{"id":296606,"date":"2014-02-19T12:38:34","date_gmt":"2014-02-19T12:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2014\/02\/19\/daniel-medins-btba-favorites-winter-reading\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:39:27","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:39:27","slug":"daniel-medins-btba-favorites-winter-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2014\/02\/19\/daniel-medins-btba-favorites-winter-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Medin\u2019s BTBA Favorites: Winter Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Medin teaches at the American University of Paris, where he helps direct the<\/i> Center for Writers and Translators<\/a>, is an editor of<\/i> The Cahiers Series<\/a> ,and co-hosts the podcast entitled<\/i> That Other Word<\/a>. He has authored a study of Franz Kafka in the work of three international writers (Northwestern University Press, 2010) and curated the second volume of <\/i>Music and Literature magazine (Krasznanorkai\/Tarr\/Neumann), and recently edited a translation issue for <\/i>The White Review<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Minae Mizamura\u2019s A True Novel<\/i><\/a> was my great discovery this winter. Alongside Faris al-Shidyaq\u2019s eccentric classic, it ranks among the most memorable books I encountered as a judge for this year\u2019s BTBA<\/span>. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s length is misleading: once caught up in the narrative (which gets traction almost immediately), I found it impossible to read in draughts of less than 150-200 pages. The characters fascinate, as do Mizamura\u2019s manner of relating their histories. But the pleasures of A True Novel<\/i> exceed those of the conventional storytelling kind. Mizamura is an author profoundly concerned with literary tradition and she pulls off several feats here, merging a shishosetsu work (first-person Japanese autobiographical narrative) into a honkaku shosetsu (panoramic Western novel), while successfully recasting Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s Wuthering Heights in a postwar Japanese setting. Its effect recalls the greatest of Yasujiro Ozu\u2019s films or Chekhov\u2019s shorter fiction: a deep humanism is palpable beneath the dispassionate narrative. I\u2019m still astonished by how much Mizumura has managed to include about Japan\u2019s transformation from defeated imperial power to economic powerhouse\u2014all without sacrificing the intimacy of a chamber play. I first became aware of this novel thanks to Caroline Bleecke\u2019s review at Music & Literature<\/i><\/a>, which provides helpful context about A True Novel\u2019s<\/i> formal ambitions and Mizumura\u2019s previous efforts. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Writers from Transylvania have a special place in Hungarian literature. Their use of the language is particular and, in many cases, peculiar\u2014they evince a sensitivity to words not uncommon among speakers of a minority language. \u00c1d\u00e1m Bodor is one of the region\u2019s giants, andThe Sinistra Zone<\/i><\/a> his masterpiece. Entertaining, odd and strikingly true to the spirit of that twilight zone where Romania, Ukraine, Slovakia and Hungary meet, Sinistra<\/i> is a classic example of what Michael Hofmann has called \u201ccelestial provincialism\u201d: a \u201cblend of allegory, surrealism, fantasy and exuberant narrative \u2026 derived from Ha\u0161ek and Kafka.\u201d The world of Bodor\u2019s novel will be immediately familiar to his contemporaries from the once-Soviet Other Europe. Here is a passage by one of its most prominent representatives, Polish novelist Andrezej Stasiuk, about a visit to the region that inspired Sinistra:<\/p>\n

We drove to the Sinistra district. Everything here belonged to the mountain refilemen, to Colonel Puiu Borcan, and, when he died, to Izolda Mavrodin-Mahmudia, also holding rank of Colonel and called Coco for short. From the Baba Rotunda pass, we had a view of Pop Ivan; in the valley crawled narrow-gauge, wood-burning locomotives. The inhabitants of Sinistra wore military dogtags on their chests. Everyone who came here and stayed was given a new name \u2026 Diluted denatured alcohol was used here to dry mushrooms, and it was drunk with the fermented juice of forest fruits. The frosted glass for the Sinistra prison was made by Gabriel Dunka in his workshop: he frosted a pane by putting it in a sandbox and walking on it with his bare feet for hours. He was thirty-seven and a dwarf. One rainy day he picked up a naked Elvira Spiridon in his delivery van and for the first time in his life smelled a woman\u2019s body, but loyalty triumphed over desire and he turned her in\u2026 All this supposedly took place near Sighetu Marma\u021biei, but I learned about it only two years later, in Adam Bodor\u2019s Sinistra District, and the story has pursued me since. Pursued me and replaced the flat spot on the map. Once again, the visible pales before the narrated. Pales but does not disappear. It only loses its force, its intolerable obviousness. This is a special quality of auxiliary countries, of second-order, second-tier peoples: the ephemeral tale in different versions, the distorted mirror, magic lantern, mirage, phantom that mercifully sneaks in between what is and what ought to be. The self-irony that allows you to play with your personal fate, to mock it, parrot it, turning defeat into heroic-comic legend and a lie into something that has the shape of salvation.
\n\u2014from On the Road to Babadag (Harcourt, 2011)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Other highlights of winter readings include A Most Ambiguous Sunday<\/i><\/a> by June Young Moon (Dalkey Archive), whose stories \u201cMrs. Brown,\u201d \u201cDrifting,\u201d and \u201cAnimals Songs of Boredom of Fury\u201d share the deadpan humor that makes reading Beckett or George Saunders such fun; <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Bullfight<\/i><\/a>, the flawless debut of Japanese master Yasushi Inoui;<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Errors of Young Tja\u017e<\/i><\/a> by Florjan Lipu\u0161 (Dalkey Archive), a strange and discomfiting account of childhood in postwar rural Austria;<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

and Life Form<\/i><\/a> by Am\u00e9lie Nothomb (Europa), a refreshing, funny, and clever counterpoint to some of this season\u2019s sterner submissions\u2014despite its own dark subject matter.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Finally, I\u2019d like to draw attention to three titles that were published in 2013, but proved ineligible because of a previous translation. Stig Dagarman\u2019s A Burnt Child<\/i><\/a>, trans. Benjamin Mier-Cruz (Minnesota); Ahmet Hamdi Tanipar\u2019s The Time Regulation Institute<\/i><\/a>, trans. Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe (Penguin); and Natsume S\u014dseki\u2019s Light and Dark<\/i><\/a>, trans. John Nathan (Columbia) are all remarkable novels, and would have appeared on my longlist were it not for having been published previously. Here\u2019s hoping they receive the attention they\u2014along with their latest translators, and the publishers who commissioned them\u2014deserve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daniel Medin teaches at the American University of Paris, where he helps direct the Center for Writers and Translators, is an editor of The Cahiers Series ,and co-hosts the podcast entitled That Other Word. He has authored a study of Franz Kafka in the work of three international writers (Northwestern University Press, 2010) and curated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[1646],"class_list":["post-296606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317696,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296606\/revisions\/317696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}