A Common Reader . . .

Review: The Angel Maker - Stefan Brijs

The Angel Maker is one of the few (only?) books I have read by a Belgian author, which is probably more to do with a lack of interest on the part of publishers in Flemish/English translations than any lack of talent in the Belgian publishing scene.  Certainly, Stefan Brijs has produced a complex and engaging novel, which deservedly won the Golden Owl from the Royal Academy for Dutch Language and Literature in 2006.  Hester Velmans has translated the book in a flowing style leaving no sense of "translation" in the finished work. 

The book seems to be marketed by its publishers as thriller, but it is far much than that.  The story concerns a doctor who returns to the small village of Wolfheim after many years, with three identical children in the back-seat of his car, all with a hare-lip.  Dr Victor Hoppe lives a secluded life and keeps his children away from public view.  The villagers view him with suspicion but he soon wins their trust by performing some notable cures.  

It is almost impossible to review this book without spoiling it for other readers, for the doctor has a complex background as a medical researcher and the children are not what they seem.  The author slowly reveals the doctor's past, from childhood on through medical training and into genetic research.  The themes are many, but all wholly topical, from advanced fertility treatment through to the character traits accompanying Aspergers Syndrome. 

The reader is drawn through a richly complex story which develops many subjects including religious intolerance, society's treatment of disability and "difference", genetic research, autism and its effect on personality.  Stefan Brijs reveals an in-depth understanding of his subject matter and a search through Wikipedia shows how well-grounded he is in the background science.  Underlying the whole book are questions about medical ethics which are in many cases sill unresolved by most European governments. 

As explored in previous articles on this blog, I was able to use Google Earth to enhance my reading by giving me photographs and background information on the region in which the book is set.  I tracked the locations in this book on Google Earth and learned much about the area around Vaalserberg and Drielandenpunt, the point at which three borders meet (Netherlands, Germany and Belgium).  This point features significantly in the book, and its unique setting has enabled Stefan Brijs to cover the book's themes from the perspective of different national cultures while giving it a very pan-European flavour. 

I would recommend this book firstly to those who have an interest in contemporary European writing and secondly to anyone who would enjoy a challenging but exiting book on a difficult subject, with many twists and turns along the way. 

One more thing:  I was amused by the Wikipedia entry on the Drielandenpunt which seems to show the Dutch writers of the article making a dig at the Belgians - the "tidy and urbanised development stands in marked contrast to the rough cinder parking area that makes up the Belgium sector". 

Letter to The Times

What's the point of having a blog if you can't indulge in a bit of shameless self-publicity from time to time? I made a précis of my article Lost in Translation and sent it as a letter to the Editor of the Times and they published it this morning.  

Simple pleasures.

LibraryThing book pile photo contest

I catalogue my books with LibraryThing and they are running a book pile photo contest at the moment.  OK, the prizes aren't great (a LibraryThing tshirt, a CueCat barcode scanner, and a gift membership) but its a bit of fun. 

If you don't know what LibraryThing is you could read my review here or visit the site. 

If you're interested to see other peoples' book piles you can view them here.

Lost in Translation?

Michael Gove in The Times yesterday speculated that "reading great literature in translation involves a loss of nuance, a sacrifice of subtlety, which few will admit to. It is not in the translators' interests to acknowledge what's lost in the process, and neither is it in the authors' . . . surely the suppleness of language in the original doesn't come through in the same way as when we're reading our mother tongue".

While acknowledging that reading a book in translation will not be exactly the same experience as reading in in the original language, on the whole I believe that the differences may not be large as Michael Gove fears, and in any case, will probably not matter all that much. 

Last year I read the John E Woods of Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain and a few months later I read Polish writer Pawel Huelle's "prequel" to Magic Mountain, Castorp which was translated by Antonia Lloyd Jones.  What struck me is the complete consistency in "voice" between the two books.  The Hans Castorp in Magic Mountain is precisely the same person in Castorp.  This says much about the skill of the translators of course, but the consistency of style between the two books suggests to me that not a lot was lost in the translation of either book.

I reflected on Michael Gove's article and as a regular reader of translated literature came up with some thoughts of my own:

1. It is not unreasonable to believe that a translated work is in some sense a new literary creation which stands in its own right, but this does not in itself devalue the reading experience. Where a skilled translator has brought all his or her skills, experience and artistic ability to the work of translation, the work will not necessarily be less valuable than the original. It is just different to one degree or another.
2. In some ways, translations could be seen like a different production of the same play.  We do not quibble at the different production values but see them as bringing a different light to the work.  Scott Moncrieff's translations of Proust are very different to the Allen Lane/Penguin editions which have multiple translators, but on the whole the same Proustian voice remains although the colours and tones of the text may be different. 
3. Sometimes a new translation can re-invigorate a work.  It is widely accepted that Edith Grossman's translation of Don Quixote has effectively re-launched the work and enabled new generations to see its importance as "the first modern novel". 
4. Sometimes a translation can achieve transcendence and stand as a major work in its own right.  One need only consider the King James Bible for example. 

I am currently reading Adam Thirlwell's fascinating book on the art of translation The Delighted States and recommend this to anyone who wants to understand more about the history of translation and the way in which it has been conducted over the centuries.  Thirlwell's survey of work in translation reveals the artistry involved in translation when "occasionally the sense and its connotations has to alter, so that the rhytyms of the words, the sentences' musicality can still remain". 

On the whole I feel that Michael Gove need not worry about losing much in translation.  It would be very sad to miss out on great European literature in order as he puts it, "to revel in the work of a second division Brit".

Review: A Paragon of Virtue - Christian Von Ditfurth

A Paragon of Virtue is the first novel by Christian Von Ditfurth to be translated into English and I find myself looking longingly at the list of his novels in German wondering how long we will have to wait before reading more about his convincing historian/investigator Josef Stachelmann. 

A Paragon of Virtue is an intelligently written crime novel and shows Von Ditfurth's experience as a historian.  The main character, Josef Stachelmann, is a professor of history at Hamburg University. and finds himself embroiled in an investigation into the murders of the family members of a prominent citizen of Hamburg, Maximilian Holler. 

As Stachelmann's researches get underway, we find that the root causes of Holler's distress are found way back in the Nazi era, when party members could buy up houses and businesses from terrified Jews at huge discounts.  While the police go up various blind alleys in their efforts to find the killer, Stachelmann combs through archives of the era and draws complex conclusions which would escape those who fail to see the historical origins of the  modern-day crime.

Just after finishing this book yesterday, I listened to a BBC Radio 4 programme The Last Nazi Hunter, about Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.  I was struck by the similarities between Von Ditfurth's Josef Stachelman's search through historical archives and the real-life attempts to glean new information from the seven million documents in the Israeli holocaust archive.  Clearly Von Ditfurth as a historian has personal experience of sifting through the minutiae of letters and private papers in order to make new connections and answer complex questions. 

Like so many good crime novels, A Paragon of Virtue centres on the life of the investigator, in this case Stachelmann, a complex character, struggling to complete a major historical thesis so that he can gain tenure at his university.  Stachelmann is other-worldly and doggedly committed to historical studies, while struggling with rheumatoid arthritis.  His personal life is far from satisfactory and he seems unable to respond to obvious approaches from his colleague Anne who assists him with his researches.  In addition, as he researches the misappropriation of Jewish property he discovers that his own family roots are tainted by the fraudulent activities of the Nazi era.

Von Ditfurth tackles the immensely difficult issues of how German history of sixty years ago can affect the present day and I can only admire the way in which he almost ruthlessly turns over stones to find some extremely unpleasant horrors underneath them.

I very much enjoyed the way the book was rooted in the real world.  In an earlier post I wrote about how I could trace the locations in the book on Google Earth, but the sense of reality is fostered throughout the book by the authors in-depth knowledge of the geographical and historical aspects of the story.  In Britain we do not have a great deal of German literature available to us in translation and it was refreshing to read a fine detective novel not set in Britain or America. 

This is a serious novel and Von Ditfurth deserves a place among the best writers of crime fiction.  I can only hope this book is a success when it is released in paperback so that the publishers find it worthwhile commissioning further translations of Von Ditfurth's work. 

Simon Gray - Playwright and Diarist

I enjoyed all three volumes of Simon Gray's The Smoking Diaries, especially the last one, The Last Cigarette, and was sorry to read yesterday of his death at the age of 71. 

Gray's diaries were almost in the category of confessions, in that he wrote totally frankly of his failings and was honest about his innermost thoughts, refusing to put a gloss on them to make himself seem a more appealing person.  When reading them I always felt inspired to try to be more honest about my own failings, as though finding permission to put my social guard down and be more real with myself and other people. 

I suppose we can never be sure how accurate other people's diaries are, but I found that Gray's had an air of integrity.  The picture Gray drew of himself, sitting in a bar with a cigarette and an A4 pad, writing his account of the world was somehow convincing.  He always gave the impression of someone who had nothing to lose by candour, so why bother giving a false impression?

Sadly, his smoking habit seems to have got the better of him, and certainly there was no better incentive to give up smoking than to read The Smoking Diaries. I am sorry that no more volumes will be published because for me at least, each one was anticipated with pleasure.

More on Google Earth and reading

I will soon be reviewing A Paragon of Virtue (a book I am enjoying very much indeed).  I have much appreciated the way the author, Christian Von Ditfurth, provides very precise locations within his novel.  As a keen user of Google Earth I find all this fascinating.  Maybe its a childhood love of maps, or just idle curiosity, but I enjoy looking up book locations on Google Earth and seeing the aerial view provided by the system and also the many ground-level photographs which other Google Earth users have posted. 

For example, we read that the history lecturer Stachelman lives in a turning off Lichte Querstrasse in Lubeck, and that to travel to his work at Hamburg University he takes a train to Dammtor and walks to Von Melle Park.  With Google Earth I can see more or less precisely where Stachelman lives and also see the many photographs of the area which have been posted by other users of Google Earth, and then trace his journey to work and peer down at Hamburg University. 

We read that one of the other main characters took a train to Blankanese and walked down Dockenhudener Strasse and into Hirschpark by the Elbe - and Google Earth lets me see the park and once more, a photograph lets me see the very view described from the park over the Elbe. 

Later on Stachelman visits the Baltic coast and stops at Scharbeutz and walks along the promenade.  Google Earth lets me learn about this pretty seaside town and I am able to compare it with my own home on the Sussex Coast and see similarities. 

You only have to Google "literary tours" to find that many other people are interested in the locations of the books they read, and books abound describing "literary London" (or any other city you can think of).  But Google Earth enables me to glean an astonisihg amount of information from my own computer, not only by looking up locations from my current reading but also by using the technique described in my previous post.