I often wonder that too, both for the cultural stuff reason and for the reason you mention about feeling unsure whether the translation is any good. At this point, I have a vague feeling that Russian lit is not for me, French lit is, and the jury’s out on everything else. :p

Hahahahahaha, ew. Gross.

The prose does fall flat sometimes! And I never know if it’s the writer’s style or the translator’s that’s making it sound that way.

Yes! I LOVE subtext! Subtext is absolutely my favorite! And it is frustrating to feel I’m missing most of it.

This is such a relief to have British people confirm that it isn’t a thing. I mean, I knew it wasn’t a thing. Like obviously. It was just the sort of thing a little kid thinks she understands when really she is misinterpreting something she saw on TV. But I’ve always been too embarrassed to ask about it, because I was sure it wasn’t true, but I couldn’t completely evict the notion from my brain.

Not answering your door at all is a great way to get sales people to leave without having to talk. :p

Yes, and historical context is another thing! Very often I’ll know maybe the rough outlines of what the history is, but not necessarily enough to feel sure that I understand the implications of that.

Anyway, I agree: It’s useful to make you learn more about world history. And as Athira points out, the more translated literature we have available to us, the broader our frame of reference will become. Which can only be good!

Me too, me too! I always wonder that and worry about it, and I worry about whether the translation is any good (because it’s not like I can check!), and it stresses me out. I do think there’s a movement by publishers towards more translated fiction, so I’m hoping as time goes on we’ll have a lot more access to world literature.

Yeah, I think that’s probably what happened. I started reading Please Look after Mom, and so far I am enjoying it much more than I’ll Be Right Here. There’s something more fresh and strange about the writing style that appeals to me.

I have been hearing a lot about Yoko Ogawa this week! Give her a try or don’t, do you think?

When I read translated books, and it falls flat, I wonder if that was the translators fault, the difficulty of translation or it just being a bad book. Sometimes translators do a beautiful job (I recently read Man by Kim Thuy and it was glorious) but other times the prose can fall flat. Something about translating meaning or the actual language (or so I was told at a Modern Poetry in Translation talk).