WOMEN IN TRANSLATION MONTH 2019

Author, Tatiana Tolstaya
Translator, Anya Migdal
Book 1

5.5

Tolstaya's characters--seekers all--are daydreaming children, lonely adults, dislocated foreigners in unfamiliar lands. Whether contemplating the strategic complexities of delivering telegrams in Leningrad or the meditative melancholy of holiday aspic, vibrant inner lives and the grim elements of existence are registered in equally sharp detail in a starkly bleak but sympathetic vision of life on earth. 

A unique collection from one of the first women in years to rank among Russia's most important writers.

My view

Tatyana Tolstaya who counts among her heritage Tolstoy, is a rambunctious, acerbic and erudite author.

I encourage readers to become acquainted with this author.

Her stories will have you laugh and think. She delivers an interesting look into the new Russia of today in prose which would have certainly send her to the gulag under the USSR.

Read

Author Alina Bronsky

Translator Tim Mohr

Book 2

5.5

My view

Alina Bronsky one of my favorite Russian author, among a few others.

we all have heard of Chernobyl's catastrophe.

A dozen individuals with diverse afflictions decide to return to their homes, regardless of radiation present in their home town, after all who wants to end the last days of their lives in some strange place? Life resumes rapidly as in any small town, to the delight of the reader.

Reade

Author Linda Stift

Transator Jamie Bulloch

Book 3

Madness lurks behind the pretty façade of everyday life.


An elderly lady offers a young woman a piece of cake. She accepts. The lady resembles the Austrian Empress Elisabeth and lives with her servant in an apartment full of bizarre souvenirs. More invitations follow. A seemingly harmless visit to the museum turns into a meticulously planned raid to steal a royal cocaine syringe. Without realizing, the young woman has become the lady’s accomplice. Does she realize she is losing control?


My view

Oh, I loved this tale so exquisitely executed (  pun intended ) without a single drop of blood being spilled...
I absolutely loved this mystery novel.
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AKIN by Emma Donoghue

Little, Brown and Company
Publishing date September 10, 2019

Description

Noah Selvaggio is a retired chemistry professor and widower living on the Upper West Side, but born in the South of France. He is days away from his first visit back to Nice since he was a child, bringing with him a handful of puzzling photos he's discovered from his mother's wartime years. But he receives a call from social services: Noah is the closest available relative of an eleven-year-old great-nephew he's never met, who urgently needs someone to look after him. Out of a feeling of obligation, Noah agrees to take Michael along on his trip. 
Much has changed in this famously charming seaside mecca, still haunted by memories of the Nazi occupation. The unlikely duo, suffering from jet lag and culture shock, bicker about everything from steak frites to screen time. But Noah gradually comes to appreciate the boy's truculent wit, and Michael's ease with tech and sharp eye help Noah unearth troubling details about their family's past. Both come to grasp the risks people in all eras have run for their loved ones, and find they are more akin than they knew.

Review coming

THE MAN WHO SAW EVERYTHING by Deborah Levy

5.5
❤❤❤❤❤

Bloomsbury
Publishing date October 15, 2019

Description

It is 1988 and Saul Adler, a narcissistic young historian, has been invited to Communist East Berlin to do research; in exchange, he must publish a favorable essay about the German Democratic Republic. As a gift for his translator's sister, a Beatles fanatic who will be his host, Saul's girlfriend will shoot a photograph of him standing in the crosswalk on Abbey Road, an homage to the famous album cover. As he waits for her to arrive, he is grazed by an oncoming car, which changes the trajectory of his life.

The Man Who Saw Everything is about the difficulty of seeing ourselves and others clearly. It greets the specters that come back to haunt old and new love, previous and current incarnations of Europe, conscious and unconscious transgressions, and real and imagined betrayals, while investigating the cyclic nature of history and its reinvention by people in power. Here, Levy traverses the vast reaches of the human imagination while artfully blurring sexual and political binaries-feminine and masculine.

My thoughts

"It's like this, Saul Adler: when I was twenty-three I loved the way you touched me, but when the afternoon slipped in and you slipped out of me, you were already looking for someone else. No, it's like this, Jennifer Moreau I loved you every night and every day, but you were scared of my love and I was scared of my love too. No, she said, I was scared of your envy which was bigger than your love.
Attention Saul Adler. Attention! Look to the left and to the right, cross the road and get to the other side."

Saul Adler proposed to Jennifer before leaving London for East Germany, Jennifer rebuffed Saul.

Saul Adler is the man who saw everyting.
Saul a professor teaching history at university in London, is on his way to East Germany in order to learn first hand how it's citizens faired since the Wall went up. The year is 1988, the wall separates East Germany from West Germany. Saul is 28.
When he arrives he noticed the stark difference between East and West...something he was well aware of, after all he is a professor, a historian.

This is a difficult book to review without giving away to much.
As others mentioned, readers used to stories with clear beginings and ends might find this novel confusing. I would disagree, yes it does read like a puzzle, however in Deborah Levy's hands it is beautifully executed.

The writing is beautiful, filled with love, heartache, hope. 

Deborah Levy, deserves the Booker Prize for this novel, having been nominated a few days ago on the long list. 

Yes read it

Thank you Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley

ISLAND OF SEA WOMEN by Lisa See

Scribner
My copy

Description

Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends that come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also danger.

Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook’s differences are impossible to ignore. The Island of Sea Women is an epoch set over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War and its aftermath, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, and she will forever be marked by this association. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that after surviving hundreds of dives and developing the closest of bonds, forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point.

This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous physical work, and the men take care of the children. A classic Lisa See story—one of women’s friendships and the larger forces that shape them—The Island of Sea Womenintroduces readers to the fierce and unforgettable female divers of Jeju Island and the dramatic history that shaped their lives.

ZULEIKHA by Guzel Yakhina

One World Publication
Available now

5.5 +
Daescription

The year is 1930. In a small Tartar village, a woman named Zuleikha watches as her husband is murdered by communists. Zuleikha herself is sent into exile, enduring a horrendous train journey to a remote spot on the Angara River in Siberia. Conditions in the camp are tough, and many of her group do not survive the first difficult winter.

As she gradually settles into a routine, Zuleikha starts to get to know her companions. The eclectic group includes a rather dotty doctor, an artist who paints on the sly, and Ignatov, Zuleikha’s husband’s killer. Together, the group starts to build a new life, one that is far removed from those they left behind.
Guzel Yakhina’s smooth prose describes Zuleikha’s adjustment to a new reality and her discovery of a new form of happiness, and covers a range of cultural, ethnic, religious and socio-political issues. This outstanding debut novel from an exciting new talent has been showered with prizes and is capturing the hearts of readers all over the world.