This year’s Best Translated Book Award went to Ottilie Mulzet for her translation of Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s “Seiobo There Below.” Here she discusses the challenges of the three year process.

This year’s Best Translated Book Award went to Ottilie Mulzet for her translation of Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s Seiobo There Below.

The book which logs in at 451 pages, took her three years to translate, and, as pointed out in The Paris Review, “it required familiarity with everything from the terminology of Russian icon painting to the existence of Arcade Fire. The story, told in a series of loosely linked episodes, addresses small matters of death, time, divinity, and the transcendence of art. And that’s not to mention the sentences – intricately constructed puzzles designed to disorient and amaze the reader. They can be up to fourteen pages long.”

Ms. Mulzet (a partial pseudonym) sat down with The Paris Review’s Valerie Stivers totalk about the challenges of translating Hungarian and, in particular, Laszlo Krasznahorkai. More.

See: Publishing Perspectives

See also: Ottilie Mulzet: A veneer of erudition in English PEN

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