Tag Archives: City Lights Books
The Net and the Fence: On Jean Daive’s “Under the Dome: Walks with Paul Celan,” Translated from French by Rosmarie Waldrop
By Anna Levett Several times in Under the Dome, Jean Daive’s elliptical, poetic memoir about his friendship with the Jewish German-language poet Paul Celan, a net bag makes an appearance. I imagine it’s the kind of bag in which you would carry fruits or vegetables that you’d bought from a market—a bag made of mesh […]
Silvina Ocampo’s Queer Eye: “Forgotten Journey,” translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Katie Lateef-Jan; and “The Promise,” translated by Levine and Jessica Powell
By Dorothy Potter Snyder Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) —Walt Whitman, Song of Myself Es tan corto el amor y tan largo el olvido. — Chavela Vargas Queerness resists definition and finds expression in the manifold array of ways of being and seeing in […]
“Free falling through the subconscious”: Pablo Neruda’s “venture of the infinite man,” translated from Spanish by Jessica Powell
Reviewed by Arielle Avraham Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) remains one of the best-known South American poets of the 20th century, with copies of his most famous books selling in the millions, and two biographies published about him. His life is the stuff of legend. Born in a rural town in Chile, he began writing poetry as […]
Suspended Existence: Yusuf Atilgan’s Motherland Hotel, Translated by Fred Stark
Reviewed by Amanda Sarasien Zeberjet Kechiji is lonely. As manager of Motherland Hotel, an ancient, familial manor cum lodging house, remote in both time and place, he meticulously records the name of every guest in the hotel register but remains distant, outside, glimpsing an entire life as if through a keyhole. And there is one […]
Passing in Translation: Jessica Powell on Antonio Benítez-Rojo’s Woman in Battle Dress
Interview by Lucina Schell, Editor Woman in Battle Dress, the last published work by renowned Cuban writer Antonio Benítez-Rojo, is just out in translation by Jessica Powell from City Lights Books. The sweeping epic imagines the remarkable life of 19th-Century historical figure Henriette Faber, who lived as a man in order to study medicine and […]
Notes from an Island: Mylene Fernández-Pintado’s A Corner of the World Translated by Dick Cluster
Reviewed by Charlotte Whittle The question of whether to stay or to leave is central to the lives of almost all of the characters in A Corner of the World, Mylene Fernández Pintado’s first book-length work in English translation. Trained as a lawyer, Fernández-Pintado is known in Cuba for her novels and short stories, for […]
Bridging the Distance: Marilyn Booth’s Translation of The Penguin’s Song by Hassan Daoud
Reviewed by Ghada Mourad The Penguin’s Song (ghināʾ al-batrīq) tells the story of a family of three whose lives are completely transformed as a result of their displacement out of the old city of Beirut. The twenty-year old son, whose upper body deformation makes his figure and way of walking evocative of a penguin’s, narrates […]