The Seemingly Endless Book Challenge
Jan. 22nd, 2021 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatToday's prompt is...
A book that was originally written in a different language.
Well, this is easy. It's the one I wanted to do for my senior thesis in college, but they wouldn't let me because it was originally written in Spanish and I can't read Spanish. (I wanted to compare Ulysses to One Hundred Years of Solitude (which I adored), but alas no - I had to use Faulkner's Sound and the Fury instead (which I didn't like nearly as much) as a result I can remember Ulysses and Sound & the Fury, but have no memory whatsoever of One Hundred Years of Solitude which I devoured during the summer of my junior year in college, circa 1988.)
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez.
This is one of the books that my brother introduced me to. He kind of thrust it at me - and said, "read this, now!" Which I did. And we agreed it was brilliant and the best thing evah. Love in the Time of Cholera wasn't quite as good. We were doing that quite a bit - he'd make mixed tapes for me, I'd send him chocolate chip cookies, I'd rec a book, he'd rec a book. We still do it. We have this crazy relationship that makes no sense to anyone but us - we don't appear to get along at all - rarely talk on the phone, but we'll occasionally text each other. And share the same morbid sense of humor.
We also both, for reasons, chose New York as our home state of residence - even though we were raised in Pennsylvania and Kansas City, and went to school in places like Colorado, San Franscisco, Nova Scotia, and Ohio.
And we both share our grandfather's dislike of authority.
Anyhow...the book is a wandering poetic prose novel about a family, with ghosts.
Here's Wiki's description:
As a metaphoric, critical interpretation of Colombian history, from foundation to contemporary nation, One Hundred Years of Solitude presents different national myths through the story of the Buendía family, whose spirit of adventure places them amidst the important actions of Colombian historical events, such as the Liberal political reformation of a colonial way of life, and the 19th-century arguments for and against it; the arrival of the railway to a mountainous country; the Thousand Days' War (Guerra de los Mil Días, 1899–1902); the corporate hegemony of the United Fruit Company ("American Fruit Company" in the story); the cinema; the automobile; and the military massacre of striking workers as government–labour relations policy.[
A book that was originally written in a different language.
Well, this is easy. It's the one I wanted to do for my senior thesis in college, but they wouldn't let me because it was originally written in Spanish and I can't read Spanish. (I wanted to compare Ulysses to One Hundred Years of Solitude (which I adored), but alas no - I had to use Faulkner's Sound and the Fury instead (which I didn't like nearly as much) as a result I can remember Ulysses and Sound & the Fury, but have no memory whatsoever of One Hundred Years of Solitude which I devoured during the summer of my junior year in college, circa 1988.)
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez.
This is one of the books that my brother introduced me to. He kind of thrust it at me - and said, "read this, now!" Which I did. And we agreed it was brilliant and the best thing evah. Love in the Time of Cholera wasn't quite as good. We were doing that quite a bit - he'd make mixed tapes for me, I'd send him chocolate chip cookies, I'd rec a book, he'd rec a book. We still do it. We have this crazy relationship that makes no sense to anyone but us - we don't appear to get along at all - rarely talk on the phone, but we'll occasionally text each other. And share the same morbid sense of humor.
We also both, for reasons, chose New York as our home state of residence - even though we were raised in Pennsylvania and Kansas City, and went to school in places like Colorado, San Franscisco, Nova Scotia, and Ohio.
And we both share our grandfather's dislike of authority.
Anyhow...the book is a wandering poetic prose novel about a family, with ghosts.
Here's Wiki's description:
As a metaphoric, critical interpretation of Colombian history, from foundation to contemporary nation, One Hundred Years of Solitude presents different national myths through the story of the Buendía family, whose spirit of adventure places them amidst the important actions of Colombian historical events, such as the Liberal political reformation of a colonial way of life, and the 19th-century arguments for and against it; the arrival of the railway to a mountainous country; the Thousand Days' War (Guerra de los Mil Días, 1899–1902); the corporate hegemony of the United Fruit Company ("American Fruit Company" in the story); the cinema; the automobile; and the military massacre of striking workers as government–labour relations policy.[
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Date: 2021-01-23 03:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-23 05:20 pm (UTC)Garcia-Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude really did work for me - but it was long time ago. I think I read it when I was 20 years of age? Maybe 21? I can't remember at all now. No one in my family can - even though we all loved it when we read it.
It really depends on the translator - I think, and whether it works as translation. Another really good Spanish Literature to English Translation is Arturo Perez-Reverte's novels. My favorite is The Seville Communion. He writes mystery/thrillers. My least favorite ones were turned into movies and television series - The Club Dumas, and The Queen of the South. I couldn't get through either - yet they got made into movies. I liked his earlier books better.