Week 28 (2026) – Morrison, Coetzee and Dimópulos

In the week in which June crossed over into July, I read two short books, totaling about 220 pages in all. I’m in the midst of a run of books on the subject of translation, which will probably last for four or five titles, and I’m slowly working my way through the oeuvre of Toni Morrison. J.M. Coetzee and Mariana Dimópulos. Speaking in Tongues. Liveright, 2025. Speaking in Tongues is posed as a dialogue between the Nobel-winning writer Coetzee and the distinguished Argentine writer and translator Dimópulos. They define the central issue of the book as “the problem of transferring literary and nonliterary content from one language to another.” Both come from multilingual families, so it seemed natural that they first discuss the nature of the “mother tongue” and the different outcomes that often result from growing up monolingual versus multilingual. Then they turn to the fascinating questions of why so many languages have a gender system, why English evolved away from a gender system,…