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The Translator
In John Crowley's new novel, he tells a tale of tremendous scope and beauty, set in a time when a writer's words -- especially forbidden ones -- could be powerful enough to change the course of history. In 1962, at a large college in the Midwest, a young woman with a troubled recent history registers for a class -- a class that is to be taught by an exiled Russian poet. A writer herself, Kit Malone is drawn to Innokenti Falin, as he is called. The two forge a friendship that develops into something He asks her to help translate his work. With the tension of the cold war accelerating toward a crisis in Cuba, the atmosphere on campus becomes contentious. Meanwhile, working on each poem with Falin, Kit finds herself able to face the secrets that made her swear never to write her own poetry again. And as the summer slips away, a delicate love grows between two displaced people. It will not be until years later, though, that Kit will realize what really happened on the last night she spent with Falin, while the country held its breath against the threat of war.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2002
28 people are currently reading
1132 people want to read
About the author
John Crowley
127 books848 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
John Crowley was born in Presque Isle, Maine, in 1942; his father was then an officer in the US Army Air Corps. He grew up in Vermont, northeastern Kentucky and (for the longest stretch) Indiana, where he went to high school and college. He moved to New York City after college to make movies, and did find work in documentary films, an occupation he still pursues. He published his first novel (The Deep) in 1975, and his 15th volume of fiction (Endless Things) in 2007. Since 1993 he has taught creative writing at Yale University. In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
His first published novels were science fiction: The Deep (1975) and Beasts (1976). Engine Summer (1979) was nominated for the 1980 American Book Award; it appears in David Pringle’s 100 Best Science Fiction Novels.
In 1981 came Little, Big, which Ursula Le Guin described as a book that “all by itself calls for a redefinition of fantasy.”
In 1980 Crowley embarked on an ambitious four-volume novel, Ægypt, comprising The Solitudes (originally published as Ægypt), Love & Sleep, Dæmonomania, and Endless Things, published in May 2007. This series and Little, Big were cited when Crowley received the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature.
He is also the recipient of an Ingram Merrill Foundation grant. His recent novels are The Translator, recipient of the Premio Flaianno (Italy), and Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, which contains an entire imaginary novel by the poet. A novella, The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines, appeared in 2002. A museum-quality 25th anniversary edition of Little, Big, featuring the art of Peter Milton and a critical introduction by Harold Bloom, is in preparation.
Note: The John Crowley who wrote Sans épines, la rose: Tony Blair, un modèle pour l'Europe? is a different author with the same name. (website)
John Crowley was born in Presque Isle, Maine, in 1942; his father was then an officer in the US Army Air Corps. He grew up in Vermont, northeastern Kentucky and (for the longest stretch) Indiana, where he went to high school and college. He moved to New York City after college to make movies, and did find work in documentary films, an occupation he still pursues. He published his first novel (The Deep) in 1975, and his 15th volume of fiction (Endless Things) in 2007. Since 1993 he has taught creative writing at Yale University. In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
His first published novels were science fiction: The Deep (1975) and Beasts (1976). Engine Summer (1979) was nominated for the 1980 American Book Award; it appears in David Pringle’s 100 Best Science Fiction Novels.
In 1981 came Little, Big, which Ursula Le Guin described as a book that “all by itself calls for a redefinition of fantasy.”
In 1980 Crowley embarked on an ambitious four-volume novel, Ægypt, comprising The Solitudes (originally published as Ægypt), Love & Sleep, Dæmonomania, and Endless Things, published in May 2007. This series and Little, Big were cited when Crowley received the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature.
He is also the recipient of an Ingram Merrill Foundation grant. His recent novels are The Translator, recipient of the Premio Flaianno (Italy), and Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, which contains an entire imaginary novel by the poet. A novella, The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines, appeared in 2002. A museum-quality 25th anniversary edition of Little, Big, featuring the art of Peter Milton and a critical introduction by Harold Bloom, is in preparation.
Note: The John Crowley who wrote Sans épines, la rose: Tony Blair, un modèle pour l'Europe? is a different author with the same name. (website)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 116 reviews
December 14, 2017
My husband is a huge John Crowley fan, and one day, he very un-subtly left "The Translator" on my nightstand. I admit I was a little hesitant: I enjoyed Crowley's other works, but I also found him hard work to get through. But "The Translator" turned out to be very different from "Little, Big" or the "Aegypt" cycle. The prose is still gorgeous, but this time, it's fluid and almost cinematic as opposed to convoluted and dream-like. Crowley went very far from magical realism and dove straight into historical fiction, which surprised me. But this makes for a much more accessible and easy-going read!
In the early 90's, Christa Malone travels to Russia to talk with some people about her former college professor, exiled Russian poet Innokenti Isayevich Falin, who mysteriously disapeared in the early 1960's. His poetry was never published in his native language - hardly published at all in fact, until she published the English version of a few of them in a collection of her own poetry.
The novel is about their unfolding relationship in a small college town, just before the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it is also about the constant opposition between American and Russian culture, the power of words, in poems but also in different languages, the way they mean different things to different people. Crowley clearly has a remarkable understanding of poetry and of Russian literature, and he created a completely believable female lead. I found Kit authentic, vulnerable and touching. Her relationship with Falin was not what I expected at all, and could have only ever happened in that specific setting. I felt the 1960's very vividly in her recollections: the settings, the turns of phrase, the bright and shiny surfaces masking dark troubles that no one can bring themselves to speak aloud.
The idea of translation as inevitably imperfect, because some subtleties of language can never really be expressed in a different language, is something that I think about a lot. I navigate between French and English every day and I know all too well that some feelings can be expressed better in one language than in the other, that when I try to say one thing in one language and then in the other, it's just not the same. It's the main reason I never read translation if the original was either in English or French: I want to read what the writer really said. Russian is a beautiful, highly complicated language and while I can't speak or read it, I am all too aware that anything I'll ever read translated from the original will never fully capture what Tolstoy, Dostoevsky or Chekhov was trying to say - and to be perfectly honest, that makes me sad. Falin notes at some point that the English translation of one of his poem is actually not the poem at all; it is a poem, that is sensibly about the same thing, but it can never be the exact same poem...
This is my favorite John Crowley novel so far: beautifully written, absorbing - and it made me want to read Pasternak, who is mentioned several times. A solid 4 stars.
In the early 90's, Christa Malone travels to Russia to talk with some people about her former college professor, exiled Russian poet Innokenti Isayevich Falin, who mysteriously disapeared in the early 1960's. His poetry was never published in his native language - hardly published at all in fact, until she published the English version of a few of them in a collection of her own poetry.
The novel is about their unfolding relationship in a small college town, just before the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it is also about the constant opposition between American and Russian culture, the power of words, in poems but also in different languages, the way they mean different things to different people. Crowley clearly has a remarkable understanding of poetry and of Russian literature, and he created a completely believable female lead. I found Kit authentic, vulnerable and touching. Her relationship with Falin was not what I expected at all, and could have only ever happened in that specific setting. I felt the 1960's very vividly in her recollections: the settings, the turns of phrase, the bright and shiny surfaces masking dark troubles that no one can bring themselves to speak aloud.
The idea of translation as inevitably imperfect, because some subtleties of language can never really be expressed in a different language, is something that I think about a lot. I navigate between French and English every day and I know all too well that some feelings can be expressed better in one language than in the other, that when I try to say one thing in one language and then in the other, it's just not the same. It's the main reason I never read translation if the original was either in English or French: I want to read what the writer really said. Russian is a beautiful, highly complicated language and while I can't speak or read it, I am all too aware that anything I'll ever read translated from the original will never fully capture what Tolstoy, Dostoevsky or Chekhov was trying to say - and to be perfectly honest, that makes me sad. Falin notes at some point that the English translation of one of his poem is actually not the poem at all; it is a poem, that is sensibly about the same thing, but it can never be the exact same poem...
This is my favorite John Crowley novel so far: beautifully written, absorbing - and it made me want to read Pasternak, who is mentioned several times. A solid 4 stars.
March 24, 2009
I really enjoyed this book. It focuses on the relationship between a dissident Russia poet who is a professor at a midwestern college and his student, a female undergrad who helps him translate his work from Russian to English one summer. It is also a study of the early 1960's in America. During the course of the novel the Cold War is on, America is getting involved covertly in Viet Nam, the Cuban Missile Crisis takes place, and JFK is assassinated. These events are an integral part of the story. The characters were never as alive for me as I would have liked, but I was blown away by the poems and the description of what translating them was like. Not only did English words have to be found for Russian ones, but rhythm and meter had to be maintained. More difficult yet to handle were Russian phrases that would trigger automatic cultural connections among Russian readers but which had no counterpart in English. If this was the work of an American novelist who was also a poet I would have been impressed. But John Crowley is know for his large body of fantasy writing. I am both mystified and bowled over by his choice of subject matter and the manner in which he carried it off. =
January 31, 2008
"A being such as that couldn't die all in a day and be gone, it would take far longer, wouldn't it? There would be things he would have to do, to tell us. We, the rest of us, can't turn back after we have turned to go, but surely he could, for a time. Oh turn back, she thought, turn back, make this not to have happened all in a day forever."
This is true: the novels of John Crowley are like a garden in my heart.
"If you return, O my dead, and you will, from your ashes and earth,
Return if you can as the ghosts in ghost comedies do:
Unwounded, unrotted, not limbless or eyeless (though fleshless,
Invisible till you take form, just a drape or a candle-flame fluttering,
A wineglass that rises and empties itself in the air);
Come walking through walls in your nice clothes and your uniforms,
smiling,
Not to warn or dismay, not with news or reproaches or tears,
But only to visit; play tricks if you want to, make love to me, dance..."
This is true: the novels of John Crowley are like a garden in my heart.
"If you return, O my dead, and you will, from your ashes and earth,
Return if you can as the ghosts in ghost comedies do:
Unwounded, unrotted, not limbless or eyeless (though fleshless,
Invisible till you take form, just a drape or a candle-flame fluttering,
A wineglass that rises and empties itself in the air);
Come walking through walls in your nice clothes and your uniforms,
smiling,
Not to warn or dismay, not with news or reproaches or tears,
But only to visit; play tricks if you want to, make love to me, dance..."
October 2, 2011
Beautiful. Wonderful. I tried to slow down my reading of it at the end, because I didn't want for the book to be over. But the ending was amazing, filling, the world made whole.
The language was strong throughout, at times peaking into gorgeous, lush descriptions:
"He held her a long time, kissed her cheek and her cool brow, her mouth, her tears. She knew - she knew by now - that there really can be a person, one at least, that you can embrace as easily and wholly as though the two of you were one thing, a thing that once upon a time was broken into pieces and is now put back together. And how could she know this unless he knew it too? It was part of the wholeness, that he must: and that too she knew. With her he was for a moment whole, they were whole: as whole as an egg, and as fragile" (Crowley 209).
The language was strong throughout, at times peaking into gorgeous, lush descriptions:
"He held her a long time, kissed her cheek and her cool brow, her mouth, her tears. She knew - she knew by now - that there really can be a person, one at least, that you can embrace as easily and wholly as though the two of you were one thing, a thing that once upon a time was broken into pieces and is now put back together. And how could she know this unless he knew it too? It was part of the wholeness, that he must: and that too she knew. With her he was for a moment whole, they were whole: as whole as an egg, and as fragile" (Crowley 209).
July 26, 2012
I like to think that John Crowley is always a treat. Sure, I've only read two of his novels, but they have been so good as to allow me to call myself a John Crowley fan. The other book of his that I have read, Little, Big is often considered his masterpiece. It is unsurprising, then, that I will compare The Translator with it.
The Translator is a much simpler story than Little, Big. It is much more grounded in 'reality' (though not entirely, and the plot is not nearly as complex. This does not effect one of the most important aspects of a John Crowley book, though: the writing. John Crowley is still a master at this craft and can manipulate the reader's emotions as he sees fit.
As a result, The Translator makes a good introduction to John Crowley for the uninitiated. It is a very accessible novel, and a fairly quick read.
Are there problems? I suppose, but they are more in the line of 'not being Little, Big' than any actual problems with the novel itself. People looking for a much more complex experience will probably be disappointed, but sometimes the author and reader need simpler fare, so they ought to get over it. It would also appear that this novel, more than anything, is a writing exercise to tinker with some ideas from the cycle by the same author. As a brief history lesson, The Translator was written before the last book in this cycle, and I imagine when I read it, I'll find out which ideas Crowley was, for whatever reason, struggling with at the time.
Is it his best? No, but that would be like saying Romeo and Juliet is not Shakespeare's best work. It is still a great work in its own right and only displays failures in comparison to at least one of his other novels.
The Translator is a much simpler story than Little, Big. It is much more grounded in 'reality' (though not entirely, and the plot is not nearly as complex. This does not effect one of the most important aspects of a John Crowley book, though: the writing. John Crowley is still a master at this craft and can manipulate the reader's emotions as he sees fit.
As a result, The Translator makes a good introduction to John Crowley for the uninitiated. It is a very accessible novel, and a fairly quick read.
Are there problems? I suppose, but they are more in the line of 'not being Little, Big' than any actual problems with the novel itself. People looking for a much more complex experience will probably be disappointed, but sometimes the author and reader need simpler fare, so they ought to get over it. It would also appear that this novel, more than anything, is a writing exercise to tinker with some ideas from the cycle by the same author. As a brief history lesson, The Translator was written before the last book in this cycle, and I imagine when I read it, I'll find out which ideas Crowley was, for whatever reason, struggling with at the time.
Is it his best? No, but that would be like saying Romeo and Juliet is not Shakespeare's best work. It is still a great work in its own right and only displays failures in comparison to at least one of his other novels.
January 12, 2026
This has been in my 'Want to Read' shelf from the time I put together a list of books that I wanted to read with a translator as a novel's protagonist.
It's a poetry in prose. I loved it. Sensitive and heartbreakingly beautiful.
It's a poetry in prose. I loved it. Sensitive and heartbreakingly beautiful.
December 12, 2015
In the interests of full disclosure, I hold "Little, Big" (and to a slightly lesser extent "Engine Summer") in such high esteem that Crowley could probably publish a book consisting of nothing but his grocery lists, or just a book of blank pages, and I'd still give it the highest rating allowed. He's the rare writer that can combine a vivid imagination for the fantastic with absolutely matchless prose, able to ground us in the ephemeral while still making it seem like a dispatch from a world that only touches our tangentially. His reputation as a fantasy writer is absolutely deserved.
Meanwhile, here we are in a novel that has nothing to do with fantasy at all.
This one is a bit of a curveball in his oeuvre, coming in between the last volumes of his Aegypt tetraology and it's not clear whether this was just a minor idea he wanted to pursue as a palette cleanser of sorts between other works or an attempt to do something different than his usual tales. Set in the early 1960s just before and during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it depicts the coming of age of a young girl in college as she learns what it is to be a woman while hanging out with an old exiled Russian poet whose name might as well be Metaphor For Our Sins. Christa "Kit" Malone has some skill in poetry, having once won a contest already, finds herself fascinated by the recent campus acquisition of Falin, a poet who was so good at what he did that the Russians didn't see any reason they shouldn't share his gifts with the world and kicked him right out of the country. Near to swooning, she manages to finagle a way into his class and along the way the two of them strike up a friendship that eventually leads to her being offered to translate his poems from their natural Russian into English without losing any of their meaning, kind of a tricky skill that almost requires rewriting the poems in your own words.
People who have come here hoping that John Crowley's prose remains John Crowley's Prose(tm) will not be disappointed here, as the man's gifts have not diminished at all and in fact adapt quite well to a more mundane setting. Stuck with having to describe cars and campuses and coffeehouses forces him to pare his vocabulary down slightly but his descriptions maintain their usual high standard, setting the mood effortlessly and painting with a delicate eye that captures the period without becoming some kind of winking documentary on the Good Ol' Days, where everyone namedrops references to Dylan and the Beatles merely to prove that he did his research. He evokes the era without explicitly having to dress everyone in hats that say "This is the 60s!", capturing the mood of the times (quiet, desperate doom, apparently), the slowly evaporating optimism of the 50s (built on shaky ground to begin with) turning into the queasy undercurrent that would eventually erupt into Vietnam, and everyone's highly differing opinions on Vietnam. With her father involved in some government work he never seems to talk about, and her brother joining the Special Forces, you get a sense of real life intruding, or making an attempt to, knocking quietly on the window and asking to be let in, promising it won't make too much of a mess. Unfortunately for everyone, the Cuban Missile Crisis gives everyone a reason to consider, however briefly, the avoidance of making any long term plans that don't involve mushroom clouds.
The underlying fear of nuclear war forcing an entire nation to simultaneously contemplate their own mortality (or, conversely, delusionally pretend that everything was going to be okay no matter what) is a big topic for any novel, especially a small one and at times the novel awkwardly seesaws between focusing the relationship between student and teacher, poet and translator, and the entire country attempting to wrap their heads around imminent annihilation. Neither are beyond Crowley's skills ("Little, Big" for one managed, among other things to mix the mundane with the consideration to a crisis in the larger world so that one became a microcosm of the other) but here he tries to do both at once and the scope isn't quite set for it. The novel works best when the lens stays on Kit and Falin acting as two people sort of exiled from themselves, in the process of shedding their old skins and not yet comfortable with what the new skins are going to settle them as, enamored of words and using them as a way to bridge the gap, not just between each other but perhaps between nations and eras as well. Crowley's evocation of Falin is fascinating on some levels, perhaps moreso than Kit's at times (who gets a Difficult Past that may be deeply felt but sometimes veer right into melodrama) as he depicts a man who is not very open to begin with coming to grips with the knowledge that he's lost everything, including his own country, in the pursuit of the written word and that need for expression, that desire to say what cannot be said, trumps all else, maybe even including life. Falin doesn't always come alive as a person but as an Idea he works just fine, the notions that poets (and by extension, perhaps, writers) are the soul of a nation and perhaps the voice of a people but more importantly, the voice of just one person speaking personally and without ego. Played off against that, Kit pales, and she (and the book) can never quite overcome her awe of the mighty yet humble poet's powers. As the book winds along, contrasting Kit's misadventures with her quieter moments as her and Falin grow closer as poets and perhaps lovers, it tries to steer us into metaphorical territory that works somewhat awkwardly, trying to give a thematic heft to the novel that it doesn't really earn (the same with the constant mysteries the book dangles at us that threatens to push it into spy novel Le Carre territory, resulting in a weird hybrid at times).
But when it stays small it works brilliantly because Crowley's prose is best for capturing those small and idle moments that wind up being the most important moments of all. For all the certainty of the setting (and a portion of this is probably drawn from Crowley's own memories, as he was also just entering his twenties at the time) it never comes across as strictly personal and instead more a love letter to poets and the power they have. Not bringing Falin into complete focus both helps and hurts the book, in a way he stands in for all those people abandoned by their country and unable to voice the guilt of being stuck on the outside unable to do anything other than make noise, fully aware that people are still suffering inside the borders and its not going to stop. But we don't quite feel his ache the way we should, for all the mastery of prose demonstrated here, the story never hits the gut the way some of his other stories could (as good as he is here, there's a line in "Little, Big" about watching someone cry that doesn't normally cry that packs more emotion in that sentence than the whole novel does), never quite brings the longing and desperation of his poetry to life, even if the lives of the people involved are finely detailed. There are plenty of small joys to be found here regardless, especially since Crowley isn't so prolific that a new book from him is a common occurrence, but it works best when it focuses on the small scale and not the sweep of history. History can tell us that others have come before us but poetry can do the one thing that history isn't so good at sometimes, which is to remind us that we're not alone now.
Meanwhile, here we are in a novel that has nothing to do with fantasy at all.
This one is a bit of a curveball in his oeuvre, coming in between the last volumes of his Aegypt tetraology and it's not clear whether this was just a minor idea he wanted to pursue as a palette cleanser of sorts between other works or an attempt to do something different than his usual tales. Set in the early 1960s just before and during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it depicts the coming of age of a young girl in college as she learns what it is to be a woman while hanging out with an old exiled Russian poet whose name might as well be Metaphor For Our Sins. Christa "Kit" Malone has some skill in poetry, having once won a contest already, finds herself fascinated by the recent campus acquisition of Falin, a poet who was so good at what he did that the Russians didn't see any reason they shouldn't share his gifts with the world and kicked him right out of the country. Near to swooning, she manages to finagle a way into his class and along the way the two of them strike up a friendship that eventually leads to her being offered to translate his poems from their natural Russian into English without losing any of their meaning, kind of a tricky skill that almost requires rewriting the poems in your own words.
People who have come here hoping that John Crowley's prose remains John Crowley's Prose(tm) will not be disappointed here, as the man's gifts have not diminished at all and in fact adapt quite well to a more mundane setting. Stuck with having to describe cars and campuses and coffeehouses forces him to pare his vocabulary down slightly but his descriptions maintain their usual high standard, setting the mood effortlessly and painting with a delicate eye that captures the period without becoming some kind of winking documentary on the Good Ol' Days, where everyone namedrops references to Dylan and the Beatles merely to prove that he did his research. He evokes the era without explicitly having to dress everyone in hats that say "This is the 60s!", capturing the mood of the times (quiet, desperate doom, apparently), the slowly evaporating optimism of the 50s (built on shaky ground to begin with) turning into the queasy undercurrent that would eventually erupt into Vietnam, and everyone's highly differing opinions on Vietnam. With her father involved in some government work he never seems to talk about, and her brother joining the Special Forces, you get a sense of real life intruding, or making an attempt to, knocking quietly on the window and asking to be let in, promising it won't make too much of a mess. Unfortunately for everyone, the Cuban Missile Crisis gives everyone a reason to consider, however briefly, the avoidance of making any long term plans that don't involve mushroom clouds.
The underlying fear of nuclear war forcing an entire nation to simultaneously contemplate their own mortality (or, conversely, delusionally pretend that everything was going to be okay no matter what) is a big topic for any novel, especially a small one and at times the novel awkwardly seesaws between focusing the relationship between student and teacher, poet and translator, and the entire country attempting to wrap their heads around imminent annihilation. Neither are beyond Crowley's skills ("Little, Big" for one managed, among other things to mix the mundane with the consideration to a crisis in the larger world so that one became a microcosm of the other) but here he tries to do both at once and the scope isn't quite set for it. The novel works best when the lens stays on Kit and Falin acting as two people sort of exiled from themselves, in the process of shedding their old skins and not yet comfortable with what the new skins are going to settle them as, enamored of words and using them as a way to bridge the gap, not just between each other but perhaps between nations and eras as well. Crowley's evocation of Falin is fascinating on some levels, perhaps moreso than Kit's at times (who gets a Difficult Past that may be deeply felt but sometimes veer right into melodrama) as he depicts a man who is not very open to begin with coming to grips with the knowledge that he's lost everything, including his own country, in the pursuit of the written word and that need for expression, that desire to say what cannot be said, trumps all else, maybe even including life. Falin doesn't always come alive as a person but as an Idea he works just fine, the notions that poets (and by extension, perhaps, writers) are the soul of a nation and perhaps the voice of a people but more importantly, the voice of just one person speaking personally and without ego. Played off against that, Kit pales, and she (and the book) can never quite overcome her awe of the mighty yet humble poet's powers. As the book winds along, contrasting Kit's misadventures with her quieter moments as her and Falin grow closer as poets and perhaps lovers, it tries to steer us into metaphorical territory that works somewhat awkwardly, trying to give a thematic heft to the novel that it doesn't really earn (the same with the constant mysteries the book dangles at us that threatens to push it into spy novel Le Carre territory, resulting in a weird hybrid at times).
But when it stays small it works brilliantly because Crowley's prose is best for capturing those small and idle moments that wind up being the most important moments of all. For all the certainty of the setting (and a portion of this is probably drawn from Crowley's own memories, as he was also just entering his twenties at the time) it never comes across as strictly personal and instead more a love letter to poets and the power they have. Not bringing Falin into complete focus both helps and hurts the book, in a way he stands in for all those people abandoned by their country and unable to voice the guilt of being stuck on the outside unable to do anything other than make noise, fully aware that people are still suffering inside the borders and its not going to stop. But we don't quite feel his ache the way we should, for all the mastery of prose demonstrated here, the story never hits the gut the way some of his other stories could (as good as he is here, there's a line in "Little, Big" about watching someone cry that doesn't normally cry that packs more emotion in that sentence than the whole novel does), never quite brings the longing and desperation of his poetry to life, even if the lives of the people involved are finely detailed. There are plenty of small joys to be found here regardless, especially since Crowley isn't so prolific that a new book from him is a common occurrence, but it works best when it focuses on the small scale and not the sweep of history. History can tell us that others have come before us but poetry can do the one thing that history isn't so good at sometimes, which is to remind us that we're not alone now.
August 12, 2017
Ah, such a relief... so few 5-star books encountered so far this year... Is this Crowley's masterpiece? I loved Little, Big, but this seems better-mastered to me. Also a great book to discover or rediscover for Our Times, such as they are.
You've got McCarthyism at its height. You've got national panic over the Russians, over the threat of missiles coming at any moment, apparently even worse than what we kids felt in the 70s. THESE kids had grown up with duck and cover drills, largely abandoned by the time I came on the scene. When I was growing up, we'd not died yet from a bomb for so long, the odds seemed real but remote, at least to me. Pushing the button seemed too irrational. What with the assured part of Mutually Assured Destruction.
So, what you have here is a Russian poet, not quite a defector, but someone who's been exiled. That makes him a bit suspicious to American officials. He's installed as a professor in an unnamed midwestern university, where our girl Kit, a talented young aspiring poet, becomes one of his students. Is she good enough to qualify for his advanced seminar? Or just vulnerable enough for his purposes? Which are what? And why does the charismatic young communist agitator, not a student, but a hanger-on of indefinite age, also take an interest in Kit?
Kit becomes rather the center of things as she begins to help the poet translate his work into English. In Russia, poets are important. They can steer the course of history and damage regimes. In America a poet has little to no impact. Except, does one? Perhaps so, in an unexpected way.
Paradox runs throughout the book. For instance, the poet observes, how is that America created the bomb, and was ruthless enough to use it, and then... lives now in utter terror of the missiles falling from the sky? A good question in 2017 as in any other time, isn't it?
The novel becomes a meditation on translation--Mandelstam, often said to be be the greatest of all Soviet poets, said translation was impossible--on international misunderstanding, on the terror of mutually assured destruction, on espionage and demagoguery, and on sacrifice. But mostly translation. Because all those other things, even love, depend upon translation and usually wind up being failures of it.
Translation, the poet says, creates two worlds. A thing means one thing in one world, another in the other. But there is just one world? asks Kit. There is only one world, he affirms.
And that is the heart of it.
You've got McCarthyism at its height. You've got national panic over the Russians, over the threat of missiles coming at any moment, apparently even worse than what we kids felt in the 70s. THESE kids had grown up with duck and cover drills, largely abandoned by the time I came on the scene. When I was growing up, we'd not died yet from a bomb for so long, the odds seemed real but remote, at least to me. Pushing the button seemed too irrational. What with the assured part of Mutually Assured Destruction.
So, what you have here is a Russian poet, not quite a defector, but someone who's been exiled. That makes him a bit suspicious to American officials. He's installed as a professor in an unnamed midwestern university, where our girl Kit, a talented young aspiring poet, becomes one of his students. Is she good enough to qualify for his advanced seminar? Or just vulnerable enough for his purposes? Which are what? And why does the charismatic young communist agitator, not a student, but a hanger-on of indefinite age, also take an interest in Kit?
Kit becomes rather the center of things as she begins to help the poet translate his work into English. In Russia, poets are important. They can steer the course of history and damage regimes. In America a poet has little to no impact. Except, does one? Perhaps so, in an unexpected way.
Paradox runs throughout the book. For instance, the poet observes, how is that America created the bomb, and was ruthless enough to use it, and then... lives now in utter terror of the missiles falling from the sky? A good question in 2017 as in any other time, isn't it?
The novel becomes a meditation on translation--Mandelstam, often said to be be the greatest of all Soviet poets, said translation was impossible--on international misunderstanding, on the terror of mutually assured destruction, on espionage and demagoguery, and on sacrifice. But mostly translation. Because all those other things, even love, depend upon translation and usually wind up being failures of it.
Translation, the poet says, creates two worlds. A thing means one thing in one world, another in the other. But there is just one world? asks Kit. There is only one world, he affirms.
And that is the heart of it.
October 29, 2010
Hard for me to believe the ending (could a poet ever really be that important, politically, in terms of the Cuban missile crisis?!?) but worth it for 1) that ever-bravura ability of the fiction writer to include decent poems in her/his novel (really we should make a shortlist: Pale Fire, The Anthologist, Possession....) and 2) various swoony love passages like this one:
"It seemed to her that they spent a very long time there together: not hours but days, years even, the whole course of a long deep love affair: that with him she moved from wonder, and then knowledge, to those astonishing tears and cryings-out without a name that come when everything inside is breached; and then to other things, to plain belonging and necessity, a necessity as profound and permanent and easily slaked as thirst. And then they couldn't do without each other, and that was fearful and awesome, but there was no reversing it, no matter what. The last stars paled, the casement window opened on the cold dawn; they went out, they went on. She got lost, and went on alone; then she was found, and lost, and found again; they went on, they grew old, they died together. That's what it seemed like." (NB that the narrator is very young.)
Far and away the best thing about this book is that I heard Brodsky's voice in my head everytime the main character, Falin, speaks. Crowley has obviously listened to many hours of recordings, or knew the man in person--there's no other way he could transliterate so accurately for poet, "poyt."
"It seemed to her that they spent a very long time there together: not hours but days, years even, the whole course of a long deep love affair: that with him she moved from wonder, and then knowledge, to those astonishing tears and cryings-out without a name that come when everything inside is breached; and then to other things, to plain belonging and necessity, a necessity as profound and permanent and easily slaked as thirst. And then they couldn't do without each other, and that was fearful and awesome, but there was no reversing it, no matter what. The last stars paled, the casement window opened on the cold dawn; they went out, they went on. She got lost, and went on alone; then she was found, and lost, and found again; they went on, they grew old, they died together. That's what it seemed like." (NB that the narrator is very young.)
Far and away the best thing about this book is that I heard Brodsky's voice in my head everytime the main character, Falin, speaks. Crowley has obviously listened to many hours of recordings, or knew the man in person--there's no other way he could transliterate so accurately for poet, "poyt."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 17, 2008
I was captivated by this book. It is the story of a girl, Kit, who is disconnected from her peers and life. At college she becomes involved with a Russian expatriate poet, also disconnected from his life, and works with him to translate his poems. The story moves back and forth from Kit’s childhood to her college years to a much later period when she attends a conference in Russia honoring the poet. The time frame of the early 1960’s and the Cuban missile crisis almost overwhelms the beautiful story of Kit and Falin and poetry – and I did wish that the political setting had been downplayed a bit more, but perhaps it is necessary for the story to work. I particularly liked the poems and the discussion of translation and poetry; I suspect this enjoyment was rooted in my poetic naiveté. Crowley writes beautifully.
September 11, 2023
Es una historia de amor clásica, en plena Guerra Fría, entre una mujer estadounidense y un poeta ruso en el exilio, donde su historia de amor se entrelaza con los poemas que ella quiere traducir al inglés. Es una novela muy bonita, que detalla líricamente el proceso de escritura y cómo se pierde al momento de la traducción, especialmente en poesía, siendo una metáfora del complejo amor que viven los protagonistas.
February 11, 2022
Es tracta d'un llibre publicat l'any 2002. La traducció és del setembre del 2003. El títol original és, precisament, The translator, que s'ha modificat per Traduciendo el cielo amb la voluntat, penso, d'aproximar el contingut poètic que farceix el llibre i que s'obre amb una cita les memòries de Nadezhda Mandelstam:
«"La poesía es poder" le dijo una vez [Osip] M [andelstam] a Ajmátova en Voronezh, y ella inclinó la cabeza de esbelto cuello».
L'argument mostra la vocació poètica de la protagonista, Christa Malone, la seva vida familiar i universitària on establirà una relació amb Innokenti Isayevich Falin un escriptor rus, desident i exiliat als EUA.
Veiem contextalitzat des de l'inici (1961) el contenciós de la guerra freda amb la tensió màxima de la crisi dels míssils cubans. L'autor es permet una interpretació transcendent (les ànimes de les nacions) per a explicar-ne la solució del conflicte. Cal considerar-ho com a llicència poètica en la interacció de política i poesia.
La implicació americana en la guerra del Vietnam, les tensions universitàries entre els defensors dels drets civils i l'oposició visceral anticomunista es veuen perfectament reflectits juntament amb la vigilància i control ideològic de l'estat.
Escrita amb una prosa elegant, manté l'atenció del lector amb les biografies dels personatges mitjançant les quals sabem del dol que arrosseguen. Així sabem, per exemple, dels besprizornye (nens abandonats). Falin, n'és un supervivent.
No sabem, doncs, en temps d'escepticisme i desorientació si la "poesía es una arma cargada de futuro" però podem afirmar que aquest llibre encara en vindica el seu valor:
«(...) Poeta, ten cuidado , vigila bien. No duermas pues eres el rehén de la eternidad, mantenido en cautiverio por el tiempo» (Pasternak)
«"La poesía es poder" le dijo una vez [Osip] M [andelstam] a Ajmátova en Voronezh, y ella inclinó la cabeza de esbelto cuello».
L'argument mostra la vocació poètica de la protagonista, Christa Malone, la seva vida familiar i universitària on establirà una relació amb Innokenti Isayevich Falin un escriptor rus, desident i exiliat als EUA.
Veiem contextalitzat des de l'inici (1961) el contenciós de la guerra freda amb la tensió màxima de la crisi dels míssils cubans. L'autor es permet una interpretació transcendent (les ànimes de les nacions) per a explicar-ne la solució del conflicte. Cal considerar-ho com a llicència poètica en la interacció de política i poesia.
La implicació americana en la guerra del Vietnam, les tensions universitàries entre els defensors dels drets civils i l'oposició visceral anticomunista es veuen perfectament reflectits juntament amb la vigilància i control ideològic de l'estat.
Escrita amb una prosa elegant, manté l'atenció del lector amb les biografies dels personatges mitjançant les quals sabem del dol que arrosseguen. Així sabem, per exemple, dels besprizornye (nens abandonats). Falin, n'és un supervivent.
No sabem, doncs, en temps d'escepticisme i desorientació si la "poesía es una arma cargada de futuro" però podem afirmar que aquest llibre encara en vindica el seu valor:
«(...) Poeta, ten cuidado , vigila bien. No duermas pues eres el rehén de la eternidad, mantenido en cautiverio por el tiempo» (Pasternak)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 9, 2019
This was a very intriguing story, which I became interested in due to the translator character, since I'm a translator myself.
I can see the importance of the US-Russia politics here, even how it affects the main relationship but I must confess I expected the story to be more centered on the actual translation work and its possible importance to the overall plot - even regarding the politics involved.
Instead, it felt like this was mostly about the main female character's feelings and experiences that, combined with a certain vagueness and lack of closure in certain moments, the end included, can be seen as evocative and thought provoking but also slightly unfinished and I'm in the fence about how I really feel.
The prose and poetry included did seem captivating. There were a few scenes quite spot on. But there were some boring parts too.
I can see the importance of the US-Russia politics here, even how it affects the main relationship but I must confess I expected the story to be more centered on the actual translation work and its possible importance to the overall plot - even regarding the politics involved.
Instead, it felt like this was mostly about the main female character's feelings and experiences that, combined with a certain vagueness and lack of closure in certain moments, the end included, can be seen as evocative and thought provoking but also slightly unfinished and I'm in the fence about how I really feel.
The prose and poetry included did seem captivating. There were a few scenes quite spot on. But there were some boring parts too.
December 17, 2024
About poetry and translation, set during Cuban missile crisis. Sad and beautiful. Vivid.
December 3, 2022
I have always loved Emily Dickinson's advice to writers to "tell the truth, but tell it slant" -- but I never felt sure I knew what it meant. But, finishing John Crowley's marvelous The Translator, I realized that's what Crowley has done in this book. He writes about world-shaking events: the Vietnam War, famous Russian artists jumping into the arms of U.S. immigration officials, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the threat of nuclear annihilation. But he writes them slant, through the lens of the relationship between a Russian emigré poet, and the young American woman who for one summer helps translate his poetry -- or that's what she thinks she's doing. The private, intensely personal feelings that grow between them are also in one sense as common as rain -- but Crowley writes of them with piercing, heartbreaking subtlety and sensitivity.
May 25, 2009
Christa Malone the 'translator' of this tale falls in love with an emmigre
Soviet poet who has lost everything. But under what circumstances has he made it to the United States?
The story and Christa's own poetry emerges slowly. This is a haunting tale about life in the Soviet bloc that most of us can never fully appreciate. We come very close to understanding as we see the Russian poet's old work brought home. But it is also a tale of the venality and narrow-mindedness of the 60s.
I came away wanting to re-read the poems in the story and wanting to write poems as well. I learned about the art of writing poems from this story.
Soviet poet who has lost everything. But under what circumstances has he made it to the United States?
The story and Christa's own poetry emerges slowly. This is a haunting tale about life in the Soviet bloc that most of us can never fully appreciate. We come very close to understanding as we see the Russian poet's old work brought home. But it is also a tale of the venality and narrow-mindedness of the 60s.
I came away wanting to re-read the poems in the story and wanting to write poems as well. I learned about the art of writing poems from this story.
May 27, 2021
Translation is one of the most controversial studies all around the world. While some people think that translation is a field of art, others believe that it is a study area of science including philology and linguistics. Starting from this controversy, is it possible to translate emotions, thoughts, and feelings into words and sentences by reflecting the social and cultural
necessities of the societies? In his novel aptly-titled The Translator, taking up the Innokenti Isayevich Falin and Christa Malone’s relationship in detail, John Crowley treats the subject of “translation” based on poetry.
necessities of the societies? In his novel aptly-titled The Translator, taking up the Innokenti Isayevich Falin and Christa Malone’s relationship in detail, John Crowley treats the subject of “translation” based on poetry.
May 9, 2009
A complex book in which I especially loved the poetry and talk about poetry/language and the way personal and shared histories intertwined, the way mysteries remained mysterious - and the main characters, Kyt and Innokenti. Good read.
December 23, 2020
A Memorable Experience
A book that took me to back to my past on a number of levels. To history on a personal and a cosmic level
Worth rereading. But it needs some space to allow for recovery.
A book that took me to back to my past on a number of levels. To history on a personal and a cosmic level
Worth rereading. But it needs some space to allow for recovery.
July 8, 2018
Sometimes, I'd bring books home from work because they sounded interesting, and then I'd never get around to reading them, because there were so many other books I had to read FOR work. This one's literally been on my shelves, waiting for my attention, for 17 years now. It still has the original 2001 press release in it and everything. I'm betting I enjoyed it more now than I would have 17 years ago, when I would have been a lot more cynical about what it's trying to do.
I absolutely loved the first act of the plot, when it seemed like it was about a young woman finding herself in college, and finding a professor whose views on poetry made her understand poetry differently. I got really emotional during a sequence where on the first day in his class, he has everyone stand up and recite a few lines from a favorite poem. I haven't read poetry in ages, but this book had me digging out and revisiting old favorites, and looking up the rest of the poems quoted here. And when the student and her professor sit down and try to translate his Russian poems into English, and it becomes a kind of study of language, and how some meanings don't translate, I thought that was so fascinating.
And then… it just kind of became a take on The Reader by way of The Human Stain, with the protagonist moping over this older man with a tragic past. That aspect of it really took the whole endeavor down a peg for me, because the "sad older professor-type is revived by young, nubile student-type" construction is just such a cliché, and even when done well (and focused more on her mindset than his, and with him not actually trying to get into her pants), it's hard to get around the familiarity of it, and the shadows of all the times it's been done self-indulgently and self-importantly. This is a different take on it, but not so radically fresh of one that it justifies the familiar shapes of the characters. But mostly I was just disappointed because the book starts out more like Pale Fire, and ends up more like Woody Allen's Irrational Man, with the co-ed chasing her older, burnt-out professor and not taking no for an answer.
I absolutely loved the first act of the plot, when it seemed like it was about a young woman finding herself in college, and finding a professor whose views on poetry made her understand poetry differently. I got really emotional during a sequence where on the first day in his class, he has everyone stand up and recite a few lines from a favorite poem. I haven't read poetry in ages, but this book had me digging out and revisiting old favorites, and looking up the rest of the poems quoted here. And when the student and her professor sit down and try to translate his Russian poems into English, and it becomes a kind of study of language, and how some meanings don't translate, I thought that was so fascinating.
And then… it just kind of became a take on The Reader by way of The Human Stain, with the protagonist moping over this older man with a tragic past. That aspect of it really took the whole endeavor down a peg for me, because the "sad older professor-type is revived by young, nubile student-type" construction is just such a cliché, and even when done well (and focused more on her mindset than his, and with him not actually trying to get into her pants), it's hard to get around the familiarity of it, and the shadows of all the times it's been done self-indulgently and self-importantly. This is a different take on it, but not so radically fresh of one that it justifies the familiar shapes of the characters. But mostly I was just disappointed because the book starts out more like Pale Fire, and ends up more like Woody Allen's Irrational Man, with the co-ed chasing her older, burnt-out professor and not taking no for an answer.
May 30, 2022
The cover blurb says, "Grand and serious, involving nothing less than the souls of nations and the transforming power of language."
I disagree. The first 100 pages or so make an interesting background of "Kit", with a somewhat hazy idea of this poet, Falin who she meets at University. There is a subplot as well in this first third of the book about Kit's brother Ben.
We are introduced to the concept of Besprizornye, ( literally translated as the “unattended” or “neglected” but generally understood to mean homeless children, refers to a mass phenomenon occasioned by war, revolution and civil war)
I loved the passages when I learn more about Russia, the difficulty of translation-- but would have preferred a love story just about them Falin and Kit with more convincing examples of poetry worthy of a reader!
The Cuban missile crisis seemed unnecessary. I'm not sure that the book addressed this idea put in one review: " mistranslation is the potential cause of apocalypse—the third, atomic, world war—and translation the cause of a peace-promoting sympathy between cultures."
I disagree. The first 100 pages or so make an interesting background of "Kit", with a somewhat hazy idea of this poet, Falin who she meets at University. There is a subplot as well in this first third of the book about Kit's brother Ben.
We are introduced to the concept of Besprizornye, ( literally translated as the “unattended” or “neglected” but generally understood to mean homeless children, refers to a mass phenomenon occasioned by war, revolution and civil war)
I loved the passages when I learn more about Russia, the difficulty of translation-- but would have preferred a love story just about them Falin and Kit with more convincing examples of poetry worthy of a reader!
The Cuban missile crisis seemed unnecessary. I'm not sure that the book addressed this idea put in one review: " mistranslation is the potential cause of apocalypse—the third, atomic, world war—and translation the cause of a peace-promoting sympathy between cultures."
October 15, 2023
My re-read of this extraordinary book earlier this year bore out my all my original impressions, first that it is deeply affecting, and second that the most satisfying sections come before the climax. Perhaps that's the nature of a book in which the final denouement involves the willful absence of one of its two principal characters? Given that Crowley is the author of one of my all-time favorite works, "Little, Big," I feel churlish for offering anything less than five stars––and if Goodreads would allow decimals, I'd hand out 4.75 in a heartbeat. Nevertheless, my impression remains, twice-over, that this gorgeously written Cold War novel delivers best in its carefully designed lead-up. Dare I point out that just thinking about certain sections makes my eyes well with tears? If you love poetry, history, prose, American history that goes deeper than the headlines or classroom histories, and characters worth their weight in conflicted moral gold, this should not be missed. Crowley remains an unsung national treasure.
January 21, 2023
Another one that's been sitting on my shelf for years; another home run. My third Crowley, and at this point I'm ready to buy his entire oeuvre.
This is historical fiction (with, okay, a faint whiff of mysticism—wouldn't be Crowley otherwise) that doesn't feel overburdened by the vast amounts of research necessary to bring it into being. It's agile, fleet-footed work, suggesting far more than it outright says (in keeping with the theme of what can and can't be translated), and laser-focused on a small cast of characters. But the novel's stylistic restraint never works against it. Thankfully, this isn't a case where aloof, too-pretty prose limits my emotional investment; instead, Crowley finds all the right pressure points. Your mileage may vary, of course—he seems to be a polarizing writer in that regard—but I found this incredibly moving and sensitively written. It stole past my watchful dragons in a way few novels have, lately.
This is historical fiction (with, okay, a faint whiff of mysticism—wouldn't be Crowley otherwise) that doesn't feel overburdened by the vast amounts of research necessary to bring it into being. It's agile, fleet-footed work, suggesting far more than it outright says (in keeping with the theme of what can and can't be translated), and laser-focused on a small cast of characters. But the novel's stylistic restraint never works against it. Thankfully, this isn't a case where aloof, too-pretty prose limits my emotional investment; instead, Crowley finds all the right pressure points. Your mileage may vary, of course—he seems to be a polarizing writer in that regard—but I found this incredibly moving and sensitively written. It stole past my watchful dragons in a way few novels have, lately.
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August 28, 2025This book is great if you’re a woman who wants to feel less comfortable in her personhood! It’s got everything: a young woman who exists only as a supporting character to men, women around her fitting neatly into stereotypes (vapid, passive, conniving, etc.) and a predatory older man, who is mysterious and revered because he cares about art (BONUS: he refers to the young woman as “unspoiled” 🤢). Yeah, I wanted to toss it about 1/3 of the way through, but I just kept hoping maybe I was missing something? I wasn’t. Too bad, because the concept had potential.
January 12, 2020
Disappointed. I would not recommend this book to anyone, but I had to read it for a book club. Contains over-wrought prose and poetry juxtaposed with the politics of the Cuban missle crisis. What happened to Jackie and who was he? What was the big epiphany at the end of the book???
Did I miss something somewhere?
Did I miss something somewhere?
May 20, 2024
If I write a review that says something like this is a book about a girl that grows up, you will think, nope I don't want to read that. So I will tell you only three things about this book. It is very well written. It is more about the interior of a human than the actions taken or done to. If you like literary books I think you'll like this one, it's not a beach read.
July 25, 2018
Es un libro bastante interesante sobre literatura pero no nos engañemos, apenas se habla de la traducción aunque es una bonita historia de amor.
April 4, 2018
Beautiful prose. The kind you want to take down in a notebook to look at like a lovely photograph. But it was also obtuse. Much was unclear when I finished.
July 4, 2018
Going to have to research what the big epiphany was at end. Certainly not obvious to me.
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