The Translator

Though little noticed, Ward Just's Forgetfulness is certainly one of the best novels published in 2007. The Translator, which appeared sixteen years before it, is also accomplished. Both are topical: 9/11 and Jihadis come into the eloquent meditation on revenge, remembering, and forgetting that is Forgetfulness; The Translator, too is drawn from the pages of the morning news, but the news is old: the Cold War, and the war which gave rise to it, World War II, East Germany as it was. Just's novels may draw on the news, but they never depend upon it as do the newspapers which, once read, can't hit the recycling stack fast enough. In The Translator, along with what now seems ancient history, he gives us enduring meditations on language—his protagonist is a German translator living in Paris—but also on what it means to live one's life away from the land of one's birth. Though I live almost as many miles from the Paris where Just's translator works as I do from the country where I was born Just's description of expatriate life as it is lived by those not on cushy expat packages rings true, and I am certain it will for others far from places that used to be home. One of the blurbers for The Translator notes that "Ward Just just keeps getting better." The Translator is a good novel; Forgetfulness is a masterpiece. The blurber's assertion remains true.