![]() ![]() ![]() The author, if alive and equipped, might be called on to help with the odd nuance. A writer scores a hit after years confined or nearly confined to Japanese or Norwegian or, in the case of the brilliant and mercurial and – we now know – highly inconsistent Mathias Énard, French. The majority of instances are more straightforward. Writing in the mid-sixties, John Updike appeared irritated that Vladimir Nabokov, rather than extending his identity as an American writer by “composing the delightful, devilish, and unimaginable successor to Pale Fire”, had become consumed in the backward-looking endeavour of translating his “minor” Russian works. ![]() In certain extreme cases, it may be felt that belated demand is being answered by the wrong kind of supply. W hen a novelist writing in a language other than English is discovered mid-career by Anglo-American readers, old books and new books take turns in tumbling forth. ![]()
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