num_pages: 365
description: An essay with the reach and momentum of a novel Kate Briggss This Little Art is a genre-bending song for the practice of literary translation offering fresh fierce and timely thinking on reading writing and living with the works of others. Taking her own experience of translating Roland Barthess lecture notes as a starting point the author threads various stories together to give us this portrait of translation as a compelling complex and intensely relational activity. She recounts the story of Helen Lowe-Porters translations of Thomas Mann and their posthumous vilification. She writes about the loving relationship between Andr Gide and his translator Dorothy Bussy. She recalls how Robinson Crusoe laboriously made a table for him for the first time on an undeserted island. With This Little Art a beautifully layered account of a subjective translating experience Kate Briggs emerges as a truly remarkable writer: distinctive wise frank funny and utterly original.
language: English
title: This Little Art
publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions