Recently Begun Books

[Benny Profane]

I think it's outrageous a small country to have 2 or 3 translators from a "non-conventional" language and a big country like mine don't have any specialist translator from Croatian and another Balkan languages.

Sad!

For example, to corroborate my point, Miroslav Krleža is still unpublished in Brazil and nobody wants to publish him here.

 

[alik-vit]

Mia Couto, " Sleepwalking Land".

 

[Leseratte]

Read part of it. Found it impressive, but also very depressing.

 

[Leseratte]

I mean, you can major in Portuguese in Zagreb, so I guess there are plenty of people that at least theoretically can translate from Portuguese. There are two or three most famous translators, and they sometimes translate Brazilians - of course your dear Coelho, but there are a few translations of Amado and a lot of Lispector in the last years.

Clarifying: The hearts are for Lispector and Amado, not for Coelho.

 

[alik-vit]

Read part of it. Found it impressive, but also very depressing.

Part of this Couto's novel?

 

[Leseratte]

Part of this Couto's novel?

Yes, part of " Sleepwalking Land".

 

[Ben Jackson]

Mia Couto, " Sleepwalking Land".

Among Africans, when we want to mention classic novels, novels usually mentioned are TFa, A Grain of Wheat, Cry the Beloved Country, Famished Road etc, but this novel is simply outstanding and ought to be in discussion along with the aforementioned novels. I haven't read Couto since, but this novel's pure masterpiece.

 

[Ben Jackson]

Read part of it. Found it impressive, but also very depressing.

I think why part of it is depressive is because Couto was trying to describe a society ravaged/torn by the effects of war. I can say that hellish (or depressive) depiction of societal disintegration of Mozambique's similar to both Antunes and, to some extent, Cela. Quite depressing, yes, but Couto tends to depict authentically the scars brought into society by war and how it deepens a society into depths of Hell.

 

[alik-vit]

Yes, part of " Sleepwalking Land".

And I can see why. But still, it seems his language is very poetic!

 

[Leseratte]

And I can see why. But still, it seems his language is very poetic!

I agree with you.And it is all steeped in a mytical atmosphere. I think I will have to go back to it sometimes.

 

[tiganeasca]

Simin Daneshvar, Sutra & Other Stories

Ludmila Ulitskaya, The Big Green Tent

 

[Rodica]

Alain Fournier- The Lost Estate
Theodore Roethke- Words for the Wind: The Collected Verse

 

[alik-vit]

Ananda Devi, When night agrees to speak to me

Hayden White, The Practical Past (in Rus.)

 

[Ben Jackson]

Big Green Tent--- Ludmila Ulitskaya
Open Secrets--- Alice Munro
Jazz--- Toni Morrison

 

[alik-vit]

Big Green Tent--- Ludmila Ulitskaya
Open Secrets--- Alice Munro
Jazz--- Toni Morrison

"Jazz" is love of my life. Truly amazing book.