Staff Bookshelf September

I’m reading the Emily Wilson translation of the Iliad. She’s the first woman to publish a translation of Homer in English. The poem obviously maintains its place as one of the greatest pieces of world literature, and the translation does an excellent job rendering the text metrically into the more English iambic pentameter.  

I’m trying to read Yr Hobyd, the brand-new, first-ever, published in 2024, translation of Tolkien’s classic story into Welsh. It features Bilbo Baglan, Golwm, Gandalff, Smawg, and Thorin Dariandderw. I’m ignoring the “five-word rule” of reading something in a different language, a decision which is transforming this beloved story of Middle Earth into a language-learning boot camp. But so far — and here, shout outs to “Say Something in Welsh”  and “Gales con Marian”   are called for — I’m understanding far more than I ever thought possible.

Why do I love epic novels so? I think that one can read a regularly-sized novel set in one’s own cultural context or a futuristic / fantasy one, but to immerse oneself in an authentic different culture takes hundreds of pages, or for the audiobook listener, 30+ hours. The Covenant of Water (2023) is the second novel by Abraham Vergehese, an accomplished surgeon (now at Stanford) born in Ethiopia to parents from the southern state of Kerela, India. This work is, in part, a love letter to his roots–to Kerela, St. Thomas Christians, to his alma mater Madras Medical College–all of which feature in the decades-spanning plot. But to call it a love letter is not to say that it isn’t searing in its insights and heart-wrenching in its tragedies. The author still features his medical knowledge in various parts of the book, although not as prominently as in his first epic novel, Cutting for Stone, which focused on Indian doctors in Ethiopia. The ending of Cutting for Stone left a bad taste in my mouth, so I am hoping that The Covenant of Water lands better, although he has at least already nailed the send-off for the initial protagonist, Big Ammachi. The highest praise that I can give is that, even though this is a long book, individual chapters would often work as short stories, so finely crafted is the writing and so well-defined the stakes. The author reads the audiobook himself very well, although his brief attempt at a Texas accent is not impressive. However, the wrestling with God and the spirits of the dead, with doubt and despair, and with communism and injustice are all quite impressive to this reader.