<p>In this second episode of Hawthornden’s Como Conversazione, we explore beginnings. Anyone who has been around kids knows that a good Lego build starts with a good base. In a translation, this is the first sentence of a text. First sentences are so often the most famous lines.  They are a place for a translator to make their mark. They dictate the voice in which the book unfolds. But has the importance of the first sentence been overly inflated?</p>

In this second episode of Hawthornden’s Como Conversazione, we explore beginnings. Anyone who has been around kids knows that a good Lego build starts with a good base. In a translation, this is the first sentence of a text. First sentences are so often the most famous lines. They are a place for a translator to make their mark. They dictate the voice in which the book unfolds. But has the importance of the first sentence been overly inflated?

<p>In this second episode of Hawthornden’s Como Conversazione, we explore beginnings. Anyone who has been around kids knows that a good Lego build starts with a good base. In a translation, this is the first sentence of a text. First sentences are so often the most famous lines.&nbsp; They are a place for a translator to make their mark. They dictate the voice in which the book unfolds. But has the importance of the first sentence been overly inflated?</p>

First Sentences

Welcome to Season Three of The Critic and Her Publics: On Translation.
In 1999, twelve distinguished writers gathered at Casa Ecco, a villa on Lake Como, to discuss the art of translation. Twenty-five years later, their ideas are still apt and powerful. Last October, Merve Emre convened a group of translators and publishers at the same villa to return to those ideas and to examine a field at an inflection point.
In this series, you’ll hear from the translators Maureen Freely, Daisy Rockwell, Virginia Jewiss, Jeremy Tiang, and Tiffany Tsao, as well as publishers Adam Levy (Transit Books) and Jacques Testard (Fitzcarraldo Editions).


Hosted by Merve Emre • Edited by Michele Moses • Music by Dani Lencioni • Art by Leanne Shapton
This Como Conversazione season of The Critic and Her Publics is a co-production between the Hawthornden Foundation, New York Review of Books, and Lit Hub.

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Books

Welcome to Season Three of The Critic and Her Publics: On Translation. In 1999, twelve distinguished writers gathered at Casa Ecco, a villa on Lake Como, to discuss the art of translation. Twenty-five years later, their ideas are still apt and powerful. Last October, Merve Emre convened a group of translators and publishers at the same villa to return to those ideas and to examine a field at an inflection point. In this series, you’ll hear from the translators Maureen Freely, Daisy Rockwell, Virginia Jewiss, Jeremy Tiang, and Tiffany Tsao, as well as publishers Adam Levy (Transit Books) and Jacques Testard (Fitzcarraldo Editions). Hosted by Merve Emre • Edited by Michele Moses • Music by Dani Lencioni • Art by Leanne Shapton This Como Conversazione season of The Critic and Her Publics is a co-production between the Hawthornden Foundation, New York Review of Books, and Lit Hub.

Welcome to Season Three of The Critic and Her Publics: On Translation.
In 1999, twelve distinguished writers gathered at Casa Ecco, a villa on Lake Como, to discuss the art of translation. Twenty-five years later, their ideas are still apt and powerful. Last October, Merve Emre convened a group of translators and publishers at the same villa to return to those ideas and to examine a field at an inflection point.
In this series, you’ll hear from the translators Maureen Freely, Daisy Rockwell, Virginia Jewiss, Jeremy Tiang, and Tiffany Tsao, as well as publishers Adam Levy (Transit Books) and&nbsp;Jacques Testard (Fitzcarraldo Editions).


Hosted by Merve Emre • Edited by Michele Moses • Music by Dani Lencioni • Art by Leanne Shapton
This Como Conversazione season of The Critic and Her Publics is a co-production between the Hawthornden Foundation, New York Review of Books, and Lit Hub.

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