Intimate Stranger

Breytenbach composed this docu-dream during a period of incarceration. Mouroir (mourir: to die + miroir: mirror) is a ship of thought moving with its own hallucinatory logic through a sea of mythic images, protean characters and what the author describes as “landscapes and spaces beyond death, spaces that have always existed and will always exist.” An Orphic voyage into memory and mirage, through passages between death and life, darkness and light, oppression and flight, sense and the sensed. Mouroir.

An outspoken human rights activist, is a poet, novelist, memoirist, essayist, and visual artist. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited around the world. Born in South Africa, he immigrated to Paris in the late ’60s and became deeply involved in the anti-Apartheid movement. Breytenbach is the author of , and , among many others. He received the Alan Paton Award for in 1994 and the prestigious Hertzog Prize for Poetry for in 1999 and for () in 2008.

“It is impossible to stop our ears against the excruciating power of what Breytenbach has to say.”—Nadine Gordimer

“Obviously the greatest Afrikaner poet of this generation. . No one elevated the Boer language to such pure beauty and no one wielded it so devastatingly against the apartheid regime as its exiled poet Breyten Breytenbach.”—

All One Horse

An outspoken human rights activist, is a poet, novelist, memoirist, essayist, and painter (his paintings and drawings have been exhibited around the world). After years of exile in France, in 1975 he was apprehended during a clandestine trip to South Africa, accused of terrorism for his anti-apartheid activities, and spent seven years in prison. He received the Alan Paton Non-Fiction Award for in 1994 and the Hertzog Prize for poetry in 1999 and 2007.

Перевод с английского, африкаанс, белорусского, грузинского, датского, древнегреческого, иврита, идиш, исландского, испанского, итальянского, квенья, латинского, мальтийского, немецкого, нидерландского, новогреческого, норвежского, польского, португальского, словацкого, старопровансальского, турецкого, украинского, французского, чешского, шведского

Жанр поэтического перевода не знал подобных изданий за всю историю: без Интернета сделать такую книгу было бы невозможно. Успех первой антологии «Век перевода» (2005) лишь раззадорил и поэтов-переводчиков, и читателей: потребовалось издание новой. На этот раз в ней пятьдесят участников, переводы выполнены с двадцати семи языков, появился солидный раздел литературного наследия. По объему книга превосходит предыдущую в полтора раза. В конце размещен указатель переведенных авторов (для обеих книг) — почти 300 имен.

Хочется надеяться, что эта антология не будет последней.