Last Name	First Name	Language	Annotation
Valenzuela	Luisa	Spanish	Luisa Valenzuela. Clara [Hay que sonreir]. Tr. Andrea G. Labinger. Pittsburgh. Latin American Literary Review Press. 1999. 159 pp.Paper: $15.95; ISBN 1-891270-09-5. Discoveries series. Clara is a free-spirited young woman, a prostitute in Buenos Aires who is full of vague plans and dreams, trying to shield herself from an ominous world. Answering to her own laws, Clara reacts with inner strength and autonomy to save herself from certain death. The novel mixes social commentary with humor, its lively spontaneity capturing a certain segment of humanity in Buenos Aires, Argentina, during the turbulent 1950s. Clara is the first major novel of Latin American writer Luisa Valenzuela, who is perhaps best known for The Lizard's Tail, Black Novel with Argentines, and Symmetries. A previous English translation of Clara was published by Harcourt Brace in 1976.
Valéry	Paul	French	Paul Valéry. La Jeune Parque. Tr. Alistair Elliot. Dufour Editions [Éditions Gallimard]. 1997 [1917]. 64 pp. Paper: $15.95; ISBN 1-85224-387-2. "A poem should not mean, but be," said Archibald MacLeish. La Jeune Parque (`the goddess of Fate as a young woman') certainly exists: she's beautiful and makes great gestures. Elliot's translation with notes is aimed at making this rewarding but difficult, long poem accessible enough for bafflement to turn into admiration. He attempts to clarify its small puzzles and also trace the overall narrative line of Paul Valéry's poem: it does have a story (what should a young woman do?) and does struggle towards a resolution. He also provides an introduction which deals with the interesting circumstances of the poem's four-year composition (1913-17), which resulted in Valéry's instantly becoming famous at the age of 45. This is Elliot's fifth book of verse translation, including Verlaine's Femmes/Hombres, Heine's The Lazarus Poems, and French Love Poems and Italian Landscape Poems.
Valkeapää	Nils-asalk	Sami	Nils-Aslak Valkeapää. Trekways of the Wind [Ruoktu Váimmus]. Trs. Ralph Salisbury, Lars Nordström, and Harald Gaski. The University of Arizona Press [DAT, 1985]. 1994. n.p. Cloth: $20.00; ISBN 82-90625-21-9. "Until now the intense, direct, sudden lyrical poetry of the Sámi people (as they prefer to be called, rather than Lapp), the rich tradition of the yoik, has been all but unknown to readers of English. The yoiks have a kinship with other high lyrical forms of oral poetry--with the poems of the Inuit...and what we can hear of the nomadic peoples of the Arab world and the songs of the Native Americans. Valkeapää was born into a reindeer-breeding family, trained as a teacher, became a visual artist. His poems rise directly from the yoik tradition, at once intimately personal, traditional and evocative of a huge landscape" (W.S. Merwin).
Vallejo	César A.	Spanish	César A. Vallejo. The Black Heralds [Los Heraldos Negros]. Tr. Barry Fogden. Allardyce, Barnett, Publishers. 1995. 112 pp. Paper: $12.50; ISBN 0-907954-23-5. César Vallejo's first book of poems, appearing in 1919, has late-Romantic and late-modernista roots, but, as D. Gallagher says in his survey Modern Latin American Literature, "what is remarkable about Los heraldos negros is the sense one gets now and then of a personal voice emerging." Fogden's translation is the first to bring the full range of the poetry and poetics of Vallejo's debut collection accurately and imaginatively into English. Poems include such works as: "Mainsails of Ice," "Pervasion of Anguish," "The Spider," "Rhea," "Dregs," "Impious Woman," "Plaster," "Ebony Leaves," "Huaco," "Dead Idyll," "In the Greek Tents," "Agapé" and "Go For a Grand!"
Vallejo	Alfonso	Spanish	Alfonso Vallejo. Train to Kiu [El cero transparente]. Tr. Rick Hite. Estreño. 1996. 43 pp. Paper: $6.00; ISBN 0-9631212-9-4. Contemporary Spanish Plays 9. "Public transportation can be risky! We are at the mercy of officials who, though nominally there to serve us, can seem bent on extorting our meek compliance. We sit in intimate quarters with unbidden fellow travelers, forced to bear each other's idiosyncracies.... And what more impregnable authority figure can one conjure than the loudspeaker: aloof, imperturbable, exquisite in its absurd logic!" (Rick Seyford, A Note on the Play) Among Hite's translations that have had performances are Alejandro Casona's Siren Cast Ashore (La sirena varada), Alfonso Vallejo's Weekend, and Fermín Cabal's Get Thee Behind Me! [¡Vade retro!] and Passage (Travesía).
Valtinos	Thanassis	Greek	Thanassis Valtinos. Data from the Decade of the Sixties : A Novel [Stoicheia yia ti dekaetia tou '60: Mythistorima]. Tr. and intro. Jane Assimakopoulos and Stavros Deligiorgis. Evanston. Hydra Books by Northwestern University Press. 2000. 307 pp. Paper: $19.95; ISBN 0-8101-1699-5. In the 1960s, the Greek monarchy gave way to a republic (via dictatorship); an agricultural society became industrialized; and no less significant, formerly arranged marriages could be based on love. The many voices in Data from the Decade of the Sixties coalesce in a series of fictional documents, ranging from personal correspondence between friends and family members to news reports and advertisements. Together these fictional testimonies reveal the tumult of 1960s Greece, where generations and values collided as society struggled to adapt. Thanassis Valtinos examines the pulse of the decade, portraying the spirit of the century in Greece and throughout the world. A member of the International Theater Institute and the former president of the Society of Greek Writers, Valtinos continues to write fiction and screenplays and to translate classical Greek drama for the stage.
Valtinos	Thanassis	Greek	Thanassis Valtinos. Deep Blue Almost Black. Trs. Jane Assimakopoulos and Stavros Deligiorgis. Northwestern University Press. 1997. 116 pp. Cloth: $24.95; ISBN 0-8101-1490-9. In settings both rural and urban, and ranging across time from World War II to the present, Valtinos contrasts the cheap and popular side of 20th-century Greece with the enduring sense of history of a proud and dignified people. He addresses the major dislocations of three generations of Greeks in the face of profound political, social, and cultural change. Disillusioned urbanites and simple farmers alike are affected by the coups and political pressures of contemporary Greece, while at the same time they are moved by the primitive Greece of visions, ghostly apparitions, and of saints' shrines in olive groves.
Valtinos	Thanassis	Greek	Thanassis Valtinos. Deep Blue Almost Black: Selected Fiction. Tr. Jane Assimakopoulos and Stavros Deligiorgis. Evanston. Northwestern University Press. 2000 [1997]. 116 pp. Paper: $15.95; ISBN 0-8101-1766-5. First paperback edition. Some of the 12 short stories in this volume were originally published in various literary journals, while others appeared for the first time in the collection, Tha vreite ta osta mou ypo vrohin [You Will Find My Bones Under Rain], published in Athens by Agra Publications in 1992. Printed in the strict chronological order in which they were written, the stories can be viewed as an artist's documentation of a period of fierce and often brutal change for modern Greece as a whole. Also included in this volume is Valtino's Deep Blue Almost Black: A Novella, which is a novella in name only, by virtue of its size and etymological proximity to the term. When it first appeared on the Greek literary scene under the title Ble vathy shedon mavro in 1985, it was a refreshing "new work," shorn of the traditional elements of plot and story line, and lacking an author's mediating point of view. A stream-of-consciousness narrative that brings to mind a theatrical monologue, Deep Blue Almost Black has, in fact, been performed as a one-act play both in Greece and abroad. As a member of the International Theater Institute and the former president of the Society of Greek Writers, Valtinos continues to write fiction and screenplays and to translate classical Greek drama for the theatre.
Van Dijk	Lutz	German	Lutz van Dijk. Damned Strong Love: The True Story of Willi G. and Stephan K. Tr. Elizabeth D. Crawford. Henry Holt & Company. 1995. 138 pp. Cloth: $15.95; ISBN 0-8050-3770-5. When the Nazis overran Poland in the fall of 1939, fifteen-year-old Stefan K.'s father was sent off to a German labor camp. Now, in the tense days of occupation, Stefan scrambles to help take care of his family. Yet when his brother, Mikolai, takes him out after curfew to celebrate his 16th birthday, Stefan makes a life-changing discovery: he yearns for men the way his brother does for women. As he juggles his time between his day job at a bakery and his evening work in the theater, Stefan becomes more aware of his desires. And then he meets Willi, his one true love. Everything about Stefan's love affair with Willi is damned. They are both men. Willi is an Austrian airman, a Nazi soldier. Stefan's brother is actively fighting the Germans in the Polish Resistance. Yet Stefan and Willi's love sees no boundaries of nation, race, or gender. It is too strong to deny. And too passionate to survive. When the Gestapo discovers their affair, not only their love but their lives are in great danger. Crawford has translated Peter Harling's Crutches, for which she won the Mildred Batchelder Award.
Van Dis	Adriaan	Dutch	Adriaan van Dis. My Father's War [Indische Duinen]. Tr. Claire Nicolas White. The New Press [J.M. Meulenhoff bv, 1994]. 1996. 261 pp. Cloth: $23.00; ISBN 1-56584-033-X. Survivors of World War II Japanese prison camps in Indonesia "had kept strangely silent" upon repatriation to The Netherlands, according to White. My Father's War breaks that silence with a son's struggle to understand his family's wartime experiences and to come to terms with the war's effects on his work and his capacity to love. Born in Holland after the war, the boy grows up an outsider in the midst of his part-Indonesian family. Living in isolation among the dunes of coastal Holland, he looks on as his family are mocked for their "yellow skin," endures the bizarre and brutal military training his father puts him through, and wonders about the hardships his family suffered but never mentions. Years later, the middle-aged son begins a quest into his family's past in Indonesia, and the origins of his father's strange mix of charm and cruelty. Van Dis is the author of ten books, a noted translator, winner of seven major literary awards in Holland, and a journalist.
Van Nieumghen	Mariken	Dutch	Mariken Van Nieumghen. Eds. and Trs. Therese Decker and Martin Walsh. Camden House. 1994. 150 pp. Cloth: $55.00; ISBN 1-879751-20-8. Part of the Medieval Texts and Translations Series. A drama in medieval Dutch that provides the first known example of the drama-within-a-drama device. The text is based on the chapbook of around 1518. In a remarkable parallel to the Faust chapbook, a young woman enters into an agreement with the devil, offering her soul for knowledge and wisdom. The first translation into English, with the original text on facing pages.
Vantuono	William	Middle English	Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Ed. and tr. William Vantuono. University of Notre Dame Press. 1999. 322 pp. Paper: $30.00; ISBN 0-268-01767-0. Bilingual. This comprehensive critical edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the fruit of William Vantuono’s research on the famous 14^th-century romance that praises court life with an undercurrent of satire against a declining chivalric ideal. The heart of this volume is the Middle English text, with a Modern English verse translation on facing pages and extensive notes at the bottom of the pages. A discussion of the manuscript, the anonymous poet and his other poems, the structure of the poem and its audience, themes, characterization, and purpose serves as a valuable introduction to this classic text. Vantuono’s translation follows the original as closely as possible without sacrificing the poem’s essential meaning and mood. The notes reveal the literal sense of the Middle English vocabulary where necessary changes were made for poetic effect, so that the reader can compare the original, the translation, and the notes in order to learn about the old language, the content of the poem, the poet’s artistry, and the process of translation.
Vasilenko	Svetlana	Russian	Svetlana Vasilenko. Shamara and Other Stories. Tr. Andrew Bromfield, Helena Goscilo, Elisabeth Jezierski, Daria A. Kirjanov, Elena V. Prokhorova, and Benjamin Sutcliffe. Ed. and intro. Helena Goscilo. Evanston. Northwestern University Press. 2000. 247 pp. Cloth: $45.95; ISBN 0-8101-1721-5. Paper: $15.95; ISBN 0-8101-1722-3. Writings from an Unbound Europe. Svetlana Vasilenko gained instant fame in 1982 with the publication of her prize-winning debut book, Going after Goat-Antelopes. Though her subsequent novellas and short stories have been translated into various languages, this books marks Vasilenko's first sustained appearance in English. At the center of the volume is her only novel, Little Fool, which traces the transformation of Ganna, a child from the Volga, into a modern-day madonna who gives birth to a New World. The novella, "Shamara," chronicles a violent love triangle that unfolds in an atmosphere of rivalry, existential despair, and sexual ambiguity. Also included are short stories, "Piggy," "The Gopher," and "Poplar, Poplar's Daughter," as well as the aforementioned "Going after Goat-Antelopes."
Vega	Ana Lydia	Spanish	Ana Lydia Vega. True and False Romances. Tr. Andrew Hurley. Serpent's Tail. 1994. 261 pp. Paper: $12.99; ISBN 1-85242-272-6. Vega won the 1984 Juan Rulfo short story prize and the 1989 Guggenheim Fellowship for Literary Creation. In 1982, she was also awarded the Casa de las Américas Prize in Havana. Vega exposes what she sees as machismo, Caribbean style, in her stories, and her work reflects, critically, the influence of United States culture on her own Puerto Rican culture. This collection of short stories and a novella by the Puerto Rican writer are published for the first time in English.
Vega	Ana Lydia	Spanish	Ana Lydia Vega. True and False Romances. Tr. Andrew Hurley. Serpent's Tail/Consortium. 1994. 261 pp. Paper: $12.99; ISBN 1-85242-272-6. In this scintillating collection of stories, Puerto Rican writer Ana Lydia Vega exposes the pretensions of Latin American men and accurately reflects the influence of U.S. culture. Though her stories appear in many anthologies, this is the first collection of her work to be published in English. Vega won the 1984 Juan Rulfo prize. Stories presented here include, among others, "Just One Small Detail," "Aerobics for Love," "Eye-Openers," "Solutions, Inc.," and "Miss Florence's Trunk."
Velarde	Ramón López	Spanish	Ramón López Velarde. Song of the Heart [Obras]. Ed. José Luis Martínez. Tr. Margaret Sayers Peden. University of Texas Press [Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1971]. 1995. 104 pp. Cloth: ISBN 0-292-74685-7. Paper: ISBN 0-292-74686-5. Bilingual. Often called a "poet of the provinces," López Verlarde gives us a glimpse into a slower and more gentle way of life. His poems present the contrast between city and hometown and between urban and pastoral landscapes. Through these contrasts runs the thread of religious faith, while urgency of language informs the entire body of his poetic production. Original, specially commissioned drawings by noted contemporary Mexican artist Juan Soriano complement the poems. Peden's translation of Pacheco's An Ark for the Next Millenium is also available from UT Press.
Verga	Giovanni	Italian	Giovanni Verga. Sparrow [Storia di una Capinera]. Trs. Lucy Gordan and Frances Frenaye. Italica Press. 1997. 104 pp. Paper: $12.00; ISBN 0-934977-42-9. Set in and around Catania, Sicily, on the verge of the Italian Risorgimento, Sparrow was first published in 1870. It tells the story of Maria, the daughter of a low-level bureaucrat, who, like so many other young women of the time, was forced into the convent by economic and social forces. After a brief--and almost imaginary--flirtation with the son of neighbors living side-by-side with her family in the country during a cholera epidemic, Maria is sent back into the convent, there to go from disappointed love, to broken health, madness, and death.
Verga	Giovanni	Italian	Giovanni Verga. Cavalleria Rusticana and Other Stories. Tr. and intro. G. H. McWilliam. London. Penguin. 1999. 241 pp. Paper: $12.95; ISBN 0-14-044741-5. Penguin Classics. Born in the 1840s to a well-to-do Sicilian family, Giovanni Verga became an active observer and habitué of Milanese salon society, but eventually found in the everyday lives of Sicilian peasants the inspiration for his finest narratives. Love, adultery, and honor are recurring themes in stories set against the scorched landscapes of the slopes of Mount Etna and the Plain of Catania. G. H. McWilliams's new translation includes Nedda, the ground-breaking narrative of Italian verismo, as well as Jeli the Shepherd and Rosso Malpelo, which D. H. Lawrence considered two of the finest stories ever written. (Lawrence's own translation of Verga's novel Mastro-don Gesualdo was published in New York in 1923.) G. H. McWilliams has translated plays by Italo Svevo, Pirandello, and Ugo Betti, and poems by Salvatore Quasimodo. His Penguin Classics translation of Boccacio's Decameron (1972) was reissued in 1995 with a new introductions, detailed notes, maps, and indices.
Verissimo	Luis Fernando	Portuguese	Verissimo, Luis Fernando. The Club of Angels. Translated by Margaret Jull Costa. New York: New Directions 2002. 144 pp. Cloth: $21.95. ISBN 0-8112-1500-8. [Clube does anjos]. In The Club of Angels, Daniel, a member of the Beef Stew Club, thinks his new friend Lucidio will be able to rejuvenate the long-running gourmet dinner group. Instead, the members begin to die off one by one, after eating their favorite dishes as prepared by Lucidio. Luis Fernando Verissimo’s works have appeared in national publications in Brazil, as well as in the national weekly Veja. His articles provide observations about Brazilian life, as well as illustrations and cartoons. Translator Margaret Jull Costa has translated the works of José Saramago, Eça de Queiroz, Fernando Pessoa, and Lídia Jorge, as well as a number of other Spanish authors.
Verlaine	Paul	French	Paul Verlaine. One Hundred and One Poems by Paul Verlaine. Tr. Norman R. Shapiro. University of Chicago Press. 2000. 292 pp. Cloth: $25.00; ISBN 0-226-85344-6. Paper: $15.00; ISBN 0-226-85345-4. First paperback edition. Bilingual. French poet Paul Verlaine was a major representative of the Symbolist Movement during the latter half of the nineteenth century. A wide cross-section of work spanning the poet's entire career is included in this collection, from his lyrical early period, through his tumultuous relationship with Arthur Rimbaud, and into his later years of dissipation and disease. Biographical information and notes help explain the circumstances that gave rise to Verlaine's writing. Among Norman Shapiro's many translations are Four Farces by Georges Feydeau, The Fabulist French: Verse Fables of Nine Centuries (named Distinguished Book of the Year by ALTA for 1993), and Selected Poems from "Les Fleurs du mal."
Vesaas	Tarjei	Norwegian	Tarjei Vesaas. Through Naked Branches: Selected Poems of Tarjei Vesaas. Tr. Roger Greenwald. Princeton, NJ. Princeton University Press. 2000. 149 pp. Cloth: $35.00; ISBN 0-691-00896-5. Paper: $12.95; ISBN 0-691-00897-3. Bilingual. One of Scandinavia's greatest fiction writers, including the renowned novel Is-slottet [The Ice Palace],Tarjei Vesaas proves to be an original and meditative poet as well. Through Naked Branches, which won the American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prize, presents 46 poems drawn from his six volumes of poetry. Translator Roger Greenwald includes an introduction that explores why Vesaas's poetry has often resisted critical analysis and how it challenges received notions of modernism. By explaining the poet's strong roots in the oral tradition, Greenwald illuminates Vesaas's work so that readers can begin to understand his allegiance towards "hearing" as opposed to "seeing," and the effect of this allegiance upon all poetry.
Vian	Boris	French	Boris Vian. Blues for a Black Cat & Other Stories [Les Fourmis]. Ed. and tr. Julia Older. Foreword Louis Malle. Lincoln. University of Nebraska Press. 2001 [Le Terrain Vague, 1989; 1992]. 143 pp. Paper: $12.95; ISBN 0-8032-9609-6. French Modernist Library. Blues for a Black Cat is a collection of ten avant-garde moral fables, albeit fables told in a cynical, mocking voice and set in a skewed version of the real world. Under the surface absurdity and verbal play, they offer serious indictments of human weakness and pretensions. Further, they reveal the spiritual emptiness just beneath our civilized façade. Initially published in 1949, the collection has the unmistakable flavor of time and place—Claude Abadie's jazz band, the coded and absurdist messages of rebellion, the wistful fables, verbal riffs and anarchic encounters. Boris Vian (1920-59) was a major literary figure in World War II France. Julia Older's stories, translations, essaysm and poems have appeared in the New Yorker and Poets and Writers.
Vicente	Gil	Portuguese	Gil Vicente. Vicente: Three Discovery Plays [Auto da Barca do Inferno, Exortação da Guerra, Auto da Índia]. Ed. and Tr. Anthony Lappin. Aris & Phillips/The David Brown Book Co. 1997. 232 pp. Paper: $22.00; ISBN 0-5668-666-2. Bilingual. The three plays edited and translated in this volume are strongly linked to what we now think of as the Portuguese Discoveries. All three are fundamentally concerned with the expansion of Portugal in Africa and India through either crusade or commerce. In the introduction to the plays, the playwright's social role as a court dramatist is emphasized, and his dramatic productions are set, firmly within the political concerns of his time. Careful consideration is given to the involvement of both Gil Vicente and the Inquisition in the later emendation of the play's text.
Vicuña	Cecilia	Spanish	Cecilia Vicuña. The Precarious: The Art and Poetry of Cecilia Vicuña. Ed. M. Catherine de Zegher. Wesleyan University Press/University Press of New England. 1997. 235 pp. Cloth: ISBN 0-8195-6324-2. The first half of this book contains a critical analysis of Vicuña's poetry in chapters by various authors. The five chapters are "Spinning the Common Thread," "Ouvrage: Knot a Not, Notes as Knots," "Metaphor Spun: A Conversation with Cecilia Vicuña," "Cryptic Weaving," and "Sound Written and Sound Breathing: Versions of Palpable Poetics." Then one turns the book over to encounter photos and "quipoem," translated by Esther Allen.
Viganò	Renata	Italian	Renata Viganò. Partisan Wedding: Stories by Renata Viganò [Matrimonio in brigata]. Tr. and intro. Suzanne Branciforte. Columbia. University of Missouri Press. 1999. 240 pp. Paper: $19.95; ISBN 0-8262-1288-X. Paperback original. A generation of Italian authors dedicated their lives, their works, and their voices to the primary driving force behind 20^th-century narratives—World War II. Renata Viganò was an active member of the Italian Resistance and like many of her male counterparts, she depicts the actions of the brave people who contributed to and participated in the partisan movement. Unlike them, however, Viganò vividly portrays the experiences of women, notably women on the front line, in her posthumously published collection, here translated for the first time in English. Because of Viganò's own role as a partisan, the stories in Partisan Wedding are based on the writer's personal experiences. "Acquitted" and "My Resistance" are specifically autobiographical, while the remaining seventeen are fictional, though based on Viganò's own memories of Italian women who participated in the war effort.
Vilhjálmsson	Thor	Icelandic	Thor Vilhjálmsson. Justice Undone [Grámosinn Glóir]. Tr. Bernard Scudder. Mare's Nest Publishing/Dufour Editions, Inc. [Mál og menning, Reykjavík, 1986]. 1997. 232 pp. Paper: $14.95; ISBN 1-899197-10-9. Justice Undone, winner of the 1988 Nordic Prize, brought Vilhjálmsson popular success in Iceland. A leading exponent of Icelandic modernism, he turns his attention to a historical event, the trial of half-siblings accused of incest and infanticide. Scudder has also translated Einar Már Gudmundsson's Epilogue of the Raindrops and Ólaf Ólafsson's Absolution.
Villanueva	Tino	Spanish	Tino Villanueva. Chronicle of My Worst Years [Crónica de mis años peores]. Tr. James Hoggard. Northwestern University Press [Lalo Press, 1987]. 1994. 84 pp. Cloth: ISBN 0-8101-5009-3. Paper: $12.95; ISBN 0-8101-5034-4. As a Chicano writer working in Spanish, Villanueva explores experience in the tongue that was the first European language spoken in his Texas homeland. Villanueva voices complex and compelling historical, literary, and cultural questions as impassioned personal utterances, investing the book with intimacy and seriousness. This bilingual collection includes the poem "History Class," a memorable presentation of divided education and divided experience. Villanueva received the 1994 American Book Award for Scene from the Movie GIANT. His other books are Hay Otra Voz Poems and Shaking Off the Dark.
Villanueva	Tino	Spanish	Tino Villanueva. Primera Causa/First Cause. Tr. Tina Horowitz. Cross-Cultural Communications. 1999. 32 pp. Cloth: $15.00; ISBN 0-89304-176-9. Paper: $5.00; ISBN 0-89304-177-7. Cross-Cultural Review Chapbook 14. Latin American (Chicano) Poetry #2. Bilingual. This slim volume containing bilingual versions of ten poems by Tino Villanueva is the author's fifth book of poetry, but only the second written entirely in Spanish. The first, Crónica de mis años peores/Chronicle of My Worst Years, was translated by James Hoggard and published in a bilingual edition in 1994 by Northwestern University Press. Previous translations by Tina Horowitz include works by José Angel Valente and Gabriel Celaya, and Me and the Moon, poems by Eugenia León published in Spain.
Virgil		Latin	Virgil in English. Ed. K. W. Gransden. Penguin Books. 1996. 345 pp. Paper: $14.95; ISBN 0-14-042386-9. From Chaucer to W. H. Auden and Robert Lowell, Virgil is a defining presence in English poetry. Eclogues and Georgics inspired the pastorals of Spenser, Milton, and Pope; the Aeneid's pathos, spiritual insights, and long-suffering hero─who struggles with doubt, despair, and the loss of everything he loves to found the Roman race─made it the model epic. Dryden's complete Virgil in heroic couplets sums up and supersedes his predecessors, yet later translators include Wordsworth, William Morris, Robert Bridges, and Cecil Day Lewis. This selection consists largely of extracts from straight translations, along with a number of pieces illustrating Virgil's influence; celebrated episodes like the death of Dido and Aeneas' descent into the underworld appear in several different versions.
Virgil		Latin	Virgil. Aeneid VII-XII Appendix Vergiliana. Tr. H. Rushton Fairclough. Revised by G. P. Goold. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. 2000. 590 pp. Cloth: $19.95; ISBN 0-674-99586-4. Loeb Classical Library 64. Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) was born in 70 BC near Mantua and was educated in Cremona, Milan, and Rome. All his undoubted extant work is written in his perfect hexameters. Earliest comes the collection of ten bucolic poems, the Ecologues, which freely imitated Theocritus's idylls. Before 29 BC came one of the best of all didactic works, the four books of Georgics on tillage, trees, cattle, and bees. Virgil's remaining years were spent in composing his great, not wholly finished, epic the Aeneid, on the traditional theme of Rome's origins through Aeneas of Troy. He left a request in Rome that all 12 books of the Aeneid should be destroyed if he were to die before completing the work, but fortunately they were published by his disobedient executors.
Virgil		Latin	Virgil. Virgil's Aeneid. Tr. John Dryden. Penguin Classics. 1997. 422 pp. Paper: $14.95; ISBN 0-14-044627-3. In Aeneas, Virgil created the dutiful yet fallible Trojan prince who overcomes war, suffering and countless setbacks to lay the foundations of the Roman race. In his translation Dryden formed a style vigorous yet refined and drew on the deep understanding of political unrest he had acquired during the Civil Wars of 1642-51 and the revolution of 1688. This edition includes maps, a substantial glossary, and enough background to help readers overcome any unfamiliarity with style or substance.
Vittorini	Elio	Italian	Elio Vittorini. Conversations in Sicily [Converssazione in Sicilia]. Tr. Alane Salierno Mason. Foreword Ernest Hemingway. New York. New Directions. 2000 [1951]. 144 pp. Paper: $13.95; ISBN 0-8112-1455-9. Conversations in Sicily is a short and often humorous novel, full of the life and texture of real, non-political peasant Italy. The story recounts a city man's rediscovery of himself and the basic values of life when he returns for a visit to the primitive Sicilian village where he was born. Written just before World War II, Vittorini was arrested in 1943 by the Fascist police and jailed. Released from prison before the German occupation of Italy and forced to go into hiding, Vittorini nevertheless inspired partisans and passive objectors alike. After learning English, he began to translate writers such Poe, D. H. Lawrence, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Saroyan, and Caldwell into Italian. Although he is not well-known in this country, Vittorini's works are popular throughout Europe and have been translated into 11 languages.
Vogel	Alois	German	Alois Vogel. Refractions [Schlagschatten]. Tr. Walter L. Kreeger. Ariadne Press [University of Otago]. 1995. 235 pp. Paper: ISBN 0-929497-97-X. Refractions portrays life among the workers and farmers in the aftermath of the short but violent civil war in Austria in February 1934, when the deep-seated hostility between the Christian Social Party (Blacks) and the Social Democrats (Reds) erupted into armed conflict. The uprising was quelled after three days, but the pursuit and persecution of the Social Democrats continued, causing hardships and enmity that has never been forgotten. This bitter political division between the parties was a major turning point in Austrian history and was one of the primary causes leading the country to annexation by Germany in 1938. The reader is shown that the situation did not have to become violent if politicians on both sides had known more tolerance for different views. Vogel, a contemporary witness, builds tension in the novel through the technique of flashback and creates an accurate first-hand account of one of the most critical events in modern Austrian history. Refractions is Vogel's first work translated into English.
Voinovitch	Vladimir	Russian	Vladimir Voinovich. The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin [Zhizn'i neobychainye prikliucheniia soldata Ivana Chonkina]. Tr. Richard Lourie. Northwestern University Press [Possev Verlag, 1969]. 1995. 316 pp. Paper: $15.95; ISBN 0-8101-1243-4. Ivan Chonkin is a simple, bumbling peasant who has been drafted into the Red Army. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, he is sent to an obscure village with one week's ration of canned meat and orders to guard a downed plane. Apparently forgotten by his unit, Chonkin resumes his life as a peasant and passes the war peacefully tending the village postmistress's garden. Just after the German invasion, the secret police discover this mysterious soldier lurking behind the front line. Their pursuit of Chonkin and his determined resistence leads to wild skirmishes and slapstick encounters. Vladimir Voinovich's hilarious satire ridicules everything that was sacred in the Soviet Union, from agricultural reform to the Red Army to Stalin. Pretender to the Throne, his sequel to this novel, is also published by Northwestern. His other books available in English are The Fur Hat and Moscow 2042. Lourie is the translator of Andrei Sakharov's Memoirs and Czeslaw Milosz's Visions from San Francisco Bay. Vladimir Voinovich. Pretender to the Throne: The Further Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin [Pretendent na prestol]. Tr. Richard Lourie. Northwestern Unversity Press [YMCA-Press, 1979]. 1995. 358 pp. Paper: $15.95; ISBN 0-8101-1244-2. This hilarious novel follows the continuing adventures of the simple peasant Ivan Chonkin, who has been arrested as a traitor to the motherland after spending World War II happily tending a garden. Lacking evidence against him, the bumbling bureaucrats base their case on a rumor in his home village that he is the illegitimate son of a prince. The comic case of mistaken identity escalates as they accuse this unlikely prince of working in league with Hitler to restore the monarchy.
Volodine	Antoine	French	Antoine Volodine. Naming the Jungle [Le nom des singes]. Tr. Linda Coverdale. The New Press [Les Éditions de Minuit, 1994]. 1996. 176 pp. Cloth: $18.95; ISBN 1-56584-274-X. Puesto Libertad could be any Latin American city torn by the strife of civil war. In this isolated capital buried in the jungle, the revolutionary secret police have started digging into Fabian Golpiez's past. In order to avoid brutal torture and interrogation, he decides to feign madness. Led by a local shaman/psychiatrist in a bizarre talking cure, Golpiez must use indigenous names to prove both his innocence and his true Tupi Indian identity. To name is to conquer. He names the monkeys, the plants, and the insects all around him as he names his fears, his paranoia, and his pathologies. Jungle is the first translation of Volotine's work into English. Coverdale's most recent translations of fiction for The New Press include Patrick Chamoiseau's Creole Folktales and Bruno Bontempelli's The Traveler's Tree.
Volponi	Paolo	Italian	Paolo Volponi. Last Act in Urbino [Il sipario ducale]. Tr. Peter N. Pedroni. Italica Press [Aldo Garzanti Editore, 1975]. 1995. 302 pp. Paper: $15.00; ISBN 0-934977-33-X. When terrorist bombs explode in a bank in Milan in 1969, they raise the curtain on a cast of unlikely players: Prof. Gaspare Subissoni and his lifelong companion and inspiration Vivés, both anarchist veterans of the Spanish Civil War; the young Count Oddo Oddi-Semproni and his two unmarried aunts who have protected him─and themselves─from the modern world in their crumbling Renaissance palace; their chauffeur Giocondini who serves them─and himself─with limousine tours to "Italy" and with dreams of a revived Duchy; and the young prostitute Dirce, whom Oddo would have as his countess and who sets all their worlds upside-down when she, Gaspare, and Vivés unite forces. Volponi was the first person to twice win Italy's Premio Strega (La Strada per Roma, 1991; La macchina mondiale, 1965).
Von Arnim Von Arnim Grimm	Bettine Gisela	German	Bettine von Arnim and Gisela von Arnim Grimm. The Life of High Countess Gritta von Ratsinourhouse [Leben der Hochgräfin Gritta von Rattenzuhausbeiuns]. Tr. and intro. Lisa Ohm. University of Nebraska Press. 1999. 154 pp. Cloth: $35.00; ISBN 0-8032-4665-X. Paper: $15.00; ISBN 0-8032-9620-7. European Women Writers Series. Appearing here for the first time in English translation, this delightful story of the adventures of twelve young girls superimposes a fairy tale over the structure of a female Bildungsroman to demonstrate constraints on women who pursue intellectual and artistic growth. Neglected by her father, Gritta is uprooted when her new stepmother insists she enter a convent school. Strictly supervised by the nun Sequestra, Gritta slips into melancholy. A mishandled bird awakens Gritta to the realization that she and her friends must flee their walled-in lives. The runaway girls are eventually shipwrecked and establish a Robinson Crusoe-like existence, eventually founding their own cloister. Co-authored in the early 1840s by Gisela von Arnim Grimm (daughter-in-law of the legendary Wilhelm Grimm) and her mother, Bettine, this story lay undiscovered in an archive for nearly a century before the full text was retrieved from oblivion in 1986. An introductory essay by Lisa Ohm entitled, "The Fairy Tale of Women's Bildung in the Nineteenth Century" provides a wealth of historical, cultural, and biographical information helpful to understanding the work in the context of the German literary tradition.
Von Bacheracht	Therese	German	Therese von Bacheracht. Heinrich Burkart. Tr. Hugh Powell. Camden House. 1997. 126 pp. Cloth: $54.95; ISBN 1-57113-085-3. This topical work, first published in German in 1846, was inspired by the problems causing social and political unrest in the 1840s. When banished from his domicile in Germany, Heinrich Burkart chooses to go to Switzerland, and here he establishes a flourishing commune where workers and their families are cared for from cradle to maturity. This novel is one of the first to point to the emergence of the technician toward the middle of the 19th century. The romance chronicled in the novel does not overshadow the political and social aspects of the work, but rather contributes to them by juxtaposing the submissive middle-class daughter and the cultured self-emancipated woman.
Von Doderer	Heimito	German	Heimito von Doderer. The Lighted Windows or The Humanization of the Bureaucrat Julius Zihal [Die erleuchteten Fenster]. Tr. with foreword John S. Barrett. Riverside, CA. Ariadne Press. 2000 [C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, München, 1995]. 136 pp. Paper: $14.50; ISBN 1-57241-081-7. Studies in Austrian literature, culture, and thought. Translation Series. Originally published in 1951, The Lighted Windows continues Heimito von Doderer's examination of character development, the process of "humanization." In serio-comic fashion, it portrays the isolation and confinement that arise when the intellect attempts to deal with the world by ordering it with rules and regulations. This parable seems to say that, fortunately, even the worst of us can be saved and humanized by the beneficent chaos generated by our senses and the spirits of love. John Barrett has previously translated Doderer's The Secret of the Empire (Ariadne), as well as works by Grete Weil and Barbara Honigman.
Von Ebner-Eschenbach	Marie	German	Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. Their Pavel [Das Gemeindekind]. Tr. Lynne Tatlock. Camden House, Inc. 1996. 171 pp. Cloth: $55.95; ISBN 1-57113-078-0. Based on a true incident, Their Pavel (first published in 1887) investigates the troubled social relations of a moravian village that is endowed with the right of local governance but steeped in the habits of its former feudal relationship to the local barony. The novel explores the parallel fates of the children of a hanged murderer and thief: Melada, the appealing and alert daughter, is adopted on a whim by the aging baroness while Pavel, the awkward and taciturn son, is thrown upon the uncertain mercy of the village. Both children suffer the stigma of their father's crime. Milada, who is educated in a convent school, pursues a radical asceticism to atone for her father's sins: Pavel, on the other hand, determines to fulfill every prejudice that the villagers harbor against him. Tatlock is Professor of German at Washington University in St. Louis. She has translated works by Leibniz, Abraham a Santa Clara, and Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg.
Vön François	Louise	German	Louise vön François. The Last von Reckenburg [Die letzte Reckenburgerin]. Tr. Mary Joanna Safford. Camden House, Inc. 1995. 370 pp. Cloth: ISBN 1-879751-96-8. This novel depicts the fate of two women, the aristocratic Eberhardine von Reckenburg and the middle-class woman Dorothee Müller, whose lives intertwine against the events of the Napoleonic Wars. Exemplified by the contrasting women, it focuses on the conflict between two opposing value systems: duty vs. inclination, reason vs. feeling, and conscience vs. frivolity. The strong, self-disciplined, "manly" Eberhardine becomes involved in a moral dilemma when she evades the truth to protect Dorothee, the frivolous, 19th-century child-woman. The book's feminist criticism of society lies in Dorothee's depiction as a victim of a patriarchal society that robs her of any chance of self-development. Von François was one of three major 19th-century female writers in Germany.
Von Goethe	Johann Wolfgang	German	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Correspondence between Goethe and Schiller 1794-1805. Tr. Liselotte Dieckmann. Peter Lang. 1994. 304 pp. Cloth: ISBN 0-8204-2314-9. These letters reveal a "unique friendship, the meeting of two great minds whose common goal was to create the purest poetry possible, while simultaneously realizing their personal differences and treating each other with generosity and increasing understanding.... From the beginning the relationship is not so much what we might call a 'personal' one...rather the intimate meeting of two minds who understand and admire each other not only on the level of poetry and writing but also of criticsm and aesthetics in general" (Introduction).
Von Goethe	Johann Wolfgang	German	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Faust: Parts 1 and 2. Ed. Victor Lange. Tr. Louis MacNiece. Continuum Books. 1994. 296 pp. Cloth: ISBN 0-8264-0724-2. Paper: ISBN 0-8264-0725-0. The German Library, Volume 18. In his retelling of the tale of the legendary 15th-century medical doctor, theologian, and magician, Goethe attains a mythological level of human greatness and failure, pride and humility, faith and deception. The translation is by the poet MacNiece, prepared originally for radio broadcast on the 200th anniversary of Goethe's birth.
Von Goethe	Johann Wolfgang	German	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Fairy Tales, Short Stories, and Poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Ed. and tr. J. W. Thomas. Peter Lang. 1998. 137 pp. Cloth: $33.95; ISBN 0-8204-3741-7. American University Studies I, Germanic Languages and Literatures 109. Goethe’s short narratives are almost unknown outside of Germany, chiefly because, with one exception, they are buried in longer works that have been forgotten by all but Goethe scholars. The present collection introduces these pieces to an English-speaking public, together with a representative selection of Goethe's poetry. Contents include "The Fairy Tale" (from Conversation of German Refugees), "The New Paris" (from his autobiography, the first part of which was published in 1811), "The New Melusina" (from Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years, 1826), "The Ghost," "The Lawyer," "The Singular Children of Neighbors" (in his novel, Elective Affinities, 1809), and "Novella" (begun 1979, published 1828). The poems are from German Verse from the 12^th to the 20^th Century in English Translation (1963) also translated and edited by J. W. Thomas. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Poems of the West and East: West-Eastern Divan/West-Östlicher Divan, A Bi-Lingual Edition of the Complete Poems. Tr. John Whaley. Intro. Katharina Mommsen. Peter Lang (Berne). 1998. 493 pp. Cloth: $70.95; ISBN 3-906759-62-8. Germanic Studies in America 68. Goethe's West-Eastern Divan, his greatest cycle of poems in both its volume and its quality, has been called, along with Faust, his most important and most personal work. Yet despite its masterpiece status, the work is only now becoming known outside scholarly circles in Germany as well as in the English-speaking world. The West in his title stands for the Occident, while the East comprises Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Hebrew lands. With very few exceptions, Goethe's poems are not translations of Oriental poetry, nor was he trying to imitate such poetry. According to Katharina Mommsen, "His Divan results from an assimilation which could only stem from an inward affinity, as if the alien poetry was born again in the West-Eastern Divan."
Von Herzmanovsky-Orlando	Fritz	German	Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando. The Tragic Demise of a Faithful Court Official [Der Gaulschreck im Rosennetz]. Tr. David A. Veeder. Ariadne Press [Langen Müller in F.A. Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1963]. 1997. 144 pp. Paper: ISBN 1-57241-035-3. This 1928 novel tells of the romantic entanglements, inexorable decline, and subsequent tragicomic death of the rigid and proper Biedermeier bureaucrat Jaromir Edler von Eynhuf. In his unwavering efforts to gain the attention of his beloved Emperor Franz I and to further his career, Eynhuf loses sight of all propriety and embarks on an irreversible path of obsession leading into the netherworld of the diva Hoellteufel and to his eventual ruination.
von Loën	Johann Michael	German	Johann Michael von Loën. The Honest Man at Court [Der redliche Mann am Hofe; oder die Begebenheiten des Grafens von Rivera]. Tr. John R. Russell. Camden House, Inc. 1997. 214 pp. Cloth: $44.95; ISBN 1-57113-108-6. This work is noteworthy as the last gasp in the Chaucer-Boccaccio tradition in which members of upper-class society narrate their life stories. Although this style of narrative tended to produce works intended to titillate the reader, with von Loën--a successful merchant and great-uncle of Goethe--they function to advance the education of a prince to produce a paragon of probity, much in the tradition of the 17th-century "politischer Roman." The work is a revealing mirror of the attitudes of the German Enlightenment.
Von Saar	Ferdinand	German	Ferdinand von Saar. The Stone Breakers & Other Novellas. Trs. Kurt and Alice R. Bergel, with Dorothy Augustine. Ariadne Press. 1998. 232 pp. Paper: ISBN 1-57241-055-8. The five novellas included here--all appearing in English for the first time--represent five variations on the theme of love and sensuality in a variety of settings and involving different social classes, from railroad workers to the clergy, to the aristocracy. Extending over a period of almost 30 years, they provide a good overview of the variety of concerns addressed in Saar's writings as well as the changes in his style as he matured. The five novellas are "Innocens," "The Stone Breakers," "Vae Victis," "The Troglodyte," and "Castle Kostenitz."
Von Sacher-Masoch	Leopold	German	Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. A Light for Others and Other Jewish Tales from Galicia [Der Judenraphael]. Tr. Michael T. O'Pecko. Ariadne Press [Adolf Opel]. 1994. 338 pp. Paper: $25.95; ISBN 0-929497-93-7. Sacher-Masoch, whose name has been immortalized in the term masochism, is known today predominantly as the author of Venus in Furs and for his tales of dominant women and suffering men. In his own lifetime, however, he was also famous as the author of vibrant tales from Galicia, the exotic eastern edge of the Austrian empire, where he championed the cause of the region's most oppressed minorities, the Ruthenians and the Jews. The six stories included are "The Jewish Sects in Galicia," "The Red Pepperman's Evil Spirit," "Hasara Raba," "My Tailor Abrahamek," "A Light for Others," and "Pintschev and Mintschev."
Von Thümmel Nicolai	Moritz Friedrich	German	Moritz von Thümmel/Friedrich Nicolai. Wilhelmine and The Life and Opinions of Sebaldus Nothanker: Masterworks of the German Rococo and Enlightenment. Tr. John R. Russell. Camden House. 1997. 170 pp. Cloth: $55.00; ISBN 1-57113-145-0. Despite the fact that during the Enlightenment literature was still taught as a craft learned by studying examples from Antiquity and imitating them, masterworks did emerge. Thümmel's Wilhelmine was one, a mock epic written in the wake of Pope's "Rape of the Lock." Nicolai, a leading figure of the Berlin Enlightenment, acknowledged the popularity of Wilhelmine by taking its principal characters as the starting point for his novel Sebaldus Nothanker. Abandoning all Rococo constraints and influenced by Sterne's Tristam Shandy, Nicolai's discursive novel gave him the freedom to attack many targets of the Enlightenment such as superstition, dogmatism, sectarianism, and sentimentalism.
Von Westphalen	Joseph	German	Joseph von Westphalen. Diplomatic Pursuits [Im diplomatischen Dienst]. Tr. Melanie Richter-Bernburg. Catbird Press. 1995. 300 pp. Paper: $14.95; ISBN 0-945774-28-1. This novel by one of Germany's leading satirists follows the thoughts and adventures of Harry von Duckwitz. Duckwitz is an aristocratic, left-leaning lawyer who suddenly leaves his law firm, enters the foreign service, and gets posted to Cameroon and Ecuador. He has outrageous opinions about almost everything under the sun, but he is thoughtful as well, and self-critical. He pursues ideas and women with the same conflicted, contrary volatility he brings to his diplomatic career. Whether insulting or trying to understand people, from left-wing intellectuals to right-wing colonels, he stumbles across a number of truths, half-truths, and perspectives. This is Westphalen's first appearance in English.
Vroman	Leo	Dutch	(English/Dutch) Auth. and Tr. Leo Vroman. Flight 800/Vlucht 800. Cross-Cultural Communications. 1997. Paper: ISBN 0-89304-188-2. Bilingual. Poetry dedicated to and inspired by TWA flight 800, which crashed outside New York.