Recent Purchases

[Eric]

Who translated the Wargamäe, and was it published in the GDR or BRD - or, God forbid, Nazi Germany? There are various editions, but they keep quiet about the translator on the internet (could have been a pseudonym). Will this have been translated from the Russian version? One translation can raise a lot of questions.

Anyway, do tell us what it's all about - before the English translation appears - and whether it's too Blut und Bodenèsque for you.

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Eric

Who translated the Wargamäe, and was it published in the GDR or BRD - or, God forbid, Nazi Germany? There are various editions, but they keep quiet about the translator on the internet (could have been a pseudonym). Will this have been translated from the Russian version? One translation can raise a lot of questions.

Anyway, do tell us what it's all about - before the English translation appears - and whether it's too Blut und Bodenèsque for you.

"Dr. A.E. Graf" it says, and translated from the estonian. publisher is a gdr one. published 1978.

[Eric]

Good, Mirabell, that it is translated directly from the Estonian. Thanks for checking that out.

I finally found an entry for Adolf-Eduard Graf (1881-1962) in the Eesti kirjanike leksikon i.e. the Lexicon of Estonian Writers (2000), and a few details are:

Baltic German. Born in Tallinn. School in Tallinn and Saint Petersburg. Studied Germanic philology at Tartu University. Wrote his PhD thesis on "Die Grundlagen des Reinecke Fuchs". Worked in Novgorod, Berlin, Heidelberg, then as a German teacher on the island of Saaremaa (Ösel) from 1924-39. Moved to Germany in 1939, worked as an interpreter. Died in Potsdam in the GDR.

Wrote several linguistic books and his translations into German are:

* Eduard Vilde: Mahtra sõda (The Mahtra War) 1952, reprint 1984

* Anton Hansen Tammsaare: Kõrboja peremees (The Master of Kõrboja) 1958

* Anton Hansen Tammsaare: Tõde ja õigus I (first volume of Truth and Justice = Wargamäe) 1970, reprint 1978

plus unnamed Estionian short-stories.

You can see why he called himself A. Graf after WWII and when living in the GDR, as the name "Adolf" was by then not very popular...

[Heteronym]

Today I got:

The Joke, Milan Kundera
Diary of the Pig War, Adolfo Bioy Casares
Cronopios and Famas, Julio Córtazar
The Seven Messengers, Dino Buzzati

[Stewart]

• A Dead Man's Memoir, Mikhail Bulgakov
• A Dog's Heart, Mikhail Bulgakov
• Ann Veronica, H.G. Wells

[saliotthomas]

Distant relations by Carlos Fuentes
I got lucky at the local book store.

[saliotthomas]

Not purchases but what i found in the house in Paris.

Imre Kertész -Kaddish for the child who won't be born(translated myself)Kaddish pour l'enfant qui ne naitra pas

Yasunari Kawabat -the lac

Francois Vallejo-Ouest

Saneh Sangsuk_White Shadow

Altaf Tyrewala-No god in sight

AND great joy Andrei Makine-l'amour humain(humain love) the start is very like requiem,the harder side of the man.

Tomorrow i go hunting for Sandor Marai,Miklos Banffy reste of the trilogie,and mishima(the sailor)

[Stewart]

The Life And Times Of Michael K., J.M. Coetzee
They Came Like Swallows, William Maxwell
The Eye In The Door, Pat Barker
A Hero Of Our Time, Mikhail Lermontov

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Stewart

The Life And Times Of Michael K., J.M. Coetzee
They Came Like Swallows, William Maxwell
The Eye In The Door, Pat Barker
A Hero Of Our Time, Mikhail Lermontov

Ooooh
I expect new threads soon then...

maxwell esp. I'm interested in (syntax broken-ish?)
seen him around in what these people here dare call "translation"

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by Mirabell

Ooooh, I expect new threads soon then...

You'll be waiting a while. I'm still pushing through the Booker longlist. On my third novel, after two days' dragging through Michelle de Kretser's The Lost Dog and getting nowhere. Set it aside, so as not to upset my momentum, with the intention of returning to it later. But the Maxwell is one I could feasibly read of an afternoon.

[Stewart]

• The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
• The Sorrows Of Young Werther, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• DeNiro's Game, Rawi Hage
• To Siberia, Per Petterson
• The Unknown Masterpiece, Honoré de Balzac
• The White King, Dragomán György

[ions]

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey 0571153046
Already Dead by Denis Johnson 006092909X
Coming Through the Slaughter by Michael Ondaajte 0676971768
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth 1400079497

[ions]

Originally Posted by Stewart

• DeNiro's Game, Rawi Hage

I'll be curious to read your thoughts on this one Stewart. It got a lot of press here.

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by ions

I'll be curious to read your thoughts on this one Stewart. It got a lot of press here.

Before or after it won the IMPAC Dublin Award earlier this year?

[Sybarite]

On the way from Amazon (well, waiting to be picked up from the sorting office on Saturday morning):

Mahmoud Darwish's The Butterfly's Burden, Camilo Jose Cela's The Hive and Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveller.

The collection of Darwish's poetry was ordered after reading obits, the Cela after browsing Spanish literature in Amazon and the Calvino was recommended by a colleague who, in telling me that I'm the sort of pretentious bitch who might appreciate it, then marked himself down as pretentious because he likes it enough to recommend.

[Irene Wilde]

Originally Posted by Sybarite

...the Calvino was recommended by a colleague who, in telling me that I'm the sort of pretentious bitch who might appreciate it...

Let's start a club! We can have t-shirts made: PBI. We can photoshop a picture so it looks like Victoria Beckham is reading If One a Winter's Night A Traveler.

[Sybarite]

Originally Posted by Irene Wilde

Let's start a club! We can have t-shirts made: PBI. We can photoshop a picture so it looks like Victoria Beckham is reading If One a Winter's Night A Traveler.

[ions]

Originally Posted by Stewart

Before or after it won the IMPAC Dublin Award earlier this year?

Before. I was working at the book chain when it was getting big buzz and I left there in 06. I remember leafing through it during a shift but nothing specific. It had won some stuff here previous to the Dublin.

[aquablue]

Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy

[Mirabell]

in the mail


Stoner, John Williams

Collected Poems, Vol. 1, William Carlos Williams

Play it as it lays, Joan Didion




yeehaw!