Reading and Discussion
Would you like to be introduced to new German-language books? Would you also like to be able to recommend them to your friends who do not speak German?
You'll find the title you're looking for with our new series "The New Book in Town"! In this series, we will present German books recently translated into English and invite the authors or translators to a reading and discussion. There will be exchanges about all topical issues in Germany and Europe. We look forward to your participation in the discussion and hearing your thoughts about the New Book in Town.
An Inventory of Losses
Contrary to popular belief, conservation is not the arresting of change but its careful management; the conservator’s task is to guide artworks through time. On a large enough timescale, even the most precious charges are doomed, often thanks to the well-meaning but ultimately ill-conceived interventions of those who most wish them to survive.
The subjects of Judith Schalansky’s new book, "An Inventory of Losses", have already made their great passage out of this world. Extinct species, destroyed books, and buildings dismantled brick by brick are all featured in "An Inventory of Losses", translated from the German by Jackie Smith. The book’s theme seems a natural development from Schalansky’s previous authorial interests. Her Atlas of Remote Islands (2009) is a striking collection of vignettes about the far-flung corners of the globe where, hidden from view, acts of cruelty and destruction take place with impunity: abuse, murders, the decimation of wildlife populations, and, above all, the loss of life and culture that inevitably follow the arrival of colonizers’ ships.
An Inventory of Losses – Harvard Review
© René Fietzek
Judith Schalansky, born 1980 in Greifswald, studied Art History and Communication Design. Her Works, including internatioal best selling novel "Atlas of remote islands", the Bildungsroman "Der Hals der Giraffe" and "An Inventory of Losses" have been translated into more than 25 languages and were awarded numerous times. She is Editor of the "Naturkunden" and of the library "Wildes Wissen" (both published by Matthes & Seitz Berlin) and lives in Berlin.
© privat
Jackie Smith studied Modern Languages (German and French) at the University of Cambridge. After graduating she worked as a commercial translator, including several years at a German bank, before venturing into book translation. She has translated fiction and non-fiction, and in 2017 was the winner of the Austrian Cultural Forum London Translation Prize. Her translation of Judith Schalansky’s “An Inventory of Losses”, which was her first full-length literary translation, won the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize 2021, the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, and the TA First Translation Prize, and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2021 and the National Book Award for Translated Literature. She currently works as a translator at the German Embassy in London.
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