Using in one tongue the word for a thing in the other makes the attributes of both resound: if you say Give me fire when they say Give me a light, what is not to be learned about fire, light and the act of giving? It’s not another way of saying things: these are new things. The world happening anew, Makina realizes: promising other things, signifying other things, producing different objects. Who knows if they’ll last, who knows if these names will be adopted by all, she thinks, but there they are, doing their damnedest.
This is from Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World (translated by Lisa Dillman), which I’ve reviewed for Words Without Borders. If you’ve never come across Words Without Borders before, I do recommend you spend some time exploring – it’s an essential site for fiction in translation, and I’m proud to be reviewing for it.
Signs Preceding the End of the World, meanwhile, is one of the best books I’ve read so far this year. It’s the story of Makina’s crossing from Mexico to the US with a message for her brother. But it’s also a novel of translation and fluid languages, thresholds and fuzzy boundaries. The novel’s language becomes the medium of Makina’s journey, and I hope I’ve captured a sense of that in my review.
5th June 2015 at 4:07 pm
The italics don’t cut off most of the way down in the review, so that all the remaining text is italicised, thought you should know.
Nice review of a book that definietly interests me. Full of “sinuous sentences that seem to spread” eh? Nicely done.
7th June 2015 at 7:11 pm
Thanks for the heads-up about the italics Max; I’ll pass the message on and see if they can get it fixed.
I did wonder about that alliteration, but decided to leave it in because a) it describes the point I’m trying to make, and b) why not? 🙂
I think you would definitely like Signs Preceding; almost certainly it will be one of my picks of the year.
6th June 2015 at 1:37 am
That’s a great review of a book which I’m hearing about from all sides at the moment. I love the idea of playing with cultural, geographical and linguistic boundaries, blurring the literal and the metaphorical.
7th June 2015 at 7:12 pm
Thanks Audrey – it is a marvellous book; I can only hope I did it justice.