On Translation Browsing a Copenhagen airport bookstore, a translator picks up a book. The journey between that impulse and his eventual translation of the memoir into English was both emotional and serendipitous. In the summer of 2016 I was passing through Kastrup Airport in Copenhagen with my wife, on our way home after a visit with family. We stopped to browse the bookstore, and I noticed a reprint of a book by Danish author Tove Ditlevsen called Gift, which had first been published in 1971. I hadn’t read much of her work, but I knew she was a big name, so I bought it, even though the cover was strange, a psychedelic skull on a gray background. It did not take more than a couple of sittings to devour this memoir of Tove Ditlevsen’s life from the ages of about twenty-three to thirty-five. It chronicles her rise as a best-selling author, while she also had four failed marriages, two back-alley abortions, and a five-year near-fatal addiction to the opioid Demerol. I distinctly remember laying the book down after the final page and thinking to myself, I think this is a masterpiece. This was an intuitive judgment, not a conclusion I had come to after analyzing the text. But looking back now, I think what caused me to deem this work a masterpiece is the combination of Ditlevsen’s writing style, which is concise, honest, and ironic, combined with the content of her story, which through her many troubling experiences pulls back the... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2021-04-06 13:12:22 UTC ]
Cassell will publish the “hilarious and unflinching” memoir from award-winning author and journalist Emma John about "what it means to be alone when everyone else isn't". Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-22 00:54:33 UTC ]
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WHAT WOULD YOU DO if the person who hurt you most refused to say they were sorry? Could you forgive anyway? Best-selling author Susan Shapiro explores this universal question in her intriguing, insightful, all-too-relatable new book The Forgiveness Tour, out this past January. In her... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2021-02-21 18:00:04 UTC ]
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A syllabus of sorts for exploring some of the funniest books of all time by the funniest people. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-02-19 10:00:27 UTC ]
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Kristin Iversen profiles Patricia Lockwood, writer of crystalline sentences, really good tweets, and a new novel about much more than the internet. | Lit Hub Yemisi Adegoke grapples with what it means to be a “returnee” to Lagos, after growing up in the UK. | Lit Hub Memoir “Am I prepared? Is... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-18 10:30:19 UTC ]
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An excerpt from “Blindfold: A Memoir of Capture, Torture, and Enlightenment,” by Theo Padnos Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-02-16 13:32:26 UTC ]
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“Blindfold” is the American journalist Theo Padnos’s memoir of his nearly two years in captivity and a meditation on resilience. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-02-16 10:00:06 UTC ]
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“Ticking Clock,” a new memoir by Ira Rosen, a former producer for the show, recounts the newsmagazine’s pathbreaking journalism and its culture of harassment and abuse. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-02-16 10:00:05 UTC ]
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In 'Between Two Kingdoms,' young cancer survivor Suleika Jaouad writes with fierce honesty about the false divide between the sick and the well. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-02-15 15:00:38 UTC ]
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Actress and activist Evanna Lynch is publishing a "raw and compelling" memoir with Headline, exploring eating disorders and "the battle between perfection and creativity". Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-15 11:29:21 UTC ]
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Vanessa Springora’s memoir, Consent, electrified the French literary world. American readers will find it exhilarating. Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2021-02-15 10:50:00 UTC ]
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“Still, the best, most generative conversations mostly happen out of the public eye.” Wayne Miller on the hazards of talking poetry on social media. | Lit Hub As Gabriel Byrne watches his father’s decline, he wonders if it’s ever possible to be truly honest with himself. | Lit Hub Memoir “It... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-13 11:30:54 UTC ]
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Michael Patrick F. Smith’s “The Good Hand” is a memoir about grinding work in the last days of the Bakken oil boom. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-02-12 10:00:02 UTC ]
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Notes on Grief will recount the life of ‘a remarkable man of kindness and charm’ and the author’s struggle to absorb his loss during lockdown last yearChimamanda Ngozi Adichie has written a memoir about the sudden death of her father in lockdown last year. Notes on Grief, by the Orange... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-02-11 14:18:53 UTC ]
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TOVE DITLEVSEN’S first novel, A Child was Harmed, was sent back from the publisher with the accusation that she had “been reading too much Freud.” But Ditlevsen says she didn’t know who Freud was, a declaration that, 200-plus pages into her three-part memoir — a clear-eyed exploration of the... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2021-02-10 13:30:35 UTC ]
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Patricia Lockwood followed up on her memoir “Priestdaddy” with “No One Is Talking About This,” a novel that explores the chaotic feel of the internet and the pain of personal loss. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-02-10 10:00:17 UTC ]
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Beloved Mexican-American actor and restauranteur Danny Trejo’s first memoir, Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood—which details Trejo’s path from drug addiction and incarceration in some of America’s most notorious prisons (including San Quentin, Folsom, and Soledad), to unexpected... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-02-09 21:03:44 UTC ]
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An excerpt from “Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted,” by Suleika Jaouad Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-02-09 16:17:10 UTC ]
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A list of nonfiction Black history books you can read this month to learn more about the history of racism and being Black in the U.S., including Men We Reaped: A Memoir by Jesmyn Ward. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2021-02-09 11:31:00 UTC ]
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In his new memoir, “Gay Bar,” Jeremy Atherton Lin documents his personal history and the history of queer identity by exploring gay bars around the world. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-02-09 10:00:09 UTC ]
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In her new memoir coming out Tuesday, actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas recalls the pressure she felt to conform to the film industry's beauty standards. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2021-02-08 23:44:01 UTC ]
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