Literature in Translation
Interview with David Dollenmayer

David Dollenmayer's translation of Martin Walser’s A Gushing Fountain was published in April 2015. Literary scholar Susanne Klingenstein appreciates its appearance in the US.

David Dollenmayer is a literary translator from German into English and emeritus Professor of German at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts. Now retired from teaching, translating is his main occupation. He says that he was always interested in the close reading of texts. Gradually he realized that “the closest of close readings is a translation rather than an academic commentary”. In 2008 he won the prestigious Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize for his translation of Moses Rosenkranz’s memoir Childhood. He has translated novels, memoirs, and correspondence by such authors as Elias and Veza Canetti, Anna Mitgutsch, Bertolt Brecht, Elias Canetti, Peter Stephan Jungk, Michael Kleeberg, Stefan Klein, Marie-Luise Knott, Michael Köhlmeier, Willibald Sauerländer and Hansjörg Schertenleib.