The Genre Reading Group met this week to discuss literature
in translation. Our topic for the May 28th
meeting is cookbooks! I hope you’ll join us!
(amazon.com) From the author of the Finlandia Award-winning
novel Troll: A Love Story, The Core of the Sun further cements
Johanna Sinisalo’s reputation as a master of literary speculative fiction and
of her country’s unique take on it, dubbed “Finnish weird.” Set in an
alternative historical present, in a “eusistocracy”—an extreme welfare
state—that holds public health and social stability above all else, it follows
a young woman whose growing addiction to illegal chili peppers leads her on an
adventure into a world where love, sex, and free will are all controlled by the
state.
The Eusistocratic Republic of Finland has bred a new human sub-species of receptive, submissive women, called eloi, for sex and procreation, while intelligent, independent women are relegated to menial labor and sterilized so that they do not carry on their "defective" line. Vanna, raised as an eloi but secretly intelligent, needs money to help her doll-like sister, who has disappeared. Vanna forms a friendship with a man named Jare, and they become involved in buying and selling a stimulant known to the Health Authority to be extremely dangerous: chili peppers. Then Jare comes across a strange religious cult in possession of the Core of the Sun, a chili so hot that it is rumored to cause hallucinations. Does this chili have effects that justify its prohibition? How did Finland turn into the North Korea of Europe? And will Vanna succeed in her quest to find her sister, or will her growing need to satisfy her chili addiction destroy her?
Johanna Sinisalo’s tautly told story of fight and flight is also a feisty, between-the-lines social polemic—a witty, inventive, and fiendishly engaging read.
The Eusistocratic Republic of Finland has bred a new human sub-species of receptive, submissive women, called eloi, for sex and procreation, while intelligent, independent women are relegated to menial labor and sterilized so that they do not carry on their "defective" line. Vanna, raised as an eloi but secretly intelligent, needs money to help her doll-like sister, who has disappeared. Vanna forms a friendship with a man named Jare, and they become involved in buying and selling a stimulant known to the Health Authority to be extremely dangerous: chili peppers. Then Jare comes across a strange religious cult in possession of the Core of the Sun, a chili so hot that it is rumored to cause hallucinations. Does this chili have effects that justify its prohibition? How did Finland turn into the North Korea of Europe? And will Vanna succeed in her quest to find her sister, or will her growing need to satisfy her chili addiction destroy her?
Johanna Sinisalo’s tautly told story of fight and flight is also a feisty, between-the-lines social polemic—a witty, inventive, and fiendishly engaging read.
One of Bill Gates' "Five Best Summer Reads"
The basis for the critically-acclaimed film, Heal the Living, directed by Katell Quillévéré and starring Tahar Rahim and
Emmanuelle Seigner
Albertine Prize Finalist
Winner of the Wellcome Book Prize and
the French-American Foundation Translation Prize
(amazon.com) Just before dawn on a Sunday morning, three
teenage boys go surfing. While driving home exhausted, the boys are involved in
a fatal car accident on a deserted road. Two of the boys are wearing seat
belts; one goes through the windshield. The doctors declare him brain-dead
shortly after arriving at the hospital, but his heart is still beating.
The Heart takes place over the twenty-four hours surrounding
the resulting heart transplant, as life is taken from a young man and given to
a woman close to death. In gorgeous, ruminative prose, it examines the deepest
feelings of everyone involved as they navigate decisions of life and death.
As stylistically audacious as it is emotionally explosive, The
Heart mesmerized readers in France, where it has been hailed as the
breakthrough work of a new literary star. With the precision of a surgeon and
the language of a poet, de Kerangal has made a major contribution to both
medicine and literature with an epic tale of grief, hope, and survival.
One of BBC Culture's Ten Books to Read this March and The
Rumpus Book Club Pick for March
Maylis de Kerangal follows up her acclaimed novel The Heart with a dissection of the world of a young Parisian chef.
Maylis de Kerangal follows up her acclaimed novel The Heart with a dissection of the world of a young Parisian chef.
(amazon.com) More like a poetic biographical essay on a
fictional person than a novel, The Cook is a coming-of-age journey
centered on Mauro, a young self-taught cook. The story is told by an unnamed
female narrator, Mauro’s friend and disciple who we also suspect might be in
love with him. Set not only in Paris but in Berlin, Thailand, Burma, and other
far-flung places over the course of fifteen years, the book is
hyperrealistic―to the point of feeling, at times, like a documentary. It
transcends this simplistic form, however, through the lyricism and intensely
vivid evocative nature of Maylis de Kerangal’s prose, which conjures moods,
sensations, and flavors, as well as the exhausting rigor and sometimes violent
abuses of kitchen work.
In The Cook, we follow Mauro as he finds his path in
life: baking cakes as a child; cooking for his friends as a teenager; a series
of studies, jobs, and travels; a failed love affair; a successful business; a
virtual nervous breakdown; and―at the end―a rediscovery of his hunger for
cooking, his appetite for life.
(amazon.com) The Book of Proper Names is set in
contemporary Paris, its main character an orphan named Plectrude. Before the
child's birth her nineteen-year-old mother shoots and kills her
nineteen-year-old (and somewhat feckless) father because she hates the names
he's devised for their child--she fears they will doom their unborn child to
mediocrity. The mother confesses openly to what she has done, and why. She is
arrested and thrown into prison, where she gives birth to the child, names her,
to everyone's bafflement, Plectrude--an obscure saint, and an albatross of a
name--and then hangs herself.
The novel therefore begins on the borderline between tragedy and absurdity, but as Plectrude grows--raised by a loving, indulgent, and eccentric aunt--it becomes a deeply moving and simultaneously chilling portrait of girlhood. Plectrude's great gift turns out to be for ballet, and she throws herself into dance as if her life depended upon it. Few novels have shown us the implacable and unforgiving world of ballet with more intuitive sympathy, yet also with a keen-eyed assessment of the true price of artistic perfection.. Inevitably, the doom hovering over Plectrude's life from birth returns to haunt her, and in the end she learns to survive in the only way she knows how--by committing an act of deadly self-preservation her mother would have perhaps understood best.
The Book of Proper Names is vintage Amelie Nothomb--alternatively mordant and poignant, a portrait of adolescence that is fierce and funny at the same time. There is nothing mediocre either about Nothomb nor her creations.
The novel therefore begins on the borderline between tragedy and absurdity, but as Plectrude grows--raised by a loving, indulgent, and eccentric aunt--it becomes a deeply moving and simultaneously chilling portrait of girlhood. Plectrude's great gift turns out to be for ballet, and she throws herself into dance as if her life depended upon it. Few novels have shown us the implacable and unforgiving world of ballet with more intuitive sympathy, yet also with a keen-eyed assessment of the true price of artistic perfection.. Inevitably, the doom hovering over Plectrude's life from birth returns to haunt her, and in the end she learns to survive in the only way she knows how--by committing an act of deadly self-preservation her mother would have perhaps understood best.
The Book of Proper Names is vintage Amelie Nothomb--alternatively mordant and poignant, a portrait of adolescence that is fierce and funny at the same time. There is nothing mediocre either about Nothomb nor her creations.
(amazon.com) A fresh, authoritative English translation,
with an informative introduction, fascinating explanatory notes, and the Coptic
text, with interpretation by Harold Bloom, our pre–eminent literary critic.
Now a Major Motion Picture starring Michael Fassbender.
(amazon.com) One night, after the first snowfall of the year, a boy named Jonas wakes up and discovers that his mother has disappeared. Only one trace of her remains: a pink scarf, his Christmas gift to her, now worn by the snowman that inexplicably appeared in their yard earlier that day. Inspector Harry Hole suspects a link between the missing woman and a suspicious letter he’s received. The case deepens when a pattern emerges: over the past decade, eleven women have vanished—all on the day of the first snow. But this is a killer who makes his own rules . . . and he’ll break his pattern just to keep the game interesting, as he draws Harry ever closer into his twisted web. With brilliantly realized characters and hair-raising suspense, international bestselling author Jo Nesbø presents his most chilling case yet—one that will test Harry Hole to the very limits of his sanity.
(amazon.com) One night, after the first snowfall of the year, a boy named Jonas wakes up and discovers that his mother has disappeared. Only one trace of her remains: a pink scarf, his Christmas gift to her, now worn by the snowman that inexplicably appeared in their yard earlier that day. Inspector Harry Hole suspects a link between the missing woman and a suspicious letter he’s received. The case deepens when a pattern emerges: over the past decade, eleven women have vanished—all on the day of the first snow. But this is a killer who makes his own rules . . . and he’ll break his pattern just to keep the game interesting, as he draws Harry ever closer into his twisted web. With brilliantly realized characters and hair-raising suspense, international bestselling author Jo Nesbø presents his most chilling case yet—one that will test Harry Hole to the very limits of his sanity.
(amazon.com) A spectacular best seller and now a classic, The Name
of the Rose catapulted Umberto Eco, an Italian professor of semiotics
turned novelist, to international prominence. An erudite murder mystery set in
a fourteenth-century monastery, it is not only a gripping story but also a
brilliant exploration of medieval philosophy, history, theology, and logic.
In 1327, Brother William of Baskerville is sent to investigate a wealthy Italian abbey whose monks are suspected of heresy. When his mission is overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths patterned on the book of Revelation, Brother William turns detective, following the trail of a conspiracy that brings him face-to-face with the abbey’s labyrinthine secrets, the subversive effects of laughter, and the medieval Inquisition. Caught in a power struggle between the emperor he serves and the pope who rules the Church, Brother William comes to see that what is at stake is larger than any mere political dispute–that his investigation is being blocked by those who fear imagination, curiosity, and the power of ideas.
The Name of the Rose offers the reader not only an ingeniously constructed mystery—complete with secret symbols and coded manuscripts—but also an unparalleled portrait of the medieval world on the brink of profound transformation.
In 1327, Brother William of Baskerville is sent to investigate a wealthy Italian abbey whose monks are suspected of heresy. When his mission is overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths patterned on the book of Revelation, Brother William turns detective, following the trail of a conspiracy that brings him face-to-face with the abbey’s labyrinthine secrets, the subversive effects of laughter, and the medieval Inquisition. Caught in a power struggle between the emperor he serves and the pope who rules the Church, Brother William comes to see that what is at stake is larger than any mere political dispute–that his investigation is being blocked by those who fear imagination, curiosity, and the power of ideas.
The Name of the Rose offers the reader not only an ingeniously constructed mystery—complete with secret symbols and coded manuscripts—but also an unparalleled portrait of the medieval world on the brink of profound transformation.
(rottentomatoes.com) Adapted from Umberto Eco's best-selling
novel, director Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Name of the Rose is a 14th century
murder-mystery thriller starring Sean Connery as a Sherlock Holmes-esque
Franciscan monk called William of Baskerville. When a murder occurs at a
secluded Benedictine Abbey, William is called in to investigate. As he and his
apprentice, Adson von Melk (Christian Slater), delve deeper and deeper into the
case, more dead bodies begin to turn up. Eventually, Bernardo Gui, an
inquisitor played by F. Murray Abraham gets involved, but he may not have the
best intentions. Sean Connery's performance earned him the award for Best Actor
at the 1988 British Academy Awards. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi
(amazon.com) A tremendous, emotionally stirring
tragedy, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame features one of literature's
most striking creations Quasimodo, the hideously deformed bellringer of
Notre-Dame de Paris during the turbulent final years of the fifteenth century.
Rejected by all but the priest Claude Frollo, Quasimodo rescues the beautiful
gypsy Esmeralda, condemned for a crime she did not commit, and brings her to
the sanctuary of the cathedral. But Frollo has been corrupted by his lust for
the girl. Only Quasimodo can hope to save her.
(amazon.com) Upon its original publication in 1857 Charles
Baudelaire’s “Les Fleurs du Mal” or “The Flowers of Evil” was embroiled in
controversy. Within a month of its publication the French authorities brought
an action against the author and the book’s publisher claiming that the work
was an insult to public decency. Eventually the French courts would acknowledge
the literary merit of Baudelaire’s work but ordered that six poems in
particular should be banned from subsequent publication. The notoriety caused
by this scandal would ultimately work in the author’s favor causing the initial
publication to sell out, thus prompting the publication of another edition. The
second edition was published in 1861, it included an additional thirty-five
poems, with the exclusion of the six poems censored by the French government. Rich with symbolism, “The Flowers
of Evil” is rightly considered a classic of the modernist literary movement.
Its themes of decadence and eroticism seek to exhibit Baudelaire’s criticism of
the Parisian society of his time.
Baudelaire was no slouch in the translation department
either. He nearly singlehandedly launched
Edgar Allan Poe’s popularity in France and the rest of Europe. Read more about it on Vanderbilt University’s website by clicking here.
In 1966 Wallace Fowlie, a scholar of French Literature and
professor at Duke University, produced “Rimbaud: Complete Works and Selected Letters,” an English translation of the complete poems of Arthur Rimbaud, a
work that captured the attention and imagination of famed musician Jim
Morrison. Fowlie’s later book, “Rimbaud and Jim Morrison: The Rebel as Poet,”
is a master of the form of the memoir, reconstructing the lives of the two
youthful poets from a personal perspective. In their twinned stories he
discovers an uncanny symmetry, a pattern far richer than the simple truth that
both led lives full of adventure and both made poetry of their thirst for the
liberation of the self.
The result is an engaging account of the connections
between an exceptional French symbolist who gave up writing poetry at the age
of twenty, died young, and whose poems are still avidly read to this day, and
an American rock musician whose brief career ignited an entire generation and
has continued to fascinate millions around the world in the twenty years since
his death in Paris. In this dual portrait, Fowlie gives us a glimpse of the
affinities and resemblances between European literary traditions and American
rock music and youth culture in the late twentieth century.
A personal meditation on two unusual, yet emblematic, cultural figures, this book also stands as a summary of a noted scholar’s lifelong reflections on creative artists.
A personal meditation on two unusual, yet emblematic, cultural figures, this book also stands as a summary of a noted scholar’s lifelong reflections on creative artists.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment