A uniquely ebullient account of world translators seeking to make Shakespeare their own.
The Bard in many tongues.
Shakespeare is a litmus test for translators. Make him too literal, sacrifice the sound for the sense, and you wind up with basic prose. Overdo it, reproduce the flow of meter and the crack of consonants, and you get an affectation burning like acid. Hahn is a brilliant literary translator, and his book offers a grand and very enjoyable tour of Shakespeare in the worlds of other words. He writes about a Pericles in Brazilian Portuguese, a Hamlet in Danish, a King Lear (famously) in Yiddish, and a Julius Caesar in Latin (which has the author wondering, “How do you translate ‘Et tu, Brute’ into Latin?”). Hahn provides a tour de force analysis of Twelfth Night, looking at the play of pun and prosody through multiple linguistic lenses. He prints a passage, then presents a string of versions. How does Georgian say the pangs of love? How do the flowers bloom in Chinese or Hungarian? How do Shakespeare’s distinctions between “thou” and “you” (informal and formal) render out in Swahili? Every page brims with discoveries, yet Hahn’s tone remains modest—and refreshingly droll. “Translators are hilarious and weird people,” he writes in the book’s acknowledgments. “(If you’ve read this book, you’ll have figured that out for yourself, obviously.)” Readers thinking they know Shakespeare will find something new here. Readers new to the plays and poems will marvel at what they have been missing. You finish the book and realize that it is not just about an author and his readers but about the mysteries of language itself. As Hahn writes, “How do you present a piece of writing that people know so well already, that rings in their memories whether you like it or not? That is the question.”
A uniquely ebullient account of world translators seeking to make Shakespeare their own.Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9780593801666
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2026
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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