Last Name
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First Name
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Language
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Annotation
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Feierstein
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Ricardo
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Spanish
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Ricardo
Feierstein. Mestizo. Tr.
Stephen A. Sadow. Intro. Ilan
Stavans. Albuquerque. University of New Mexico Press. 2000 [Editorial Planeta, Buenos Aires, 1994]. 335 pp. Cloth: $45.00;
ISBN 0-8263-2115-1. Paper: $19.95; ISBN 0-8263-2116-X. Jewish Latin America series. In this ingenious
detective story, the police try to solve an assassination and a lost man
tries to reconstruct his identity. These two searches are set against the
story of four generations of a Jewish family, a social and cultural narrative
that spans nearly a hundred years of cataclysmic events. Personal, cultural,
and historical identity is the main theme of this novel, as is the experience
of being "other." As the characters find ways to eliminate
discrimination, it becomes clear there is no unblended race or religion, and
that to be a mestizo (a person of mixed culture and
blood) is to reject the concept of purity and homogeneity. With poet Jim Kates, Stephen Sadow translated
and edited a bilingual edition of Feierstein's poetry
entitled We, the Generation in the
Wilderness.
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Felinto
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Marilene
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Portuguese
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Marilene Felinto. The Women of Tijucopapo
[As Mulheres de Tijucopapo]. Tr. Irene Matthews. University of Nebraska Press. 1994.
132 pp. Cloth: ISBN 0-8032-1988-1. Paper:
$10.95; ISBN 0-8032-6881-5. Risia only wants her life "to have a happy
ending." To find it she must go
back to Tijucopapo, where her mother was born. One moonlit night her grandmother gave away
a baby, and that baby was Risia's mother. Sharing the trauma of her mother's
miserable marriage, Risia recollects and invents
tales of Tijucopapo in the happier days before she
was born. When she was a little girl
she clung to the idea that she would kill her father for the way he treated
women. Now, a woman herself, Risia hasn't lost the urge to kill. The time is ripe for it--war is in the
air--but nothing can be taken for granted since everything might be taken
away.
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Ferdowski
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Abolgasem
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Persian
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Abolgasem Ferdowski. In the Dragon’s Claws: The Story of Rostam
& Esfandiyar from the Persian Book of Kings. Tr.
and intro. Jerome W. Clinton. Mage Publishers. 1999. 144 pp. Paper: $17.95;
ISBN 0-934211-56-8. Esfandiyar, the designated heir
to the throne of Iran, has just returned in triumph
from his campaign against the shah of Turan. He has
slain Arjasp, Iran’s greatest enemy, captured
his family and treasury, and liberated his own sisters from their captivity.
He expects that his father, Goshtasp, will now
abdicate his throne of Iran. Instead, Goshtasp
sets his son another task – he must bring Iran’s greatest hero, Rostam, back to the court in chains. The story of Rostam and Esfandiyar, one of
the most moving tragedies in Abolqasem Ferdowsi’s epic Shanameh, or Book of Kings (AD 932-1025), displays
a surprisingly modern skepticism about the values we associate with this
ancient work. The only complete poetic translation of the Shahnameh into English was completed in 1925 by Arthur George Warner and
Edmond Warner and published in nine volumes. Since then, the only new English
translation that attempts to include the whole work is the prose paraphrase
by Reuben Levy (1967). In making his translation, Jerome W. Clinton consulted
the Warner’s English version and Jules Mohl’s
monumental rendering into French (Paris: 1838; reprint 1976). Clinton has also translated The Tragedy of Sohrah
and Rostam from the Shahnameh (1987).
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Feydeau
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Georges
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French
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Georges Feydeau. Five by Feydeau. Tr. J. Paul Marcoux. Peter Lang.
1994. 286 pp. Cloth:
ISBN 0-8204-2390-4. Feydeau is considered second only to Moličre
as a great writer of French comedy and yet his reputation, at least in
English-speaking countries, rests largely on a half-dozen plays. This book features new translations of five
of his lesser-known works as seen from the perspective of a stage
director: Brothers In Crime (Gibier de potence), The
Dressmaker (Tailleur pour dames), All My Husbands
(Le mariage de Barillon),
That's My Girl! (Occupe-toi d'Amélie),
and Nothing But the Tooth (Hortense a dit: "Je me'en fous"). The introduction provides biographical
information, traces the most significant influences in Feydeau's
output, and discusses farce as a dramatic genre.
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Filippini
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Serge
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French
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Serge
Filippini. The
Man in Flames [L'homme encendie].
Tr. Liz Nash. Sawtry, U.K. Dedalus.
U.S. Distributor: Subterranean.
2000 [editions Phebus, 1990]. 369 pp. Paper:
$16.99; ISBN 1-873982-24-0. Rome, 10
February 1600. In seven days' time, the poet-philosopher Giordano
Bruno will burn at the stake, condemned by the Inquisition for his
'heretical' beliefs. Defiant to the last, he refuses to recant and spends his
remaining days writing the story of his own turbulent life. Pugnacious and
earthy, Bruno had incurred the enmity of corrupt, bigoted churchmen and
academics and has been forced to travel the length and breadth of Europe,
battling to teach and publish his beliefs: that the universe is infinite and
in perpetual motion; that God is not outside the world but everywhere in
Nature; and that men should be free to think as they choose. Bruno counts
among his friends and admirers such notables as Henri III of France, Montaigne, Sir Philip Sydney, Arcimboldo
the painter, and a brilliant young actor named Snitterfield,
soon to become famous and change his name to Shakespeare.
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Fischerová
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Daniela
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Czech
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Daniela
Fischerová. Fingers
Pointing Somewhere Else [Prst, který
se nikdy nedotkne]. Tr.
Neil Bermel. North Haven, CT. Catbird Press. 2000
[1995]. 176 pp. Cloth: $19.95; ISBN 0-945774-44-3. According to one narrator,
stories are "fingers pointing somewhere else." Daniela Fischerová's craftmanship and
voice set her stories apart, always surprising in structure, word choice,
ideas, and emotions. The strongest thread running through the stories in this
collection is the importance of accepting one's emotions and desires, and
embracing the imagined as a way to find and express oneself. Fischerová is one of the leading Czech writers of the
postwar generation. Her plays have been staged around the world (including
the U.S.) and two of her stories have
appeared in recent English language anthologies: Daylight in Nightclub Inferno and Allskin and Other Tales by Contemporary Czech Women. Neil Bermel has previously translated I am Snowing and The Widow
Killer by Pavel Kohout.
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Fishman
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Rukhl
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Yiddish
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Rukhl Fishman. I Want to Fall Like This: Selected Poems of Rukhl
Fishman. Tr. Seymour Levitan. Wayne State University Press. 1995.
206 pp. Paper: $15.95; ISBN 0-8143-2541-6. Bilingual.
This collection showcases the poetry of Fishman, the youngest and only
American-born Yiddish poet of the "Yung Yisroel." This group of young poets and writers from
across the world settled in Israel after World War II and used
Yiddish instead of Hebrew to bridge gaps across time and place. Her preference for free verse and sparing
use of rhyme, her delight in puns and wordplay concentrates on simple subjects─nature, animals, and the world around
her. Includes such works as
"Sunned Through," "Full as a Pomegranate," "Now You
Are Quieter," "Little Blue Flames," and "My Wild
She-Goat." Translator Levitan's stories and poems are included in Voices
Within the Ark, The Spice Box,
Identifications, The Penguin Book of Yiddish Verse, and A Treasury of Yiddish
Stories.
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Flaccus
|
Faius Valerius
|
Latin
|
Gaius Valerius Flaccus. The Voyage
of the "Argo": The Argonautica of Gaius Valerius Flaccus. Tr. David R. Slavitt.
Baltimore. Johns Hopkins University Press. 1999. Cloth: $45.00; ISBN 0-8018-6177-2.
Paper: $15.95; ISBN 0-8018-6178-0. The story of Jason and the Argonauts and
their quest for the Golden Fleece is one of the oldest and most familiar
tales in classical literature. Apollonius of Rhodes wrote the best-known
version, in Greek, in the third century B.C.E. The
Latin poet Gaius Valerius
Flaccus began his own interpretation in the first
century of the Christian era, but he died before completing it. With The Voyage of the "Argo," poet
and translator David Slavitt recovers for modern
readers the only surviving work of this little-known writer. The result is an
engaging rendition of Jason's adventures, of particular interest when
compared to the Greek version of the story. While Apollonius's
tale offers a subtle psychologocial study of Medea, Valerius Flaccus's achievement is to present Jason as a more
complete and compelling heroic figure. Slavitt's
translations include the Metamorphoses of
Ovid, The Fables of Avianus,
and Seneca: The Tragedies, vols.
1 and 2 (Johns Hopkins). He is co-editor of the Complete Roman Drama in Translation series, and the Penn Greek Drama Series.
|
Flaubert
|
Gustave
|
French
|
Gustave Flaubert. A Simple Heart [Le coeur
simple]. Tr. Arthur McDowall. New
Directions. 1996. 64 pp.
Paper: $6.00; ISBN 0-8112-1318-8.
In 1875, to console himself from various personal misfortunes,
Flaubert turned from his monumental survey of modern follies to a series of
miniatures. A Simple Heart,
"the legend of a modern saint," was the greatest of these. A Simple Heart was a sequel to Madame
Bovary, more particularly to the episode at the agricultural show, where Cathérine Leroux, a single
heroic figure in the crowd, was cited for half a century of servitude. Félicité, the
most real of Flaubert's heroines and one of his few characters of good will,
sprang from the same peasant stock, belonged to the same Norman countryside,
and incarnated the same "animal-like devotion and religious
veneration" as Ms. Leroux.
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Fontane
|
Theodor
|
German
|
Theodor Fontane. Effi Briest. Trs. Hugh Rorrison and Helen
Chambers. Angel Books/Dufour Editions, Inc.
1995. 245 pp. Paper:
$18.95; ISBN 0-946162-44-1. Effi Briest is set in the
hey-day of Bismarck's Berlin. It is Germany's answer to Madame Bovary,
Middlemarch, and Anna Karenina.
Effi, its effervescent seventeen-year-old
heroine, is a most unforgettable heroine.
A marriage is arranged between Effi,
daughter of a country gentleman, and the considerably older Geert von Innstetten, a civil
servant and confidant of Bismarck. In the remote Baltic town where they first
live, Effi has an adulterous affair; when the
couple later move to Berlin, the social code exacts a
drastic price. Fontane's
depiction of a rigid, hypocritical, male-dominated society is full of subtle
humor and irony.
|
Fontanella
|
Luigi
|
Italian
|
Luigi Fontanella. Angels
of Youth [Ceres]. Ed., tr., and preface Carol Lettieri
and Irene Marchegiani Jones. Intro. Rebecca J.
West. Riverside, CA. Xenos Books. 2000 [Caramanica Editore, Formia, 1996]. 170 pp. Paper: $13.00; ISBN 1-879378-43-4.
"Angels of Youth contains most
of the poems included in the original Italian volume, Ceres, a title that refers not only to a long section and a
specific poem in the collection, but more significantly to the goddess of
agriculture also known as Demeter. This mythic story is about loss: of a
daughter, of innocence, of eternal spring. It is also about retrieval and
compromise: the acceptant of Necessity, which marks the mortal condition. Fontanella's poetry similarly speaks of loss, but it
avoids a purely elegiac tone by rooting itself squarely in the plenitude of
the here and now." (Introduction) Fontanella,
who is the editor of Gradiva, an international journal of Italian
poetry, has published numerous books of poetry, fiction, and criticism.
|
Fourcade
|
Dominique
|
French
|
Dominique Fourcade. Xbo. Tr. Robert Kocik. Sun & Moon Press [P.O.L.
éditeur, 1988].
1993. 79 pp. Paper:
$9.95; ISBN 1-55713-067-1. Fourcade is a writer of witty, lyrically intense
meditations on the self, art, poetry, and language in general.
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Fox
|
Everett
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Hebrew
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Give Us a King! Samuel, Saul, and David. A New Translation of Samuel
I and II. Tr. and intro. Everett Fox. New York. Schocken Books. 1999. 294 pp. Cloth: $26.00; ISBN
0-8052-4160-4. Everett Fox's translations of The Five Books of Moses: The Schocken
Bible, Volume I, which contains translations of Genesis through
Deuteronomy, has been widely acclaimed as a scholarly, religious, and
literary masterpiece. In Give Us a
King!, Fox turns to the two books of Samuel, which contain some of the
Bible's most famous stories and most unforgettable personalities: the barren
Hannah, the tragic King Saul; Bathsheba; and King David himself, the romantic
hero who becomes a legendary but morally compromised monarch. Accompanied by
commentary and notes, this new translation recreates the echoes, allusions,
alliterations, and wordplays of the original Hebrew in order to recreate in
English the full power of the ancient saga.
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Franco
|
Veronica
|
Italian
|
Veronica
Franco. Poems and Selected Letters. Ed.
and tr. by Ann Rosalind Jones and Margaret F. Rosenthal. University of Chicago Press. 1998 [Gruppo Ugo Mursia,
Milan, 1995]. 300 pp. Cloth: ISBN 0-226-25986-2. Paper:
ISBN 0-226-25987-0. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Bilingual. Veronica Franco
(1546-1591) was a poet who articulated her pro-woman views in poems and
letters usually written in a tactful, courteous style. She was not an explicitly feminist essayist
or polemicist, but her frank eroticism and her impressive eloquence set her
apart from the chaste, silent woman prescribed in Renaissance gender
ideology. In the Familiar Letters, the translators have maintained the
elaborate syntax of Franco's dedications but have given a slightly less
formal character to the epistles themselves. Rather than imitate Franco's eleven-syllable lines, they aimed
for a four-beat line in English and added prose summaries of each poem. The volume also includes introductions to
both the series and the book itself, as well as an extensive bibliography.
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Frank
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Anne
|
Dutch
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The Diary of a Young Girl: Anne Frank:
Definitive Edition. Eds. Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler. Tr. Susan Massotty. Doubleday.
1995. 340 pp. Cloth:
$25.00; ISBN 0-385-47378-8.
Restored in this edition are diary entries that had been omitted from
the original edition. These passages
(30% more material) reinforce the fact that Anne was first and foremost a
teenage girl, not a remote and flawless symbol. She fretted about, and tried to cope with,
her own emerging sexuality. Like many
young girls, she often found herself in disagreement with her mother. And like any teenager, she veered between
the carefreee nature of a child and the
full-fledged sorrow of an adult. Anne
emerges more human, more vulnerable, and more vital than ever.
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Fredriksson
|
Marianne
|
Swedish
|
Marianne
Fredriksson. Simon's
Family [Simon och ekarna].
Tr. Joan Tate. Ballantine. 1999 [Bengt Nordin Agency, Värdmö, Sweden, 1985]. 336 pp. Paper: $24.00; ISBN 1-345-43459-5.
Though at the center of a loving family, Simon Larsson has struggled with
inexplicable feelings that something from his past was not quite right. The
expansive sea bordering his Swedish homeland fills him with longing—for
connection, for freedom. But freedom from what? As the shadow of World War II
falls across Europe, Simon forms a friendship with his Jewish
classmate, Isak Lentov.
It is a relationship that will forever change both their lives, as the two
families are irrevocably drawn together in their striving to endure shame,
betrayal, war, and even madness. Marianne Frederiksson's
previous novel, the international bestseller, Hanna's Daughters, was her first U. S. publication.
|
Frei
|
Irene González
|
Spanish
|
Irene González Frei. Your Name Written on Water [Tu nombre escrito
en el agua]. Tr. Kristina Cordero. Grove Press.
1999 [Tusquets Editores, Barcelona, 1995]. 196 pp. Paper: $12.00;
ISBN 0-8021-3648-6. A charged exploration of desire and narcissim,
Your Name Written on Water reads
like Anaďs Nin with a
twist of The Story of O. Sofia works in a gallery in Madrid, the young wife of an
architect whose fierce love for her has hardened into a furious resentment.
Her life is transformed when one afternoon, by chance, she spends her lunch
hour at a public pool outside the city. There she meets Marina, a woman who
could be her twin. They are immediately drawn together—so powerfully that Sofia feels it all may be a trick
of her fevered mind—and together they forge a love that is tender as well as
passionate, with an intimacy that is almost eerie. Irene González
Frei is a pseudonym. The author is from Latin America and works as a translator.
|
Frénaud
|
André
|
French
|
André Frénaud. Rome the Sorceress/La Sorcičre de Rome.
Tr. Keith Bosley. Bloodaxe Books/Dufour Editions [Éditions Gallimard, 1973].
1996. 224 pp. Paper:
$18.95; ISBN 1-85224-318-X. Bloodaxe Contemporary French Poets: 7. Bilingual.
Rome the Sorceress is Frénaud's
richest and most disturbing confrontation with the hidden life of myths and
the sacred, probing the themes of time, inheritance, revolt, illusions of
divinity, father-figures, mother-figures, and the insatiable monuments of
language which pretend to grapple with this weight of experience. Includes "Under the floorboards,"
"Cities," "Time and Motion," "Fires of the
Sorceress," "Crossroads of the Voice," and "The Poem in
the Mirror." Bosley's
translations include An Idiom of Night, a selection from Pierre Jean Jouve (1968); A
Round O by André Frénaud (1977); the last
Penguin Mallarmé (1977); and From the Theorems
of Master Jean de La Ceppčde (1983).
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Fuentes
|
Carlos
|
Spanish
|
Carlos Fuentes. The
Orange Tree [El naranjo,
o los círculos del tiempo]. Tr. Alfred MacAdam. Farrar, Straus and Giroux [Alfaguara Literaturas,
1993]. 1994. 229 pp.
Cloth: $21.00; ISBN
0-374-22683-0. In the five novellas
that comprise The Orange Tree, Fuentes continues the passionate and
imaginative reconstruction of past and present history that has distinguished
Terra Nostra and The Campaign.
From the story of Columbus's arrival in the Caribbean, to the fate of Hernán Cortés's two sons, to
the destruction of the Spanish city of Numantia by the Romans and the
annihilation of Hollywood by Acapulco, Fuentes couples the
historical with the many pleasures of the flesh.
|
Fuentes
|
Carlos
|
Spanish
|
Fuentes, Carlos. Inez. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2002. 150 pp.
Cloth: $18.00. ISBN
0-374-17553-5.
[Instinto de Inez,
2001].
Inez weaves together two stories that evoke two
different times and two grand passions.
One concerns Gabriel Atlan-Ferrara, a fabled
orchestra conductor, and his great passion for Inez Prada,
a renowned singer. In the other,
Fuentes delineates the first encounter in human history between a man and a
woman. Linking these two stories is a
beautiful crystal seal that belongs to Atlan-Ferrara. The seal may allow one to read unknown
languages and hear music of impossible beauty. Mr. Fuentes currently divides his time
between Mexico
City and London and lectures regularly in the United States.
|
Fumiko
|
Hayashi
|
Japanese
|
Hayashi Fumiko. I Saw a Pale Horse and selected poems from
Diary of a Vagabond [Aouma wo
mitari and H_r_ki. Ed. Karen Smith. Tr. Janice Brown. Cornell East Asia Series - East Asia Program. 1997.
135 pp. Cloth: $22.00; ISBN 1-885445-66-0. Paper:
$14.00; ISBN 1-885445-86-5.
Hayashi Fumiko, one of the most popular
prose writers of the Showa era, began writing as a down-and-out poet
wandering the streets of 1920's Tokyo. In these translations of her first poetry
collection, I Saw a Pale Horse, and selected poems from Diary of a
Vagabond, Fumiko's literary origins are
colorfully revealed. Little known in
the west, these early poetic texts focus on Fumiko's
unconventional early life, and her construction of a female subject that
would challenge, with gusto and panache, accepted notions not only of class,
family, and gender, but also of female poetic practice.
|