Natasha Wimmer
Encyclopedia
Natasha Wimmer is an American translator best known for her translations of Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño
's 2666 and The Savage Detectives
from Spanish into English.
Wimmer learned Spanish in Spain, where she spent four years growing up. She studied Spanish literature at Harvard. After graduating her first job was at Farrar, Straus & Giroux from 1996 to 1999 as an assistant and then managing editor. While there her first translation was Dirty Havana Trilogy by the Cuban novelist Pedro Juan Gutiérrez
.
She then worked at Publishers Weekly
, before the demands on working on Bolaño's books became full-time. "My reason for going into publishing in the first place was that I had decided in college that I would never be a fiction writer, but I knew I wanted to be as close to books as I could. Publishing was one way, and translating turned out to be a better way for me."
She has also translated Nobel Prize
-winner Mario Vargas Llosa
's The Language of Passion, The Way to Paradise
, and Letters to a Young Novelist.
Roberto Bolaño
Roberto Bolaño Ávalos was a Chilean novelist and poet. In 1999 he won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize for his novel Los detectives salvajes , and in 2008 he was posthumously awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for his novel 2666, which was described by board member Marcela Valdes...
's 2666 and The Savage Detectives
The Savage Detectives
The Savage Detectives is an award-winning novel published by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño in 1998. Natasha Wimmer's English translation was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007...
from Spanish into English.
Wimmer learned Spanish in Spain, where she spent four years growing up. She studied Spanish literature at Harvard. After graduating her first job was at Farrar, Straus & Giroux from 1996 to 1999 as an assistant and then managing editor. While there her first translation was Dirty Havana Trilogy by the Cuban novelist Pedro Juan Gutiérrez
Pedro Juan Gutiérrez
Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, born in 1950 , is a Cuban novelist.-History:Gutiérrez grew up in Pinar del Río and began to work selling ice cream and newspapers when he was eleven years old. He was a soldier, swimming and kayak instructor, agricultural worker, technician in construction, technical designer,...
.
She then worked at Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
, before the demands on working on Bolaño's books became full-time. "My reason for going into publishing in the first place was that I had decided in college that I would never be a fiction writer, but I knew I wanted to be as close to books as I could. Publishing was one way, and translating turned out to be a better way for me."
She has also translated Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
-winner Mario Vargas Llosa
Mario Vargas Llosa
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation...
's The Language of Passion, The Way to Paradise
The Way to Paradise
The Way to Paradise is a novel published by Mario Vargas Llosa in 2003.The novel is a historical double biography of Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin and his grandmother Flora Tristan, one of the founders of feminism. The book is divided into 11 chapters, each alternating narratives of...
, and Letters to a Young Novelist.