Translation State, by Ann Leckie, and Canción, by Eduardo Halfon

After finishing two books in the space of a week (which, to be clear, it took me a lot longer than a week to read... one of them I had been reading for months!), I felt suddenly freed and like I could dive into anything. This coincided with the New York Times publishing its much discussed (for approximately 3 days) list of 100 best books of the 21st century [to date]*, so I had that list fresh in my mind – particularly the handful of books from the list that I owned but had not read. Two weeks ago now, I was headed off to eastern Long Island for a weekend, facing a weekend of relaxation with a long train ride at the end of it. The perfect time, I thought, to dive into something long and serious. I selected The Line of Beauty. I spent a pleasant afternoon reading The Line of Beauty in the garden of the house where I was staying. The other parts of the weekend flew by. I was tired by the time I got on my 3-hour train home, and minutes after I boarded I saw the news that President Biden had decided not to seek reelection after all. (I can hardly believe that was just two weeks ago today.) Of course, I spent the entire train trip on social media and group texts rather than reading my book. 36 hours later, I left for Toronto. I brought The Line of Beauty with me, and didn't read at all during the 5 days I was there. They were long days of attending a work conference, followed by long days of visiting friends. There was never enough sleep. And then I flew home again. I got home last Sunday and amazingly managed to motivate myself to work out and then there were still hours left in the day and I thought I should get back to reading – keep up the momentum I'd built before my travels. I read a few pages of The Line of Beauty, but it was slow and I wanted fast and I had just gotten a copy of Translation State, so I changed my plans and started it. 48 hours later I finished it. 

I wrote this long explanation of how I came to be reading Translation State perhaps to avoid having to write much about it at all. As with every Leckie book I've read, I feel unable or somehow unqualified to speak to it at any length. I enjoyed it. I realized after finishing it that there were links to the Ancillary books that I hadn't totally picked up on. Maybe I need to go back to those. Maybe if I did, I'd have more to say.

After finishing Translation State I did, of course, briefly think I'd return to The Line of Beauty, but a few pages in, I decided to set it down again and embark on another book I'd recently acquired (I took advantage of bookshop.org's free shipping day): Eduardo Halfon's Canción. I didn't even know Halfon had a new (if 2022 counts as new) book out. I searched his name on a whim and saw there was one I hadn't read, so I ordered it. This book centers on the story of Halfon's Lebanese grandfather, who emigrated to Guatemala sometime before WWII and who was kidnapped there in 1967 during the Civil War. I always enjoy the meandering way Halfon tells stories, where the significance of various characters or anecdotes only becomes clear later (if it becomes clear). Reading Canción, I was again fascinated by the unexpected world Halfon's books open up. Just his own family history begins to dismantle things that I thought I knew or unconsciously assumed about Guatemala, about interwar immigration, about – in this case – Lebanon, which I discovered I knew even less about that I thought I did. 

I first read Halfon because he was Guatemalan and I hadn't read any books from Guatemala, but reading his books has opened my understanding about other parts of the world as well. In the very first pages of Canción, Halfon writes,

I had come to Japan to participate in a Lebanese writers' conference. After receiving the invitation a few weeks earlier, and after reading it and rereading it until I was sure it wasn't a mistake or a joke, I'd opened the closet to find my Lebanese disguise – among my many disguises – inherited from my paternal grandfather, born in Beirut. I'd never been to Japan before. And I had never been asked to be a Lebanese writer. A Jewish writer, yes. A Guatemalan writer, obviously. A Latin American writer, of course. A Central American writer, less and less. A U.S. writer, more and more. A Spanish writer, when traveling on that passport was desirable. A Polish writer, on one occasion, at a Barcelona bookstore that insisted – insists – on shelving my books in the Polish literature section. A French writer, since I lived for a time in Paris and some people assume I'm still there. 

Is this a distillation of the absurdity of my world books project? It could be. But I've known it was flawed from the start and if I hadn't "needed" to read a Guatemalan writer, I might never have found my way to Halfon. Maybe this is the whole reason for the project.

*I could nitpick a few things about this list, but I'll limit myself to two: (1) It was really lacking in literature in translation, and (2) I find it weird that it included (at number 71) The Copenhagen Trilogy, a collection of books that were written in the 1960s/70s. Even the translations of the first two books in the trilogy date to the 1980s. This is not a 21st century book!