This half-memoir, half-philosophical treatise is a meditation on the art of translation, and its potential for activism and humanist engagement.
Mireille Gansel grew up in the traumatic aftermath of her family losing everything—including their native languages—to Nazi Germany. In the 1960s and 70s, she translated poets from East Berlin and Vietnam to help broadcast their defiance to the rest of the world. Winner of a French Voices Award, Gansel’s debut illustrates the estrangement every translator experiences for the privilege of moving between tongues and muses on how translation becomes an exercise of empathy between those in exile.