Lit&Lunch: The Translator As Overachiever
111 Minna Gallery | 111 Minna Street | San Francisco, CA
Literary translation is often a job with little renown and few financial rewards, but translator Alison Anderson managed to strike it big twice in 2008: the French author J.M.G. Le Clézio, whose novels Anderson has translated, received the Nobel Prize for literature, and Muriel Barbery’s novel Elegance of the Hedgehog became a national bestseller. Anderson talks about the pleasures and the pains of becoming a hot commodity and the books behind these literary celebrities.
Alison Anderson’s translations include Europa Editions’ The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, and works by Nobel laureate J. M. G. Le Clézio. She has also written two novels and is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literary Translation Fellowship. She has lived in Greece and Croatia, and speaks several European languages, including Russian.