Light Breeze in Paradise

Translated by Molly O’Laughlin (English) and Vassili Rapti (Greek). The narrator turns her back on Berlin and the hectic throb of the big city for a summer, in order to recharge and reconnect with herself in the seclusion of a Greek mountain village. For the first little while she passes the time silently on a terrace. A terrace on the hillside, looking out over the great expanse of the ocean. She lives surrounded by insects and other animals that eventually become her friends. She takes time to experience changes in light and transformations of the sea, to take notice of the hidden and inconspicuous things in her environment, the glimmer of what lies concealed. It is only after some days have passed that she is struck by the desire to meet people again, and starts to embark on journeys beyond the cosmos of her terrace. She hitchhikes to the town by the sea each day. Brief encounters along the way, people-watching on the beach, and observations of nature’s own spectacle as it unfolds reveal to her the interrelation of all living beings in nature. Coinciding with the human interactions, dramas play out in the microcosm of insects, beetles, and small animals--like scenes from Greek mythology. This book is all about the detailed narration of the small world reflected in the larger one.

＂Translation is a collaboration, the work of two artists, or a double art,＂ Willis Barnstone claims in The Other Babel. This idea couldn’t be truer in the case of this bilingual translation of Leichter Wind im Paradies by Carmen-Francesca Banciu in English (LIGHT BREEZE IN PARADISE) and Greek (Ελαφρύ Αεράκι στον Παράδεισο). This bilingual translation challenges the limits of the notion of collaboration, as it occurs on multiple levels. More specifically, this is the outcome of a collaboration in the frame of The Advanced Training in Greek Poetry Translation & Performance Workshop, founded and directed by Dr. Vassiliki Rapti at Harvard University in 2014 and run independently since July 2016.

Fiction. Poetry. Bilingual Edition.

Carmen-Francesca Banciu was born in Romanian Lipova and studied religious painting and foreign trade in Bucharest. As a result of being awarded the International Short Story Award of the City of Arnsberg for the story Das strahlende Ghetto (1985), she was banned from publishing her work in Romania. In 1991 she accepted an invitation extended by DAAD Berlin Artists-in-Residence program and came to Germany. She has been living in Berlin since 1992, has been working as a freelance author writing articles for the radio and newspapers as well as leading seminars for creativity and creative writing. Since 2013 she has acted as the co-editor and deputy director of the transnational, interdisciplinary, and multilingual e-magazine Levure Littéraire. Banciu has received numerous literature prizes and scholarships; her work has been translated into many languages.