Aleksandar Hemon on Translation

[Liam]

Aleksandar Hemon and Anthea Bell on European literature in translation

[Audio]: Aleksandar Hemon and Anthea Bell discuss European literature and translation and we look at some surprises in a chart that lists the bestselling authors across the continent

...

Is there such a thing as a European literature and why don't English speakers read more of it? In this week's podcast we ask Anthea Bell, one of the UK's most successful translators, about the books we should all be reading.

We take a look at the 50 bestselling novels in Europe and discover that it's not all about American blockbusters. Hugh Laurie is in there as well, propelled to the top of the charts by his love affair with the French. We discuss why crime writing is so dominant all over the continent.

And we meet up with Aleksandar Hemon, the Bosnian-American author of The Question of Bruno and Nowhere Man,who has taken time off from his own writing to edit an anthology of European literature for Dalkey Archive called Best European Fiction 2010.

Reading list

Best European Fiction 2010 edited by Aleksandar Hemon (Dalkey Archive)

The Question of Bruno by Aleksandar Hemon (Picador)

Nowhere Man, by Aleksandar Hemon (Picador)

Austerlitz by WG Sebald (Penguin)

The World of Yesterday, Stefan Zweig (Pushkin Press)

Burning Secret, by Stefan Zweig (Pushkin Press)

How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone by Sasa Stanisic (Grove)

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, The Girl Who Played with Fire, all by Stieg Larsson (MacLehose)

Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann (Quercus)

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery (Gallic Books)



Aleksandar Hemon and Anthea Bell on European literature in translation | Books | guardian.co.uk




L.

[Eric]

I have mixed feelings regarding the term "European literature". On the one hand it does draw the world's attention to one of the most concentrated parts of the world where quality literature is written (look how tiny Europe is on a map of the world). On the other, it blurs the distinction between all the many and quite different countries and literatures written on that continent. I'm not quite sure on what Bell and Hemon base their list and the names on it.

Personally, I think it would be nice to get away from the label "European" as it tends to lump together too many genres, countries, authors, styles, etc. under a kind of lowest common denominator. It is maybe time that critics and reviewers from the USA began to discern the differences between the literatures (plural) on our continent. What does Finnish literature have in common with Portuguese, or Albanian with Danish? They are all geographically European, but what does that actually mean in cultural and literary terms? The "United States of Europe" do not exist, so maybe "European literature" doesn't either.

[Eric]

There was a review of Aleksandar Hemon's novel "The Lazarus Project" in the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet a week ago. It's from 2008 and pretty new, even in English. And now it's already available in Swedish.

Quoting reviewer Paulina Helgeson:

"The Lazarus Project" tells about how a Bosnia-born resident of Chicago Vladimir Brik becomes fascinated by Lazarus Averbach, a 19-year-old Russian-Jewish immmigrant who was shot dead in 1908 by the Chicago police chief George Shippy in the latter's home. Shippy claimed that the man had been armed. Witness accounts were, however, contradictory and it would seem probable that Shippy, in the fear at the time on the part of the authorities for an anarchist threat, shot out of panic and in so doing also managed to wound his chauffeur and his son in the tumult.

That thread of the novel is well done and convincing, says Helgeson. The other thread, about the life of Vladimir Brik travelling through various run-down parts of Eastern Europe is, she feels, not as good. But she comes down on the side of the book as a whole in the end.

Hemon is lucky in that he writes in English so that his works maybe get published more quickly than if written in the Bosnian brand of Serbo-Croat.

[Bjorn]

I'm reading The Lazarus Project right now and am quite enjoying it - especially once the two timelines start affecting each other. Recommended so far.

Re: the Bosnian brand of Serbo-Croat, Hemon has his protagonist define "Bosnian" as being neither an ethnicity nor a religion but simply a citizenship - and this from a character who (like Hemon himself) has never actually lived in the independent nation of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Then the 1908 storyline goes on to ask just what makes an American citizen un-American (finding books on the US constitution in someone's flat proves they're an anarchist). I'm not sure where he's going with that yet, but it's interesting.

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Bjorn

I'm reading The Lazarus Project right now and am quite enjoying it - especially once the two timelines start affecting each other. Recommended so far.

Re: the Bosnian brand of Serbo-Croat, Hemon has his protagonist define "Bosnian" as being neither an ethnicity nor a religion but simply a citizenship - and this from a character who (like Hemon himself) has never actually lived in the independent nation of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Then the 1908 storyline goes on to ask just what makes an American citizen un-American (finding books on the US constitution in someone's flat proves they're an anarchist). I'm not sure where he's going with that yet, but it's interesting.

I don't like it particularly. It's incredibly well written but ultimately hollow and cold.

[Eric]

Well, two contrasting views. I've not seen it in the shops yet. As for the language, as far as I can see, Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian are the same language, but on account of the exceedingly quarrelsome nature of the Balkans (as Bismarck remarked on), they are advertised as different languages, when only differing as much as Sweden-Swedish with Finland-Swedish, or Netherlands-Dutch with the Flemish variety of that language. Language contains ideology as well as linguistics. Though Slovene is a separate language, whilst Macedonian is maybe (almost) Bulgarian really. But I'm not sure there.

[Daniel del Real]

Originally Posted by Mirabell

I don't like it particularly. It's incredibly well written but ultimately hollow and cold.

It's supposed to be hollow and cold. A great book.

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Daniel del Real

It's supposed to be hollow and cold. A great book.

A vapid boy's game. The issues are too important to be tossed around in a no-stakes game of noncommittal hollow writing,

[Daniel del Real]

Originally Posted by Mirabell

A vapid boy's game. The issues are too important to be tossed around in a no-stakes game of noncommittal hollow writing,

Sometimes situations have to be described how they happened, with no passion at all, in a harsh, cruel and vivid manner. The novel is cold as the way Lazarus lives his life is cold, he is no committed at all to a belief, to a party. The other story goes the same way, when he's trying to collect information about this soul less and transparent character in a really confusing era.

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by Daniel del Real

Sometimes situations have to be described how they happened, with no passion at all, in a harsh, cruel and vivid manner. The novel is cold as the way Lazarus lives his life is cold, he is no committed at all to a belief, to a party. The other story goes the same way, when he's trying to collect information about this soul less and transparent character in a really confusing era.

a novel is more than a character. the book is also not "harsh". by no stretch of the imagination is it harsh. The narrator is disinterested in the story he's telling and the issues going on in it. The whole book reads like an exercise in style, with historical props. One of the most irrelevant literary books I read in recent years.

[Eric]

There's still certainly a duel of opinions going on here. I've rarely seen so many sentences by Mirabell (as opposed to Shigekuni). But I have to say that Hemon's photo in the paper a week ago did make him look alarmingly and staringly emotionless. Maybe Mirabell has a point. Or maybe Hemon needs a new pair of specs.

When I find the book in the library, I will be able to judge for myself.

How, Mirabell, does he compare with, say, Andrukhovych or Stasiuk when it comes to describing Eastern & Central Europe?

[e joseph]

So I'm going on record saying that I really enjoyed The Lazarus Project. I have no evidence to offer as to why I liked it, or to refute the "hollowness" of the book; what can I say, I suck as a reader. I remember when reading it (about 2 years ago) that midway through I wasn't thrilled with it - I was enjoying the line about the killing of Averbuch and it's aftermath, but not so much about Brik. At some point, my interest was piqued and I ended up racing toward the finish and enjoying it a lot. Maybe it was the intertwining of the lines, as Bjorn mentions, maybe not.

As for the hollowness or sterility of Hemon's writing, I can see it. I'm in the middle of The Question of Bruno now (oddly enough), and there was one story which sort of uses the same method as Lazarus. A boy reads about a spy and imagines his father as a one as well, finding evidence and behaviors to support the possibility. The technique is fair, but the story comes off really sterile and bored me for it's 40 pages; however, I just finished another story, which wasn't lacking in emotion at all. So, dunno, but I'm staying on record as a fan of Lazarus.

[Mirabell]

Originally Posted by e joseph

So I'm going on record saying that I really enjoyed The Lazarus Project. I have no evidence to offer as to why I liked it, or to refute the "hollowness" of the book; what can I say, I suck as a reader. I remember when reading it (about 2 years ago) that midway through I wasn't thrilled with it - I was enjoying the line about the killing of Averbuch and it's aftermath, but not so much about Brik. At some point, my interest was piqued and I ended up racing toward the finish and enjoying it a lot. Maybe it was the intertwining of the lines, as Bjorn mentions, maybe not.

As for the hollowness or sterility of Hemon's writing, I can see it. I'm in the middle of The Question of Bruno now (oddly enough), and there was one story which sort of uses the same method as Lazarus. A boy reads about a spy and imagines his father as a one as well, finding evidence and behaviors to support the possibility. The technique is fair, but the story comes off really sterile and bored me for it's 40 pages; however, I just finished another story, which wasn't lacking in emotion at all. So, dunno, but I'm staying on record as a fan of Lazarus.

ha. that's fine. Maybe I'm just disappointed, because he's clearly such a fine and talented writer. Maybe I expected a mind that could keep up with the pen and my bitterness colors my judgment.