Marian Schwartz » Interviews

Behind the Line

mbs — Tue, 25 May 2010 15:47:55 +0000

Thanks to Kyle Semmel of the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, who has posted an interview with me about Russian literature, Olga Slavnikova’s 2017, and how I translate.

Lizok’s Bookshelf Reviews Olga Slavnikova’s 2017

mbs — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:29:04 +0000

Lizok’s Bookshelf (written by Lisa Hayden Espenschade) has posted an interview with me about some recent translations of mine and even a cheerful thought on the future of foreign literature publishing in this country.

Creating translations that are faithful, not literal

mbs — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 19:46:21 +0000

On the heels of the publication of Olga Slavnikova’s 2017 (Overlook) and the paperback edition of Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov (Yale), an interview with me in the Boston Globe.

Open Letter Posts Video of Fall Roundtable

mbs — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:07:53 +0000

Last fall, as part of its Reading the World Conversation Series, Open Letter Books invited me to be part of this Translators Roundtable, which brought together four literary translators—who work in a variety of languages and genres—to discuss their experiences. The conversation explored a number of different topics, from how they got started as translators, to the obstacles of retranslating classic works, to translating film scripts during the writers’ strike, etc.

Also taking part were translators Michael Emmerich (translating from Japanese), Edward Gauvin (French), and Martha Tennent (Spanish and Catalan).

To see the video of the event, click here.

Leonard Lopate Interview on WNYC

mbs — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:35:00 +0000

Leonard Lopate interviewed me this summer about my new translation of Yuri Olesha’s 1927 novel Envy for his “Underappreciated” series:

“When it was published in 1927, Yuri Olesha’s Envy was celebrated by the Soviet establishment as a condemnation of the bourgeois psyche. But two years later Olesha came under suspicion when Communist officials realized that the novel was a satire. Marian Schwartz, who translated Envy for the New York Review Books imprint, tells us why Olesha’s forgotten masterpiece deserves a second look.”

Listen to the podcast here.

Interview with Bill Marx on PRI’s The World

mbs — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:19:00 +0000

Listen to my interview with Bill Marx, broadcast on August 15, 2008, for his World Books series on PRI’s The World, about making the "first complete and accurate translation" of White Guard, Mikhail Bulgakov’s first novel. An epic story of the Russian civil war, the book anticipates Bulgakov’s masterpiece, The Master and Margarita.