Layers upon Layers: Short stories

In the Author’s Words:

Translating a literary world is rewriting it, and that is a tormenting job. But still you don’t want to ask any other person to do it. It’s yours, and you don’t give it away, even to a friend. You may listen to him, and after that, you’ll do it the way you feel is right for you.

The translation of the Romanian book ‘Alb și Negru, la voia destinului’ marks its own rebirth into another form of expres­sion, in the book ‘Layers upon Layers’; as the saying goes, they are brothers, but siblings, not twins.

This book follows the same narrative as the first one, and while it keeps the spirit of the original work, it has its own soul manifesting through a series of subsequent changes while remaining obedient to the writer’s perception of the reality the characters lived in.

And even though the book ‘Layers upon Layers’ brings out the same memories, sounds, colours, imagines and facts as the Romanian version, it still sounds and feels differently.

That’s the way I see this new book, as an interpretation, not a translation; and I love it.

Hopefully, you love it too.

Smaranda Kafka