Telegraph Avenue van Michael Chabon, vertaald door Wim Scherpenisse, Gerda Baardman en Tjadine Stheeman, uitgegeven bij Anthos (oorspronkelijke titel eveneens Telegraph Avenue).
Waar het vorige boek van Michael Chabon, De Jiddische politiebond, de lezer meevoerde naar een fictieve joodse gemeenschap in ijzig Alaska, is de schrijver uit Berkeley in zijn nieuwste roman dicht bij huis gebleven: in Oakland. In deze onder economische malaise zuchtende stad, gelegen tussen het bruisende San Francisco en het welvarende Berkeley, drijven twee vrienden, Archy en Nat, een platenwinkel. Ze verkopen geen cd’s, maar vintage vinyl: zeldzame opnamen van vooral jazz. De winkel wordt gefrequenteerd door een bont gezelschap buurtgenoten, van de louche begrafenisondernemer Chandler Flowers en de gewiekste kleine ritselaar Mirchandani tot de oude jazzlegende Cochise Jones, de laatste steevast vergezeld door zijn papegaai Achtenvijftig. (more…)
Like many Britons of my generation, I am virtually a monoglot. I was taught French at school but taught so badly that I had no confidence either in speaking or reading the language; essentially, it was taught to me as an extinct language, like Latin, and no acknowledgement was made of the fact that, within visible distance of our shoreline, millions of happy Frenchmen and women were chatting away. 
For the past year I have had the good fortune to legitimately engross myself in what is to me the most compelling of novels, translating Hilary Mantel’s Bring up the Bodies, the sequel to 2009 Booker Prize Winner Wolf Hall. The most compelling novels do have a habit of providing ample scope for research, leading you on winding paths outside the pages of the book in order to know what exactly an author is alluding at and how to best convey it in the target language. And though a great deal can be found on the Internet, some particularities will remain obscure: No virtual tour will give you a clear view of roof constructions, palace kitchens, gates or stabling facilities. Which hardly ever presents problems; descriptions usually allow for general wordings. Bring up the Bodies, or rather its protagonist Cromwell, does not. By the time I started grumbling about the ‘preposterous lack of information on the Internet’, I thought it best to go over and have a look myself, and if possible, to discuss everything that still puzzled me about the text with Ms Mantel. So I (timidly but hopefully) applied to the Dutch Foundation of Literature for a travel grant, which met with generous approval. 
Ineke Lenting vertaalt live in Amsterdam