Best of 2013: Translations into English

2013 Translations Read:

Yoko Ogawa, Revenge

Angélica Gorodischer, Tráfalgar

Ismail Kadare, The Fall of the Stone City

Xu Lei, Search for the Buried Bomber

Pierre Grimbert, The Secret of Ji:  Six Heirs

Nihad Sirees, The Silence and the Roar

Jean-Marie Blas de Robles, Where Tigers are at Home

Sinan Antoon, The Corpse Washer

Martín Arias and Martín Hadis, Professor Borges:  A Course on English Literature

Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump

Inga Ābele, High Tide 

Liliana Bodoc, The Days of the Deer 

Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone 

László Krasznahorkai, Seiobo There Below 

Jyrki Vainonen, The Explorer & Other Stories 

Leena Krohn, Datura 

Andrzej Sapkowski, The Time of Contempt 
João Cerqueira, The Tragedy of Fidel Castro

Edit:  Translators for these titles are listed in the comments to this post.
 
I read more translated works, both fiction and non-fiction alike, in 2013 than I had in recent years.  Yet even this list does not contain every book that I've read that saw an English translation this year (Javier Marías' Infatuations is one prominent example, although as good as that tale was, it would not have made my shortlist of three works), plus there is another book, Zoran Živković's Find Me (a sequel to The Last Book), that I got to read before its English publication (and that one would have possibly cracked the top 5, if not the top 3).

The translations here ranged from autobiographies such as Naoki Higashida's insightful look into his life as a teen in Japan with autism (I credit this memoir with helping me immensely with one of my current jobs) to philosophical meanderings (Leopardi's Zibaldone, which I also read in Italian this year) to various "genre" offerings (the mystery elements present in High Tide to the SF of Tráfalgar to the high fantasy of The Days of the Deer and The Time of Contempt) and all other points in-between and around (such as Datura).  It is difficult to choose the very "best" from this list due to the diversity of the genres listed and the various tastes that readers might have (if anything, I could note a few that were not my favorites, although they were decent reads and would appeal to some readers:  The Secret of Ji, Search for the Buried Bomber), but below are three works, only one of which I have reviewed before, that I would consider to be the Best of 2013 for translations into English:

3.  Sinan Antoon, The Corpse Washer

This harrowing look at the effects of war and terrorism has lingered with me even more than has Nihad Siree's The Silence and the Roar (which does a very good job laying out the crumbling situation in Syria).  See the full review for my thoughts.

2.  Jean-Marie Blas de Robles, Where Tigers are at Home

This 2013 US release was one of the more monumental reads of the year.  Blas de Robles tells what appears to be two stories in parallel, that of a 17th century philosopher/scientist and a contemporary scientist, both engaged in attempting to solve mysteries, but the tale soon becomes that about how we conceive of information systems and knowledge itself.  It sounds extremely complex to explain in a single paragraph, but what Blas de Robles does is create a magnificently-woven tapestry of images and concepts that sucks the reader into its weaving, leaving the reader bedazzled at what she encounters.  I enjoyed this work so much in translation that I sought out the French original a few months later to read it anew.

1.  László Krasznahorkai, Seiobo There Below

I am planning on doing a series of reviews next year of Krasznahorkai's works, but this novel (his fourth to be translated into English) is a true literary beauty.  Readers familiar with his labyrinthine sentences will encounter even more subtlety of expression and meaning (for those who are not, Krasznahorkai is akin to José Saramago in constructing pages-long sentences without using direct quotations, but with some differences to how points are conveyed within those clause-laden sentences).  The story touches upon many things, but at its heart lies the search for Art, Love, and the true Apocalypse where all of our (self-) deceits shall be laid bare.  Here is an exemplary quote fragment:

He set off from the deepest of hatreds and arrived, from deep below, and from far away, from so far below and so far away – that then, at the beginning of the beginning, he had not the slightest idea where he was heading; indeed, he didn't even suspect that there was a route toward anything at all, he had come to hate the country where he lived, come to hate the city where he resided, come to hate the people among whom he stepped onto the metro every morning at dawn, and with whom he traveled home in the evening, it is futile, he said to himself, I have no one here, nothing ties me to this place, let the whole thing go to hell and rot away; since for a good long while he could not decide, he just went with the morning metro and came back with the evening one, back home, and when the day arrived, one morning at dawn, that he no longer stepped onto that metro with the others, he just stood for a while on the platform, there was nothing in his head, he just stood, and he was pushed around, here and there; he picked up one of the free advertising newspapers, then had a beer standing at the counter, and he looked at the want ads and picked out a country along with a job offer, because he knew nothing about it, Spain, that's a good distance away, so let it be Spain, and from that point on things sped up, and a cheap airline was already dragging him along, he was traveling by plane for the first time in his life, yet he felt nothing other than fear and hatred, for he was afraid of them:  he hated the self-confident stewardesses, the self-confident travelers, and even the self-confident clouds that whirled around below him, and he hated the sun and the sparkling light as well – and then he was nearly plummeting down, plummeting down straight into that city, and hardly had he set foot here then he had already been swindled, for of course there was no job behind the job offer, and the money he had saved up was almost immediately gone – it had gone toward the traveling, accommodation for the first few days, and food, so that he could start here, there was no going back, no going back at all – he could start to look for work in this foreign land, which of course he didn't find, everything the "Romanian vagrants" and those of their ilk were chased away, he just wandered around in this beautiful city, and no one would give him any kind of work, and a week passed, and then another and then another, ... (Ch. 21, pp. 165-166)

At first these "walls of words" may be intimidating for even intrepid readers most eager to parse them, but there is a rhythm to his narrator's thoughts, to his blending of description and introspection, that lulls the reader into reading just a little bit more, into considering just a little bit more what is transpiring.  There comes a point (for myself, it was around 20 pages in) where the rhythms become so internalized that the narrative seems to "pulse" (for lack of a better work) with a force that is irresistible.  While this has been true for the other Krasznahorkai novels that I have read, here in Seiobo There Below it is intensified, perhaps because the author's explorations, which formerly focused more on matters of desolation and despair, have expanded to included the yearning qualities of hope and beauty.  It truly is a marvelous work to behold and (re)consider.

Sinan Antoon, The Corpse Washer

I can almost hear death saying:  "I am what I am and haven't changed at all.  I am but a postman."

If death is a postman, then I receive his letters every day.  I am the one who opens carefully the bloodied and torn envelopes.  I am the one who washes them, who removes the stamps of death and dries and perfumes them, mumbling what I don't entirely believe in.  Then I wrap them carefully in white so they may reach their final reader – the grave.

But the letters are piling up, Father!  Tenfold more than what you used to see in the span of a week now pass before me in a day or two.  If you were alive, Father, would you say that that is fate and God's will?  I wish you were here so I could leave Mother with you and escape without feeling guilty.  You were heavily armed with faith, and that made your heart a castle.  My heart, by contrast, is an abandoned house whose windows are shattered and doors unhinged.  Ghosts play inside it, and the winds wail. (p. 3)

The ten years since the US-led invasion have been torturous ones for Iraqi citizens, both those living inside the country and those who had left as emigres years before.  IEDs, sectarian violence, shortages of items that most Westerners take for granted – this is but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the pains and travails endured.  How does one put voice to such grief and anguish, especially considering that one long-desired event, the execution of Saddam Hussein, was more than balanced out with atrocities committed by Americans or other parties who had a keen interest in destabilizing post-war Iraq?

Yet Sinan Antoon in his recently-translated book The Corpse Washer manages to make a herculean effort to do just that.  In just 185 pages, he eloquently addresses the myriad conflicts and frustrated dreams of Iraqis through the point-of-view of a Shi'ite corpse washer,  Jawad.  Moving back and forth in time, from the 1980s to the late 2000s, Jawad's life, first as the semi-rebellious younger son of a corpse washing father and then as a "failed" artist who returns grudgingly to the ancient and humble practice of his forefathers, mirrors closely the lives of many Iraqis who saw their dreams arrested in the tumult of the Iraq-Iran War of 1980-1988 and its numerous disastrous sequels. 

The Corpse Washer works on several levels.  It describes in sometimes painfully realistic fashion Jawad's sense of being trapped in a situation that is not of his own doing and yet one that has made him the person who he is.  We see his exiled uncle return, learn of his older brother's fate, and witness two doomed loves of his.  By themselves, these would make for a good literary fiction, but Antoon also works in parallels with the social situation in Iraq.  There are short yet heart-achingly poignant moments such as the story of a Sunni relating the story of an unnamed Shi'ite who he had briefly befriended before a car bombing.  In these tales, often tragic and yet possessing a sense of dignity in the midst of grief, Jawad is the nexus through which a flood of symbolic and concrete meanings and events are filtered.

It is hard to identify any obvious flaws in the story.  Antoon adroitly moves back and forth in narrative time in his sketching of Jawad's character and how he has come to be an exemplar of contemporary Iraqi society.  There is grief, yes, but also warm embraces and shared silences that connect the characters.  The prose alternates between poetic descriptions such as the one quoted above to sharp dialogue that feels raw and visceral in its directness in addressing the joys and sufferings of Jawad's family and friends.  The end result is a gripping, moving story that simultaneous works as a well-drawn portrait of a conflicted dreamer and as a metaphor for post-invasion Iraq.  Antoon's ability to avoid maudlin scenes or heavy-handed allegories is a testimony to his skill as a writer and through the first half of 2013, The Corpse Washer was the finest 2013 US release that I have read.  Very highly recommended.

"If death is a postman"

I just started reading the English translation of Iraqi writer Sinan Antoon's The Corpse Washer (which was published in the US this month) when I read this passage:

I can almost hear death saying:  "I am what I am and haven't changed at all.  I am but a postman."

If death is a postman, then I receive his letters every day.  I am the one who opens carefully the bloodied and torn envelopes.  I am the one who washes them, who removes the stamps of death and dries and perfumes them, mumbling what I don't entirely believe in.  Then I wrap them carefully in white so they may reach their final reader – the grave.

But the letters are piling up, Father!  Tenfold more than what you used to see in the span of a week now pass before me in a day or two.  If you were alive, Father, would you say that that is fate and God's will?  I wish you were here so I could leave Mother with you and escape without feeling guilty.  You were heavily armed with faith, and that made your heart a castle.  My heart, by contrast, is an abandoned house whose windows are shattered and doors unhinged.  Ghosts play inside it, and the winds wail. (p. 3)

This novel, set primarily in 2003 Iraq, promises to be haunting for me, if this passage is any indication.  Not too many Anglo-American fictions these days are as direct and as poetic simultaneously as this quote.  Hopefully I'll find The Corpse Washer to be excellent; it certainly is off to a good start.