translations

Amazon's new department for literature in translation is an excellent idea, and good to use in conjunction with Booktrust's reviews of translated fiction.

By the way, this morning I finally reached the end of re-reading Anna Karenin on my Sony Reader. Actually I read chunks of it at night on my backlit iTouch. As I've said before, the screen only emphasises the experience of reading over the object, the ability to 'turn up' the font is fantastic as a means to heighten concentration. Meanwhile Tolstoy takes you inside the consciousness of such a range of vivid characters in the way only great fiction can. Love, death, childbirth, politics... it's all there. In one chapter he even takes you into the mind of a hunting dog.

The Gutenberg text is littered with misprints and imperfections, but that only proves the resiliance of the vision which shines through translation and digitisation.