Tag Archives: New Vessel Press
Silence Speaks in Egana Djabbarova’s “My Dreadful Body,” Translated from Russian by Lisa C. Hayden
Born to an Azerbaijani family in Russia in the early 1990s, Egana Djabbarova grew up in a conservative diaspora that scrutinized every bit of her body. In her memoir, “My Dreadful Body,” translated by Lisa C. Hayden, she explores different parts of herself with the ruthlessness of a physician and the care of a poet.
Writing on the High Wire: Daniele Del Giudice’s “A Fictional Inquiry,” translated from Italian by Anne Milano Appel
How do you write about the compelling need to write, to translate reality into narrative, while also writing about someone who decided not to write? The title of Anne Milano Appel’s English translation, published by New Vessel Press, suitably spells it out: this is “A Fictional Inquiry,” an investigation into the nature of fiction itself and its entanglements with reality.
From Deportation to the Laocoön, an Archival Fiction: Hans von Trotha’s “Pollak’s Arm,” Translated from German by Elisabeth Lauffer
The book is about Austrian art dealer, museum director, and archaeologist Ludwig Pollak (Prague 1868-Auschwitz 1943), who found the arm of Laocoön in 1906, four-hundred years after the discovery of the famous sculpture grouping itself, and was deported
Turin’s Skies, Women’s Bodies, and Foreign Lands: Marina Jarre’s “Distant Fathers,” Translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein
The centrality of women’s experiences in current Italian fiction has drawn attention to previously neglected works. Although Jarre’s frankness about the body, from childhood to older age, is not shocking after Ferrante, it marked a new contribution to Italian literature in her time.
Halcyon Days: Adrien Goetz’s “Villa of Delirium,” translated from French by Natasha Lehrer
The novel falls within the greater readiness in French culture to reckon with the nation’s anti-Semitic past than its colonialism.