A Miscellany


BACKGROUND NOISE/RUIDO DE FONDO by Saúl Yurkievich, translated from the Spanish by Cola Franzen. The first volume of poetry in English (presented bilingually) by an Argentinian writer Carlos Fuentes has called "a virtuoso of words." Yurkievich's poems are like jazz solos, wonderful to read aloud.

$13, 237 pages, ISBN 0-945774-58-3.

“Reading Yurkievich is like entering a Klein bottle where form is function, function form,
where the outside leads to the inside. … Background Noise is dazzling, mysterious, alchemical.
No less miraculous is that Cola Franzen has been able to render this fabulous text, full of a
thousand pitfalls, in such an extraordinarily lucent and poetic fashion.”
—Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno


IN THE IMAGE AND LIKENESS by Saúl Yurkievich, translated from the Spanish by Cola Franzen. Fictional pieces about the artists Velázquez, Goya, Picasso, and Schwitters and short delights that display this Argentine's humor and imagination.

$11, 112 pages, ISBN 0-945774-59-1. Also available as an e-book.

“Saúl Yurkievich is a virtuoso of words. Like a magnificent pianist, he can go from
the softest to the strongest on the splendid keyboard of the Spanish language.
Yurkievich besieges words, finds their god-like resemblances, goes beyond them
with pleasure and, finally, paints his own dream.”
—Carlos Fuentes


PERFORMING WITHOUT A STAGE: The Art of Literary Translation by Robert Wechsler. The first overview of this important, exciting, yet most invisible of performing arts, which gives us access to the world's literature. The book deals with such matters as the history of translation, the publishing, reviewing, and teaching of translation, the translator's nearly nonexistent public image, and the value for writers and scholars of studying and practicing translation.

$21.95, 320 pages, ISBN 0-945774-38-9. Also available as an e-book and a free PDF.
 
"Throughout, the tone is conversational, jargon-free, sometimes angry
and frequently funny . . . Above all, this book is quite inspiring . . . it should
encourage a deeper appreciation of how much we owe the people who
generously bring us the world's literature." —Washington Post Book World


DIPLOMATIC PURSUITS by Joseph von Westphalen. Translated from the German by Melanie Richter-Bernburg. Harry von Duckwitz pursues ideas and women with the same conflicted, contrary, self-critical volatility he brings to his diplomatic career. This novel by a leading German satirist makes you laugh and think at the same time.

$14.95 paper, 300 pp., ISBN 0-945774-28-1.

"Most will be taken with von Westphalen's gently cynical voice, . . .
his sense of everyday absurdity, and Duckwitz's mordant musings on phones,
fidelity, politics, and deficiencies of existence." —Publishers Weekly



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