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Charlotte Collins | Notes on Craft
Charlotte Collins
Charlotte Collins on the craft of translation. ‘Literary translators don’t just translate the ‘meaning’ of a text; we translate the feel of it.’
When We Returned to Pakistan
Bina Shah
Bina Shah on growing up in Pakistan. ‘Culture shock was what they called it in those days, but to me it felt like a kidnapping.’
Imperium
Ryszard Kapuściński
Ryszard Kapuściński, once the only foreign correspondent for the Polish Press Agency, on the concept of borders.
Diana Athill
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood on Diana Athill. ‘Diana was admired by all who knew her, and also by all who read her memoirs, for her honesty, her plain but elegant style, her lack of pretenses, and her stoicism in the face of ever-narrowing possibilities.’
Nostalgia in Blue
Viviana Peretti & Caroline Brothers
‘To step inside Viviana Peretti’s camera obscura is to witness the very process by which memory is made.’
Best Book of 1949: The Thief’s Journal
Holly Pester
‘To read it is to feel the alternative tempo in the rude repetitions of the thief who loves to steal.’
The Best Book of 1943: Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
Kathryn Scanlan
Kathryn Scanlan on the best book of 1943: Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles.
Best Book of 1921: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Will Harris
‘I wanted to understand the world and why it hurt, and soon I stumbled on the Tractatus’ Will Harris on the best book of 1921.
Best Book of 1966: Season of Migration to the North
Ayşegül Savaş
‘Of course, literature cannot be separated from its flesh of language and form. Nor can its tangible subject explain why it moves its reader, through the subtleties of language, or the shadowy geographies that it leaves to the imagination.’
Best Book of 1999: Ai’s Vice
Jillian Weise
‘I love Ai’s work because it gives me permission and reminds me that poetry invented fiction. I needed that in 1999 and I need it today.’
