By Jeremy Schwab
Thrillers, murder mysteries, romance novels: they are to the beach and summer what morning coffees, overbooked schedules, and end-of-day Netflix binging are to the rest of our lives. But this summer, consider an adventurous alternative: pick up one of these great books that have been translated into English, recommended by some of our expert literary translators at BU Arts & Sciences. These works may not be well known to American audiences, but they have deep meaning in their cultures of origin.
Arts & Sciences is a leading hub of literary translation, with an MFA degree program in Literary Translation and translation classes and workshops offered in German, Japanese, Arabic, Korean, Chinese, French, and Spanish. Since 1981, the spring BU Translation Seminar has featured lectures by prominent literary translators. In 2021, these included GRS alumna and renowned fiction writer Jhumpa Lahiri and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Benjamin Moser. The University sponsors translation prizes, and faculty members from a number of academic departments practice translation themselves.
Found in Translation
Book title: Rayuela (Hopscotch)
Author: Julio Cortázar
Translated by: Gregory Rabassa
Published in: 1963 (translation published 1966)
Recommended by: Alicia Borinsky, BU Arts & Sciences professor of Spanish and co-translator from Spanish to English of a number of her own novels including My Husband’s Woman (see Anita Savo’s recommendation of this book below), Lost Cities Go to Paradise, and Frivolous Women and Other Sinners.
Why this book matters: Borinsky writes: “Hopscotch is a highly innovative book that tests the very definition of the novel. Gregory Rabassa produced a miraculously playful, precise, and at the same time creative version that became highly influential for writers in English, therefore doubling the impact of the original.”
Book title: Bieguni (Flights)
Author: Olga Tokarczuk
Translated by: Jennifer Croft
Published in: 2007 (translation in 2017)
Recommended by: Anna Zielinska-Elliott, master lecturer in Japanese, director of the Literary Translation MFA program at BU Arts & Sciences, and translator from Japanese into Polish of most of Haruki Murakami’s works as well as Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, The Key by Junichiro Tanizaki, and several works by Yukio Mishima.
Why this book matters: Zielinska-Elliott writes: “This book by the 2018 Nobel-Prize-winning Polish writer also won the Man Booker Prize in the category of translation. It is hard to classify in terms of genre because it subverts the established forms and includes a great variety of styles: fictional narratives, short essays, and even fables, as well as musings on the theme of journeys. Critics called it ‘an intellectual revelation’ ‘epic in its scope and mission.’ The New York Times said: ‘It’s a busy, beautiful vexation, this novel, a quiver full of fables of pilgrims and pilgrimages, and the reasons — the hidden, the brave, the foolhardy — we venture forth into the world …In Jennifer Croft’s assured translation, each self-enclosed account is tightly conceived and elegantly modulated, the language balletic, unforced.’”
Book title: The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai
Author and Translator: Ha Jin, William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at BU
Published in: 2019
Recommended by: Robert Pinsky, former U.S. poet laureate, creator of the Favorite Poem Project, and director of the BU Arts & Sciences Creative Writing Program. Pinsky has translated The Inferno of Dante among other works and is the author of many works of poetry including his most recent, At the Foundling Hospital.
Why this book matters: Pinsky writes: “Like William Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri, the Chinese poet Li Bai (701-762 A.D.) is a world figure whose work has endured for centuries and inspired poets in every language. The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai, as well as being a readable, critically informative biography, contains Ha Jin’s lucid, graceful translations of much of Li Bai’s poetry. This book about a supreme figure and his poetry combines biography, historical insight and critical insight with translation.
Book title: Aigua de Mar (Salt Water)
Author: Josep Pla
Translated by: Peter Bush
Published in: 1966 (translation in 2020)
Recommended by: Christopher Maurer, professor of Spanish, an editor and translator of poetry, correspondence, essays and lectures related to poetry. He has translated The Complete Perfectionist: A Poetics of Work by Juan Ramón Jiménez and Sebastian’s Arrows: Letters and Mementos by Federico García Lorca and Salvador Dalí.
Why this book matters: Maurer writes: “In Salt Water, Josep Pla (1897-1981) a great writer neglected on this side of the Atlantic (perhaps because he wrote much of his work in Catalan rather than Spanish) meanders along the coast north of Barcelona describing in unhurried detail all sorts of ocean lure, from coral diving to smuggling to the habits of seagulls to what one expects from a good fish soup. As Colm Tóbín put it, Pla is ‘a great noticer of things and places.’ Peter Bush’s translation is a virtuoso performance, and the book itself is a well-made object worthy of both of them.”
Book title: Daphnis and Chloe
Author: Longus
Translated by: Jeffrey Henderson, William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of Greek Language and Literature in BU Arts & Sciences
Published in: second century C.E. (Common Era) (translation in 2003)
Recommended by: Stephen Scully, chair of Classical studies, author of many books including a translation of Plato’s Phaedrus.
Why this book matters: Scully writes: “One of our earliest novels and among the great works of world literature: an innocent boy and girl gradually discover their sexuality in an idealized pastoral environment. Goethe recommended re-reading it every year ‘to sense freshly its great beauty.’ This translation includes the Greek on the facing page.”
Book title: Roma fuggitiva: una città e i suoi dintorni (Fleeting Rome: In Search of La Dolce Vita)
Author: Carlo Levi
Translated by: Tony Shugaar
Published in: 2002 (translation in 2004)
Recommended by: Karl Kirchwey, professor of English and creative writing and associate dean of faculty for the humanities, translator of poetry into English from French, Italian, German and Spanish and author of Poems Under Saturn, a translation of Paul Verlaine’s Poèmes saturniens.
Why this book matters: Kirchwey writes: “This is a posthumous collection of writings about Rome by Carlo Levi (1902-1975), the famous Italian doctor, painter and author of works such as Christ Stopped at Eboli. Although Levi himself was born in Turin, in northern Italy, this sharp-eyed set of essays (many of them written for newspaper publication) captures the spirit of the Eternal City in the period between the end of World War II and the rise of student movements in the 1960s as no other book I know of manages to do, bringing to life a city full of ‘magical realism’ and immortal moments that will revolutionize any visitor’s perception of Rome.”
Book title: La mujer de mi marido (My Husband’s Woman)
Author: Alicia Borinsky, BU Arts & Sciences professor of Spanish
Translated by: Natasha Hakimi Zapata and Alicia Borinsky
Published in: 2000 (translation in 2016)
Recommended by: Anita Savo, assistant professor of Spanish, expert on medieval Spanish literature and occasional translator from Spanish to English.
Why this book matters: Savo writes: “The poetry collection La mujer de mi marido by BU professor Alicia Borinsky is available in a bilingual edition prepared by the author together with translator Natasha Hakimi Zapata, who earned an MFA in creative writing from BU. Many of the poems are about sex, love, and desire, expressed in punchy language that evokes lunfardo, the slang of Borinsky’s native Buenos Aires. One section, called ‘manual de piropos’ or ‘manual of pick-up lines,’ places the aggressive but familiar language of catcalls in juxtapositions that are surprising and often laugh-out-loud funny. The English translation is equally vivid, and the bilingual edition is great for readers interested in seeing the Spanish and English side by side.”