Unfaithful: A Translator's Memoir
Suzanne Jill Levine has devoted her life to practicing, teaching and writing about the art of literary translation, as well as researching the innovative works and authors she translated. Her translations of critical Latin American authors profoundly impacted and broadened the variety of Hispanic literature known to the English-speaking world, by such writers as Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Severo Sarduy, Clarice Lispector, Silvina Ocampo, Cecilia Vicuña, Jorge Luis Borges, Manuel Puig, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Carlos Fuentes and Julio Cortázar.
In her new book published by Bloomsbury Academic, Unfaithful: A Translator's Memoir, Levine analyzes how her openness to diverse cultures and experiences shaped her career as a translator, taking her from a modest New York background into a whole new literary and linguistic world. Unfaithful recounts Levine’s life among key figures of the Latin American Boom during the 1970s and beyond, offering an intimate view of literary history from the perspective of a woman navigating her profession, personal identity, and the complexities of power in male-dominated intellectual circles.
Levine is Distinguished Research Professor Emerita of Spanish and Portuguese at UC Santa Barbara. Among her many honors over the years, her translation of José Donoso’s The Lizard’s Tale won the 2012 PEN Center USA Translation Award, and her translation of Mundo Cruel by Luis Negrón won a Lambda Literary Award in 2014. Most recently, she was awarded the 2024 PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation in recognition of her lifetime of achievement.