Tag Archives: Knopf
When Life Gives You Lemons: Mieko Kawakami’s “Sisters in Yellow,” translated from Japanese by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio
Mieko Kawakami’s latest novel, “Sisters in Yellow,” is loosely framed by the COVID-19 pandemic, though the main story unfolds in the 1990s, after the economic “bubble” bursts and recession sets in, emphasizing the intersection between gender and precarity. Kawakami’s novel is as personal as it is political and, I would suggest, could be read as a call for a feminist ethics of care: an approach to care as interdependent, relational, contextual and intersectional.
A Plague for Our Times: Albert Camus’ “The Plague,” Translated from French by Laura Marris
It is impossible to read The Plague now without thinking of COVID-19 and its globally catastrophic and ongoing wreckage. With Laura Marris’ new translation, we have a text for the twenty-first century. I hesitate to write “for a new generation,” as accurate as that may be, because even those of us who’ve read Stuart Gilbert’s translation can find new meaning, new life, in Marris’ extraordinary translation.
B-Sides and Rarities: “Fifty-Two Stories by Anton Chekhov,” Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
In short, this is not the “greatest hits” compilation we have come to expect from translated collections of short prose. The question becomes, then, what is it?