Monday, April 16, 2007

In translation

The NYT Book Review has started to put out occasional "theme" issues—issues where are the reviews are devoted to new books with a common subject: books on war, books on food, etc.

This week's Book Review focuses on fiction in translation, with a lead review by James Wood of Roberto Bolaño. Read it. Cover to cover. (Except the reviews of children's books, which are not translations. You can skip those.)

Only 3.5% of adult fiction published in the U.S. is originally written in a laguage other than English. (This table, published as the Review's back page, provides some other interesting data.) I'm sure that I don't need to tell any of you that there's great writing being done outside of the U.S. It's really good to see a venue as public as the Book Review taking steps to point people to it.

2 comments:

Pearl C. Pritchard said...

I just stumbled across your blog while looking for Maria Kalman images. Isn't she great?

Also, I used to live in Lansing Michigan but now I live in England. Must show my British friends the Kalman piece!

Tim said...

I love how Wood's review of Bolano, in the online edition, also includes a map of South America with Chile in red. This is in the New York Times.