Thursday, September 26, 2013

What is Nina Schuyler reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Nina Schuyler, author of The Translator.

Her entry begins:
I’ve just started reading Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II, by Keith Lowe. Not long after World War II, my husband’s parents left Germany and came to America. His father was thirteen when he arrived in New York. His mother was twenty. A courageous act, to be sure, but I’ve always been curious: what did they leave behind? Lowe goes far beyond the known celebratory mood that accompanied the war’s end. He reveals ravaged landscapes, razed cities, a Europe where law and order were non-existent, where German civilians all over Europe were beaten, arrested and used as slave labor or murdered. Women who slept with German soldiers were stripped, shaved and...[read on]
About The Translator, from the publisher:
When renowned translator Hanne Schubert falls down a flight of stairs, she suffers from an unusual but real condition — the loss of her native language. Speaking only Japanese, a language learned later in life, she leaves for Japan. There, to Hanne’s shock, the Japanese novelist whose work she recently translated confronts her publicly for sabotaging his work.

Reeling, Hanne seeks out the inspiration for the author’s novel — a tortured, chimerical actor, once a master in the art of Noh theater. Through their passionate, volatile relationship, Hanne is forced to reexamine how she has lived her life, including her estranged relationship with her daughter. In elegant and understated prose, Nina Schuyler offers a deeply moving and mesmerizing story about language, love, and the transcendence of family.
Learn more about the book and author at Nina Schuyler's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Translator.

Writers Read: Nina Schuyler.

--Marshal Zeringue