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“Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Irish freedom.” So says Michael Fassbender’s character, Arló Ó Cairealláin, in the self-titled, “mostly true” biopic of Irish-language hip-hop trio, Kneecap. The film follows the three childhood friends, who were inspired to start rapping after meeting the local music teacher who acted as their Irish-language translator during a police interrogation.
Raucous hijinks follow, but so too do affecting explorations of the lives of the disenfranchised ceasefire generation. One band member is having a relationship with a Protestant girl – but keeping it well under wraps. Another has a tricky relationship with his father (Fassbender), a former IRA member, who faked his own death to avoid prison. And all three experience run-ins with the police, who treat them with increasing sadism.
The band played in my own city, Leeds, last year. An event my partner described (in breathless admiration) as chaotic, energising and “sweaty”. For our reviewer, an expert in Irish-language music, the film is a treat. Even if you haven’t heard Kneecap’s music before, with their energetic beats and catchy lyrics, she says “there is no doubt that you will be bopping to [it] throughout the film”.
August is women in translation month, and we’ve been publishing a series of stories to celebrate. The latest is a review of Spontaneous Acts by Japanese writer Yoko Tawada. The novel follows literary researcher Patrik, who is struggling to rejoin the world after the COVID lockdowns and finds himself consumed by constant agitation and loneliness. Our reviewer admires the way Tawada “captures the dreamlike half-life of living entirely in memories and in literature” in this beautiful “ode to connection and writing”.
Marking the month had the arts team discussing our current favourite works in translation. For me, it’s What I’d Rather Not Think About by Jente Posthuma, which explores what happens when one half of a pair of twins no longer wants to live. For my colleague Naomi, it’s The Vegetarian by Han Kang – a haunting rumination on our faltering attempts to understand the lives of others.
Do you have a favourite translated novel? We’d love to hear from you – let us know in the comments below.
One of the perks of working in arts and culture is advanced access to new releases before they hit the shelves. That’s how I came to read the final instalment of Pat Barker’s Women of Troy trilogy, The Voyage Home, ahead of its publication yesterday. Holding back on discussing it has been a challenge – to my mind it’s the perfect ending to the trilogy that began with The Silence of the Girls in 2018.
In its retelling of Homer’s Iliad from the perspective of the women, Barker’s trilogy has not only shed a new light on the Trojan war, but also questioned how we tell stories about the past, and how anger from the stories that don’t get told embeds itself into our society. Our reviewer, Emily Hauser (who has also written novels retelling the work of Homer), found the final instalment a harrowing read, but a necessary one, that insists unrelentingly on the hideousness of war.
One book I haven’t been able to get my hands on (try as I might) is the new Sally Rooney novel. Despite being seen in the hands of actor Sarah Jessica Parker and several “bookfluencers”, a hard copy of Intermezzo still eludes me.
I’m grateful, therefore, to Orlaith Darling of Trinity College Dublin, who has put together this helpful guide to five other Irish writers that fans of Rooney can enjoy while they wait for Intermezzo to hit shelves on September 24. My favourite Rooney novel is Beautiful World, Where Are You? So I plan to get stuck into We Were Young by Niamh Campbell, which Darling says shares its contemplation of the political utility of art.
My best friend is a huge K-pop fan. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve sat on her sofa as she plays me song after song by superhumanly synchronised boy and girl bands. Much as I am astounded by the talent, I can’t quite get into the genre the way she has. Something about the perfection puts me off. I like my musicians a little dog-eared and out of tune. So, I can well admire the challenge the contestants of the new BBC reality show Made in Korea have signed on for.
As expert in Korean studies Sarah Son explains, the series follows a group of young British men as they go through the same brutal training expected from Korea’s elite musicians. For acts like global superstars BTS or Blackpink, true K-pop success is all-consuming and unforgiving. And Made in Korea makes no secret of the industry’s “unwavering commitment to excellence”.
