Allan Massie
The Terrors of Translation
A few years ago I was appearing at the Edinburgh Book Festival with Ivan Klima. As it happened I had recently received copies of the Czech edition of one of my Roman novels. So I gave him one – a small matter of courtesy, also an opportunity to get rid of a copy. ‘Your novel,’ he asked, the next time I met him – ‘is it written in some sort of slang?’ ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘Then I’m sorry,’ he rejoined , ‘but it’s very bad Czech.’
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'This rude spectral activity was a far cry from the moaning and chain-clanking traditionally associated with hauntings. It had a distinctly modern flavour.'
@LucyLethbridge on a real life haunting.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-woolworths-poltergeist
'I inadvertently saw "Saturn Devouring His Son" in my early teens and it was a very unsettling thing to come across.'
@robinsimonbaj on Goya.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/he-painted-it-black
'The narrative moves fluently between the raffish ... life he was living there, his main love affair and friendships – most of them kept up for a lifetime – and his journalism.'
Jeremy Treglown weighs up Hermione Lee's biography of Tom Stoppard.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-long-road-to-leopoldstadt