Lost in Translation?

[arabis]

Recently I've read a few books which have been translated into English from other languages:

The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin and translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield
Dance of the Assassins by Herve Jubert and translated from the French by Anthea Bell
City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende and translated from the Spanish by Margaret

Comments

[ehutch]

I know exactly what you mean about adults getting snotty about the reading of 'children's fiction'. I get a lot of comments when people discover the main part of my degree was children's lit... (I did my dissertation on Susan Cooper and Ursula le Guin.) A very astute tutor of mine once said that there was no such thing as books for just children, simply some books that were just for adults. I like that view point!

[arabis]

Yes, I think your tutor's comment is what I was trying to get at.

I liked Susan Cooper's 'Dark is Rising' books but don't think I got on very well with Ursula Le Guin's 'Wizard of Earthsea' ones.

Don't know if it's of interest, but the Sci-fi channel seem to be doing a miniseries of Earthsea for later this year: http://www.scifi.com/earthsea/

[fialta]

Akunin's books are very cool! This novel is called Azazel in Russian and I think it's the first about Fandorin, Leviathan is a very good book as well, highly recommended.
I enjoyed his Fandorin books quiet a lot, but you know they say some authors write one and the same story for all life (like Sallinger did), I think it's what happened to this guy Akunin.
I think he's very true in terms of historical facts and presents them from a bit of unusual (at least for me, as I did my history studies in the kommunist era) perspective. Are the gifted children mentioned there?

[arabis]

Yes, Lady Alistair's school for gifted children is in Winter Queen/Azazel - though it sounds from reports on amazon.co.uk as though students or ex-students crop up in the later books.

I'll have to wait at least until I've read Leviathan to comment on whether Akunin keeps writing the same story - but maybe if it's a good enough story it won't matter :)