What books are on your bedside table?
‘Landscapes’, by Christine Lai, ‘Glory’, by NoViolet Bulawayo, ‘La Migración’, by Pablo Maurette, ‘Time Shelter’, by Georgi Gospodinov and Angela Rodel, Sara Baume’s ‘Seven Steeples’, a booklet about Paul Gauguin’s “ Where are we from? What are we? Where Are We Going?,” by George TM Shackelford, and “Goodnight Moon” — the cardboard book edition — by Margaret Wise Brown.
What’s the last great book you’ve read?
I just read “Chain-Gang All-Stars” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, which is a masterpiece. Brilliant and sensitive, he manages to write about things that matter (to him and to us) while drawing on an array of influences, from hip-hop to anime to 19th-century Russian literature, which allows him to to get deeply involved with the widest possible audience, a skill I greatly admire.
Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).
Translated novella, hammock, oak.
Which translators working today do you most admire? And what writers in other fields – novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets?
There are so many great translators working into English right now — we’re so lucky — I can’t even scratch the surface, but here are three who also write fiction, plays, and non-fiction, respectively: Anton Hur (who translates from Korean ), Jeremy Tiang (translating from Chinese) and Frank Wynne (translating from French and Spanish).