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

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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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