RaveThe AtlanticThe semi-comic, pulp-y framing lures readers into what becomes a poignant exploration of an adolescent mind lurching toward maturity ... If the fable-esque set-up seems a bit heavy-handed, Kurniawan avoids that pitfall by wrapping his tale in warmth and candor. He captures the tender rationale of teens in the swell of adolescent transformation, showing (through the character of Gecko, who gladly loans his father to his friend) how intuitively empathetic young people can be toward each other ... . Kurniawan confidently drops in details without explaining them, sets readers down in medias res, and presents dream sequences as though they’re real, always shifting gears with ease. It’s to his credit (and to Annie Tucker’s simple but vibrant translation) that his experiments don’t create reader whiplash.
Anne Garréta, Trans. by Emma Ramadan
MixedWords Without Borders\"This is the novel’s linguistic meta-conceit: At no point does Garréta give any indication of either lover’s gender … Further, her characters’ actions are motivated, slyly, by her grammatical needs. Or, to put it another way, as Ramadan writes in her translator’s note: ‘the constraint and the writing become one and the same.’ Plot and character traits—even those that might irritate the reader—are used in the service of Garréta’s goal … At times a frustrating read, Sphinx unexpectedly prompts feelings of liberation, too. While je’s description of the first time they have sex—‘Crotches crossed and sexes mixed, I no longer knew how to distinguish anything’—isn’t lush with details, it also doesn’t rely on gender tropes to move the action forward. It’s easier to focus on emotions as well, without associating them with female or male points of view.\
Rachel Cantor
PositiveBookforumCantor’s passages on the practice and theories of translation are a geeky pleasure to read, but it’s the odd overlaps she creates between Shira’s work and life that lend the book its rich, neurotic character ... Occasionally, Cantor lays the overarching translation metaphor on too thick. But she does use a fine web of plotlines to illustrate, humorously and compassionately, how many human acts are translational ones, carrying with them the possibility of a slight or betrayal or in some cases, a simple misinterpretation.
