Review | The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas, Dmitry Chen

Studying Latin translation has given me a new appreciation for literary translation. Before this point, I didn't really think about how books are translated from one language to another, but now I'm familiar with the process of deciphering the work on a word-by-word level, producing a rough "translationese" draft, going back over it and clearing it up, working on drawing out the implications of the original text... Literary translators of this world, I salute you!

And yet there really isn't enough translation being done. I have a friend who is doing a degree in German and has to translate a contemporary German novel (which hasn't been translated into English yet) as part of her coursework. She has an enormous choice; there's tons of fantastic untranslated German literature out there, as there is for every country. What makes The Pet Hawk of the House of Abbas interesting on the level of translation is that it wasn't published conventionally; it was crowdfunded by a Kickstarter campaign and published by Russian Life. The trilogy it's part of, the Silk Road Trilogy, was a massive hit in Russia, but no Anglophone publishing house has picked it up. (The same goes for the cult hit Дом, в котором... by Mariam Petrosyan which still isn't available in a language I can read!) Could this represent a new way to get translated fiction out into the world?

Musings about translation aside, this definitely deserved to be translated. It's an excellent book on an unconventional subject: the fall of the Umayyad dynasty and the rise of the Abbasids. It further subverts expectations by not taking place in the centre of the action in Syria/the Levant/Mesopotamia, but in the trading cities of Central Asia: Samarkand, Bukhara, Merv. Peripheral and yet entirely central to these pivotal events, the people of Central Asia - the conquered peoples of Sogdia and Iran - live under uneasy Arab Muslim rule and are experiencing a sea change not only in the dynasty that rules the Islamic empire, but in their own countries and cultures. More people, such as the protagonist's brother, are converting to Islam out of genuine conviction or the chance for an easier life or both. Although the Islamic conquest of Central Asia is a century old by the time this book takes place (749-50 AD), a strong miasma of loss and dislocation permeates this book.

The main character, Nanidat Maniakh, is a wealthy silk merchant from Samarkand who is caught up in murder, mystery, and intrigue when he returns from two years in China and is the victim of an attempted assassination in his own home. He then journeys from Samarkand into Iran to try to uncover the truth, and finds himself part of a great tangle of alliances, plots, and secret organisations. Nanidat did not exist, but most of the people in this book did, and are huge figures in early Islamic history: Abu Muslim, al-Mansur, al-Saffah, Marwan II, and many more. This book relies heavily on real and imagined history, and as such it can be difficult to keep track of everything that goes on. Many reviews on Amazon and Goodreads have highlighted this problem; personally, I had very little difficulty following the narrative, but I did study early Islamic history which gave me a big head start! Reading a little on the Umayyads and Abbasids, as well as some basic Central Asian history, would go a long way in enriching one's enjoyment of this book.

The style of this book is somewhat grandiose and epic, which is suitable to the story and is not particularly distracting or irritating once you get absorbed in it. Unlike some historical fiction, it doesn't try to translate an older experience to modern understandings, and there's very little slangy, casual dialogue. To come back to the translation - I haven't read the original Russian, but Liv Bliss' translation is superb. It's fluid and eloquent, and doesn't have any of the dull, stiff quality that translated prose can sometimes have (God knows most of my translations are overly stiff and unnatural...). I commend both Dmitry Chen for writing this book (if the other two books of the trilogy come out in English I will definitely be buying them!), and Liv Bliss for producing such a distinguished, readable translation.

Why the fuck did I take a translation class

It's been unusually sunny here for April, and today was no exception. Blue skies, bright sun, and I was stuck indoors with a pile of paper. Because I have a Latin translation mock in two weeks time which I haven't prepared for! And I'm going to fail!

When I settle down for a long period of translation, it tends to require a lot of work and space. For this - I was translating Tacitus, which is a big ball of WTF and OH MY GOD KILL ME NOW - I had a notebook to write the English translation in, a printout of the original to annotate, my dictionary, a commentary on the text, and a translation off the web on my laptop.

Not pictured: my laptop, or my crushing sense of despair.

To be honest, I can't do this, mostly because I haven't actually learnt the vocabulary. All the grammar knowledge in the world doesn't, it turns out, help you out if you don't know the words. So I found a vocabulary list of my textbook online - God bless the internet - and have a snazzy blue folder with it all in. I'll have to do my exam more or less blind, but at least I might remember this time what egredior means...