Reading the World

This month the Tree Table is featuring literature in translation.  Eric loves translated literature and he's sharing some of his favorite picks with you.  And if you're nervous about delving into the strange waters of translation, come by and ask us, many staff members are happy to give you their recommendations.  Plus, if you're a fan of Steig Larrson, remember those books are translated too!

Portrait of the Artist as a Domesticated Animal, by Lydies Salvagre (France)
In this dark ans hilarious novel a young writer steps inside the world of the obscenely rich when she becomes the biographer of a fast food mogul.  Mesmerized by the novelty  of her surroundings and by ongoing fantasied of Robert Deniro, who she meets early on, the "Artist" falls under the mogul's spell even as he proves himself a tyrant and a lunatic.




The Ice Palace, by Tarjei Vesaas (Norway)
This is one of those books you discover too infrequently- a book you instantly know you're going to grow old with, reading again and again over the years.  The Ice Palace is shot through with eeriness, mystery, and near-mystical enigma.  Yet on another level it is a very simple story told in an elliptical, poetic mode and built on a foundation of frighteningly powerful and conspicuously unnamed currents of emotion