Posted on October 20, 2009 by Scott Esposito

We’ll be running our own interview with Gunter Grass translator Breon Mitchell up on Two Words shortly, but for now I wanted to pass along some more coverage of Tin Drum retranslation.

Don’t forget, we’ll have Mitchell live and in person for two events in November. He’ll be at Lit&Lunch talking about the process of retranslation, and he’ll also be at our book release party for Wherever I Lie Is Your Bed with scads of food, wine, and other translators.

And now here’s James Leigh in the San Diego Union-Tribune’s culture blog:

On its appearance in Germany, “The Tin Drum” was called at first both heretical and pornographic, and Manheim skipped or softened some passages. Mitchell not only gets whatever raunchiness was missing, he finds English equivalents to Grass’ playful and ingenious rhythms. Mitchell’s end-note suggests that Manheim’s version aimed to serve the English reader, while his own more closely echoes the author.

Certainly the new version does full justice to the contradictory, sardonic anger of its central character, Oskar Matzerath, and his narrative voice. Forever switching back and forth between first and third person, between a dry pity and a barely contained fury, the tin drummer provides a unique commentary on prewar, wartime and postwar Germany and its history.