The Best Books of 2024: Literature in Translation
The Best Books of 2024: Literature in Translation!
Even in a comparatively anemic publishing year, another indication I've always used for the health of the environment is the health of the reprint field. There's not all that much health this time around, but literature in translation always brings so many jolts of the strange or the unpredictable that it's very much worth watching all year. These were the highlights:
10. The Poems from On the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (translated by a whole bunch of people)(World Poetry Books) – This first book on our list qualifies both as literature in translation and a promising reprint: in these pages, first printed in 1994, Peter Glassgold brings together not only the original Latin of Boethius but the facing-page translations by an array of people, including King Alfred the Great. That such a collage could ever have seen the light of print at all is a marvellous thing; that it could be reprinted in the godforsaken year 2024 is nothing less than a miracle.
9. The Art of Running by Andrea Marcolongo (translated by Will Schutt) (Europa Editions) – Of all the works in translation on the list this time, this one is the most remarkable both in terms of subject matter (it's the author's prolonged attempt to figure out how the ancient Greeks conceived of the act of running, a strangely simple and fascinating inquiry) and in terms of critical reception (it almost seemed like every book critic in Christendom, most of whom couldn't trot to the end of their driveway, rhapsodized over the book). The book is well worth all the attention.
8. The Tale of a Wall by Nasser Abu Srour (translated by Luke Leafgren) (Other Press) – The ominous shadow of topicality looms over this prison memoir of a Palestinian man held in an Israeli prison since 1993, but thankfully, this lean, appropriately stark translation by Luke Leafgren neatly escapes from topicality through its sheer gripping intelligence, which would make it stand out regardless of the hopeless headlines in the press.
7. The Divine Comedy of Dante (translated by Michael Palma) (Liveright) – This year saw a small bounty in Dante-related goodies, perhaps none more bracing than this complete verse translation of the Commedia by Michael Palma, which makes a whole range of choices, some more effective than others but all of them interesting. It's always thrilling to get such an invigorating Dante translation.
6. La Vita Nuova by Dante (translated by Joseph Luzzi) (Liveright) – Even more thrilling to get more invigorating Dante translations, and 2024 saw the perfect little companion to the Palma Commedia: this thoughtful, gemlike rendition by Joseph Luzzi of Dante's enduringly odd and moving meditation on what it might feel like to feel like you might be under the impression that you're in love. The work is quietly, composedly surreal, and Luzzi captures it wonderfully.
5. On Leaders and Tyrants by Poggio Bracciolini, Guarino of Verona, Pietro del Monte (translated by David Rundle & Hester Schadee) (The I Tatti Renaissance Library) – The I Tatti Library series continues its years-long tradition of not only publishing the explosion of literary works from the Renaissance but also giving many of them their first English-language translation in decades, in a century, or ever. Case in point: this is the first complete translation into English of an attention-grabbing booklet-war between scholars on the lessons ancient Roman leadership might teach their own day. A cause for joy, to see this latest product of I Tatti's great work.
4. Aesop’s Fables (translated by Robin Waterfield) (Basic Books) – The great classicist Robin Waterfield here very clearly wants to present readers with the definitive English-language version of the famous fables of Aesop, a version shorn of dumb sentimentality and pat moralizing and re-invested with complexity and innuendo. He leaves out rather more than I'd like, but in the main he succeeds in this kind of end; it's difficult to imagine a more masterly version of Aesop.
3. The Book Against Death by Elias Canetti, translated by Peter Filkins (New Directions) – A new English translation of a book in which a great, weird writer obsesses about grim, inevitable death is a bit much for a summer afternoon, but this lively translation by Peter Filkins allows Canetti's flinty, oddly innocent brilliance to shine through on every page. Like most indolent intellectuals, Canetti hated the very idea that he might some day die, and this book bristles with his fundamental indignation.
2 Selected Stories of Kafka (translated by Mark Harman) (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) – Much like Dante, Kafka is a perennial field day for translators, most of whom fail in interesting ways. It's axiomatic that all translators of Kafka in particular will fail, but it's difficult to think of Mark Harman's terrific renderings here as failures. They're supple and sad and sometimes bitingly funny in ways that feel much closer to the mark than even the best earlier English-language editions.
1 Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1 by Karl Marx (translated by Paul Reitter) (Princeton University Press) – The best work of literature in translation for 2024 is also the most ponderous, the most baggage-laden, in short the most Gawd-help-us: the first whopping-big volume of Marx's “Capital,” here translated by Paul Reitter from the final German-language edition overseen by Marx before he croaked. Reitter is such an energetic presence on every page that he actually manages to make Marx enjoyable to read.