Please join us in congratulating our colleague Sean Cotter on the extraordinary critical reception his translation of Magda Cârneci’s FEM has received. If you would like to buy a copy of the book, visit this link. In the meantime, here are some highlights from the many recent reviews of the book:
The English publication of FEM—Romanian poet and translator Magda Cârneci’s only novel—continues a procession of important feminist novels making their English debuts a decade or more after original publication. […] Thankfully, Cârneci’s expression of this boundless consciousness is strikingly rendered by Sean Cotter, an award-winning translator whose previous treatments of Mircea Cărtărescu and Nichita Stănescu prove him a worthy match for Cârneci’s sumptuous talent.
–The Kenyon Review
Cârneci is, in the end, an original writer and a masterful stylist, whose mastery of language comes vividly across through Sean Cotter’s dexterous translation. Her stylistic ingenuity is felicitously rendered by her translator, as in this case: “You taste me, I distaste you” (the translation of a pun in Romanian, in which “dezgusti” means both “dis-taste” and “disgust”).
–Los Angeles Review of Books
As FEM’s highly stylized and meandering prose examines the twin subjects of love and loss, readers are confronted with the ultimate feminist agenda of a woman’s right to choose, together with the numerous hurdles and dilemmas associated with it. Sean Cotter’s elegant translation meaningfully punctuates this internal tension and brings to life a mesmerizing landscape of female desire and frustration.
–Words Without Borders
As for Sean Cotter’s translation, it is downright transparent, as fluid as the text itself: “I left the earth behind, an Easter egg painted with a lot of blue, a little yellow-ochre, and dark green, an ever smaller egg, ever farther away. I drifted tranquilly past the moon, with its puffy, red face, like a young girl crying, praying, and begging, always begging for something, some particular thing, from her terrestrial mother.”
–World Literature Today
Poet Cârneci’s rich English-language debut records a woman’s dreamlike ecstatic experiences and revelations. […] Full of strong imagery, this heavily symbolic work is a notable entry in international feminist literature.
–Publishers Weekly
Let’s also congratulate Sean on his translation of Mateiu Caragiale’s Rakes of the Old Court, which was released by Northwestern University Press last month. Revista Familia—which is one of the most respected academic journals in Romania—recently hosted an online launch for Sean’s translation with leading scholars of Romanian literature and film. Watch a recording of the launch.