Nieuws: De beste Engelse en Amerikaanse literatuur van 2010

2 december 2010

De beste boeken van 2010? The New York Times had er honderd. Wij pakken het bescheidener én ambitieuzer aan: kortere lijstjes, meer rubrieken. Vandaag de beste Engelse en Amerikaanse romans en verhalenbundels volgens de boekverkopers in Amsterdam en Haarlem. Met onder andere Franzen, Mitchell, Auster en Blackburn.

Amsterdam

Jonathan Franzen, Freedom (vertaald door Peter Abelsen als Vrijheid, zie ook onze recensie)
'The news about Walter Berglund wasn't picked up locally - he and Patty had moved away two years earlier to Washington and meant nothing to St. Paul now - but the urban gentry of Ramsey Hill were not so loyal to their city as not to read the New York Times.'
Paul Auster, Sunset Park (vertaald door Ton Heuvelmans als Sunset Park, zie ook onze voorpublicatie)
'For almost a year now, he has been taking photographs of abandoned things.'
Keith Richards, Life (vertaald door Jolanda te Lindert als Life)
'Why did we stop at the 4-Dice Restaurant in Fordyce, Arkansas, for lunch on Independence Day weekend?'
David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (vertaald door Harm Damsma en Niek Miedema als De niet verhoorde gebeden van Jacob de Zoet, zie ook onze voorpublicatie)
'"Miss Kawasemi?" Orito kneels on a stale and sticky futon. "Can you hear me?"'
Kathryn Stockett, The Help (vertaald door Ineke van Bronswijk als Een keukenmeidenroman, zie ook de toelichting van de vertaalster)
'Mae Mobley was born on an early Sunday morning in August, 1960.'
Amanda Maxwell, Nobody Told Me There'd Be Days Like These (vertaald door Boukje Verheij als Als ik dat had geweten, zie ook ons interview met de auteur)
'The local paper printed an article about that night. It said that the house where the party was had been cut in half and the neighbours had found it the next morning in two pieces.'
Ann Beattie, The New Yorker Stories
'When Ellen was told she would be hired as a music teacher at the highschool, she decided that it did not mean that she would have to look like the other people on the faculty.'
Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn
'Mellas stood beneath the gray monsoon clouds on the narrow strip of cleared ground between the edge of the jungle and the relative safety of the perimeter wire.'
Julia Blackburn, The Three of Us (vertaald door Paul van der Lecq als Wij drieën, zie ook het uitgebreide fragment in onze Nacht)
'This is the story of three people. It is the story of my two parents and the three of us together, but it is also the story of the tangled fairy-tale triangle, which took shape between me and my mother and the succession of solitary men who entered our lives after my father had left.'
Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question
'He should have seen it coming.'

Haarlem

Jonathan Franzen, Freedom (vertaald door Peter Abelsen als Vrijheid, zie ook onze recensie)
'The news about Walter Berglund wasn't picked up locally - he and Patty had moved away two years earlier to Washington and meant nothing to St. Paul now - but the urban gentry of Ramsey Hill were not so loyal to their city as not to read the New York Times.'
David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (vertaald door Harm Damsma en Niek Miedema als De niet verhoorde gebeden van Jacob de Zoet, zie ook onze voorpublicatie)
'"Miss Kawasemi?" Orito kneels on a stale and sticky futon. "Can you hear me?"'
Julia Blackburn, The Three of Us (vertaald door Paul van der Lecq als Wij drieën, zie ook het uitgebreide fragment in onze Nacht)
'This is the story of three people. It is the story of my two parents and the three of us together, but it is also the story of the tangled fairy-tale triangle, which took shape between me and my mother and the succession of solitary men who entered our lives after my father had left.'
Tobias Wolff, Our Story Begins (vertaald door Guido Goluke als Hier begint het verhaal)
'When she was young, Mary saw a brilliant and original man lose his job because he had expressed ideas that were offensive to the trustees of the college where they both taught.'
Philip Roth, Nemesis (vertaald door Babet Mossel als Nemesis)
'The first case of polio that summer came early in June, right after Memorial Day, in a poor Italian neighborhood crosstown from where we lived.'
Douglas Coupland, Player One
'Karen likes crossword puzzles because they make time pass quickly.'
Brady Udall, The Lonely Polygamist (vertaald door Erica Feberwee als De eenzame polygamist, zie ook het uitgebreide fragment in onze Nacht)
'To put it as simply as possible: this is the story of a polygamist who has an affair.'
Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness
'On the first day of January, in the year 1891, a small woman and a large man are walking in the Old Cemetery, in Genoa.'
Robert Harris, Lustrum (vertaald door Janneke Zwart als Lustrum)
'Two days before the inauguration of Marcus Tullis Cicero as consul of Rome, the body of a child was pulled from the River Tiber, close to the boat sheds of the republican war fleet.'
Paul Auster, Sunset Park (vertaald door Ton Heuvelmans als Sunset Park, zie ook onze voorpublicatie)
'For almost a year now, he has been taking photographs of abandoned things.'