Category French
Foam of the Daze, translated to the Screen
Reviewed by Lucina Schell, Editor Despite being a highly cinematic book, when Boris Vian’s L’Écume des jours was published in 1947 it would have been difficult to imagine a film capable of equaling its fantastical imagination in technological effects. Now, we have the capacity to bring to vivid life even the most impossible ideas, but it is […]
Dissecting Layers: Hervé Le Tellier’s Electrico W, Translated by Adriana Hunter
Reviewed by Lara Vergnaud Electrico W is about fragments – of time, memory, language and relationships, which rudely brush against one another, and which don’t seem to cohere until they do. This latest work by experimental French author Hervé Le Tellier, published in France by JC Lattès in 2011, and now available in English thanks […]
Forgotten Histories: Pierre Michon’s Winter Mythologies and Abbots, Translated by Ann Jefferson
Reviewed by Amanda Sarasien History is not the sole domain of great men and “shot-heard-round-the-world” events. At least, not for Pierre Michon, one of France’s most acclaimed contemporary writers, who pored over historical archives to imagine the tales of long-forgotten figures for his most recent English-language release, Winter Mythologies and Abbots. These tales were originally published […]
Access & Aesthetics: An Interview with Luis de Miranda, Haute Culture Books
The young and exciting Haute Culture Books has already made a name for itself with its innovative take on the participative publishing model. Governed by the philosophy “digital books should be free, physical books should be sublime,” HCB rewards its “Book Angels” with beautifully crafted art object limited editions that subsidize the wide distribution of […]
Bleak Fairy Tales: Gisèle Prassinos’s Surrealist Texts, Translated by Ellen Nations
Reviewed by Lucina Schell, Editor Born in 1920 and discovered at just fourteen by André Breton, Gisèle Prassinos became the darling of the surrealists. Regarded as a sort of living incarnation of the surrealist ideal of the child-woman, a pure, uncorrupted talent, she had been writing ecstatic literature from her unconscious with no knowledge of the […]
Rhapsody in Red: Boris Vian’s Red Grass, Translated by Paul Knobloch
Reviewed by Amanda Sarasien Though the French film adaptation of Boris Vian’s novel L’Écume des jours has yet to be scheduled for release in the US, it seems already to have generated a buzz capable of reviving American interest in this regrettably overlooked, but wildly inventive, author. Fortunately, TamTam Books has just released another novel […]
Tips for Reviewers: New Digital Tools to Assist Translators & Reviewers
As a blogger, looking over the program of offerings for the first day of the American Literary Translators’ Association (ALTA) Conference in October, “Translation and the Digital Age” was a must. Not knowing what to expect, I attended, anticipating some discussion of the benefits or detriments of digital publishing for literature in translation. What I found was […]
Lydia Davis brings her concision and ironic sensibilities to a new translation of Madame Bovary
Reviewed by Lucina Schell, Editor As a great admirer of Lydia Davis’ short fictions, I am very enthused to see her tackle new translations of classic texts from the French by Proust and Flaubert. The recent Man Booker Prize winner, acclaimed for her concision and humor—many of her “short stories” are only one sentence long—possesses […]
Translating Music: Foam of the Daze by Boris Vian, Translated by Brian Harper
Reviewed by Lucina Schell, Editor In the Harvard Crimson’s 1969 review of Mood Indigo, John Sturrock’s translation of Boris Vian’s L’Écume des jours, the author provides this disheartening forecast: “It is unlikely that Vian’s novels will become particularly popular in this country: they’re very French, and they suffer in translation. But Mood Indigo has a […]