Peter Manseau:
Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter (2008)
An interesting novel about … love and translation, I guess. So that’s right up my alley.
This is a debut novel, but clearly written by a writer who knows his po-mo literature. The main story reminded me – probably intentionally – of Amos Oz’ A Tale of Love and Darkness in being an old jewish writer telling the story of his life. That is punctured by some very elaborate translator’s notes. And the scoop is of course that the novel isn’t a translation.
So an unreliable narrator telling the story about his progrom-ridden childhood and adulthood in New York, which turned out not to have streets paved with gold. And a translator trying to make sense of that story along with his own love life and the whole concept of translating. And it works really well, maybe even for non-translators.