Annamarie Jagose

Winner of the Pen Award for Best First Fiction and the NZSA Best First Book Award in 1994 In Translation, at 190 pages only just scrapes into my definition of a novella as between 100-200 pages. It's the debut novel of Annamarie Jagose, who subsequently wrote that marvellous novel Slow Water which won multiple awards in2004 including the 2004 Deutz Medal for Fiction in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards; the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Australian Miles Franklin Literary Award. (See my review here). Alas for her readers, these days Professor Annamarie Jagose is the University of Sydney's Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor and as far as I can tell she has published extensively in academia, but there have been no more novels.

Unfortunately, it may be hard to get hold of In Translation. It seems to be out of print.

Moving backwards and forwards in time and place, In Translation is the story of a love-triangle. A young woman called Helena arrives in Wellington fresh from a scandal involving her high school teacher. Her parents have offloaded her to her aunt , a woman who shares a smell with her house, a mustiness of old carpet and thighs clenched shut for too long. This aunt soon departs for overseas travel, sending Helena postcards of herself, (imprudently) leaving Helena to reconstruct the house to please herself. Helena shoves most of the furniture in the back of the house, sells the rest and then repaints the front rooms and carpets them with sand in the style of a Japanese garden...

The neighbours, Lillian and Navaz, invite her to a party. Lillian is an artist who stages artistic photographs while Navez is a translator. Helena embroiders the story of the scandal which brought her to her dreary work in Wellington as a bank teller, and before long they invite her to move in. And In due course, Helena displaces Lillian as Navaz's lover.

The women fly out to India where they are shown the sights by a guide called Prakash, and then, when they are in London, Navaz abandons Helena.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/11/19/in-translation-by-annamarie-jagose/… (más)

(8.5) This book took a bit of getting into, mainly because of the vast array of characters introduced in the first 40 or so pages. They consisted of the passengers bound for a new life in Australia and New Zealand and the crew of the Prince Regent.
The story follows their three month journey from England and their arrival in Sydney. It is an in depth look at the experiences of sailing around the world in 1836 and also at the relationships formed on board. Not the least is that of English clergyman and a member of the crew. I was not expecting the turn of events and it is a story based on fact. I became caught up in this tale and see it as a worthy winner of the New Zealand Book Award in 2004.… (más)