by Drago Jancar
YURIY TARNAWSKY was born in Western Ukraine. During World War II, he emigrated with his family to Germany and then to the US. An engineer and linguist by training, he worked as computer scientist at IBM Corporation, specializing in natural language processing, and then as Professor of Ukrainian literature and culture at Columbia University. He is a cofounder of the avant-garde group of Ukrainian émigré writers known as the New York Group, as well as a member of the Writers’ Union of Ukrainem. For his contribution to Ukrainian literature, in 2008, he was awarded the Prince Yaroslav the Wise Order of Merit by the Ukrainian Government. He writes in Ukrainian and English. His works have been translated into French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, and Russian.
In Ukrainian, he has authored nineteen collections of poetry, collected in the volumes Poeziji pro nishcho i inshi poeziji na cju samu temu (Poems About Nothing and Other Poems on the Same Subject, 1970) and Jikh nemaje (They Don‘t Exist, 1999; six plays (collected as 6x0 in 1998); and selected prose (collected as Ne znaju [I don’t know] in 2000), containing Shljakhy (Roads), Sim sprob (Seven Tries), and Bosonizh dodomu i nazad (Running Barefoot Home and Back); a story collection Korotki khvosty (2006; Short Tails, 2011); and selected essays Kvity khvoromu (Flowers for the Patient, 2012). His English-language works include the novels Meningitis (1979) and Three Blondes and Death (1993), the story collection Short Tails, and three collections of “mininovels”: Like Blood in Water (2007), The Future of Giraffes, and View of Delft, published together as The Placebo Effect Trilogy in 2013, as well as a collection of poetry titled Modus Tollens (2013).
VLADA UROŠEVIĆ was born in 1934 in Skopje. He is a Macedonian poet, prose writer, critic, essayist, editor, and translator. He holds a PhD in literature and was a full professor at the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, where he taught courses on the history of European poetry. In the 1950s and 60s, Urošević was a leading member of the “modernists,” who gathered around the magazine Razgledi (Panoramas) and strove not only for the modernization of Macedonian literature but for a liberalization of the intellectual climate in Macedonia in general. Beginning with his first book Eden drug grad (A Different City, 1959), Urošević has published a dozen collections of poetry and is the only Macedonian poet to be a three-time winner of the Brakja Miladinovci Prize for the best book of poetry at the Struga Poetry Evenings. He also writes in several other genres and has published four books of short stories, five novels, seven books of critcism and essays, two of travel literature, two on the fine arts, and has edited a dozen anthologies. He has translated the poetry of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Michaux, Breton, and other modern French poets into Macedonian. For his significant contribution to the translation of French poetry he was made a Knight of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and later raised to an Officer of the same Order. He lives in Skopje.
INGA ZHOLUDE was born in 1984, and received her master’s in English from the University of Latvia. She also studied English literature at Southern Illinois University (Carbondale) through the Fulbright Program, and has worked as a project coordinator and manager in the field of culture and education. She is currently studying for her doctorate at the University of Latvia. Her prose has appeared in Latvian periodicals since 2002, and she has been a member of the Latvian Writers’ Union since 2010. Zholude’s first book was the novel Silta zeme (Warm Earth), published in 2008. This was followed in 2010 by her short-story collection Mierinājums Ādama kokam (Solace for Adam’s Tree), and, in 2012, her second novel Sarkanie bērni (Red Children).
Zholude has received several literary awards of major importance. In 2011, she was awarded the European Union Prize for Literature for Mierinājums Ādama kokam, while Sarkanie bērni won the Raimonds Gerkens Prize awarded by the Latvian Writers’ Union.
Her stories and excerpts from her novels have been translated and published in anthologies in English, German, French, Swedish, Polish, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Czech, and other languages.
Translator Biographies
NEIL ANDERSON is a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he studies contemporary Galician fiction and the intersection between Cultural Geography and literary studies. He holds an MA in Spanish from Middlebury College.
KHATUNA BERIDZE translates from English to Georgian, including works by Truman Capote and Oscar Wilde, as well as from Georgian to English. She obtained her doctorate in philology, with a specialization in translation, from Tbilisi State Technical University in 2009.
ŠPELA BIBIČ holds a degree in Translation studies (English-French) and works as a freelance translator. She has translated two novels into Slovenian thus far—Renée Vivien’s Une femme m’apparut and Georges Eekhoud’s Escal-Vigor. Her English translations of short Slovenian fiction have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals.
ALISTAIR IAN BLYTH was born in Sunderland, England, attended the universities of Cambridge and Durham, and now lives in the foothills of the Carpathians, near the village of Bughea de Jos. He translates fiction, poetry and philosophy by authors from the Republic of Moldova and Romania.
CHRISTOPHER BURAWA is a poet and translator. His awards include the 2010 Joy Harjo Poetry Award, a 2007 NEA Literature Fellowship for Translation, and a 2008 American-Scandinavian Foundation Creative Writing Fellowship. He is the Director of the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee.
ADAM CULLEN originates from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He currently resides in Tallinn, Estonia, where he moved in 2007 to become fluent in Estonian through complete immersion. His complete translation of Emil Tode / Tõnu Õnnepalu’s novel Radio will be published in 2014.
WILL FIRTH was born in 1965 in Newcastle, Australia. He studied German and Slavic languages in Canberra, Zagreb, and Moscow. Since 1991 he has been living in Berlin, Germany, where he works as a freelance translator of literature and the humanities. He translates from Russian, Macedonian, and all variants of Serbo-Croatian.
MICHAELA FREEMAN was born in 1975 in Prague. She is a freelance translator, writer, web designer, digital artist, and creativity coach. She focuses on specialty and creative translations from Czech to English. For this, she teams up with her husband, Jim Freeman, a writer, proofreader, and editor. She maintains a website at michaela-freeman.com.
MARGITA GAILITIS was born in Riga, Latvia, and grew up in Canada. In 1998 she returned to Latvia to work on a Canadian International Development Agency-sponsored project translating Latvian laws into English. Her poetry has been published in Canada and the US, and she is the recipient of Ontario Arts and Canada Council awards. In 2011, she was awarded the Order of the Three Stars by the President of Latvia.
SOREN A. GAUGER is a Canadian who has lived for over a decade in Krakow, Poland. He has published two books of short fiction (Hymns to Millionaires and Quatre Regards sur l’Enfant Jesus) and translations of numerous Polish writers (including Jerzy Ficowski, Bruno Jasienski, and Wojciech Jagielski).
EDWARD GAUVIN has received fellowships and residencies from the NEA, the Fulbright Foundation, the Centre National du Livre, Ledig House, the Banff Centre, and ALTA. His work includes A Life on Paper by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud and publications in Conjunctions, World Literature Today, Tin House, and the Harvard Review, among others. The winner of the John Dryden Translation Prize, he is the contributing editor for Francophone comics at Words Without Borders. He maintains a website at edwardgauvin.com.
ANDREA GREGOVICH is a writer and translator of Russian literature. Her translations of Kozlov and others have appeared in Tin House, AGNI Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, 3:AM Magazine, Cafe Irreal, and two anthologies of Russian writing. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska.
SEÁN KINSELLA is from Ireland. He holds an MPhil in Literary Translation from Trinity College, Dublin, and in addition to contributing translations to several years of Best European Fiction, he has translated two novels by Stig Sæterbakken, as well as a collection of Kjell Askildsen’s short stories, which w
ill appear in 2014. He currently lives in Norway with his wife and two small daughters.
VIJA KOSTOFF is a linguist by education, and a language teacher, writer, and editor by profession. She has been collaborating with Margita Gailitis for more than ten years in translating the novels, short stories, plays, film scripts, and poetry of many of Latvia’s major writers. Born in Latvia, she now resides in Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, Canada where she exercises her secondary passions for gardening and painting.
NATE LA MESHI is a freelance translator and language teacher, and lives in Boston.
ROSIE MARTEAU translates from Spanish, having lived and studied in Barcelona and travelled throughout Latin America. Her published work includes Washing Dishes in Hotel Paradise by Eduardo Belgrano Rawson, and a collaboration with Susana Medina and Anne McLean on Medina’s short story collection Red Tales Cuentos rojos, published in a bilingual edition in 2012.
Irish Scot DONAL MCLAUGHLIN was featured in BEF 2012 as both an author and a translator. Shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award 2013 for his English edition of Urs Widmer’s My Father’s Book, he specializes in translating Swiss novels; in the case of Pedro Lenz, even from one dialect (Bernese) into another (Glaswegian). He maintains a website at donalmclaughlin.wordpress.com.
RHETT MCNEIL has translated work by João Almino, António Lobo Antunes, Machado de Assis, and Gonçalo M. Tavares into English.
MARCIN PIEKOSZEWSKI was born in Kluczbork, Poland. He studied at the English Departments of Opole University and Krakow’s Jagiellonian University, graduating from the latter in American Literature. Having worked as a teacher, translator, journalist, and bookseller, he currently lives in Berlin where he runs a Polish-German bookshop.
KATINA ROGERS holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Colorado. In addition to translating contemporary francophone literature, she works on graduate education reform and emerging models of academic authoring and publishing at the Scholarly Communication Institute.
LOLA ROGERS is a Finnish to English literary translator living in Seattle. Lola’s published translations include Riikka Pulkkinen’s novels True and The Limit, and Sofi Oksanen’s internationally acclaimed novel Purge. She is also a regular contributor to Books from Finland, Words Without Borders, and other publications.
NATHALIE ROY is a Russian-to-English translator based in Moscow.
BOGDAN RUSEV has an MA in English and American Literature from Sofia University. He is a published author and works in magazines, television, and advertising. He usually translates from English into Bulgarian, and has published translations of such different authors as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Bukowski and China Miéville. He only translates from Bulgarian into English when he thinks a Bulgarian author is really worth it.
JAYDE WILL is a translator of Lithuanian, Estonian and Russian literature into English. He has contributed to a number of magazines and anthologies, including the forthcoming Dedalus Book of Lithuanian Literature. He has also translated the subtitles for a number of short and feature-length films, including The Age of Milosz, a documentary about Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, as well as the award-winning Lithuanian film Vanishing Waves.
Acknowledgments
Publication of Best European Fiction 2014 was made possible by generous support from the following cultural agencies and embassies:
Books from Lithuania
Cultural Services of the French Embassy
DGLB—General Directorate for Books and Libraries / Portugal
Elizabeth Kostova Foundation
Embassy of the Principality of Liechtenstein to the United States of America
Embassy of the Republic of Macedonia, Washington, D.C.
Embassy of Spain, Washington, D.C.
Estonian Literature Centre
Finnish Literature Exchange (FILI)
Icelandic Literature Fund
Literàrne informačné centrum (The Centre for Information on Literature), Bratislava, Slovakia
The Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia: Program in Support of Georgian Books and Literature
NORLA: Norwegian Literature Abroad, Fiction & Nonfiction
The Polish Cultural Institute of London
Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council
Republic of Croatia, Ministry of Culture, Directorate for the Development of Culture and Art
The Slovenian Book Agency (JAK)
Rights and Permissions
Rui Manuel Amaral: “Almost Ten Stories” © 2008, 2010 by Rui Manuel Amaral. Translation © 2013 by Rhett McNeil.
Kjell Askildsen: “My Sister’s Face” © 1996, 2005 by Kjell Askildsen. Translation © 2013 by Seàn Kinsella.
Katya Atanasova: “Fear of Ankles” © 2006 by Katya Atanasova. Translation © 2013 by Bogdan Rusev.
Xurxo Borrazàs: “Pena de Ancares” © 2002 by Xurxo Borrazàs. Translation © 2013 by Neil Anderson.
Eric Chevillard: “Hippopotamus,” excerpt from Oreille Rouge (Red Ear) © 2005 by Les Éditions de Minuit. Published by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc., on behalf of Les Éditions de Minuit. Translation © 2013 by Katina Rogers.
Jens Dittmar: “His Cryptologists,” excerpt from So kalt und schön (forthcoming 2014) © 2012 by Jens Dittmar. Translation © 2013 by Nate La Meshi.
Guram Dochanashvili: “A Fellow Traveler” © 2007 by Guram Dochanashvili. Translation © 2013 by Khatuna Beridze.
Nina Gabrielyan: “Quiet Feasts” © 2001 by Nina Gabrielyan. Translation © 2013 by Nathalie Roy.
Elvis Hadzic: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Zec” © 2013 by Elvis Hadzic. Translation © 2013 by Elvis Hadzic.
Vladimír Havrilla: “The Teacher and the Parchment” © 2007 by Vladimír Havrilla. Translation © 2013 by Michaela Freeman.
Thierry Horguelin: “The Man in the Yellow Parka” © 2012 by Thierry Horguelin. Translation © 2013 by Edward Gauvin.
Olja Savičević Ivančević: “Adios Cowboy,” excerpt from Adio kauboju (Farewell, Cowboy) © 2010 by Olja Savičević Ivančević. Translation © 2013 by Will Firth.
Vladimir Kozlov: “Politics” © 2013 by Vladimir Kozlov. Translation © 2013 by Andrea Gregovich.
Herkus Kunčius: “Belovezh” © 2007 by Herkus Kunčius. Translation © 2013 by Jayde Will.
Vesna Lemaić: “The Pool” © 2008 by Vesna Lemaić. Translation © 2013 by Špela Bibič.
Óskar Magnússon: “Dr. Amplatz” © 2010 by Óskar Magnússon. Translation © 2013 by Christopher Burawa.
Mox Mäkelä: “Night Shift” © 2013 by Mox Mäkelä. Translation © 2013 by Lola Rogers.
Ioan Mânăscurtă: “How I Was Going to Die on the Battlefield” © 2005 by Ioan Mânăscurtă. Translation © 2013 by Alistair Ian Blyth.
Tom McCarthy: “On Dodgem Jockeys” © 2012 by Tom McCarthy. Reprinted by permission of Melanie Jackson Agency, LLC.
Susana Medina: “Oestrogen” © 2012 by Susana Medina. Translation © 2013 by Rosie Marteau.
Robert Minhinnick: “Scavenger” © 2013 by Robert Minhinnick.
Tõnu Õnnepalu: “Interpretation,” excerpt from Raadio (Radio) © 2002 by Tõnu Õnnepalu. Translation © 2013 by Adam Cullen.
Krystian Piwowarski: “Homo Polonicus,” excerpt from Homo Polonicus © 2008 by Prószyński i S-ka. Translation © 2013 by Soren A. Gauger and Marcin Piekoszewski.
Christoph Simon: “Fairy Tales from the World of Publishing” © 2011 by Christoph Simon. Translation © 2013 by Donal McLaughlin.
Lena Ruth Stefanović: “The New Testament” © 2009 by Lena Ruth Stefanović. Translation © 2013 by Will Firth.
Yuriy Tarnawsky: “Dead Darling” © 2012 by Yuriy Tarnawsky.
Vlada Urošević: “The Seventh Side of the Dice” © 2010 by Vlada Urošević. Translation © 2013 by Will Firth.
Inga Zholude: “Dirty Laundry” © 2007 by Inga Zholude. Translation © 2013 by Margita Gailitis and Vija Kostoff.
MICHAL AJVAZ, The Golden Age.
The Other City.
PIERRE ALBERT-BIROT
, Grabinoulor.
YUZ ALESHKOVSKY, Kangaroo.
FELIPE ALFAU, Chromos.
Locos.
IVAN NGELO, The Celebration.
The Tower of Glass.
ANTÓNIO LOBO ANTUNES, Knowledge of Hell.
The Splendor of Portugal.
ALAIN ARIAS-MISSON, Theatre of Incest.
JOHN ASHBERY AND JAMES SCHUYLER, A Nest of Ninnies.
ROBERT ASHLEY, Perfect Lives.
GABRIELA AVIGUR-ROTEM, Heatwave and Crazy Birds.
DJUNA BARNES, Ladies Almanack.
Ryder.
JOHN BARTH, LETTERS.
Sabbatical.
DONALD BARTHELME, The King.
Paradise.
SVETISLAV BASARA, Chinese Letter.
MIQUEL BAUÇÀ, The Siege in the Room.
RENÉ BELLETTO, Dying.
MAREK BIECZYK, Transparency.
ANDREI BITOV, Pushkin House.
ANDREJ BLATNIK, You Do Understand.
LOUIS PAUL BOON, Chapel Road.
My Little War.
Summer in Termuren.
ROGER BOYLAN, Killoyle.
IGNÁCIO DE LOYOLA BRANDÃO, Anonymous Celebrity.
Zero.
BONNIE BREMSER, Troia: Mexican Memoirs.
CHRISTINE BROOKE-ROSE, Amalgamemnon.
BRIGID BROPHY, In Transit.
GERALD L. BRUNS, Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language.
GABRIELLE BURTON, Heartbreak Hotel.
MICHEL BUTOR, Degrees.
Mobile.
G. CABRERA INFANTE, Infante’s Inferno.
Three Trapped Tigers.
JULIETA CAMPOS,
The Fear of Losing Eurydice.
ANNE CARSON, Eros the Bittersweet.
ORLY CASTEL-BLOOM, Dolly City.
LOUIS-FERDINAND CÉLINE, Castle to Castle.