April 2nd, 2016 § § permalink
Looking forward to this spring, Zainab Akhtar of Comics and Cola has a column at The Guardian on graphic novels to look forward to. Blutch’s Peplum, due out in April, is one of the launch titles for New York Review Comics, New York Review of Books’ new comics imprint.
The man known as Blutch is one of the giants of contemporary comics, and Peplum may be his masterpiece: a grand, strange dream of ancient Rome. At the edge of the empire, a gang of bandits discovers the body of a beautiful woman in a cave; she is encased in ice but may still be alive. One of the bandits, bearing a stolen name and with the frozen maiden in tow, makes his way toward Rome—seeking power, or maybe just survival, as the world unravels.
Thrilling and hallucinatory, vast in scope yet unnervingly intimate, Peplum weaves together threads from Shakespeare and theSatyricon along with Blutch’s own distinctive vision. His hypnotic storytelling and stark, gorgeous art pull us into one of the great works of graphic literature, translated into English for the first time.
“Blutch is a master. No other cartoonist renders with such casual virtuosity. It’s long overdue for his books to be translated into English.†—Craig Thompson
“One of our greatest artists.†—L’Express“In the hands of the amazing Mr. Hincker (who uses the pseudonym Blutch), a simple pencil takes on the qualities of a magic wand.†—
The New York Times
“One of the greatest living cartoonists (and if you don’t think Blutch fits this bill you really, really need to read more Blutch).â€â€”The Comics ReporterÂ
“One of the most important European cartoonists of the past 20 years.â€â€”Robot 6
Blutch (Christian Hincker) is an award-winning, highly influential French cartoonist. He has published almost two dozen books since his 1988 comic debut in the legendary avant-garde magazine Fluide Glacial, including Mitchum, Le Petit Christian, and So Long, Silver Screen, his only previous book to be published in English. His illustrations appear in Les Inrockuptibles, Libération, and The New Yorker.
April 1st, 2016 § § permalink
Words Without Borders’ annual comics issue featured an excerpt from Le piano oriental by Zeina Abirached, of A Game for Swallows fame. Serialized online in its entirety at the French newspaper Le Monde, Abirached’s work tells a playful and complex intergenerational tale of music and migration. This  excerpt tells the story of how she left home for Paris for the first time.
March 31st, 2016 § § permalink
7:30 – 9PM
453 S Spring St – Ground Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90013
The Last Bookstore is pleased to present Melville House Night, featuring authors Christopher Boucher, Jeremy Bushnell, Catie Disabato, and Kirk Lynn, and translator Edward Gauvin. Come join us to hear them read from their latest books.
CHRISTOPHER BOUCHERÂ teaches writing and literature at Boston College, and is the managing editor of Post Road Magazine. He is the author of How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive, and the forthcoming novel Golden Delicious.
JEREMY P. BUSHNELLÂ is the author of The Weirdness, and the forthcoming novel The Insides. He teaches writing at Northeastern University in Boston and lives in Dedham, Massachusetts.
CATIE DISABATOÂ is the author of The Ghost Network. She is a columnist for Full Stop and has written criticism and commentary for This Recording, The Millions, and The Rumpus.
KIRK LYNNÂ is the head of the Playwriting and Directing Area in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin, is one of six coproducing artistic directors of Rude Mechanicals theater collective. He is the author of Rules for Werewolves.
EDWARD GAUVIN is a translator from the French. His work has won multiple prizes and has appeared in the New York Times, Tin House, Subtropics, World Literature Today, and Weird Fiction Review. The translator of more than two hundred graphic novels, Gauvin is a contributing editor for comics at Words Without Borders. His translation of Serge Brussolo’s The Deep Sea Diver’s Syndrome marked the first English-language publication of the French master of the fantastic.
March 30th, 2016 § § permalink
R230. The Translator as Coauthor: Collaborative Translation
Room 513, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Thursday, March 31, 2016
1:30 pm to 2:45 pm
When translators and authors collaborate, we often assume that the translation replicates the original. Yet the results often differ not only in the obvious linguistic ways, but also in content, organization, and even plot, as writers take opportunities to revise and translators both render and rewrite the evolving text. Four translators discuss their experiences in working with their authors to bring their works into English, and the creative strategies involved in collaboration.
Moderator:Susan Harris is the editorial director of Words without Borders and the coeditor, with Ilya Kaminsky, of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry.
Edward Gauvin’s translations have appeared in the New York Times, Tin House,Subtropics, Conjunctions, PEN America, Words Without Borders, the Southern Review, the Harvard Review, and World Literature Today. As H.V. Chao, he has published fiction in the Kenyon Review, Birkensnake, and West Branch.
Shabnam Nadiya has an MFA from and is the 2013–14 Schulze Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is currently working on a collection of linked stories calledPariah Dog and Others.
Kareem James Abu-Zeid is a freelance writer, editor, and translator (of Arabic, German, and French). He is currently writing a history of psychedelic literature and wrapping up his PhD. His recent translations include novels and collections of poetry from Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, and Sudan.
Karen Emmerich is a translator of modern Greek poetry and prose. She has a PhD in comparative literature from Columbia University and is on the faculty of Princeton University.
March 29th, 2016 § § permalink
Editor Jessie Vail Aufiery’s labor of extraordinary love is now out from Serving House Press, and available on Amazon! Featuring, I’m proud to say, my translations of the essay “Paris” by Julien Green and an excerpt, “The Bawdyhouse for Beggars,” from Jean-Paul Clébert’s Paris insolite, forthcoming in Donald Nicholson-Smith’s translation as Paris Vagabond from New York Review Books. The Clébert piece previously appeared in the Le Carré issue of The Literary Review and Harper’s.
An anthology of poems, stories and essays that explore what Paris means to writers who have visited and lived in this fascinating city. These are works that are jubilant, despondent, flippant, stuck, liberated, devastated, bored, solitary, joyous, in love–that explore, in short, a wide rambling space that is not just tragedy or fantasy, but all the life that happens in between.
March 2nd, 2016 § § permalink
Blank Slate by Boulet & Bagieu
A young woman wakes up on a bench without any memory of either her name or what she is doing there. Conducting an investigation with great difficulty, she tries to reconstruct her not only her memory, but her entire identity.
What is she going to discover? A past made of drama and romance, or the regular old life of an ordinary girl? And if so, will she know how to become somebody, having potentially been anyone at all?
February 4th, 2016 § § permalink
Thanks to Ian Baran, librarian and blogger at the New York Public Library, my 2013 translation of Jean Ferry’s Surrealist-tinged tales is back in the news, part of a handful of titles profiled in two articles on Wakefield Press, that valiant publisher of Euro-obscurities based in Boston. In this “exceptional pocket book of 24 or so stories,” Baran says, “Jean Ferry has won over the everyday with extraordinary grace.”
On a side note: to date, Jean Ferry’s collection The Conductor and Other Tales is the only book where I’ve received royalties–not just contractually promised, mind you, but actually paid. For that I have my editor and publisher Marc Lowenthal to thank.
February 2nd, 2016 § § permalink
I’ll be reading from and discussing Serge Brussolo’s The Deep Sea Diver’s Syndrome tonight in downtown Mountain View at Bookbuyers, one of the largest used bookstores in the SF Bay Area.
WHEN: 7:30 PM
WHERE:Â 317 Castro St, Mountain View, CA 94041
Come one and all!
February 1st, 2016 § § permalink
At his site The Complete Review, always a trove of helpful links and context, Michael Orthofer gives The Deep Sea Diver’s Syndrome an A-, saying that it offers “a remarkably full story, creating two fascinating worlds [and] a beautful conclusion […]a very impressive flight of fantasy.” At his blog The Literary Saloon, he concludes that it is
“a very good book. I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten more attention — not even pre-publication Publishers Weekly or (full) Kirkus Reviews reviews — but it’s strong enough that word-of-mouth and internet attention should help it find its appreciative readership. (Yes, it is kind of science fiction — but hardly just.)
Really — give it a try.â€
(Incidentally, this is the 3rd translation of mine Orthofer has reviewed, and the first to break me out of my B+ streak.)
Meanwhile, despite misspelling the author’s name so as to make him more Russian, Matt Staggs at Suvudu is unapologetic about Brussolo’s SFnal qualities, and calls DSDS
“an unbelievably gorgeous little novel that lies somewhere between Inception and Blade Runner: a work of acid-laced science-fiction noir that grabbed me from page one and pulled me deep into the darkest waters of the imagination. It left me gasping for air. I’ve never read anything like it. It’s as high concept as anything Philip K. Dick wrote, and reads like a masterful work of magic realism. It borders on surreal. I love it like a beautiful and strange freak of nature that’s almost too good for this world: Hold it tight and keep it close, because You may never see another one like it again.”
January 31st, 2016 § § permalink
Forthcoming in late spring, my second book with the wonderful Wakefield Press after Jean Ferry’s The Conductor in 2013: an exquisite collection of six stories and two essays by Belgian fabulist Paul Willems. The Cathedral of Mist will take its place, after two books by Paul Scheerbart, in Wakefield’s series Imagining Architecture, which focuses on fantastical architecture, imaginary urbanism, and hallucinatory dwellings. The collection features a cover and interior illustrations by Bette Burgoyne, whose work has previously been featured by Will Schofield on 50watts.
Some stories from the book previously appeared (in slightly different form) in these fine publications:
- “The Horse’s Eye” in Tin House #50: Beauty (2011)
- “Cherepish” in Subtropics #13 (2012)
- “The Cathedral of Mist” in Tin House #58: Winter Reading (2013)
- “Requiem for Bread” at The Open Bar, Tin House’s blog (forthcoming)
Willems’ delicate original fairytale “The Colors of the World” (not in the forthcoming collection) was published in in Scheherezade’s Bequest #15 (2012) and podcast in 2013 at Podcastle, read aloud by Marguerite Croft.
Paul Willems (1912-1997) belongs to the final generation of great Francophone Belgian fabulists of Flemish descent. Four novels and two story collections bracket his career as a playwright, for which he was best known in his lifetime. He published his first novel, Everything Here is Real, in 1941. Donald Friedman’s translation of his late novella The Drowned Land was nominated for the Dublin IMPAC Literary Award and published with Suzanne Burgoyne’s translation of his play La Vita Brève in an edition from Peter Lang in 1994.
