Going Forward and Looking Back

Chad Post over at Three Percent has started his 2009 Translation Database. 2009 looks to be a damn good year. Tops on my list of anticipated titles:

Pluriverse by Ernesto Cardenal
Skating Rink by Roberto Bolaño
Halfway House by Guillermo Rosales
Guru is Born by Takeshi Kitano (yes, that Takeshi Kitano)
Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction edited by Alvaro Uribe
Ghosts by Cesar Aira

And that’s just the ones where I have a slight inkling as to content or am aware of the writer.

So yeah, I’m jacked for 2009 to get going now that ’08 is on its last legs. And ’08 was a good year, as it brought me 2666, Senselessness, and Nazi Literature in the Americas, not to mention the other notable reads (not published in ’08) I managed to get under my belt, tops among them being Three Trapped Tigers and Infante’s Inferno by G. Cabrera Infante, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, Sin by Forough Farokhzad, Madwomen by Gabriela Mistral, The Ecstasy of Capitulation by Daniel Borzutzky, The Enormity of the Tragedy by Quin Monzo, Bartleby & Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas, Distant Star and By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño, Antipoems by Nicanor Parra, Apocalypse by Ernesto Cardenal, Sylvia by Leonard Michaels, etc. and so on.

Let’s get our collective read on, as the kids say.