Borders are real, but some fearless women will keep on experimenting in the borderlands.
Translator’s Acknowledgements
It may not take a village to produce a novel translation, but it often involves more people than readers imagine, and I owe thanks to several who helped on the journey (complete with a lost red shoe) that brought The Wandering into print. Most of my work on the translation occurred in my living room or university office in Wellington, but the final edits took place in Indonesia’s West Sulawesi province, in Mamasa, a town with deep traditional knowledge of wandering ghosts. My thanks to its residents, especially the family of Pak Muhammad Husein, for a congenial stay.
Tiffany Tsao deserves special mention for publishing the excerpt ‘Visiting a Haunted House’ in Asymptote and first bringing Intan Paramaditha’s work to the attention of Brow Books. Tiffany also brought her editing wizardry to bear on a late draft of The Wandering and contributed numerous suggestions that have made the final version a far better text than it would be otherwise. Virtually every page profits from her magical touch.
My thanks go to the helpful staff at Harvill Secker, in particular editor Ellie Steel; I much appreciate Katherine Fry’s contribution as well. Publication of The Wandering has further benefitted from a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant from PEN America and PEN Translates in the UK.
A further tip of the hat to John McGlynn who first introduced me to Intan and her work several years ago and has done much to help us and to promote Indonesian literature generally. The team at Brow Books – most notably Elizabeth Bryer – gave us wonderful support in the initial production of the story collection Apple and Knife. I also thank my colleagues from the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation at Victoria University of Wellington, and my fellow translators of Korean literature Sora Kim-Russell and Jenny Wang Medina for support. And love and appreciation to Mi Young and Sonia, always.
Above all, though, my gratitude to Intan Paramaditha, not only for creating a brilliant source text that was a joy to engage with throughout, but for being eternally delightful to work with. Intan and I have now collaborated for almost a decade in bringing her work from one linguistic context to another. I use the word collaborate purposefully, for our process differs from my other translation projects. Her own outstanding English sensibilities have improved the final text substantially, and she in turn has allowed me generous leeway to shape the translation creatively, while also attending closely to the original. Our shared goal has been to ensure that The Wandering lives and breathes on its own in English.
I have sought to capture insofar as possible the experience of reading the source text: fluid, witty, sarcastic, insightful and just downright fun, with its sly references to material ranging from pop culture touchstones to Indonesian legends. Inspired by the liberal use of song lyrics in the original, I developed their use in the translation. Ironically, many lyrics quoted in the original had to be dropped because of copyright issues, but elsewhere allusions made possible by the English context activate new resonances for The Wandering, a strategy that met with Intan’s enthusiastic consent, and hopefully will with you too, dear reader. May you enjoy the journey(s) you choose through the text.
THE LEOPARD
The leopard is one of Harvill’s historic colophons and an imprimatur of the highest quality literature from around the world.
When The Harvill Press was founded in 1946 by former Foreign Office colleagues Manya Harari and Marjorie Villiers (hence Har-vill), it was with the express intention of rebuilding cultural bridges after the Second World War. As their first catalogue set out: ‘The editors believe that by producing translations of important books they are helping to overcome the barriers, which at present are still big, to close interchange of ideas between people who are divided by frontiers.’ The press went on to publish from many different languages, with highlights including Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard, Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, José Saramago’s Blindness, W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, Henning Mankell’s Faceless Killers and Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood.
In 2005 The Harvill Press joined with Secker & Warburg, a publisher with its own illustrious history of publishing international writers. In 2020, Harvill Secker reintroduced the leopard to launch a new translated series celebrating some of the finest and most exciting voices of the twenty-first century.
Ismail Kadare: The Doll
trans. John Hodgson
Intan Paramaditha: The Wandering
trans. Stephen J. Epstein
Dima Wannous: The Frightened Ones
trans. Elisabeth Jaquette
Pauline Delabroy-Allard: All About Sarah
trans. Adriana Hunter
Jonas Hassen Khemiri: The Family Clause
trans. Alice Menzies
Paolo Cognetti: Without Ever Reaching the Summit
trans. Stash Luczkiw
Karl Ove Knausgaard: In the Land of the Cyclops
trans. Martin Aitken
Urs Faes: The Twelve Nights
trans. Jamie Lee Searle
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: The Perfect Nine,
trans. the author
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Copyright © Intan Paramaditha 2017
English translation copyright © Stephen J. Epstein 2020
Intan Paramaditha has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Harvill Secker in 2020
First published with the title Gentayangan: Pilih sendiri petualangan sepatu merahmu in Indonesia by Gramedia Pustaka Utama in 2017
penguin.co.uk/vintage
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PEN’s ‘PEN Translates’ programme, supported by Arts Council England. English PEN exists to promote literature and our understanding of it, to uphold writers’ freedoms around the world, to campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and to promote the friendly co-operation of writers and the free exchange of ideas. www.englishpen.org
Excerpts from Franz Xaver Kroetz’s commentary on his play Request Concert, translated by Peter Sander; and Anne Sexton’s ‘The Red Shoes’ from The Complete Poems, copyright © Linda Gray Sexton and Loring Conant, Jr. 1981.
ISBN 9781473562394
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