The spring issue of The Threepenny Review has Robert Boyers' Norman Manea at Seventy-Five -- a good occasion also to remind you that Yale University Press' admirable Margellos World Republic of Letters series is bringing out four Manea titles in the coming months -- The Lair, The Black Envelope, The Fifth Impossibility, and Compulsory Happiness.
Yes, most are (or should be !) familiar, and yes, their Compulsory Happiness is just a reprint of the old Linda Coverdale translation from the French (which is not the language the contents were written in -- which, despite her observation that: "whatever its flaws and virtues" it "arrives with the author's own seal of authenticity", still seems ... less than ideal) -- but this looks like a pile of books well worth getting. (Reviews will be posted if/when I can get my hands on the books .....)
Yes, most are (or should be !) familiar, and yes, their Compulsory Happiness is just a reprint of the old Linda Coverdale translation from the French (which is not the language the contents were written in -- which, despite her observation that: "whatever its flaws and virtues" it "arrives with the author's own seal of authenticity", still seems ... less than ideal) -- but this looks like a pile of books well worth getting. (Reviews will be posted if/when I can get my hands on the books .....)