Dear Readers, You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been blogging regularly for some time. So I doubt it will come as a surprise to anyone to hear that I’ve decided to end Reader at Large. Most of my writing these days has been for other sites. Writing for other outlets gives me the opportunity to reach a larger audience and work with some really great … Continue reading Thank you!
This is a review I wrote for The Quarterly Conversation a few years ago. I’ve linked to it before, during a past Women In Translation months even, but now that the site is no longer — RIP QC! — I’ve revised and moved it permanently to Reader at Large. Bohman is one of my favorite writers. She doesn’t coddle her characters or give her heroines … Continue reading Two Novels by Therese Bohman, both translated by Marlaine Delargy.
Read on its own, outside the context of a body of work that includes 13 novels, 4 plays, 3 children’s books, 1 screenplay and assorted essays, The Cheffe: A Cook’s Novel by Marie NDiaye is a deceptively straight-forward tale about the life of a gifted French female chef told by her lovelorn protégé. For readers familiar, passionate even, about NDiaye, it seems an outlier. Traditional … Continue reading The Cheffe: A Cook’s Novel by Marie NDiaye, translated by Jordan Stump
Welcome to Women In Translation Month 2020! This annual event, started by the inimitable Meytal Radzinski, is celebrating its sixth year. Huzzah! To learn more about #WITMonth — past, present, and future — you can visit Meytal’s blog Biblibio: A Life In Letters, or follow the hashtag on Twitter or Instagram. This year I’m going to try to review writers who I feel haven’t received … Continue reading Women In Translation Month 2020
In a collection of short essays, Cesar Aira discusses his love, bordering on obsession, for the American fine art magazine Artforum. Called, simply, Artforum, as a work of nonfiction it is something of an anomaly in the writer’s oeuvre. Written in the first person, the book carries all the markers associated with the writer — slim volume, short paragraphs covering a large breadth of territory, … Continue reading Artforum by Cesar Aira
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