Teaser courtesy of A. A. Knopf.

1Q84 is coming October 25th. Click here to reserve your copy.

Click here to see all of Haruki Murakmai’s books.

Click here to see other blog posts on Haruki Murakami.

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If you’ve fallen in love with an translated piece of literature, you’ve probably wondered what it would be like to read the work in the original language. My fellow bookseller, Kelly, wrote a blog piece on the translation of literature in July 2009 after the second Stieg Larsson book (written in Swedish) had been released. She gave examples of how difficult it is translate poetry, and being a fan of Gabriel García Márquez, I appreciated her questions about the translation of his work:

“Gabriel García Márquez’s novels have been praised for, among other things, their beautiful language. But can we really say it’s his language that’s so lovely? Isn’t it more accurate to say that his novel’s translator painstakingly pored over each sentence until it most closely resembled Marquez’s aim and cadence in Spanish?”

Since I have been reading 1Q84, I began to wonder about Haruki Murakami’s translators. In an effort to release the English edition in a timely manner, two of Murakami’s translators took on the work: Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel. (Alfred Birnbaum has translated A Wild Sheep Chase, Dance Dance Dance, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Underground and others.) As 1Q84 was released in three volumes in Japan, Rubin set to work on the first two. Once the third volume was ready, Gabriel began working on it while Rubin continued working on volume two.

Jay Rubin & Haruki Murakami, photo from The University Bookstore Blog in Seattle

In September 2011 Blake Eskin, editor of New Yorker.com, interviewed Jay Rubin about translating Murakami’s 1Q84 for The New Yorker Out Loud series.

Jay Rubin explains that he first read Murakami not by choice. It all came about when an American publisher needed an opinion of Murakami just to see if they wanted to have a Murakami work translated. Rubin had no idea what to expect and “figured he was just another pop writer.”

But Rubin was greatly surprised and begged the American publisher to print Murakami and let him translate the work. They rejected the recommendation to publish Murakami. However, about a year later, a translation of Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland translated by Alfred Birnbaum came out. Eventually, Rubin is asked to translate and his name now accompanies Haruki Murakami’s on several of his novels.

Griffin, a lover of Japanese literature and blogger for The University Bookstore in Seattle, was invited to a May 2010 lecture given by Jay Rubin. Griffin shares Rubin’s translation challenge in his blog piece:

“Professor Rubin shared one anecdote that involved his current project translating the first two volumes of 1Q84 for Haruki Murakami. He assured us that this isn’t a spoiler, but some of the characters see two moons in the sky. These folks are in the minority, as everyone else sees a single moon. But in Japanese, there is no distinction between plural and singular nouns. So the struggle, for him, has become sorting out how many moons each character sees.”

In the Eskin interview, Rubin comments on how authors are truly at the mercy of the translator and that the process of translation is very subjective. All three translators of Murakami have their own recognizable styles, says Rubin, and adds that Murakami has felt that it is he, Rubin, who sticks the closest to the original.

In an interview with The Paris Review Murakami was asked how he chose his translators:

“I have three—Alfred Birnbaum, Philip Gabriel, Jay Rubin—and the rule is “first come, first get.” We’re friends, so they are very honest. They read my books and one of them thinks, That’s great! I’d like to do that. So he takes it. As a translator myself, I know that to be enthusiastic is the main part of a good translation. If someone is a good translator but doesn’t like a book so much, that’s the end of the story. Translation is very hard work, and it takes time.”

Back to Kelly’s blog piece in which she considers the translation of Gabriel García Márquez and Stieg Larsson: She was fortunate to get a comment from Larsson’s translator, Reg Keeland. Here’s what he had to say:

“Once, through the translator grapevine, I heard that Gabriel García Márquez had told his translator Gregory Rabassa that the English version sounded better than his own original Spanish. Now that’s a compliment! I hope Americans are finally getting over their fear of translations. Compared to the 80s and 90s, we’re experiencing a mini-boom in translated fiction. Publishers are not going to incur extra expense to publish a translation if it’s not excellent, and the quality of translations in general has gone up considerably since their fall in status in the 70s-80s. I still recall the golden age of translated fiction in the 60s, when I could go to the library and find a new author from any number of countries — the way I discovered Jorge Amado from Brazil through his novella “The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell.” Let’s face it, reading good fiction from other countries is a fantastic way to learn about other cultures without leaving your armchair.”

In my unquenchable thirst for all things Murakami, I found out about an entire symposium devoted to translating and reading his work. When us book/language nerds begin to think about the 40+ languages into which Murakami has been translated, we can imagine the discussion. The book to commemorate the symposium is aptly entitled A Wild Haruki Chase: Reading Murakami Around the World

As we appreciate the work of translators, what’s left to do but enjoy the fruits of their labor? It also leads me to peruse all of the beautiful covers around the world. Our former bookseller and Murakami fan Kaycie photographed these books in a Paris bookshop.

Blake Eskin’s interview is a pleasure. Listen to the entire interview here.

1Q84 is coming October 25th. Click here to reserve your copy.

Click here to see all of Haruki Murakmai’s books.

Click here to see other blog posts on Murakami.

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In getting ready for the long-awaited release of 1Q84 on October 25th, I was pleasantly surprised to find evidence of Lemuria-Staff-Past who have also been devoted fans. Walker (Lemuria Class of 2006) said he would be happy if we shared some of his thoughts on one his favorite Murakami books and a recommended first read. Here’s what he has to say:

Murakami’s Norwegian Wood was the novel that broke the author into mainstream success. Compared to Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World or Kafka on the Shore, the narrative is straightforward: a college boy’s coming-of-age story, told through his romantic involvement with two very different girls. But this book is the most affecting, personal, and character-driven Murakami I’ve read, and I loved it.

It’s a coming of age story with all of what I count as some of the author’s big draws: simple, elegant sentences, sexual frankness, and quiet thoughts on everyday scenes. When Murakami writes that his character just drank coffee, read a chapter in a book, then went to get beer, you don’t doubt it, and you feel for some reason that you would like coffee, a good book, and then some beer. It’s a weird and calm effect he has. Also, in this book, you get to read about what everybody eats and drinks. You will know what every character ate and drank every time they do it. It’s great. There’s a diligent and gentle attention to surface detail that’s almost strange.

This book would serve as a great introduction to Murakami, his writing and voice are wonderful here, the story is clear and intimate, and if you’re leery or not in the mood for fantastic elements, they’re none to be found.

-Walker (Lemuria 2006)

For an introduction to Murakami and preview of 1Q84, click here.

1Q84 is coming October 25th. Click here to reserve your copy.

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I was walking through the Fiction Room and saw a book that I was unfamiliar with, but the cover just drew me to it.  I did a little investigating online and decided that while We, The Drowned by Carsten Jensen was not the genre I usually read, it was to be my next book.

This novel was published in Europe first and has been hailed an instant classic there.  We, the Drowned is a seafaring novel that takes us through a 100-year history of the port town of Marstal through the eyes of the Madsen family starting with the infamous Laurids, who is known as “single-handedly starting a war” to his son, Albert, who follows in his father’s footsteps by not only becoming a sailor but by sailing around the world in search of Laurids after he disappears.

It is also the tale of the women who are left behind constantly wondering if their husbands and/or sons will return home after sailing the storm ravaged seas from Newfoundland to Samoa to Tasmania to Russia, and if they do return, what stories they will have of their travels.

While reading I really could picture everything and everyone in the town of Marstel and very much enjoyed the stories about cannibals, shrunken heads, prophetic dreams, treasures, forbidden passions, tragedies and survivals.  I felt like I was sailing around the world and worried at home with the various Marstallers.  This is a perfect book if you are looking for a “stay-cation” for Spring Break.

On a Saturday night, when I was a teenager in 1970s Ireland, my pals and I would go to the school-kids’ disco at the Presentation College, Glasthule. ‘Prez’, as it was known, was fairly grimy at the time, but fantastically exciting, too. Deep Purple were in vogue. The girls wore cheesecloth and denim. When Status Quo were played, the air would be filled with swirling dandruff as we head-banged and thrashed air guitars. The climax of the evening was always Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’, and if you hadn’t persuaded someone to slow-dance with you before that song sped up, the consensus was that you were going home alone. And most Saturday nights, that’s what happened to me. Tongue-tied, nervous, I faced the long road home. But still, there was a love story in Glasthule.

My walk home would take me past the old Victorian house where the great writer John Synge and his widowed mother had endured their last years, a house that appears several times in Ghost Light. As a child, I passed it often, was faintly afraid of it, often wondered about the stories it had seen. On a wintry night it could be forbidding as the Bates Motel, or as Wuthering Heights in a rainstorm. But on a moonlit summer evening in that coast-town of seagulls and steeples, a strange beauty seemed to glitter from its windows.

Molly Allgood by John B. Yeats

My late mother, a great reader, had often told me the strangest story of all: how in the last years of Synge’s life, this reticent, broken genius, the son of a Protestant land-owning family, had fallen tempestuously in love with a Catholic girl from the inner city of Dublin, a young actress called Molly Allgood. Molly had been an apprentice dressmaker at one point in her teens. My mother, too, had trained as a dress-designer. Molly’s stage name was ‘Maire O’Neill’, my grandmother’s surname. These tiny connections, and other ones, kept the story burning long in my mind.  But the main thing that fuelled it was the memory of lonely Saturday nights, when I’d walk past that house and feel its ghosts gazing out at me, every bit as friendless as I was.

A couple of years ago, I began writing this novel inspired by Molly Allgood and Synge. I started with the uncertainty most novelists have at the outset. You don’t know if your story is going to work at all. What tense should it be written in? Who should be the narrator? Every book needs to have a style, its own unique voice, and to find it can be gruelingly frustrating. But somehow, over time, through dozens of drafts, I came to see that this story needed to be simple, focused closely on Molly. She began to loom up at me from the phantoms of dead drafts, as funny and flirtatious as I had imagined her in my teens. I suppose I learnt to stand out of her way, to let her lead me into the story of Ghost Light. I follow her through a day in the 1950s in London, when the past comes back to an elderly Irish actress who was once the beautiful muse of a genius.

William Butler Yeats

To write fiction based on real people and those they loved is a morally ambiguous enterprise, to say the least.  Ghost Light is a work of the imagination, frequently taking immense liberties with fact. The experiences and personalities of the real Molly and Synge differed from those of my characters in numerous ways. Yeats and Lady Gregory and Sean O’Casey appear in the book too, no doubt in forms some biographers won’t like. Then again, these giants often said they had fanned their fictions from the sparks of real life, renaming the people who had inspired their stories. The practice was sometimes a camouflage, sometimes a claim of authenticity. It was an option I considered carefully but decided against in the end, and so I dare to ask the forgiveness of these noble ghosts of world literature for not changing the names of the innocent.

To finish a book is an ambiguous feeling too. You have worked so long and hard on it, you know its every line and comma. In the final stages of editing, you dream about it. And then suddenly, the day is coming when it must go out into the world. You won’t be there to hold its hand, to reason away its deficiencies, to explain it to those who will encounter it. There is a kind of joy in finishing, but there is fear and apprehensiveness too. You want the book to find friends who will meet it halfway. Perhaps it’s similar to what a parent feels when a child leaves the house. This day was always coming; it’s what everything was building towards; but there is anxiety in the mix, a sense of encroaching realities, and if I am honest, there is even a touch of sadness. You come to know your characters so well; everything about them. Things you’ll never know about your spouse or your closest friend, you know about a person you have created. To see her walk away, into the great, wide world, is to watch a little piece of your self take its chances. But that’s what a novel is for: to offer itself to the reader. I hope you find something in it that speaks to you.

This essay first appeared on Joseph O’Connor’s official website. There you can find material for book clubs, reviews, video, book tour information, and much more.

Lemuria is one of nine stops on Joseph O’Connor’s U.S. tour for Ghost Light. He will be signing at 5:00 and reading at 5:30 on Friday, February 18th.

The signing and reading will take place at our Dot Com events building.

Ya’lls Blues will start playing music at 5:00. Come on over for a beer and a relaxing evening on the deck.

Also see Nan’s blog on Ghost Light.

Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2011)

Festooned by a calligraphic black spill across the dust jacket, white block letters announce that this book is “The International Bestseller” written by a very young Italian who just happens to also be a physicist. Against a stark pure white background are two slightly wet peas in a green pod and the title in uneven black block letters.

There is a reason for spending time describing the dust jacket. First, the jacket itself is a metaphor for the whole story inside, a kind of meditation of the whole reduced to the one page you see first (e-books are simply not as good at enticing the reader). The three toned cover is an artistic invitation inviting us to gently enter. Do come in, it says.

Secondly, after finishing the book last night, I can assure you that just reflecting on this cover will remind you of the beautiful language inside that propels us almost imperceptibly. The pace comes from an emotional yet unsentimental rhythm that keeps us afloat in spite of all apparent circumstances.

The two “peas” of this book are Alice Della Rocca, just nine-years-old, forced by her domineering father to attend ski school every morning, supposedly somewhere in the Italian Alps. The ski instructor, like her father, are success driven types who disdain slackers. Alice has just had breakfast and the milk was spoiled. Needless to say, once she’s mummified into her ski clothes and left for the morning where she simply doesn’t want to be, things get a little out of hand. She feels a little sick and needs a bathroom but such silliness is verboten in this snowfilled outdoor classroom.

She disappears into the white snow and blinding fog, searching for a private space. She suffers an injury to her leg that will isolate her from most of the joys of growing up while creating psychic wounds that make coping a world weary struggle.

The other “pea” is Mattias Balossino, gifted intellectually and mathematically, whose twin sister was born with severe mental disabilities. Mattias is his sister’s keeper. That being his duty, these two live mostly on the fringe of childhood. One day, they are both invited, rather reluctantly, to a classmate’s birthday party. Mattias, the perennial caregiver to his mentally challenged sister, makes an impulsive decision to leave Michela, his twin, in the park while he attends the party by himself. This choice will alter the course of his life, leaving him with both visible and invisible wounds, rendering his psyche, like Alice’s, damaged.

This brings us to the third reason to note how the cover mirrors the story inside. This is a love story. A timely blog to honor cupid’s own Valentine’s Day. You just might figure the love part of this book while noting the two green peas in a singular green pea pod, broken off its branch. If it weren’t for this emerald, verdant green on the front, the colors would be just black and white perhaps suggesting that the story inside is an almost unbearable story of sadness and missed opportunities, which it is, partly.

But you see, this is a story fueled by love, surprising types of love. Not just the romantic kind that sees stars and feels desire. It is a story about two damaged people who somehow support each other through the agonies of adolescence, isolated from the crowd. A bullying young girl plots an encounter between Alice and Mattias, knowing the results will be humiliating for the two of them. Her plot turns on her and instead of triumph, she feels jealousy. Not all love stories end up happily ever after. But some leave us with a more satisfying hope of good things yet to come.

Also see Kelly’s blog on Prime Numbers

The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano (Penguin, 2010)

-Pat

When I learned that Norwegian writer Per Petterson had written a new novel, I was so excited, for I just loved Out Stealing Horses, released in 2007. In fact, I liked it so much that I chose it for our book club to read and discuss for one of our meetings. It’s hard for me to believe that Petterson’s work always appears in translation since the language flows so beautifully that it seems to be written  in our native tongue here in the United States. This, of course, speaks well for the ability of his translator, Charlotte Barslund who translates Scandinavian novels and plays.  In fact, at the conclusion of this new title, information is included about the translation.

I Curse the River of Time, an unusual title for a novel, comes from the lyrics of a tune whose words are included within the novel’s pages, as are the lyrics of other songs throughout the novel. Written in a flashback structure, the novel should be read, in my opinion, in two or three readings, and not over a period of two or three weeks, as I did. It is short enough to be read in a few sittings. The problem with stretching it out over a longer period of time is that the reader can’t remember the flashback location, and with the locales being in Norway, the recognition of the cities is not as easy. (I tend to read four to five novels at the same time, and sometimes this can be the detriment of not being able to finish one in the period of time that would be advantageous.)

The main character, thirty-seven year old Arvid, experiences great anxiety due to many factors in his life: his impending divorce, his terminally ill mother, his inability to find a job which satisfies him, and his frustration with the current state of politics. (He has made a conscious decision to support Communism in the late 1980s.) That should be enough to stress out anyone, but add to this mix the fact that obviously there is a slight Oedipal complex at play which rears its head often in the limitless number of flashbacks involving his mother who seems to favor another of his many brothers. Suffice it to say that Arvid is discontented.

On page 186, Arvid’s self realization comes to the front as he admits:

“…..it suddenly dawned on me that what I had tried to do might not be possible: to leave behind the Arvid I had been up to this point in my life, to pull him up by his hair and then lower him into some other Arvid I still did not know, yes, with full conviction turn my back on the Arvid who was loved by those he loved the most, who greeted him and called him by pet names when he passed them in front of the house, the Arvid who got one hundred kroner notes from his mother when he was broke, but now had done what I had done and joined the “peuple” which really did not exist any more, but was an anachronism. I was a man out of time, or my character had a flaw, a crack in its foundation that would grow wider with each year.”

-Nan

Is that beautiful writing, or what? Take a look again at the length of that sentence and how smoothly it flows.

What I came away with after turning the last page, still stands for me today as I write:  sad can be beautiful too. This is not a depressing book, but it is a sad one, but the way Petterson handles the character is with such beauty and craft that I was fulfilled as a reader to be a part of such a creative, well written novel. The reader has hope about Arvid and believes that he is not a lost soul forever, but is one slow to mature and deal with life’s challenges and problems.

It’s no wonder that Petterson won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the largest international prize for a work of fiction published in English for his previous novel Out Stealing Horses. The “New York Times” and “Time” also named this prior novel as a Best Book for 2007. Petterson is a master at his craft. He was born in Oslo to a working class family, and he still lives in Norway today. Readers who have not discovered Petterson yet are in for a treat.

P.S.  In case any of you readers speak Norwegian, this book was published with the title: Jeg forbanner tidens elv by Oktober Forlag, Oslo, in 2008 and the English translation was first published in Great Britain by Harvill Secker, Random House Group, London, in 2010.

i saw this book come in a few weeks ago and immediately fell in love with the looks of it and had to have it.  they say you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover but i say phooey.  cover judging is how i’ve found most of my favorite books including this little gem.

the books starts off with skippy’s dramatic death scene in a doughnut shop which i thought would just ruin the whole story but boy was i wrong.  this is one hell of a “coming of age” story that delves into your normal growing up misadventures and goes on to other dimensions almost literally.

by Zita