It's been said that translation is the closest kind of reading, the nearest you can get to a text or an author.
In our Talks on Translation video series, we hear from some of the brilliant international authors and translators that Restless Books works with to bring you excellent literature. They talk about how a text can bring them closer to their co-translator, and how the process of translation mediates between cultures as well as languages. They discuss how translation isn't a one-way process—it's an intimate collaboration.
Watch the conversations below, featuring Emma Ramadan and Tom Roberge, co-translators of Marcus Malte’s The Boy; Gabriela Wiener and Jessica Powell, author and translator of Nine Moons; and Yishai Sarid and Yardenne Greenspan, author and translator of The Memory Monster.
"We already have so much beauty, so much wonderful literature in the world that already exists—we just don't have access to it all [in America]." —Emma Ramadan
"The straightforwardness and the bluntness are the power of The Memory Monster. I think my main goal as the translator was to not interfere with what the language was doing." —Yardenne Greenspan
About the Books
By Yishai Sarid
Translated from the Hebrew by Yardenne Greenspan
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2020
2020 National Jewish Book Awards Finalist
“A brilliant short novel that serves as a brave, sharp-toothed brief against letting the past devour the present” (The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice), Yishai Sarid’s The Memory Monster is a harrowing parable of a young historian who becomes consumed by the memory of the Holocaust.
Hardcover ISBN: 9781632062710
Publication date: Sep 8, 2020
Paperback ISBN: 9781632060600
Publication date: Sep 7, 2021