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 ]
The value of “writing a life” that Wallis Wilde-Menozzi undertook a quarter century ago is now the model to express our times. Continue reading at The Paris Review
[ The Paris Review | 2020-03-20 16:10:53 UTC ]
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A MAJOR FEATURE of the African-American writer James McBride’s books — beginning with the memoir The Color of Water (1995), a tribute to his white mother — is the large dose of humor injected into subjects that are, on the face of things, deadly serious if not sacred. Here in The Color of Water... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-03-18 19:00:39 UTC ]
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Hodder has acquired a celebrity memoir, Eat, Gay, Love, by the YouTube star and radio presenter Calum McSwiggan. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-17 11:41:15 UTC ]
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“Nobody Will Tell You This but Me,” a memoir by Bess Kalb, traces her family history from the Russian pogroms to the American dream. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-03-17 09:00:08 UTC ]
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“Our House Is on Fire” shares a very personal story of the suffering that preceded Thunberg’s activism on climate change. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-03-16 16:00:00 UTC ]
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Little, Brown has acquired a new memoir by award-winning actor Rupert Everett, Tainted Glory, to be published on 8th October. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-15 15:05:18 UTC ]
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Paul Lisicky, author of “Later: My Life at the Edge of the World,” talks about Provincetown, the challenges of memoir and learning not to suppress anger. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-03-15 09:00:05 UTC ]
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Leslie Gray Streeter's memoir about grief is funny, sad and real. When a critic said it wasn’t “top shelf,” she said, "I was like, 'I’m the mid-price vodka of memoirs.'" Continue reading at HuffPost
[ HuffPost | 2020-03-14 10:00:03 UTC ]
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Among the big books that sold this week are the three new titles My Lovely Wife author Samantha Downing will pen for seven figures; Alexandra Andrews’s hotly contested debut, Who Is Maud Dixon?; and a new memoir from Michael J. Fox. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-03-13 04:00:00 UTC ]
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In this episode, writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit reflects on her new memoir Recollections of My Nonexistence. Solnit talks to Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell about the deep impact of gendered violence on daily life and what it means to... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-03-12 08:49:53 UTC ]
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Headline is publishing the first memoir by ex-Liverpool and England player Jamie Redknapp. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-11 22:25:10 UTC ]
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“Young Heroes of the Soviet Union,” by Alex Halberstadt, is a moving and often funny memoir about the author’s family and their history. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-03-11 16:29:22 UTC ]
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Katy Waldman reviews the writer Rebecca Solnit’s new book, “Recollections of My Nonexistence,” which is Solnit’s first to be billed as a memoir. Continue reading at New Yorker
[ New Yorker | 2020-03-11 10:00:00 UTC ]
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Sphere has done a string of "major" international rights deals for a memoir by human rights lawer Benjamin Ferencz, Parting Words, including a pre-empt in Germany. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-10 23:17:05 UTC ]
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HarperNonFiction has bought a “unique and poignant” memoir by Holocaust survivor Thomas Geve, told through the drawings of concentration camps he did as a boy. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-10 19:10:45 UTC ]
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A trans author reflects on the fraught history of trans women’s memoir covers, and why she didn’t want her likeness on her own. Continue reading at Guernica
[ Guernica | 2020-03-10 12:00:35 UTC ]
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The film director’s book Apropos of Nothing was dropped by its US publisher after staff walkouts, but the French publisher says ‘Allen is not Roman Polanski’Woody Allen’s controversial memoir will still be published in France despite its US publisher dropping it, with his French publisher saying... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-03-09 14:57:23 UTC ]
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Hachette Book Group is no longer publishing Woody Allen’s autobiography, returning all rights to the author a day after an estimated 75–100 employees walked out in protest. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-08 18:31:06 UTC ]
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Writer ‘uneasy’ over US publisher’s decision to drop director’s memoirAuthor Stephen King has hit out at publisher Hachette over its decision to drop publication of Woody Allen’s memoir after a protest from his son, the author Ronan Farrow, prompted a walkout of staff at the publishing group’s... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-03-08 08:10:29 UTC ]
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Hachette Book Group has decided not to publish film director Woody Allen’s upcoming memoir, a day after employees at the company walked out in solidarity with Ronan Farrow. In a statement, Hachette... To view the full story, click the title link. Continue reading at Crains New York
[ Crains New York | 2020-03-06 23:58:20 UTC ]
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