I have temporarily gone off reading to mess around with a new camera I bought, a Canon G9. It comes with a time-lapse feature, enabling it to take a frame automatically every second, or every two seconds. As you can see, this feature will revolutionize the world as we know it; it enabled me to mow my front lawn in 1/60th the normal time. All I can say is, thank God for YouTube.
Wunderbar! No? Well, soon I’ll get back to the big stack o’ books, which includes Fred Vargas’ Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand (did she really need the world “clean” in that sentence?) and Ken Follett’s World Without End, a sort-of sequel to his excellent Pillars of the Earth, published way back in 1990. Also, The Coroner’s Lunch, by Colin Cotterill, which has gotten pretty decent reviews.
Christian rock, Cuban style
” … Fred Vargas’ Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand (did she really need the word `clean’ in that sentence?)”
Blame Shakespeare; the line is his, from Macbeth: “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand?”
In any case, the responsibility may be even further removed from Vargas. None of her English titles, as far as I know, is even an approximate translation of the original, though Wash This Blood … has some relation to the original Sous les vents de Neptune through the Neptune in Shakespeare’s couplet.
It would be interesting to learn who selects the English titles and whether Vargas has a voice in the matter. I think the English titles are evocative in ways that direct translations of the French would not be. Whether those French titles work in the original, I don’t know. I’d have to ask a French Vargas fan.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
“Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home”
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/