Archive

The Experts Weigh In

July 01, 2009

Critic: Jean Harris, interviewer

World-famous novelist Norman Manea, two premier experts in the realm of literature in translation—Susan Harris of Words Without Borders and Chad Post of Three Percent and Open Letter—and award-winning translator from German Susan Bernofsky address a literary zone in permanent crisis: the ...

Critics | Răzvan Petrescu

Răzvan Petrescu: a Collage Round Table by way of Introduction

June 01, 2009

Someone once told me, the word Romanian speaks less to nationality than it does to career. Job description: on a daily basis the candidate must juggle ridicule and despair, cynicism and familial gallows humor and avidity for life. You can’t live here without hearing countless citizens ...

Critics | Filip Florian

The Days of the King

May 01, 2009

Critic: Carmen Muşat

The Days of the King Filip Florian Polirom, 2008, 270 pp. Filip Florian belongs to the select club of “writers’ writers.” Days of the King is his third outing, and although it is evident by now that Florian never writes from the same playbook, something ...

Critics | Norman Manea

Norman Manea: Winner of the Third Observator Cultural Opera Omnia Award

April 01, 2009

Critic: Carmen Muşat

A witness to the paired totalitarianisms of the 20th century, Norman Manea is a writer of survivals. His medium is Romanian. He belongs to the world. With Gogol he shares the ability to express life’s absurdity while rendering—while constituting—overwhelming humanity. This in the face of ...

Critics | Norman Manea

Norman Manea: a World Voice, an essay with links

April 01, 2009

Critic: Jean Harris

There’s no way to say what makes one writer a “world voice.” Only some compel us at deeper levels. Of that feat, negotiated with posterity, canonical status is born. Witness, spokesperson, bearer of informed testimony, one who submits experience to the shaping of art, Norman Manea finds ...

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About this issue

This July, The Observer Translation Project leaves its usual format to present a special CRISIS ISSUE. Things are tough all over. Hard Times suddenly feels like the book of the moment. The global economic crisis impacts life as we know it, and viewed from Bucharest the effects reverberate in domains that include geo-politics and publishing in Romania and abroad, with the crisis at The Observer Translation Project as an instance of a universal phenomenon. read more...

Translator's Choice

Author: Stelian Tănase
Translated by: Jean Harris

From Maestro: A Melodrama. Episode 7

Emiluţa has an unfortunate thought. She’ll throw herself off the top of the building. Why? What the fuck? Let’s say for the cause of PeaceonEarth, for the slumdogs, Europe, for the lonely. Which is to say she doesn’t have a ghost of a reason. Viva Walachia! The way things stand, if ...

Translator’s Note
Translator’s Note: a synopsis

Author: Ştefan Agopian
Translated by: Ileana Orlich

How I Learned to Read (from Tache de Catifea / The Velvet Man)

The bearded man was the owner of an apothecary shop where he worked with two apprentices. Nobody paid me any mind, so I spent all day in what was supposed to be the shop. I say this because it was a large, dark room full of odors—a mix of smells from everywhere. The room hadn’t been cleaned ...

Translator’s Note
Re: Learning to Read, from Tache de catifea / The Velvet Man

Author: Gabriela Adameşteanu
Translated by: Patrick Camiller

Wasted Morning - Napoleon in Bucharest

“What you’ve got here is heaven on earth,” Vica says as she drops onto the kitchen chair. “But where’s your mother?” “At work,” Gelu lazily replies, leaning sideways against the door. “She’s doing mornings this week, didn’t you know?” He is tall and thin, with unset ...

Author: Petre Ispirescu
Translated by: Jean Harris

Youth Without Age and Life Without Death

It happened once as never before-y, ‘cause if it couldn’t be true, it wouldn’t make a story about the time when the poplar tree made berries and the willow tree broke out in cherries, when bears began to brawl with their tails, and wolf and lamb, unfurling their sails, threw arms around each ...

Translator’s Note
On Petre Ispirescu