Category Portuguese
Queer Struggle and Resilience in Stenio Gardel’s “The Words that Remain,” Translated from Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato
The novel portrays the way in which queer love and desire transcend time, hatred, and even the barriers of language. Raimundo and Cícero’s relationship, set against the landscape of Northern Brazil and the people who inhabit that space, opens a new perspective of queerness specific to that region.
A Whirring Blender of Colors: Paulo Scott’s “Phenotypes,” Translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn
The book in English translation reads as tormented and complex as it does in Portuguese. So much so that the experience of feeling breathless while reading was the same in both versions.
Finding Power, Losing Love: Graciliano Ramos’ “São Bernardo,” translated from Portuguese by Padma Viswanathan
Padma Viswanathan allows readers to recognize anew the importance of community in such a precarious moment with her translation of Graciliano Ramos’ rustic satire, São Bernardo.
A Woman Besieged: Clarice Lispector’s “The Besieged City,” translated from Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz
This month, in memory of our contributor Professor Jed Deppman who founded the Oberlin College Translation Symposium, instituted a literary translation minor, and taught courses in literary translation and comparative literature, we are featuring three reviews by Oberlin College Comparative Literature graduates and students, taught and trained by Professor Deppman and other Oberlin College faculty. Professor […]
It’s a Wonderful Death: Hilda Hilst’s “Of Death. Minimal Odes,” translated from Portuguese by Laura Cesarco Eglin
By Alessandro Mondelli In Of Death. Minimal Odes, Brazilian poet Hilda Hilst imagines death not only as the absence of life or as life’s negation, but also as a productive force that imbues life with a wide yet nuanced palette of affects. Hilst, recognized in Brazil as a seminal writer, poet, and playwright of twentieth-century […]
The Refracted Existence: João Gilberto Noll’s Quiet Creature on the Corner, Translated by Adam Morris
Reviewed by Amanda Sarasien Perhaps the self is light refracted through a prism: Multiple. Bent by every twist of fate. And ultimately hovering just beyond our reach. Or so Brazilian author João Gilberto Noll’s Quiet Creature on the Corner, recently released in a stirring translation by Adam Morris, provokes us to consider. This slim volume […]
At the Intersection of Poetry and Mathematics: Hilda Hilst’s With My Dog-Eyes, translated by Adam Morris
Reviewed by Amanda Sarasien That the name Hilda Hilst is not more widely recognized by English-language readers, particularly admirers of her contemporary, Clarice Lispector, should come as no surprise considering the experimentalism of Hilst’s work. Thankfully, Adam Morris’ translation of With My Dog-Eyes, “perhaps the most novel-like prose work” (xvi) of a largely poetic oeuvre, […]
A Breath of Life by Clarice Lispector, Translated by Johnny Lorenz
Reviewed by Amanda Sarasien Readers familiar with the lyrical style of Clarice Lispector will appreciate the difficulty of translating her. Nevertheless, Lispector’s posthumously published novel, Um Sopro de vida, or A Breath of Life in English, arguably presents the translator with an even greater challenge. Fortunately for Anglophone readers, Johnny Lorenz, in this recent introduction […]