Tag: literature in translation

#BookReview The High-Rise Diver by Julia von Lucadou @WorldEdBooks @RandomTTours

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FINAL High Rise Diver BT Poster

Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The High-Rise Diver by Julia von Lucadou, translated by Sharmila Cohen.  My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to World Editions for my review copy.

The High-Rise DiverAbout the Book

Riva is a “high-rise diver”, a top athlete with millions of fans, and a perfectly functioning human on all levels. Suddenly she rebels, breaking her contract and refusing to train. Cameras are everywhere in her world, but she doesn’t know her every move is being watched by Hitomi, the psychologist tasked with reining Riva back in. Unquestionably loyal to the system, Hitomi’s own life is at stake: should she fail to deliver, she will be banned to the “peripheries”, the filthy outskirts of society.

For readers of The Handmaid’s Tale, The Circle and Brave New World, this chilling dystopia constructs a world uncomfortably close to our own in which performance is everything.

Format: Paperback (288 pages)    Publisher: World Editions
Publication date: 20th May 2021 Genre: Dystopian, Science Fiction, Literature in Translation

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My Review

In the High-Rise Diver, Julia von Lucadou creates a vivid, disturbing picture of a future society in which surveillance is not just widespread but constant and invasive. Think activity trackers that monitor your sleep patterns, nutritional intake and vital signs, where every action you take online is recorded and scrutinized, where facial recognition technology is omnipresent and your location is tracked in real time using the tablet device that continuously bombards you with news alerts and advertising messages.

The book introduces the reader to a highly stratified society in which those who have earned the right to dwell in the city enjoy privileges denied to those who live in the ‘peripheries’. The only route out of the latter is via success at “casting sessions” at which future life and career paths are determined based on a candidate’s performance. Naturally, the sessions are live-streamed on social media to millions.

Reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale, many children are conceived by ‘breeders’ and even those who aren’t may have little contact with their ‘bioparents’. However, like everything else in this society, the simulated experience of family life can be bought for a price. And if you don’t have the credits for that, there’s always the ‘parentbot’ app.

Readers are likely to have varying responses to certain features of the book, such as the absence of speech marks and the frequent use of ™ appended to certain words. Personally, the former didn’t cause me a problem and, although I found the latter a little annoying, it did underline the sense of a society in which anything can be commercialized, even a celebrity’s favourite cocktail. Pour me another flydrive™ barman. (You may be reassured to know that you can still get a martini even in this imagined future.)

If you thought an annual appraisal with your manager was something to be apprehensive about just imagine a situation in which your performance is continuously monitored, evaluated and rated by your superior, and in which your income, social status, accommodation and other ‘privileges’ are dependent on the outcome. If that doesn’t make you shudder, then how about the thought of having a date reviewed and rated by the other party and having to complete a profile in advance setting out your sexual preferences and expectations.

Although it wasn’t hard for me to imagine why Riva might not want to continue training in order to perform ever more daring dives off high buildings – surely a metaphor for the status conscious society imagined by the author – I’m not sure I really felt much connection with her. I was more drawn to Hitomi’s story, that of the watcher who is constantly watched herself and is gradually overwhelmed by the nature of her assignment.

The High-Rise Diver paints a rather grim vision of a possible future, one I hope will never come to pass. By the end, I definitely found myself hoping that Hugo Masters, Hitomi’s creepy boss, might have an encounter with a defective flysuit™. And if you’ve ever lacked the motivation for a digital detox, The High-Rise Diver will definitely provide the kick you need.

In three words: Chilling, thought-provoking, imaginative

Try something similar: A Calculated Life by Anne Charnock

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Julia Von Lucadou Author PicAbout the Author

Julia von Lucadou was born in Heidelberg in 1982. She studied film and theater at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and Victoria University of Wellington and earned her PhD in Film Studies in 2015. Lucadou worked as both an assistant director and a television editor prior to writing The High-Rise Diver, her debut novel, which was nominated for the Swiss Book Prize in 2018. She lives between Biel, New York, and Cologne.

Sharmila CohenAbout the Translator

Sharmila Cohen is an award-winning writer and German-to-English translator who has translated the works of several leading German-language authors. Her work has been featured in publications such as BOMB and Harpers, and her projects span from poetry and literary fiction to crime and children’s stories. Originally from New York, Cohen came to Berlin in 2011 as a Fulbright Scholar to complete an experimental translation project with local poets. She now divides her time between both cities.

#BookReview The Assistant by Kjell Ola Dahl @OrendaBooks @RandomTTours

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Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for The Assistant by Kjell Ola Dahl, translated by Don Bartlett. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to participate in the tour and to Orenda Books for my digital review copy.

The AssistantAbout the Book

Oslo, 1938. War is in the air and Europe is in turmoil. Hitler’s Germany has occupied Austria and is threatening Czechoslovakia; there’s a civil war in Spain and Mussolini reigns in Italy.

When a woman turns up at the office of police-turned-private investigator Ludvig Paaske, he and his assistant – his one-time nemesis and former drug-smuggler Jack Rivers – begin a seemingly straightforward investigation into marital infidelity.

But all is not what it seems, and when Jack is accused of murder, the trail leads back to the 1920s, to prohibition-era Norway, to the smugglers, sex workers and hoodlums of his criminal past … and an extraordinary secret.

Format: Paperback (276 pages)   Publisher: Orenda
Publication date: 13th May 2021 Genre: Historical Fiction, Crime, Thriller, Mystery

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My Review

The Assistant switches back and forth between two timelines, one set in 1924/25 (when Oslo was still known as Kristiania) and the other in 1938. The leading characters, Ludvig Paaske and Jack Rivers, appear in both timelines, as do other individuals but only gradually does it become clear how they and the events described interact. At one point, on returning to a house he visited fourteen years earlier, Jack observes how ‘time can go round in circles’ and I had much the same feeling. Thankfully, the chapter headings clearly identify which of the two timelines the reader is in.

The dictionary defines an assistant as ‘person who assists or gives aid and support; helper, a person who is subordinate to another in rank, function, etc.; one holding a secondary rank in an office or post’. I liked how the author plays with the concept of being an assistant.

When we initially meet Jack Rivers he is working for Arvid Bjerke, the owner of a transport company, driving vehicles carrying goods, including contraband alcohol, to Bjerke’s customers. In other words, Jack is assisting in criminal activity. Moving forward fourteen years, Jack is working as assistant to Ludvig Paaske, a former police office who now runs a private investigation business. Ludvig has hired Jack despite his criminal record so you could say Paaske is assisting Jack to go straight.

If only the relationship between the two men was as straightforward as that. For example, does the role of assistant imply a degree of loyalty to the person you are assisting? From Paaske’s point of view it seems clear it does. ‘An assistant means outgoings, but he has to be able to repay investment, to add value.’  But if this is the case, should there be an expectation of the same in return?

Ludwig and Jack are both flawed characters who have done bad things and made poor decisions in the past (although many of the female characters are not much better).  But which of them has damaged their integrity the most as a result?  Can the reader forgive either of them for their past actions?

At one point in the earlier timeline, Jack gets the sense he is being manipulated by unknown individuals, that someone is standing above him pulling the strings.  There’s something in that as he seems to have the uncanny habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, sometimes even at the site of a murder.

With a storyline containing so many twists and turns it’s occasionally easy to feel lost so I welcomed Jack sharing his theories in such a cogent manner in the final chapter. Setting out of the moves made by the various characters and their motivations for doing so in the way he does neatly references his own love of solving chess problems. And his piecing together of the disparate parts of the metaphorical jigsaw to reveal the full picture brings to mind Paaske undertaking the same task with the handmade jigsaws sent to him by his artist daughter.

One of the reasons I enjoy historical fiction so much is that I invariably learn things I would have never otherwise known about. For example, I wasn’t aware that Norway had a period of prohibition in the interwar years or that the Norwegian government opposed its citizens joining those fighting the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Along with the historical detail, the book conjures up a vivid picture of Norwegian lifestyle which is clearly much influenced by its landscape – the lakeside summer houses, swimming and sailing, travelling on the ferries that ply between Oslo and the small islands that surround it.

I believe the mark of a skilful translation is if at no time you feel you are reading a book translated from another language; such was the case here. The book moves along at pace, rather in the manner of the oncoming train in the opening scene. With its intricate plot, The Assistant will keep you guessing until you turn the final page and quite possibly pondering on what you’ve read for some time after that.

In three words: Complex, suspenseful, accomplished

Try something similar: The Night of Shooting Stars by Ben Pastor

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DahlKjellOlaAbout the Author

One of the fathers of the Nordic Noir genre, Kjell Ola Dahl was born in 1958 in Gjøvik. He made his debut in 1993, and has since published eighteen novels, the most prominent of which form a series of police procedurals-cum-psychological thrillers featuring investigators Gunnarstranda and Frølich. In 2000 he won the Riverton Prize for The Last Fix, and he won both the prestigious Brage and Riverton Prizes for The Courier in 2015 (published in English by Orenda Books in 2019). His work has been published in fourteen countries. He lives in Oslo.

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About the Translator

Don Bartlett completed an MA in Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in 2000 and has since worked with a wide variety of Danish and Norwegian authors, including Jo Nesbø and Karl Ove Knausgård. For Orenda he has translated several titles in Gunnar Staalesen’s Varg Veum series: We Shall Inherit the Wind, Wolves in the Dark, the Petrona award-winning Where Roses Never Die and Fallen Angels. He has also translated three books in Kjell Ola Dahl’s Oslo Detectives series for Orenda – Faithless, The Ice Swimmer and Sister – as well as The Courier.

The Assistant BT Poster