David Bellos Popular Books

David Bellos Biography & Facts

David Bellos (born 1945) is a British academic, translator and biographer. He is the Meredith Howland Pyne professor of French and comparative literature at Princeton University in the United States, and was director of its translation and intercultural communication programme from 2007 to 2019. Biography Bellos has written literary biographies of Romain Gary and Georges Perec, and has published work on Honoré de Balzac; his The Novel of the Century relates the writing of Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. He has also written a biography of the filmmaker Jacques Tati, Jacques Tati: His Life and Art, and appeared in The Magnificent Tati, a documentary about him. Other works include an introduction to translation studies, Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and The Meaning of Everything (2011) and Who Owns This Sentence. A History of Copyrights and Wrongs, written with Alexandre Montagu and published in 2024. He has translated much of the work of Perec into English, including the novel Life: A User's Manual. He won the first Man Booker International Prize for translation in 2005 for his translations of works by Albanian author Ismail Kadare, despite not speaking Albanian. His translations were done from previous French translations. He is the father of writer and broadcaster Alex Bellos. Awards and honours 1988 French-American Foundation prize for translation 1994 Prix Goncourt de la Biographie 2005 Man Booker International Prize, for translation of works by Ismail Kadare 2015 Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres 2017 American Library in Paris Book Award winner for The Novel of the Century 2019 Howard T. Berhman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities, Princeton University Publications Translations Georges Perec: Life A User's Manual, 1987 (French-American Foundation's translation prize); new edition, 2008 Georges Perec: W, or the Memory of Childhood, 1988 Georges Perec: Things: A Story of the Sixties, 1990 Georges Perec: 53 Days, 1992 Ismail Kadare: The Pyramid, 1995 Ismail Kadare:The File on H, 1996 Georges Ifrah: A Universal History of Numbers, 2000 Ismail Kadare: Spring Flowers, Spring Frost, 2001 Fred Vargas: Have Mercy On Us All, 2003 Fred Vargas: Seeking Whom He May Devour, 2004 Ismail Kadare: The Successor, 2005 Ismail Kadare: Agamemnon's Daughter, 2006 Ismail Kadare: The Siege, 2008 Hélène Berr: Journal, 2008 Georges Perec: Thoughts of Sorts, 2009 Romain Gary: Hocus Bogus, 2010 Georges Perec: The Art and Craft of Approaching Your Head of Department to Submit a Request for a Raise, 2011 Georges Simenon: Pietr the Latvian, 2013 Daniel Anselme: On Leave, 2014 Ismail Kadare: Twilight of the Eastern Gods, 2014 Georges Perec: Portrait of a Man, 2014 (UK), 2015 (USA) Georges Perec: I Remember, 2014 (USA) (with Philip Terry) Paul Fournel, Dear Reader, 2014 (UK) Frédéric Dard, Bird in a Cage2016 (UK) Delphine Horvilleur, Anti-Semitism Revisited, 2021 (UK) Maxime Rovere, How To Deal With Idiorts (and stop being one yourself), 2021 (UK) Biographies Georges Perec. A Life in Words, 1993. (Prix Goncourt de la biographie). French edition, 1994. Japanese edition, 2014. Hebrew edition, 2016. New edition in French, 2022; German translation, 2023; Turkish and Chinese translations in progress. Jacques Tati: His Life and Art, 1999. French edition, 2002; Italian edition, 2022. German edition forthcoming in 2024 Romain Gary. A Tall Story, Harvill Secker, November 2010 Other books Balzac Criticism in France, 1850–1900. The Making of a Reputation. Oxford, 1976 La Cousine Bette. A Critical Guide. London, 1981 Old Goriot (Landmarks of World Literature). Cambridge, 1987. Hebrew translation, Tek Aviv, 1990. Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything. London and New York, 2011. Paperback edition, 2012.French translation by Daniel Loayza as Le poisson & le bananier, Flammarion, 2012, republished in 2017 as La Traduction dans tous ses états. Spanish translation by Vicente Campos, as Un Pez en la higuera. Ariel, 2012. German translation by Silvia Morawetz as Was macht der Fisch in meinem Ohr?, Eichborn, 2013. Russian translation by Natalia Shahova, Azbuka, 2019. Traditional Chinese translation, Rye Field, Taipei, 2019. Also translated into Simplified Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Persian. The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables. London and New York, 2017. Korean edition, 2018. Japanese edition, 2018. Chinese edition, 2019 References External links David Bellos: Linguistic Diversity is Language on YouTube "I, Translator" by David Bellos, The New York Times (20 March 2010) Review of Georges Perec: A Life in Words by Alice Kaplan Review by Michael Hoffmann of Is That a Fish in Your Ear?, The Guardian (22 September 2011) "Babbling Barbarians: How Translators Keep Us Civilized: A conversation with David Bellos" Ideas Roadshow, 2013. Discover the David Bellos popular books. Find the top 100 most popular David Bellos books.