Miss Herbert - Hardcover

Thirlwell, Adam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022408139X ISBN 13: 9780224081399

Publisher: Jonathan Cape, 2007

Synopsis

The secret history of novelists is often a history of exile and tourism - a history of language learning.

Like the story of Gustave Flaubert and Juliet Herbert, it is a history of loss and mistakes.

Flaubert's niece was taught by an English governess: Juliet Herbert. As Flaubert finished Madame Bovary, Miss Herbert translated his novel into English. But this translation has since been lost. No photographs of Miss Herbert survive, either.

Translation, and emigration, is the way into a new history of the novel - a history of loss, of mistakes. We assume that we can read novels in translation. We also assume that style does not translate. But the history of the novel is the history of style.

Miss Herbert solves this conundrum.

The book travels from Rio de Janeiro to Prague, from Moscow to London, from Trieste to Paris, from Warsaw to New York. On its zigzagging flight, it reinvents our ideas of style, and translation - introducing new theories of jet lag, of the time difference. Miss Herbert finds problems with accurate translations, and praises imperfect ones. It dismisses history and politics, replacing them with the fun of literary games.

This is not a novel, but an inside-out novel - with novelists as characters.

But Miss Herbert is not just a book. It demonstrates a new way of reading internationally. It is a project, a book of tricks ­- complete with maps, illustrations, and a variety of helpful diagrams. And it comes with a companion, a slim appendix: 'Mademoiselle O', a story by Vladimir Nabokov, written in French, about his own governess, never before fully translated into English.

Miss Herbert is a bedside travel book, a comprehensive city break: the most original and most stylish beach read.

About this title

Review:

'Every page has good things' -- The Guardian

'beguiling and completely uncategorisable...elegance, wit and companionable charm'
-- Sunday Herald

'tackled, elegantly and provocatively, the complex problem of how books are transmitted between countries... He does say something really new' -- Times Literary Supplement

'thrilling even after a third or fourth reading'
-- Times Literary Supplement

'what elevates her biography above the others in its genre is the author's sense of humour'
-- Times Literary Supplement

`...a deft and thought-provoking piece of work'
-- Independant on Sunday

`Miss Herbert is a thoughtful, and frequently hilarious, study of the
nature of literary translation. It is also a work of art, a new form.'
-- A.S. Byatt, FT

`Miss Herbert is this year's most richly pleasurable reading experience.' -- The Sunday Telegraph

`an occasionally charming collection of anecdotes, musings and literary theory'
-- Time Out

`the scholarly showmanship is impressive and he flourishes his paradoxes with panache' -- The Sunday Times

Book Description:

'Thoughtful and frequently hilarious... It is also a work of art, a new form' - A.S. Byatt, Financial Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Jonathan Cape
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 022408139X
• ISBN 13: 9780224081399
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 592