Prehistoric Times

Alyson Waters has a fantastic translation of Eric Chevillard’s Prehistoric Times, which was published a couple of years back by Archipelago Books. I liked it so much that I reviewed it. Here is the first paragraph:

“Under the influence of having just completed this book—and let me note at the outset that the influence is hard to resist—I feel like I could start just about anywhere in reviewing it, so why not a footnote. There is just one in the book, but what a footnote, extending over two pages, explicative, digressive, apt, entertaining, and, best of all, delivered in the voice of the translator, Alyson Waters. We can say more (since, too impatient to wait for the French book to arrive in the mail, I wrote to the translator to ask): what in the world could the author have written in French that would translate so well into such a translator’s note? Answer: nothing at all! Or next to nothing. The author merely opens a window in his text (here in Waters’s translation): ‘Professor Glatt gave me the clef that opens the gate, for I am not a man to write clé when it is possible to write clef, even if in so doing I compel the translators of my tale to slow down—and I trust they see no malevolence where none intended; I would gladly let them have a full page to express this slight difference in leisurely, creative circumambages that will even further delay me taking up my post….’ His sentence goes on, as do many in this exquisitely prolix little book, but this is where the footnote marker is placed, so let’s stop where Waters’ footnote begins in order to consider its context and what she accomplishes in writing it.”

Okay, that’s enough. If I quote more, I could be infringing on copyright, which makes me very afraid. You can read the rest here! if you’re interested.

I should note that this is not the first time that Waters has taken my breath away by her work. Her translation of Vassilis Alexakis’s Foreign Words was just the second book that Autumn Hill Books published. I think it is still one of the very best.