Translated fiction: convincing first-person narration, personal stories through political turmoil, and sharp but subtle humour

Irish Times

5 days ago

In
When The Cranes Fly South
(Doubleday, 308pp, £14.99), translated from the Swedish by Alice Menzies, the author Lisa Ridzén, a woman in her 30s, inhabits the mind of an 89-year-old man, through a convincingly rendered first-person narration. Thus she demonstrates how wrong it is to advise writers to only draw on their own experience and identity.
Details of the daily humiliations wrought by age mix with recollections of his work at sawmills with a cruel father, or his friend Ture, who is also enduring the torments of old age. Such moments of memory are often visited through dreams, which linger briefly in the disconcerting juncture of waking.
Bo's wife is in a nursing home and can no longer recognise him or their son, Hans, who provides the main tension of the novel, attempting to assuage his self-doubt by issuing ultimatums about his father's supposed inability to manage his dog, Sixten. Through lucid, observant writing, Ridzén conveys the lack of autonomy allowed to elderly people in a heartfelt novel that gives voice to a sensitively realised old man.
In
Omerta: A Book of Silences
by Andrea Tompa (Seagull Books, 718pp, £22.99), translated from the Hungarian by Bernard Adams, the author creates four separate first-person narrators, to outstanding effect. Kali's tale is told in an accented translation, which is sometimes confusing ('they'd just got two or three 'old an' wouldn't let go of it'), but her voice soon becomes persuasive, especially when indulging her propensity for telling folk tales.
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After a brutal marriage - violence and suicide appear as natural as the wind - she eventually finds work with Vilmo, a rose breeder who is preoccupied with creating blossoms that will rival those produced by the famous Meilland family in France.
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Vilmo's narrative voice is very different. Analytical and unemotional, his perspective on fathering a child with Kali solidifies an imbalance of power that also pertains in his relationship with a teenage girl called Annush. However, when we hear her affecting voice, critical judgment is challenged by the temporary escape this illicit affair allows her from a merciless, alcoholic father and the ceaseless work he demands of her.
These personal stories are repeatedly impacted by the political turmoil of communist Romania and the 1956 uprising in Hungary. This is especially the case for the fourth narrator, Eleanóra, Annush's sister, who has recently been released from prison for being part of an unofficial convent of nuns. Her contemplative reflections regarding the position she can usefully occupy in a political milieu she barely understands are bolstered by her unwavering beliefs.
Through vividly imagined prose, each character's voice emerges distinctly and engagingly, allowing all four to express their perspectives on the uniqueness of their lives within the collectivised society they inhabit.
Set in a milieu in which seeking the approval of others is paramount,
Cooking In The Wrong Century
(Pushkin Press, 172pp, £16.99) by Teresa Präauer, translated from the German by Eleanor Updengraff, deploys sharp but subtle humour to undermine their anxious solipsism.
A sense of playfulness is central to a novel in which a couple host three people - all unnamed - for drinks and a meal. The central premise is replayed in several permutations, interspersed with chapters in which the reader is addressed with a familiarity that suggests their complicity in a gathering where every ingredient, gadget and piece of music is a signifier of taste, status and level of sophistication, or lack thereof: 'What Is Culture? ...
The book that bore this title had endured four house moves in 20 years and had still never been read. What is culture? Perhaps a short version of the answer could be found in the blurb."
Every action is a performance, functioning as potential content for social media posts. The irony is pointed but never overstated, in a witty translation that, despite the satirical intent, also acknowledges the sensuality of food and the ingenuity of jazz. A flood that prevents the guests from leaving hints at the influence of Luis Buñuel's Exterminating Angel, and this brilliantly clever novel shares that film's sense of absurdity. Nothing described in the novel can, with complete certainty, be said to have happened.
There is uncertainty too in
The Arsonist
(Twisted Spoon, 180pp, £11.50) by Egon Hostovský, translated from the Czech by Christopher Morris, regarding the identity of the person setting fire to buildings in a small Bohemian village called Zbečnov.
Central to the novel is the family who live above the Silver Pigeon pub, run by the mercurial Josef Simon. 'Here is home, beyond them, the world.' His teenage children, Kamil and Eliška, are suffused with burgeoning desire in search of an object.
Eliška spent three years in a convent because of their mother: 'She's always been bad.' But she too is adrift and unhappy. Outside the confines of their home, the suspicion and distrust of outsiders - already a feature of the village - is heightened when buildings begin to go up in flames.
But, as always, the truth is more complex and less convenient than the locals would wish. This sense of an outsider threatening a small community, initiated by their collective paranoia, is like a precursor to the novels of László Krasznahorkai.
First published in 1935, the novel is beautifully written, with a narrative style that whispers confidences to the reader. The lyricism of Hostovský's superbly translated descriptions is a pleasure to read, capturing both the delight and ennui in village life: 'The rooftops gleam in the sun, two small clouds sail over the church, the sparrows make a commotion on the fence, somnolent warmth, Sunday outfits and tedium.'
A Fortunate Man
(NYRB, 870pp, $29.95) by Henrik Pontoppidan, translated from the Danish by Paul Larkin, has previously been translated into English as Lucky Per from a novel that was first published in 1905, having appeared in serial form earlier.
Using free indirect narration, the novel is ostensibly a birth-to-death narrative about Per Sidenius, born into a family deeply rooted in religious service and sombre conformity. But Per's questioning nature is ill-suited to accepting received doctrines, and his break with his family personifies a journey both outward and inwards, embodying the faltering modernisation of a country and the search for a true self.
His personal story, encompassing his far-seeing ambition as an engineer - already envisioning the energy potential of wind and wave power - and indecisiveness in relationships, is at every moment fascinating and unpredictable.
But of even greater interest are his discussions about religion, especially those with the ostracised Pastor Fjaltring, and his desperate search for an authentic way of being in the world.
Despite its length, the novel never loses focus and includes much elegant, expressive writing, meticulously translated by Donegal-based Larkin, who includes a few phrases that will be familiar to Irish readers: 'the lark in the clear air' appears twice!
While the novel inevitably includes the prejudices and assumptions of its time, it also echoes the ever-changing, irresolute, self-questioning and contradictory reflections of Per in a search for the self that leads into the lonely morass that constitutes that self. He is the conscience of a novel that deserves to be considered among the greatest works of world literature.