Showing posts with label Boy Tonkin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boy Tonkin. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Foreign fields / Boyd Tonkin chooses his favourite shorter classics in translation

Georges Simenon


Foreign fields: Boyd Tonkin chooses his favourite shorter classics in translation

4 July 2020

If I had a rouble or a euro for every reader who fulfilled their lockdown promise to devour Dostoevsky, Tolstoy or Proust my bank account would hardly grow by a single penny. Duty, guilt and pride never made the pages turn more swiftly, whatever a book’s length. Almost all vows to catch up on doorstopper classics from the global canon will have failed to outlast the fallen blossoms. Yet you might more realistically blend discovery and delight by exploring some of the smaller miracles of great fiction in translation.