My Favourite Novel in Translation

Wow, this is a tough blog to write because although I’ve read a lot of fiction from around the world I honestly don’t know how much of it was written in the author’s native language and then translated. I’m not sure that I own a single book that as a translator as well as an author credited on the title page. This shows a huge gap in my reading that I have to rectify!

Despite this there are so many novels by foreign writers that have affected me deeply. I think first of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart which I read at university. Having grown up in an evangelical church that often throws out missionaries I was appalled by the effect that earlier missionaries had on Nigerian tribes. Okonkwo is a chief amongst the Igbo people and the effect on his home and on him is catastrophic. He strives to show no weakness but after an incident where one of the tribe’s sons is killed Okonkwo and his family go into exile. On his return his home has changed and he gathers a group of men to destroy the Christian church as symbol of what has gone wrong. However this causes the leader of the white government to hold him prisoner for a while. Okonkwo wants his people to return to the animistic religion they originally followed and govern themselves. He feels though, that the other villagers are not really with him and something has irrevocably changed. The white men stop the meeting of war that he organises and he realises that he is a leftover from the past and he becomes despairing and depressed. He kills one of the white men in frustration, and when they come to collect his for court, Okonkwo has committed suicide- forever separating himself from the Igbo people he loves.

I guess the next book that really affected me in the same way was Edwidge Danticat’s first novel Breath, Eyes, Memory. Sophie lives in Haiti with her grandmother and a mother who is estranged from them and lives in the USA. Sophie is a child of rape; her mother was raped by an unknown man but probably one of the tonton macoute who were the henchmen of corrupt president Papa Doc Duvalier. Sophie learns that her mother was subjected to testing by her grandmother – a way of checking that their daughters were still virgins. When Sophie moves to New York with her mother their relationship becomes strained. Her mother has issues with her body that come from her terrible experiences and she doesn’t eat, and tries to bleach her skin to look less dark. When Sophie has a friendship with a musician next door, her mother begins testing her, even though she hated the practice herself. Sophie rebels by using her mother’s spice pestle to break her hymen and her mother assumes she is no longer a virgin and kicks her out. Sophie leaves with Joseph and they marry and have a daughter. Sophie had therapy to overcome the abuse she has experienced from her mother, and returns for a visit to Haiti where it all began. She spends time with her grandmother and aunt, realising that they are all victims of a corrupt regime but also of a misogynistic society where women have historically visited abuse upon their daughters to please men. Sophie’s mother arrives and they understand each other for the first time and reconcile. This book started a love of Haitian history for me and I have read a lot about the country since, and more recently about the corruption in aid relief after the terrible earthquake. I also read other books about similar experiences where women are trying to change a history of abusive behaviour such as female genital mutilation, forced marriage and tribal practices of sexual abuse. It changed my outlook on different parts of the world and the way the Western world responds to crisis

A totally different book and experience came in Carlos Ruis Zafon’s The Shadow of the Window which is definitely a translation from the original Spanish. A boy called Daniel is taken by his father to the secret Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Anyone initiated into this secret place is allowed to take just one book from it and must protect it for life. Daniel loves his chosen book The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax and becomes so engrossed that he keeps searching for other books by the author but there are none. He then searches for the author and only finds a man called Lain Coubert, named after a character in the book that just happens to be the devil. We are taken into a story within in a story here, with a doomed love story between Julian and Penelope and Daniel’s search and what effect it has on him. This is a beautiful and mysterious book that draws you in and turns the city of Barcelona into a place you are desperate to explore for yourself.

The Lotus Book lists contain books from France, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Africa, India and many, many more and they are mainly on the Blue Lotus list which aims to educate and inspire.