Tag Archives: book in translation

The Chestnut Man by Soren Sveistrup

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The Chestnut Man by Soren Sveistrup was first published in 2019 and it was translated from Danish by Caroline Waight. I think it’s the first Scandi Noir book that I’ve read and I borrowed it from the library so that I could take part in a Scandi meme which involved reading five books, I already have books at home by Finnish and Icelandic authors and I thought this would spur me on to read more over 2023, then I realised that the project was just for January! Oh well, I’ll be doing my own wee Scandi reading project over this year anyway.

The setting is Copenhagen where the body of a young woman has been found, minus one hand. It seems that the killer has left his calling card in the shape of a little ‘man’ made from chestnuts and matchsticks. More of them turn up at crime scenes and it’s obvious that there’s a serial killer around. It seems that the killer might be somehow linked to the disappearance of the young daughter of a politician the previous year, her body had never been found, but the police think they have solved the case, did they get the wrong man?

Naia Thulin has been assigned to the case and she has been given a new partner. Mark Hess has just been thrown out of Europol for some mysterious reason, and nobody is impressed with him, as far as they’re concerned he’s damaged goods.

I’m not sure if ‘enjoy’ is the correct word to use in relation to this reading experience. I like the plot and some of the characters, but it was just a wee bit too gruesome for me, – but then that was no real surprise, having watched The Killing on TV, and that was written by this author.

Nights of Plague by Orhan Pamuk

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Nights of Plague by Orhan Pamuk has just been published but I was sent a digital copy for review via NetGalley. I must say that I was slightly depressed when I realised that it must be a massive book after being stuck on 1% for what seemed like a very long time. Anyway I clicked on for days and it wasn’t until well over halfway that I began to sort of get into it.

The setting is the Mediterranean island of Mingheria, the ‘Jewel of the Levant’ in 1900. The island is inhabited by Turks and Greeks, Muslim and Christian and there has always been a bit of tension between them, and when a plague arrives there’s suspicion and conspiracy theories galore with the two factions blaming each other for the disease. Did the plague arrive via rats from one of the Greek ships, or was it brought back by Muslims who had been on a pilgrimage?

The Sultan sends for a well-known quarantine doctor to deal with the epidemic. Dr Nuri Bey had recently married a Princess Pakize who had been locked up with her family for years, her uncle had imprisoned all the members of his family who might have threatened his rule. The doctor has a tough time trying to persuade people to take the quarantine seriously. The Greeks want to get off the island and lots of them manage it as the fishermen are more than willing to take them out under cover of darkness, even when there’s a blockade of warships to stop them from leaving.

There are a couple of romances going on, unusually between already married couples (for religious reasons I suppose) lots of history, a murder mystery and a lot about the Mingherian language which is on its last legs as most of the people who spoke it are dead and the young people speak either Greek or Turkish. It’s in an even worse position than Scots Gaelic, luckily Mingheria is an entirely imaginary place though!

I read this one on my Kindle and my heart sank when I realised how long the book must be as it was ages before I got to 2%. As with most long books it could have been improved by being shorter, I have a feeling that Pamuk wanted to get the history of the Ottoman empire written into a work of fiction, but it really didn’t work for me, it took me until 66% before I began to find it a bit interesting. The book was translated by Ekin Oklap and there were only a couple of clunky bits.

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read it.

A Certain Smile by Francoise Sagan

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A Certain Smile by Francoise Sagan was first published in 1956, I seem to have bought a first edition very cheaply, when I was in Orkney. This one is a very quick read at just 132 pages.

Dominique is a 20 year old student, studying law at the Sorbonne. She’s getting a bit tired of her boyfriend Bertrand, a fellow student. When Bertrand introduces her to his Uncle Luc Dominique is attracted to the older man. Luc is middle-aged and supposedly happily married to tall blonde and beautiful Francoise, who becomes something of a mother figure to Dominique, buying her clothes and advising her. Dominique really likes her and they become good friends, but when Francoise leaves to spend a fortnight with her mother, Luc and Dominique take the opportunity to go to Cannes in the south of France.

Dominique is sure that she can have a relationship with Luc without becoming too embroiled, but inevitably she can’t. Unknown to Dominique Francoise knows what is going on, no doubt she has been in this situation with her husband before and is very sanguine about it all.

What can I say other than this is all very French and it was mildly diverting.

It was translated from French by Irene Ash.

Wolf Among Wolves by Hans Fallada – 20 Books of Summer

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Wolf Among Wolves cover

Wolf Among Wolves by Hans Fallada was first published in German in 1937. I didn’t like this one as much as other readers seemed to have. It might just have been the wrong book at the wrong time, but I felt it didn’t need to be so long (793 pages).

The book begins in Berlin in 1923 where the German economy is in freefall with inflation getting crazier every day, the German Mark is falling daily against the American Dollar, people in the city are starving as their wages are worth nothing by the time they get paid, and one dollar is worth millions of marks.

Wolfgang Pagel, a young ex-soldier who had been at the front is the spoiled son of a famous but now deceased artist. He’s estranged from his wealthy mother and is now living in a poor part of Berlin with Petra, his girlfriend. Wolf is a compulsive gambler and every night he goes to an illegal casino which is set up in someone’s front room in the more salubrious west of the city. Wolf is happy if he wins enough money to buy some food the next day and can pay the rent, sadly he often doesn’t have the money and then he has to pawn Petra’s clothes and she has to stay in bed. Of course he thinks he has a system and will win a fortune the next evening. A series of unfortunate incidents lead to Petra being jailed on what should have been their wedding day, but Wolf is so wrapped up in himself that he doesn’t get around to even visiting her never mind getting her out.

Bizzarely Wolf leaves the city and gets work on a farm, despite having no farming experience he’s working as a sort of manager in charge of the farm workers and foresters, but he really enjoys the hard work. It isn’t long before he realises that the peasants aren’t the honest toilers that he thought they were and are no better than the city dwellers had been. The owner of the farm is a power freak and miser who spends his time trying to ruin his son-in-law whom he has as a tenant on the farm. There are various relationships going on, none of them happy.

Then due to the political and economic situation some in the army organise a putsch which is a shambles and some on the farm are involved in it. This book does have a happy ending of sorts but I thought that Wolf’s character made a very unlikely about turn as soon as he got into the country, and I kept wondering what was happening to Petra throughout most of the book, and for me she was the most interesting character.

The publisher thought that this book might get them into trouble with the Nazis, but it didn’t. Fallada chose to stay in Germany during the Nazi era, that’s something which others who had left Germany, such as Thomas Mann disliked him for. But in 1935 Fallada had been imprisoned by the Gestapo and described as an ‘undesirable author’ – not for long though as they couldn’t find any anti-Nazi material in his home. I’m amazed they didn’t plant stuff! Apparently Goebbels was breathing down Fallada’s neck trying to get him to write an anti-semitic tract, that couldn’t have been comfortable.

This is the third book that I’ve read by Fallada, I much preferred his Alone in Berlin to this one, despite it having a depressing ending.

This was on of my 20 Books of Summer.

The Long Ships by Frans Bengtsson

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The Long Ships

The Long Ships by Frans Bengtsson is a Scandinavian classic and was first published in English in 1954, translated from Swedish to English by Michael Meyer. This is a great read which combines Viking raids in various countries, slavery, conversion to Islam under duress, escapes, fights and battles a-plenty, romance and details of domesticity in the late 10th century. There’s quite a lot of humour too, with the whole idea of men going ‘a-viking’ apparently coming about because the men were tired of listening to their women’s sharp tongues over the long dark winter.

This is a real page-turner with the action beginning in Skania (southern Sweden) where a young man called Orm has been left behind with the women while the men go a-viking. Orm had been rather mollycoddled by his mother after his older brother Are had left home and never come back again, presumed dead. But Orm ends up being abducted from his own doorstep and so begin his adventures which end up with him becoming a leader of men. But it isn’t all about fighting men, there are plenty of good, strong female characters in this book.

This book does seem to be historically correct and it details how Christianity was spread throughout Scandinavia, something which seemed unlikely given that the Vikings were so keen on raiding holy islands and murdering monks and priests.

Frans Bengtsson was a poet and biographer and The Long Ships was his only novel, it’s a great Viking saga.

This year I intend to try to read quite a lot of European books in translation, this one counts towards that personal challenge.