The latest news about our gripping crime fiction, thrillers and mysteries, detective books, crime stories and page-turning books.
Amanda Hopkinson, translator from Spanish of “Rage” by the Argentine novelist Sergio Bizzio: "A translator may suspect s/he is in for trouble when even the title of the next book gives rise to some musing. Rabia means both ‘rage’ and ‘rabies’..."
Whenever I’m asked for an example of a spicy Polish phrase, the idiom that comes to mind is one that I first encountered in “A Grain of Truth” by Zygmunt Miłoszewski. You’ll find it on page 79, when the main character, Prosecutor Szacki, is relieved to hear that his boss will deal with the journalists asking awkward questions about his case. “Not his circus, not his monkeys”, he thinks – not his problem....
Emily Read, much-acclaimed translator from the French, about translating The Family by Tonino Benacquista, made into a film with Robert de Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer and Tommy Lee Jones.
Peter Bush, award-winning translator from Spanish and Catalan, about the challenges of translating Havana Red, the first in Leonardo Padura’s Havana Quartet.
What are the little things that are getting you through this extraordinary time?
I ride an exercise bike, dance, cook. I reread great sagas which allow me to escape the real world, I who defend the literature of the real (black, social) more often than that of the "imaginary-escape". I have skype drinks with a group of friends every evening at the same time. I make plans for a post-Corona world, differently than what I would have done without this epidemic and its consequences. I believe that we will have to change things in-depth, and that we will come out different (and that it is desirable).
- Which historical writer would you find it difficult to be self-isolating with? And why?
Charles Dickens. A genius and a tricky man with whom to share a domestic space. Everything revolved around him: silence when required, likewise food and entertainment. So, despite immense admiration, I’d find it difficult so thoroughly to sacrifice my own modest routines and needs to this sort of control. Dickens chose the décor and furniture in his houses, even the wallpaper, worktables, curtains and chairs in his daughters’ bedrooms.
So, I will live with his superb novels rather than imagining anything closer.
