The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles
ABOUT
THE BOOK
1939. A winter in Finland so deadly people called it the white hell. The inhabitants of a small town burn their cherished homes and, with them, their history, as they flee invading Russian troops. But one man refuses to leave: a simple woodsman with an extraordinary instinct for survival. Set against a landscape of light and darkness, blazing fires and life-robbing cold, The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles is a tale of cowards and unexpected heroes, of powerful friendships, lives bound together by war, where nothing matters more than finding the path back home.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Don
Bartlett and Don Shaw
Don Bartlett is the translator behind some of the most read and talked about Norwegian books of recent years. From Jo Nesbø’s successful crime books to the titanic introspection of Karl Ove Knausgård and his seminal My Struggle series. Bartlett has worked with some of the biggest names in Norwegian literature and has helped make their books into international best-sellers. We caught up with him at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich’s Dragon Hall to chat with him about his career as a translator, the runaway success of Knausgård’s My Struggle, the recent rise in Norwegian literature and just how difficult it is to translate dialect into English.
Don Shaw is an author and a teacher of Danish. He is the author of the standard Danish–Thai/Thai–Danish dictionaries. He has also worked with Don Bartlett on translating Erland Loe.
Don Bartlett is the translator behind some of the most read and talked about Norwegian books of recent years. From Jo Nesbø’s successful crime books to the titanic introspection of Karl Ove Knausgård and his seminal My Struggle series. Bartlett has worked with some of the biggest names in Norwegian literature and has helped make their books into international best-sellers. We caught up with him at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich’s Dragon Hall to chat with him about his career as a translator, the runaway success of Knausgård’s My Struggle, the recent rise in Norwegian literature and just how difficult it is to translate dialect into English.
Don Shaw is an author and a teacher of Danish. He is the author of the standard Danish–Thai/Thai–Danish dictionaries. He has also worked with Don Bartlett on translating Erland Loe.