Translator David Williams has hit upon a judicious combination of snappy repartee and dark underbelly that communicates essayist Dubravka Ugrešić’s rapier wit and black despair in equal measure.
Dubravka-Ugresic
Fuse Books: A Few Year End Literary Favorites
As the year nears its end, time is running out to write at length about some of the new books that gave me pleasure. Thus this quick list of favorites. As usual, my taste runs to prose that’s off-the-beaten-path.
Arts Commentary: Translating at the War-Crimes Tribunal in The Hague
“There were times when I felt as if I were perpetually stuck, like in that film, ‘Groundhog Day,’ in the spring of 1992 just as Bosnia was careening into conflict. At one point I went to Sarajevo to visit friends and was relieved, indeed surprised, to find that while I had been re-living the war over and over, the city was gradually rebuilding and leaving the war behind.”
Book Commentary: Summer Reads for Adventurous Minds
Poetry’s secret, it seems to me, consists of two ingredients: a love of this world and a curiosity about metaphysics. – Durs Grünbein, The Bars of Atlantis I resist the idea that books for the beach have to go down as easy as piña coladas. My eccentric and eclectic list of fiction and non-fiction in […]
Ellen Elias-Bursac on Writing from the Former Yugoslavia
By Bill Marx Translator Ellen Elias-Bursac On this week’s World Books podcast I talk to Ellen Elias-Bursac, who translates the work of two of my favorite writers from the former Yugoslavia: David Albahari and Dubravka Ugresic. Elias-Bursac is currently living in the Netherlands, but she recently visited Boston, so I got a chance to talk […]