Pen Translation Prize longlist

PEN has announced the longlist for the 2014 translation prizes, and I'm delighted that Hélène Cixous, Twists and Turns in the Heart's Antarctic is there.

All the happier as translating it was so much fun. It's a wonderful book, ranging from family history to philosophy via art appreciation in the vein of "looking after my 102-year-old-mother-and-fighting-with-my-brother" (Cixous's 102-year-old mother died last year). Comic and tragic, like Roz Chast's extraordinary memoir of her parents' last years, Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant, but no visuals except those the reader--easily--creates in his/her mind.