Alta Ifland's Blog: Notes on Books - Posts Tagged "spanish"

I was happy to find some of my favorite publishers: New Directions, NYBR Books, Overlook Press and Europa Editions. (Speaking of Europa Editions, the book I am reading now is published by them: The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by a young German novelist of Russian origin, Alina Bronsky. I haven’t been so totally immersed in a novel in a long time—this is a hilarious, engrossing novel, one of those rare books that can appeal to a very diverse readership.)

My best BEA moments today were two sessions, both on literature in translation: “Spanish and Latin American Fiction in Translation” and “Translating Italy.” In my experience, translators are the most interesting—definitely the most intelligent and knowledgeable—creatures one can meet at literary events. This is not by accident since a translator is, by definition, someone who attempts to inhabit someone else’s mind. By the way, at the session on Italian literature, the first question asked by the moderator was: “What is a translator?” Anne Goldstein’s definition was the one I liked best: a translator is someone who solves puzzles—but the puzzles don’t have a good or wrong answer; there could be a hundred good ways of solving a translation puzzle. The other two translators at the Italian session were Jonathan Galassi, who has recently published a much talked-about rendition of Leopardi, and Michael F. Moore. One piece of good news was that today, in Italy, the majority of books on the best-sellers lists are not only by authors of Italian origin, but also by writers of literary fiction (rather than genre fiction, as is usually the case).

The session on Spanish literature was very good too, though, unfortunately, I only caught the last half. Among the panelists were the ubiquitous Chad Post, editor of Three Percent (one of the best online literary magazines of reviews on books in translation), and celebrated translator Natasha Wimmer (who confessed that every single book she has translated was a book on which the publishers lost money, in spite of the fact that the authors were world-famous—this statement alone speaks volumes about the situation of books in translation in this country).

Three thrillers with a political/historical background were released in English translation in 2013: The Mehlis Report by Rabee Jaber (New Directions. Translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid), I Will Have Vengeance by Maurizio de Giovanni (Europa Editions. Translated from the Italian by Anne Milano Appel) and The Mongolian Conspiracy by the Mexican writer Rafael Bernal (New Directions. Translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver). Of these three, The Mehlis Report is a thriller only for marketing purposes. Set in Beirut in 2004-2005, the novel is centered on the report drawn by the German prosecutor, Mehlis, on the assassination of the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. While the description of Beirut is extremely vivid, and the reader can feel, on the one hand, the fear that permeates everyday life in a city ravaged by bombs, and on the other, the charm of a complex, multicultural society, the novel doesn’t really come to life. There is something stagnant about it, in spite of its premise—the anxious expectation of the report—, and the idea of having dead people contact the world of the living via cell phones is rather embarrassing (notwithstanding the author’s obvious symbolic intentions; besides, what are the dead supposed to symbolize here? I’m sure the author himself could only give a muddled answer.) This is a very uneven novel (for one thing, it probably has one of the worst beginnings in the history of literature, and I doubt that the editors of New Directions would have ever published it had it been written by an American writer), a novel with potential, but maybe the author, who already wrote fifteen novels before reaching forty, should have taken more than just a few months to write it.

Set in the 1930s, during the Fascist era in Italy, I Will Have Vengeance moves beyond the classical form of the thriller. It is evident that the author has not only commercial aspirations, but also literary, and to some degree he succeeds. The victim being a famous opera singer, the novel includes reflections on music, art, love, and social injustice. The title itself, “I Will Have Vengeance,” is from one of the operas performed by the victim—though I wonder why the translator (or the publisher?) didn’t use the literal translation of “Io voglio sangue,” “I want blood,” which is stronger and more compelling. As in The Mehlis Report, there is a “paranormal” element in this otherwise serious book, which, as far as I am concerned, infuses these books with a layer of kitsch: here, the detective can see dead people from his past talking to him and giving him clues about the crime. Luckily, there is a twist at the end, and although the crime is indeed, motivated by “passion,” the reason is slightly more complicated.

The Mongolian Conspiracy is the closest to a traditional thriller, which, in theory, should make it the least literary; in fact, it is the best from all points of view: written in a highly economical style, witty, politically astute, with an existentialist touch at the end. The original was published in 1969, at the height of Sartre’s fame, of whom this reply is reminiscent: “When you kill…you are forever condemned to solitude.” The reply belongs to the protagonist, a hired gunman, and it is addressed to his former employer. The background is the cold war, and the premise the potential assassination of the American president during his visit to Mexico. But the twist at the end, very intelligent, takes us in a very different direction.