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To read a real review check out: The Book of Collateral Damage - Sinan Antoon


My take:
I like Sinan Antoon.
I liked reading his newly translated novel, The Book of Collateral Damage.
I can not wait to read another of his novels,
but
in an ideal world I would prefer that Sinan Antoon be his own translator.

Arabic is a beautiful language. It was made to be read. Unfortunately, a little gets lost in translation.

"The word 'translation' comes, etymologically, from the Latin for 'bearing across'. Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately to the notion that something can also be gained."
Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-199

"It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work."
Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

"We read and reread the words of the original text in order to penetrate through them, to reach, to touch the vision or experience which prompted them. We then gather up what we have found there and take this quivering almost wordless 'thing' and place it behind the language into which it needs to be translated. And now the principal task is to persuade the host language to take in and welcome the 'thing' which is waiting to be articulated."
John Berger, Confabulations

"Why? Because true translation is not a binary affair between two languages but a triangular affair. The third point of the triangle being what lay behind the words of the original text before it was written. True translation demands a return to the pre-verbal."
John Berger, Confabulations

Sinan Antoon is an important voice. Here's why:
Iraqi poet Sinan Antoon discusses life in Iraq, 16 years after the US invasion | KALW


Sinan Antoon should be read. Do read this: Jadaliyya - A Barbarian in Rome


Also if you missed it, do read: Opinion | Fifteen Years Ago, America Destroyed My Country - The New York Times


Sinan Antoon is a novelist with a sting. Don't miss out on reading him.