Tag Archives: New Directions
The Afterlives of Natalia Ginzburg’s “The Road to the City”
A new translation of “The Road to the City” (New Directions, 2023) extends the book’s afterlife and illuminates Ginzburg’s distinctive style. The translator, Gini Alhadeff, gives in to Ginzburg’s spare and concise narration without ever losing sight of the novella’s subtle meaning making.
Storybooks, Contemporary Artists, and Family Lexicons: An Interview with Gini Alhadeff
Gini Alhadeff is a prize-winning translator, curator, and author, including of fiction, with the novel “Diary of a Djinn,” and of non-fiction, with a multitude of articles and her memoir “The Sun at Midday: Tales of a Mediterranean Family.” She grew up in Egypt, Sudan, Italy, and Japan. She studied fine art and photography at Harrow in England and at Pratt Institute in New York. She recently translated Natalia Ginzburg’s “The Road to the City” for the distinctive series, Storybook ND, that she curates for New Directions. This interview was conducted over zoom on October 6th, 2023 with Gini Alhadeff in New York City and Saskia Ziolkowski in Durham, NC.
“Drawing a Blank”: Hiroko Oyamada’s “The Hole,” translated from Japanese by David Boyd
By Alex Andriesse It’s not always clear what is happening in Hiroko Oyamada’s The Hole, but by the time the reader notices how little he understands, he is too immersed in the novel to put it down. Obviously, I am speaking in the third person about my own experience, but I doubt that this experience […]
A Terrible Beauty is Born: Fernanda Melchor’s “Hurricane Season,” Translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes
By Emma B. B. Doyle The title of Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season (La temporada de huracanes), translated by Sophie Hughes, takes its name from the many months in Mexico when you can look up at the sky and expect it to explode at any moment. This reliable forecast of disaster carries a similar tension to […]
Forrest Gander on editing untranslatable poet Yoshimasu Gozo
Yoshimasu Gozo is a one-of-a-kind artist. While he’s usually referred to as a poet, such a categorization almost always comes with some sort of qualification. His work is often called “unconventional” or “unorthodox.” Others stress that his poetry draws heavily from performance, music, and/or multimedia art. In a word, he writes the sort of poetry that’s […]
Narration Between Species: Yoko Tawada’s Memoirs of a Polar Bear, Translated by Susan Bernofsky
Reviewed by Jordan A. Y. Smith [Tawada’s Memoirs of a Polar is one of those novels that makes one loathe to reveal not only the ending but the beginning, so I will open with my clichéd but earnest recommendation that you trust me—and Tawada’s stellar and well-earned reputation—go read the novel, then continue reading this […]
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 […]