The Spanish version of The summer when my mother’s
\neyes were green, a novel by Tatiana Tibuleac, brought out by the Impedimenta
\nPublishers in 2019, scooped the Casino de Santiago European Novel Award.
\nSpanish academic and writer Marian Ochoa de Eribe is the translator of the
\nnovel. Works by Eric Vuillard, Paolo Giordano and Pedro Feijo have also been
\nincluded on the Award’s shortlist. Previously, recipients of the Casino de
\nSantiago European Novel Award were Jonathan Coe, Kazuo Ishiguro, John
\nLanchester and Emmanuel Carr\u00e8re. The summer when my mother’s eyes were green
\nis the debut novel of Tatiana \u021a\u00eebuleac, a former journalist in Chisinau and a
\ncurrent Paris resident. The Spanish version of the novel also scooped the C\u00e1lamo
\nAward in 2019, a prize offered by the C\u00e1lamo bookshop in Zaragoza. Tatiana
\nTibuleac’s debut novel, its Romanian version, was launched in 2016. The novel
\nfocuses on the emotional relationship a mother has with her son. In 2019,
\nTatiana Tibuleac’s novel, The Glass garden, brought out by the Cartier
\nPublishers in Chisinau in 2018, won the European Union’s Award for Literature.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We sat down and spoke to the translator of \u00ab The
\nsummer when my mother’s eyes were green \u00bb, Marian Ochoa de Eribe. Here she
\nis, giving us details on the history behind the translation, on how the novel
\nwas received in the Hispanic space.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Marian Ochoa de Eribe:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00ab The story of the
\ntranslation is absolutely wonderful. At the 2018 edition of the Madrid
\nBookfair, Romania was the guest country and I chaired the awarding ceremony,
\nwith Mircea Cartarescu attending. The ceremony was very beautiful. While the
\nfair was still on, I ran into a newspaper that published an extensive article
\nabout present-day Romanian literature and I saw a couple of photos there. Save
\nfor two writers, I was familiar with all the authors that were presented in
\nthat publication. Tatiana Tibuleac was one of the authors that were presented
\nin the article, I remember myself taking a picture of the article and sending
\nit to a friend of mine at the University in Constanta, Dr Eta Hrubaru. I asked her if she knew anything at all about
\nTatiana Tibuleac, she replied she was in possession of Tatiana Tibuleac’s
\nnovel, \u00abThe Summer when My Mother’s Eyes were Green\u00bb. So in early July, when I
\narrived in Constanta, the first thing I did was to read the novel, and the
\nreading was extremely rewarding. I spoke about that on a number of occasions
\nduring the meetings I had with the press and with readers in Spain, telling
\nthem I finished reading the novel on the beach in Mamaia, and that as soon as I
\ngot home I started my PC, searching for a contact of Tatiana Tibuleac. I wrote
\na message and I let her know I was still under the spell of the book and I
\nwould like to translate it, I called Enrique Redel, the founder of the Impedimenta
\npublishers. I told him I discovered a woman writer and I was going to translate
\nThe Summer when my mother’s eyes were green whether he was going to publish it
\nor not. Enrique trusted me, and the outcome of
\nthat is this wonderful blazing trail of the book and this wonderful
\ntrail Tatiana Tibuleac had in the Hispanic world. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Marian Ochoa de Eribe discovered Romanian literature
\nin the 1990s when she was teaching comparative literature with Ovidius
\nUniversity in Constanta. The first Romanian books she translated into Spanish
\nwere Panait Istrati’s Kyra Kyralina and Mo\u0219 Anghel,\/Old man Anghel, as well as
\nMircea Eliade’s The Short-sighted Adolescent’s Novel. Since 2009, Marian Ochoa de Eribe has been translating the
\nworks of Mircea C\u0103rt\u0103rescu, at the suggestion of Enrique Redel. The Impedimenta
\nPublishers between 2010 and 2013 brought out Marian Ochoa de Eribe’s versions
\nof Mircea Cartarescu’s The Roulette Player, Travesty, Nostalgia and Beautiful
\nStrangers. The Spanish version of Cartarescu’s novel, Solenoid, was published in 2017
\nand with that, Mircea Cartarescu compelled recognition in the Spanish cultural
\nspace, winning the prestigious Premio Formentor de las Letras in 2018.
\nThe Romanian was the recipient of one of the world’s most prestigious lifetime
\nachievement literary awards, meant to give an impetus to the thoroughgoing
\ntransformation of human consciousness. \u00bb <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Marian Ochoa de Eribe is briefing us up on the works of Mircea C\u0103rt\u0103rescu and Tatiana \u021a\u00eebuleac, whose
\nversions in Spanish she has recently completed. <\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Marian Ochoa de Eribe:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00abActually, I have never
\nceased to translate from Mircea Cartarescu, well…on and off, as of late I have
\nbeen working on the Poetry Anthology which is due in autumn this year. To be
\nhonest with you, after I translated The Body, which is the second part of the Blinding
\ntrilogy, a very difficult book, what I needed was a little window, a little
\nbreak, so that I could feel for some different stuff in the other drawers of my
\nmind. But I won’t fail to say that Tatiana Tibuleac’s novel, The Glass Garden,
\nwas a difficult book, an extremely complex one, language-wise. Now, coming back
\nto your question, it seems I cannot possibly take Mircea Cartarescu off my mind, it’s
\nas if I had perpetually lived in his world and in his obsessions.\u00bb<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Impedimenta publishers has recently announced Marian
\nOchoa de Eribe’s Spanish version of Tatiana Tibuleac’s second novel, The Glass
\nGarden, is available in bookshops. Marian Ochoa de Eribe’s Spanish version of
\nanother Romanian novel is due out from Acantilado publishers in 2021, Gabriela
\nAdamesteanu’s novel, Temporariness.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Award-winning author Tatiana Tibuleac<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":163197,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44685],"tags":[42903,34505,29251,35420,45062],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-163196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-of-culture","tag-achievement","tag-award","tag-chisinau","tag-novel","tag-translation"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n