![]() ![]() One hopes-a novel is inevitably an expression of unreasonable hopes-that the finished book will contain not only characters and scenes but a certain larger truth, though that truth, whatever it may be, is impossible to express fully in words. A novel in its earliest form, before it begins to be rendered into language, is a cloud of sorts that hovers over the writer’s head, a mystery born with clues to its own meanings but also, at its heart, insoluble. ![]() I had taken the raw material of the book in question and translated it into language.Įvery writer of course works differently, but I suspect that most novels begin in their writers’ minds as confusions of images, impulses, scattered meanings, devotions, grudges, fixations, and some vague sort of plot, to name just a few. It dawned on me, gradually, that I was a translator, too. I’d worried over the same things when I wrote the book in the first place. When I started working with translators, I couldn’t help noticing that many of the problems that vexed them-questions of nuance, resonance, and tone, as well as the rhythms of the sentences themselves-were familiar to me. This has been revealed to me over time, as I’ve worked with the various dedicated (and inevitably underpaid) people who have agreed to translate my own books. 2023 PEN America Literary Awards CeremonyĪll novels are translations, even in their original languages. ![]()
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