Ksenia Buksha
Read “There Is No Night,” entitled “Ночи нет” in Ksenia Buksha’s 2009 story collection This Is No Way to Live [Мы живем неправильно], here [NB: link is broken; to be repaired soon!]. The translation appears in Chtenia/Readings Issue 23 (Summer 2013), pp. 15-25. The interplay of sound, image, and theme in Buksha’s writing is always a pleasure for the translator.
At the end of a dead-end street in the outskirts, there’s a little maternity ward. Near it: a huge overgrown park, where birds sing, but the only lights are stars instead of streetlamps. There are half-derelict buildings at the edge of the park, and some sheds or something, and garages. The wild apple trees in this park let their fruit fall before its time…
A huge shout-out to my former student Clare Urbanski who brilliantly translated the title story from this collection: the idea to render Мы живем неправильно—literally, “we live wrong”—as “This is no way to live” is hers, and it is genius. It illustrates my second translation maxim, “you can’t translate the part without the whole:” you have to read the whole story to fully appreciate how well Clare’s translation choice fits.