’re interested in the challenges of language and culture in an unfamiliar place, this thin book is well worth reading.

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“A Recluse” by Wang Changling / Amy Lowell [w/ Audio]

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A cold rain blurs the edges of the river.
 Night enters Wu.
 In the level brightness of dawn
 I saw my friend start alone for the Ch'u mountain.
  I gave him this message for my friends and relations:
  My heart is a piece of ice in a jade cup.
This is the Amy Lowell translation of a poem by Tang Dynasty Poet, Wang Changling (王昌齡) --a.k.a. Shaobo (少伯)

“An Akan Lullaby” by Anonymous [w/ Audio]

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Someone would like to have you for her child
   but you are mine.
 Someone would like to rear you on a costly mat
   but you are mine.
 Someone would like to place you on a camel blanket
   but you are mine.
 I have you to rear on a torn old mat.
 Someone would like to have you as her child
   but you are mine.

NOTE: I have no specific author or translator information for this poem. (The former may not be surprising as it may be lost to history.) At any rate, my source is Classic Poems to Read Aloud, an anthology selected by James Berry (1995; Kingfisher Publications,) and it was titled “Lullaby.” That book cites a Cambridge University Press volume entitled African Poetry, edited by Ulli Beier, as its source.

BOOKS: “Best Literary Translations 2024” ed. by Jane Hirschfield, et. al.

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Best Literary Translations 2024Best Literary Translations 2024 by Jane Hirshfield
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site

This “best of” annual celebrates the unsung translator. Many of the original works are recent but some are old or even ancient; it is these translations to English that are in all cases recent. Spanish and Arabic translations are well-represented, but with respect to the twenty or so languages included, almost all are the sole representative for that particular source language. Poetry makes up the bulk of the collection (including prose poems,) but there are several pieces of short fiction and a piece of creative nonfiction or two.

Among my favorites were: “Grazing Land” (Greek,) “The Snail’s Spiral” (Spanish,) “The Lion” (Kurdish,) “Deterioration” (Persian,) “Graceless” (Chinese,) “Our Village” (Tigrinya,) and “The Sea Krait” (Tagalog.) But, as one would expect of a carefully curated “best of” collection, there were no stinkers in the batch.

If you enjoy literature in translation, this book is well worth investigating.

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In Flanders Fields by John McCrae

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In Flanders fields the poppies blow
 Between the crosses, row on row,
      That mark our place; and in the sky
      The larks, still bravely singing, fly
  Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
  We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
       Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
          In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
   To you from failing hands we throw
       The torch; be yours to hold it high. 
       If ye break faith with us who die
    We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
         In Flanders fields.

BOOK REVIEW: The Translations of Seamus Heaney by various [Trans. by Seamus Heaney / Ed. by Marco Sonzogi]

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The Translations of Seamus HeaneyThe Translations of Seamus Heaney by Seamus Heaney
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

Release Date: March 21, 2023 [for the reviewed edition]

I’d read Heaney’s approachable yet linguistically elegant translation of Beowulf long ago, and was excited to see this collection of his translations coming out. The one hundred pieces gathered make for a diverse work, from single stanza poems to epic narratives and timed from Ancient Greece through modernity. The pieces include works from well-known poets such as Baudelaire, Cavafy, Dante, Brodsky, Horace, Sophocles, Ovid, Pushkin, Rilke, and Virgil. But most readers will find new loves among the many poets who aren’t as well-known in the English-reading world, including Irish and Old English poets. I was floored by the pieces by Ana Blandiana, a prolific Romanian poet who’s a household name in Bucharest, though not so well-known beyond.

I’d highly recommend this anthology for poetry readers. Besides gorgeous and clever use of language, the power of story wasn’t lost on Heaney and his tellings of Antigone (titled herein as “The Burial at Thebes,) Beowulf, Philoctetes (titled “The Cure at Troy,”) and others are gripping and well-told.


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BOOK REVIEW: 100 Poems to Break Your Heart ed. Edward Hirsch

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100 Poems to Break Your Heart100 Poems to Break Your Heart by Edward Hirsch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Release Date: January 31, 2023

This anthology (and the accompanying analytical essays by Hirsch) covers over two-hundred years of poetry and works with a large set of translated languages as well as poems of English language origin. Therefore, the poems include an eclectic set of forms and schools of poetry. There are narrative poems and philosophical poems. There are sparse poems and elaborate poems. Besides the fact that they are all short to intermediate length poems (a few pages, at most,) the only thing the included poems have in common is some serious subject matter at each poem’s core. There are elegies and cathartic poems of illness or ended relationships, as well as tales of various types of tragedy (personal, global, and of scales in between.)

That said, not all of the poems feature a dark and melancholic tone. There are several poems that are humorous — in a gallows humor sort of way. Such poems include: Dunya Mikhail’s “The War Works Hard,” Harryette Mullen’s “We Are Not Responsible,” and Stanley Kunitz’s “Halley’s Comet.”

Of course, there are many poems that are as devastatingly sad as the title leads one to expect. Of these, Eavan Boland’s “Quarantine,” the story of a man carrying his illness-ravaged wife in search of survival during a famine in Ireland in 1847 takes the award for saddest. There are poems in this book that are more brutal, encompass vaster scales of suffering, or combine lyrical skill and emotional experience more artfully. But none of those poems socked me in the chest like Boland’s. One thing that struck me during my reading was what an intense force multiplier story is in creating poignant poems. Several others among my favorites told stories that made for visceral reads. These include: “Song” by Brigit Pageen Kelly, “The Race” by Sharon Olds, “Terminus” by Nicholas Christopher (also among the most savage tear-jerkers,) and “The Gas-Poker” by Thom Gunn.

Other favorites include: Langston Hughes’s “Song for a Dark Girl,” Miklós Radnóti’s “The Fifth Eclogue,” Stevie Smith’s “Not Waving but Drowning,” and “Mendocino Rose” by Garrett Hongo.

I’d highly recommend this book for poetry readers.


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BOOK REVIEW: Eastbound Maylis de Kerangal

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EastboundEastbound by Maylis de Kerangal
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Release of Paperback Edition: February 7, 2023

This novella is translated from French but set in Russia. The story is short and simple, yet evocative. It’s about the attempt of its two main characters to conduct very different plans of escape. Aliocha is a soldier who’s traveling by train to a remote assignment in the East when he decides to desert. Aliocha’s desertion plan ends up hinging on the assistance of a foreign woman, Hélène, a French woman who – as it happens – is fleeing a failed relationship. For whatever reason, but perhaps because she knows the intense need to break free, Hélène decides to shelter Aliocha in her cabin until he can make clean getaway.

This is a quick but intense read. The lack of common language between the two escapees makes for an austere telling, one that adds to the emotional tone of the story. I recommend it for readers of literature in translation.


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BOOK REVIEW: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka

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A Short History of Tractors in UkrainianA Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This is a comedy of family dysfunction. The family consists of Cold War era immigrants to England from Ukraine. One adult daughter (Nadezhda) narrates the story, which about how her estranged relationship with her sister (Vera) is renewed through battle with a common enemy, Valentina, the gold-digging Ukrainian woman (younger than either sister) who’s moving in with the sisters’ eighty-four-year-old father.

There’re a few divides that generate the story’s tension. First, Vera grew up with war during her formative years, while Nadezhda was a child of the post-war peace. This informs how each sees the world and the other. Vera sees her younger sister as a naïve bleeding-heart socialist, while Nadezhda sees Vera as a cold and distrusting Thatcherite scoundrel. Second, there’s the chasm between established immigrant and new arrival, the former feeling that they kept their heads down, did the work, assimilated, and earned their status as citizens, while feeling someone like Valentina is tricking her way in and expecting to be handed all the perks of first-world living without working for them. Finally, there’s the gap between what a new immigrant expects life is like in a wealthy country, and what it’s actually like. Valentina has a television view of England that assumes the characters she sees are typical.

The story is funny, but occasionally poignant – e.g. as when we learn the family’s war-torn backstory or even when Valentina is shown in a more sympathetic light by our “bleeding-heart” narrator, who waivers between her family obligation self (who despises Valentina) and her socialist-feminist self (who empathizes with Valentina to some degree.)

I’d recommend this book for readers of literary fiction. It’s well-crafted and humorous. But it’s literary fiction, so if you need your characters likable and your plot strong, you may find it a bit dull.


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BOOK REVIEW: Animals in Our Days by Mohamed Makhzangi

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Animals in Our DaysAnimals in Our Days by Mohamed Makhzangi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Out: June 14, 2022

Besides being animal-themed or animal-centric to varying degrees, there are a couple of other features common to the stories in this translated collection from Egyptian author, Mohamed Makhzangi. First, it’s truly international in terms of settings. In addition to stories that take place closer to the author’s (i.e. in the Middle East,) there are tales set in Bangkok, Jaipur, Windhoek, and undefined but evocative locales that all feel based on the author’s travels. Second, the stories tend to have a dreamy, surreal quality and / or speculative elements – i.e. they aren’t strictly realist, but more magical realist. At times, stories read like Kafka (e.g. “Brass Grasshoppers”) and at other times like a fairy tale (e.g. “White Bears / Black Bears.”) Where the stories vary is with respect to theme, from war to alienation to the interconnectedness of nature.

The translation by Chip Rossetti is highly readable, and the stories are well-crafted, engaging, and often thought-provoking. I’d recommend this for all readers of short fiction.


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