“A place has a curious quality when you have only a partial understanding of its language, and in those early months the sensation was especially peculiar. At first I moved in a cloud of unknowing, the speech around me impenetrable,… — Katie Kitamura Copy Share
Translated literature can be fascinating. There's something so intriguing about reading the text second hand - a piece of prose that has already been through an extra filter, another consciousness, in the guise of the translator. Some of my favorite writers who have written in English were doing so without English being their first language, so there's a sense of… — Katie Kitamura Copy Share
The point about sales is relevant because it suggests there are cultures out there that are supporting and consuming, on a vast scale, challenging works of literature. Works of literature that in the United States would sell only a few thousand copies, if they managed to find a publisher at all. The success of these texts in Spain or Italy… — Katie Kitamura Copy Share
“life rarely finds its exact likeness in a novel, that is hardly fiction’s purpose,” — Katie Kitamura Copy Share Image
There's a long relationship between science fiction and the 'novel of ideas,' and I think writers of science fiction are able to draw on… — Katie Kitamura Copy Share Image
I write some art criticism, and one thing that's clear to me is that politics is fashionable in the American art world in a way it maybe isn't in American fiction. Your work of art becomes fashionable the moment it has some kind of political commentary. I think this has its dangers - the equation between fashion, politics, and art… — Katie Kitamura Copy Share
I'm often a little perplexed, when I read a review of a book, by the quotes that are pulled out as evidence of excellent prose. I don't think great novels are necessarily composed of great prose, or that there's a correlation between beautiful prose and the quality of a work of fiction. A really good, interesting novel will often let… — Katie Kitamura Copy Share
I don't speak any languages well enough to make an expert assessment on writing in translation, but since I'm interested in awkwardness in prose, I find I like the way translated texts can sometimes acquire awkwardness in the process of translation. There's a discordance translation can create which I think is sometimes seen as a weakness but which I think… — Katie Kitamura Copy Share
I think it's poignant and powerful, this idea that if someone knows your name, they have the ability to kind of hail you and… — Katie Kitamura Copy Share Image
“A place has a curious quality when you have only a partial understanding of its language, and in those early months the sensation was especially peculiar. At first I moved in a cloud of unknowing, the speech around me impenetrable, but it quickly grew less elusive as I began to understand single words and then phrases and now even snippets… — Katie Kitamura Copy Share
“People were capable of living their lives in a state of permanent disappointment, there were plenty of people who did not marry the person… — Katie Kitamura Copy Share Image
