The narrator looks back on the muddle of his life as a literary translator, moving between London and Lima, Paris and Madrid, Leiden and back to London.
This translator finds it challenging enough to justice to the original text while dreaming of literary fame but it only slowly dawns how easy it is to misread events in his own life.
This is especially true of the women he meets on his travels as a jobbing translator: to London and Lima, Paris and Madrid, Leiden and back in London. Take the ambitious Julia Pinto Hughes, is she really set on wrecking his career, Dutch interpreter Sonja or enigmatic Ana Ortega, is she attracted to him? They are often unsuitable or unavailable, whereas his nerve tends to fail him at critical moments.
Will this bumbling translator succeed in disentangling the knotty syntax of his own life and relationships?
Genre: Literary Fiction
This translator finds it challenging enough to justice to the original text while dreaming of literary fame but it only slowly dawns how easy it is to misread events in his own life.
This is especially true of the women he meets on his travels as a jobbing translator: to London and Lima, Paris and Madrid, Leiden and back in London. Take the ambitious Julia Pinto Hughes, is she really set on wrecking his career, Dutch interpreter Sonja or enigmatic Ana Ortega, is she attracted to him? They are often unsuitable or unavailable, whereas his nerve tends to fail him at critical moments.
Will this bumbling translator succeed in disentangling the knotty syntax of his own life and relationships?
Genre: Literary Fiction
Used availability for Anthony Ferner's Life in Translation