Charlotte Collins

Charlotte Collins is the co-chair of the UK Translators Association and a literary translator from the German. Her translation of Robert Seethaler’s A Whole Life was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. Her co-translation, with Ruth Martin, of The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischvili will be published by Scribe UK in November 2019. Homeland by Walter Kempowski is available now.

Publications

Homeland

Walter Kempowski

Translated by Charlotte Collins

It is 1988, the year before the Berlin Wall came down. Jonathan Fabrizius, a journalist living in West Germany, is asked to travel to the contested lands of former East Prussia – where the Nazi legacy lives on in buildings and fortifications – to write about the route for a car rally. It’s a plum job, but his interest is piqued by a personal connection. Here, among the refugees fleeing the advancing Russians in 1945, he was born.

Homeland is a nuanced work from one of the great modern European storytellers, in which an everyday German comes face to face with his painful family history, and devastating questions about ordinary Germans’ complicity in the war.

Charlotte Collins on Granta.com

Essays & Memoir | Issue 149

My Chequered Europe

Melitta Breznik

‘A Europe of different languages, landscapes and cultures, all of which have retained their characters.’ Translated from the German by Charlotte Collins.