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4:00 PM-5:00 PM, GMT

Introducing the Thomas Mann: Oxford World’s Classics Editions!

Book Launch & Discussion | German Literature

  • Goethe-Institut London Library, London

  • Language English
  • Price Tickets £6, £3 concessions and for Goethe-Institut language students & library members.

The picture shows photos of Ritchie Robertson, Simon Pare, Nicolas Luckhurst, and Iain Galbraith.

Das Bild zeigt Fotos von Ritchie Robertson, Simon Pare, Nicolas Luckhurst, and Iain Galbraith.

Translating Thomas Mann is a formidable task and that is why the Goethe-Institut London is very pleased to be hosting the editor and translators of the newest editions!

Join us at the Goethe-Institut London to hear directly from them how one of the twentieth century's great literary voices found a new one in English in the brand-new Oxford World’s Classics editions.

For his longer works, British readers have largely relied on the dedicated but now somewhat old-fashioned work of Helen Lowe-Porter. Oxford World’s Classics now presents fresh translations by various hands of three major novels and two collections of short stories, some of the latter little known even in Germany.

Each volume includes an introduction and notes by the general editor, Ritchie Robertson, and a short essay in which the translator reflects on the particular difficulties encountered.

The evening will celebrate in particular, the most recent addition to the series: Mario and the Magician and Other Late Stories

There will be an opportunity to both discuss Thomas Mann’s work and ask questions of the panel.

Short Biographies

  • Ritchie Robertson retired in 2021 as Schwarz-Taylor Professor of German at the University of Oxford. He is now an Emeritus Fellow of the Queen's College. His many books include Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature (1985), The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790 (2020) and German Political Tragedy: The Machiavellian Plot and the Necessary Crime (2024), as well as books on Kafka and Goethe in OUP's Very Short Introductions series. Since 2004, he has been a Fellow of the British Academy.

  • Iain Galbraith studied Modern Languages and Comparative Literature at the universities of Cambridge, Freiburg and Mainz. He has published volumes of poetry and short prose and has translated poetry, fiction and plays from German into English and vice versa, including work by John Burnside, Reinhard Jirgl, Alice Oswald, Natascha Wodin, Esther Kinsky, Enda Walsh, Jan Wagner, Esther Dischereit, W. G. Sebald, Ulrike Draesner and Peter Handke. He has received numerous awards for translation, including the Stephen Spender Prize, the Schlegel-Tieck Prize and the Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize.

  • Nicola Luckhurst is an academic and translator. A specialist in modernism, her publications include Science and Structure in Proust's A la recherche (2000), Virginia Woolf in Camera (2001), (as editor) The European Reception of Virginia Woolf (2002), and a translation of Freud's Studies in Hysteria (2004).

  • Simon Pare studied modern languages at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He became a literary translator in 2006. He now lives near Zurich and has translated over 30 works of literature and non-fiction from German and French. His translation of Christoph Ransmayr's The Flying Mountain made the Man Booker International 2018 longlist, and he was runner-up for the 2021 Schlegel-Tieck Prize.

Event partner

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