(...) It is Kafkaesque in the sense of the continual meandering of existence.»
Showing posts with label the translator's bride. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the translator's bride. Show all posts
Wednesday, 24 June 2020
New City Magazine: The Translator's Bride
«While the plot and action of the novel are minimal, the vivid interiority of the narrator brings his world alive. While the strict practice of the translator’s real-time perspective could come off as tiresome in less-skilled hands, Reis brings out the humor of his character’s cyclical thoughts. The repeated imagery of the bride, the hat and kartofler could come off as a punchline, if Reis were not so careful as to let the reader in on the joke. When the narrator confronts his former employer about past-due wages, he leaves the publisher with the word kartofler, transforming the obsessive thought into a curse on the man who has wronged him. In moments like these, the narrative succeeds in engaging the reader with the translator’s echoes of life.
Words Without Borders: The Translator's Bride
«The Translator’s Bride brings together two seemingly disparate qualities: an ecstatic use of language and a sensitivity to the tenuousness of a life lived in the arts.»
European Literature Network: The Translator's Bride
«João Reis’ great success in The Translator’s Bride is to convince his audience that they are reading a work written at modernism’s mid-twentieth-century zenith. The stream-of-consciousness style, the focus on an individual’s relationship with the world, and, most importantly, the synthesis of a period are so authentic I regularly had to remind myself that this book was first published in 2015 – and the author was born in 1985.
(...)
It also enables Reis to render the prose style of the period perfectly. And he does so in English, too (he translates his own work), showing us that he is as skilled at writing outside his own language as he is at writing outside his historical era.»
Tuesday, 23 June 2020
Foreword Reviews: The Translator's Bride
«The circuitous absorption of The Translator’s Bride is sustained by its novella-like structure and dark, gleaming humor. Reis’s direct translation of his work from Portuguese to English adds an element of personal irony and intimacy as well. The language is beautiful, mordant, and tragic. A flutter of hope ends with a desperate plunge into the ocean as the translator tries to swim not towards death, but towards a new life and the love of the woman who no longer seems to care.»
Tuesday, 16 June 2020
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