Winter Issue of The Quarterly Conversation

Features

From the Editors: On Lessons Learned and Not Learned From the Nobel

Translate This Book!

We’ve talked to some of the top translators into English working today; we’ve talked to publishers big and small; we’ve talked to agents, journalists, and foreign-language authors. We’ve asked them all for the best books that still aren’t in English. And have they responded. They’ve told us TRANSLATE THIS BOOK!, and now we pass that on to you.

By Scott Esposito and Annie Janusch

Tracing Mahmoud Darwish’s Map

Mahmoud Darwish was a poet essential to Palestinian concepts of identity an nationhood. Here, George Fragopoulos looks at four recently published book by the prolific writer, tracing an outline of the map Darwish left for his readers to follow.

By George Fragopoulos

Now Playing at Pynchon Cinemas: What’s Going on in Pynchon’s Three California Novels

Why does Pynchon keep coming back to California? His latest novel, Inherent Vice, is his third novel set in the state. Here, Donald Brown ponders what Pynchon has found in California . . . and what it has to do with film. [more]

By Donald Brown

Intentional Schizophrenia: J.M. Coetzee’s Autobiographical Trilogy and the Falling Authority of the Author

Throughout his career, Coetzee has relentlessly highlighted the instability of words and stories, perhaps never so much as in his novels after the Nobel prize. Here, Matt Cheney shows how his three autobiographical works belie an attempt to pin down who “JM Coetzee” is.

By Matthew Cheney