German | Germany | Novel (excerpt)
November, 2014Endlich Stille ("Silence at Last") is the story told by an unnamed professor of philosophy who allows a man he meets accidentally while traveling to invade and disrupt his life to an ever-greater extent until only the most radical of solutions appears viable. In the excerpt at hand, Friedrich Grävenich, who first addressed the narrator in front of the Strasbourg railway station after the narrator had alighted there to spend a single night, has been living in the narrator's apartment in Basel's old town for several weeks; while the narrator wishes to have his apartment, and his existence, to himself again, he is unable to put his foot down and demand that Friedrich take his suitcases and go. The narrator, who was originally willing to give Friedrich the benefit of the doubt, no longer finds Friedrich's claims about his past life or future plans to be necessarily credible. Far from indicating that he is about to depart, Friedrich is behaving in an increasingly, and presumably intentionally, provocative manner. Major themes in Endlich Stille are morality, power, and control in human relationships; the tension between the desire for intimacy and commitment on the one hand and the desire for solitude and independence on the other hand; and the instability of identity.
Ott's text is characterized by sentences that tend to be very long and syntactically complex; the novel takes the form of a long reminiscence by the narrator during and, in terms of the novel's structure, framed by his solitary journey home to Basel from Liechtenstein. It appeared important to me that these long sentences for the most part be maintained in translation because they reflect the narrator's thought processes; specifically, he is--with one notable exception--indecisive and irresolute, and he tends to keep turning possible courses of action over in his mind rather than realizing any one of these possible courses of action. The narrator's paralysis, his inability to produce a solution to the central dilemma of how to rid himself of his unofficial roommate, is reflected in the length of the sentences he uses in his recollection of his time with Friedrich. While these sentences constitute narration well after the fact--when the novel begins, Friedrich has already fallen, presumably to his death, from a mountain trail in the vicinity of Vaduz--their length and structure, not least their many parallel constructions, are generally indicative of the narrator's personality and specifically reflect his mental state during the period of his enforced togetherness with Friedrich (a period during which the two men consumed large amounts of alcohol daily, mostly in the Crooked Tower, a smoke-filled bar in working-class Kleinbasel).
Like Hiroshi, Mr. Grandstetter, to whose encounter with the narrator and Friedrich the excerpt presented here makes reference, is a colleague of the narrator's in the philosophy department at the University of Basel. Friedrich's addressing the Grandstetters as "Mr. and Mrs. Pepe" is inspired by an anecdote related earlier by the narrator involving a small child who had once addressed Mr. Grandstetter as "Pepe," a presumably embarrassing incident.
- Peter Sean Woltemade
France | French | Novel (excerpt)
September, 2014A young couple, adrift in life, roams the streets of Paris on a snowy winter night. They enter a café but are forced to leave after a dispute with the owner. They continue their stroll, joined, though, by a seedy gentleman of a certain age they had met at the café. He accompanies them and tells them the story of how he reached his current state. He was once a highly regarded figure, successful in private and professional life, and a candidate for office. Returning from an electoral rally one evening, he found his wife leaving the company of another man. He confronted her and killed her. Though never arrested for the crime, his life collapsed. The young couple continue their stroll, and the young man is arrested by passing police for murder. He tries to explain that he had intended to turn himself in for an unnamed crime, and is questioned about the murder of a shopkeeper. A witness to the murder recounts the event and, when confronted with the novel's protagonist, says the young man is not the culprit. The young couple is released from custody and continues their walk, their lives as hopeless as at the beginning.
The excerpt featured here is the opening of the novel.
- Mitch Abidor
France | French | Novel (excerpt)
September, 2014Holy Mother of God! tells the warm, wise, and witty story of the politically incorrect life of Marie, a French housewife in search of happiness. Marie seems to have everything in her life she needs to be happy; a husband, Cornelius, who loves her, a newly purchased home, the news of her first pregnancy--and even though she is new to her small town, she has already become friends with a group of mothers. But Marie is naïve, and her perfect life becomes a little less than that. Astrid Éliard dares to shake the foundations of the maternity through a narrator who explains how this Marie--the French name for the Virgin Mary--struggles with her own life, "holy and full of grace."
- Allison M. Charette
German | Germany | Novel (excerpt)
June, 2014Forschungsbericht, at less than 40,000 words, is perhaps the most immediately accessible of Fichte’s ethnographic novels: set in the coastal Belizean city of Dangriga over the course of a two-week visit in February 1980, it depicts the attempts of Fichte’s alter ego, the writer Jäcki, and his companion Irma, the alter ego of Fichte’s long-time companion, the photographer Leonore Mau, to investigate the religious practices of the Black Carib (or Garifuna) community in Belize. The centerpiece of the novel is Fichte’s unsuccessful attempt to observe the dugu, the Garifuna feast for dead ancestors, which is presided over by the local buyei, or shaman, to placate the departed.
Forschungsbericht serves as an excellent point of entry into Fichte’s ethnographic writing, as meditation on both the consciousness of the writer and the creative process, and as illustration of the epistemological problem of knowing anything outside oneself, especially the foreign. Fichte, who originally meant his life’s work to be regarded as a history of tourism in the latter half of the twentieth century (and who might best be thought of as a French writer who wrote in German, a cross between Proust and Lévi-Strauss), is a crucial figure in that century’s literature, and deserves to be more widely known outside the German-speaking world.
- Adam Siegel
Arabic | Germany | Novel (excerpt)
April, 2014Zuhdi Al-Dahoodi is a Kurdish Iraqi who writes in Arabic and German and lives currently in Germany. He was born in Tuz Khormato, Iraq, in 1940. In 1956, he was forced to move to Kirkuk to continue his education after leading a student strike in his hometown against the Tri-Partite Aggression. He attended a Teacher Training Institute in Kirkuk from 1957 to 1959, and then taught in the village of Mama near Kirkuk. He was imprisoned in Kirkuk, Baquba, Ramadi, and Hilla from 1964-66, and then studied at the University of Leipzig, Germany, from 1967 to 1972. He received his doctorate from that university in 1976. Between 1976 and 2005, he taught in universities in Iraq, Libya, and Germany.
He began publishing in 1954 in newspapers and youth journals, and at one time coedited a clandestine newspaper called Sada al-Wa'i ("Echo of the Attentive"). "Two Friends" was included in his first short story collection, which was published in Arabic in 1962. He has published numerous other collections of short stories--including al-Zanabiq allati la Tamut ("Lilies that Do Not Die"; 1978). The novella Usturat Mamlakat al-Sayyid ("The Legend of the Master's Kingdom") was published in 1990.
His Arabic novels include Rajul fi kull Makan ("A Man Everywhere"; 1974), Atwal 'Am ("The Longest Year"; 1994), Zaman al-Hurub ("Time of Flight"; 1998), Wada'an Ninawa (Farewell Ninevah, 2004), Tahawwulat ("Changes"; 2007), Firdaws Qaryat al-Ashbah ("Paradise of the Village of Specters"; 2007), and Dhakirat Madina Munqarida ("Memory of a Dead Village"; 2010).
His books in German, which represent both original works and translations of his own novels, include: Die Kurden (1987), Tollwut Kurdische Erzählungen (1991), Das Längste Jahr (1993), and Abschied von Ninive (2000).
German | Germany | Novel (excerpt)
April, 2014Forschungsbericht, at less than 40,000 words, is perhaps the most immediately accessible of Fichte’s ethnographic novels: set in the coastal Belizean city of Dangriga over the course of a two-week visit in February 1980, it depicts the attempts of Fichte’s alter ego, the writer Jäcki, and his companion Irma, the alter ego of Fichte’s long-time companion, the photographer Leonore Mau, to investigate the religious practices of the Black Carib (or Garifuna) community in Belize. The centerpiece of the novel is Fichte’s unsuccessful attempt to observe the dugu, the Garifuna feast for dead ancestors, which is presided over by the local buyei, or shaman, to placate the departed.
Forschungsbericht serves as an excellent point of entry into Fichte’s ethnographic writing, as meditation on both the consciousness of the writer and the creative process, and as illustration of the epistemological problem of knowing anything outside oneself, especially the foreign. Fichte, who originally meant his life’s work to be regarded as a history of tourism in the latter half of the twentieth century (and who might best be thought of as a French writer who wrote in German, a cross between Proust and Lévi-Strauss), is a crucial figure in that century’s literature, and deserves to be more widely known outside the German-speaking world.
- Adam Siegel
Canada | French | Novel (excerpt)
April, 2014Set in Acadia, the French-speaking region of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, Bearsaga (L'Oursiade) presents a tale of two families: one of humans, the other of bears. We meet Ozite, a centenarian losing her eyesight and memory and tending to babble (at her age, it is her privilege!), along with the two orphans she's raised: Simon the Halfbreed and his young cousin, Johnny. Both men are dispossessed--their paternal origins are unknown to them, and throughout the novel they search for the identity of the man who fathered Johnny.
The bears, on the other hand, have been dispossessed of their home: when a summer fire forces them from their section of the forest, they move into a trash heap. Black Ghost, the chief, must save what is left of his clan, including his mother, Bearagenarian, a twenty-six-year-old sow who is losing her memory...and tends to babble.
While Simon is obsessed with finding the stranger who seduced and abandoned the mother of his young cousin, and while Black Ghost exhausts almost every possible solution to get his clan through the winter, Ozite and Bearagenarian meet and befriend each other. As they prepare to pass on, they look not to where they have come from, but to where they may go after death. Their homespun discussions of rebirth and reincarnation eventually provide an answer to everyone's questions.
- David L. Koral
German | Germany | Novel (excerpt)
January, 2014Forschungsbericht, at less than 40,000 words, is perhaps the most immediately accessible of Fichte’s ethnographic novels: set in the coastal Belizean city of Dangriga over the course of a two-week visit in February 1980, it depicts the attempts of Fichte’s alter ego, the writer Jäcki, and his companion Irma, the alter ego of Fichte’s long-time companion, the photographer Leonore Mau, to investigate the religious practices of the Black Carib (or Garifuna) community in Belize. The centerpiece of the novel is Fichte’s unsuccessful attempt to observe the dugu, the Garifuna feast for dead ancestors, which is presided over by the local buyei, or shaman, to placate the departed.
Forschungsbericht serves as an excellent point of entry into Fichte’s ethnographic writing, as meditation on both the consciousness of the writer and the creative process, and as illustration of the epistemological problem of knowing anything outside oneself, especially the foreign. Fichte, who originally meant his life’s work to be regarded as a history of tourism in the latter half of the twentieth century (and who might best be thought of as a French writer who wrote in German, a cross between Proust and Lévi-Strauss), is a crucial figure in that century’s literature, and deserves to be more widely known outside the German-speaking world.
- Adam Siegel
Czech | Czech Republic | Novel (excerpt)
November, 2013Jáchym Topol is the leading Czech author of his generation. Famous in his youth as an underground poet and songwriter, today he is recognized as the writer whose work most successfully and imaginatively captures the jarring changes in society since the end of communism in 1989. The title of Anděl ("Angel Station") refers to the bustling Prague Metro stop located in Smíchov, which was until its recent gentrification a rough, working-class neighborhood. With a cast of characters reflecting the area's diverse residents, including Roma and Vietnamese, Topol's novel, employing sparse, at times near-telegraphic language, weaves together the brutal and disturbing fates of an addict, a shopkeeper, and a religious fanatic as they each follow the path they hope will lead them to serenity: drugs, money, and faith. In the excerpt featured here, Butch, the addict, tries to escape his troubles in Prague by relocating to Paris with a new girlfriend.
German | Germany | Novel (excerpt)
September, 2013Forschungsbericht, at less than 40,000 words, is perhaps the most immediately accessible of Fichte’s ethnographic novels: set in the coastal Belizean city of Dangriga over the course of a two-week visit in February 1980, it depicts the attempts of Fichte’s alter ego, the writer Jäcki, and his companion Irma, the alter ego of Fichte’s long-time companion, the photographer Leonore Mau, to investigate the religious practices of the Black Carib (or Garifuna) community in Belize. The centerpiece of the novel is Fichte’s unsuccessful attempt to observe the dugu, the Garifuna feast for dead ancestors, which is presided over by the local buyei, or shaman, to placate the departed.
Forschungsbericht serves as an excellent point of entry into Fichte’s ethnographic writing, as meditation on both the consciousness of the writer and the creative process, and as illustration of the epistemological problem of knowing anything outside oneself, especially the foreign. Fichte, who originally meant his life’s work to be regarded as a history of tourism in the latter half of the twentieth century (and who might best be thought of as a French writer who wrote in German, a cross between Proust and Lévi-Strauss), is a crucial figure in that century’s literature, and deserves to be more widely known outside the German-speaking world.
The Brooklyn Rail welcomes you to our web-exclusive section InTranslation, where we feature unpublished translations of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic writing. Published since April 2007, InTranslation is a venue for outstanding work in translation and a resource for translators, authors, editors, and publishers seeking to collaborate.
We seek exceptional unpublished English translations from all languages.
Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry: Manuscripts of no longer than 20 pages (double-spaced).
Plays: Manuscripts of no longer than 30 pages (in left-justified format).