Emily Rhodes 25 May 2019 9:00 AM 25 May 2019 9:00 AM Share Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Email Whatsapp You Will Be Safe Here Damian BarrBloomsbury, pp.352, £16.99 Damian Barr explains the upsetting genesis of his impressive debut novel, You Will Be Safe Here, in his acknowledgements: This story began with a picture of a boy in a newspaper. That boy was Raymond Buys and he’d been killed in a camp not unlike New Dawn. He was just 15. This book is dedicated to him. So the novel opens with a prologue in which a boy, Willem, is left at the New Dawn camp, south of Johannesburg, in 2010. Then Part One takes us back to 1901, to the diary entries of Mrs Sarah van der Watt, about to be taken from her farm — which she watches burn under the British scorched earth policy — to a concentration camp near Bloemfontein. Sarah’s voice is intimately rendered in her diary, where she records what she and her young son suffer at the hands of the … [Read more...] about Brutish Brits: You Will Be Safe Here, by Damian Barr, reviewed
La review of books
Daniel Hahn on the art of translation
FOR A long time, translators had a hard time of it. They were underpaid and under-recognised by the literary establishment, rarely mentioned in reviews of the titles they worked on. But as foreign fiction has gained popularity—according to Nielsen BookScan, a data provider, Britons spent £20.7m ($26.6m) on it in 2018, up from £16.9m in 2014—so too has the profile of translators increased. In 2016 the Man Booker prize announced that its International award, of £50,000, would be shared by author and translator. The National Book Awards in America reintroduced a category for translated literature last year. That prize money, of $10,000, is also divided equally. As a result, a new breed of translator has emerged: confident, vocal and media-savvy. Jennifer Croft, who won the Man Booker International prize last year for her translation of Olga Tokarczuk’s “Flights”, is one such figure: she began translating Ms Tokarczuk’s work … [Read more...] about Daniel Hahn on the art of translation
Józef Czapski: painter, prisoner, and disciple of Proust
On the morning of 2 September 1939, the Polish painter Józef Czapski, then 43 years old, slipped a slim volume of the memoirs of André Gide into his greatcoat pocket and headed off to war with invading Nazi forces. In a secret protocol to the Nazi-Soviet pact guaranteeing non-aggression between the two powers, formalised on 23 August, Stalin and Hitler had agreed that the Polish state would be destroyed and its territory and people divided between them. Sixteen days after the German invasion, Soviet troops entered Poland from the east. Surrounded by German and Soviet forces at Lwów, Czapski’s unit had to surrender. The Germans turned over the Polish forces to the Soviets, and he began two years of incarceration in Soviet camps. Though he did not know it, he and the others held with him were marked down for death. In March 1940, the head of the NKVD (later KGB) Lavrentiy Beria and three members of the Politburo signed a memorandum in which the Polish officers were … [Read more...] about Józef Czapski: painter, prisoner, and disciple of Proust
Irish writer Colm Toibin writes powerful account of his recent diagnosis and treatment for testicular cancer
The award-winning author was in LA when he realised one of his testicles was swollen and became increasingly more painful. Last June he made an appointment with a leading Urologist in Dublin, who “seemed concerned” and carried out a series of blood tests and an ultrasound on his testicles. His consultant decided to put him on antibiotics in the meantime and the swollen veins in his testicle disappeared but one of them also got harder and bigger. Writing in the London Review of Books in his usual inimitable fashion, he said the decision was quickly made to remove his right testicle and he then had an agonising wait as further tests were carried out. “A week later the phone rang and I was told that I had a cancer of the testicles that had spread to a lymph node and to one lung,” he wrote. “Instead of seeing the urologist, I would now need to see an oncologist. For a few days I comforted myself by pretending that, because of my abiding … [Read more...] about Irish writer Colm Toibin writes powerful account of his recent diagnosis and treatment for testicular cancer
A Gallimaufry of Stupidity, Selfishness and Spiritedness
This is one of those weeks when, instead of tackling one theme, I have to flit from one theme to another, ranging from stupidity to selfishness, to spiritedness. The stupidity of the pro-abortion argument Now, let us assume for one moment that this idea being bandied about by the vol-au-vent organisations' pro-abortion coalition - of conception by rape to subdue the woman - were to be accepted and take root and abortion would be allowed in such cases. What would happen then? Would all these alleged rapists be prosecuted? What would happen in the case of those not found guilty after a fair trial (meaning that rape would not have been legally established)? Can abortions be reversed? This is the stupidest justification of abortion I've ever heard in my life. It elevates the woman - the would-be oppressed victim - to prosecutor, judge, jury, executioner and... oppressor. (The same applies to MAP administered "after rape" - it simply defies the presumption of innocence.) If it's a … [Read more...] about A Gallimaufry of Stupidity, Selfishness and Spiritedness