Time, these words tell us, is a stubborn thing: the past is not easily washed away by the present the long branches of past centuries can still jut unexpectedly into our own. Words unearthed from the archeological depths of our own language, some still evincing the crude rawness of their Anglo-Saxon origins, and others bearing the more finely wrought curlicues ported over by William the Conqueror and his Norman men from the Latin realm. It’s the words that stand out first: guttering, hobnailed, eclose. A finalist for the French-American Foundation Translation Prize and a recipient of the French Voices Award Grand Prize, he is currently at work on Lutz Bassmann’s Black Village (Open Letter, 2021).Īnimalia by Jean-Baptiste del Amo, translated from the French by Frank Wynne (Grove Press) Jeffrey Zuckerman is an editor at Music & Literature and a translator from French, most recently of Jean Genet’s The Criminal Child (NYRB, 2020). Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2020 Best Translated Book Awards.
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