Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Best Translations of the Year?

Over at Three Percent there is a reader poll on for deciding the best translation of the year. I have read only one on the list - Montano's Malady by Enrique Vila-Matas.

I was going through the list of books I read this year again and realized that out of around 35 fiction books that I read only two were originally published in the English language - The End of the Affair and the novella The Third Man, both by Graham Greene. I found both of them readable but just that. Avoidable if you have seen the film-versions, both of which are great. Besides that about half of the books on my list are translated from German. I was thinking about my reading choices and realized that it was more a case of one book leading to another rather than any conscious effort on my part to read books from a particular historical period or a specific region. It probably results in a skewed reading list but then one is not really deciding any literary prize or promoting world literature through the blog or anything.

On the same note, my list gets a mention on this German language literary blog too, where I get called a "Bucher-Gourmand"! (Scroll down to #107)

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