‘Nouvelles orientales’ (‘Oriental Tales’) by Marguerite Yourcenar (Review)

Well, August is coming to an end, and Women in Translation Month is almost over, but before I bring the curtain down on another enjoyable month of #WIT reading and posting, there’s just time for one more review, and it’s a rather intriguing one. For the second time this August, I’m leaving the translator behind, but where the previous work was a German affair, this time around, it’s my French that’s being tested. However, when it comes to the content, we’re heading much further east, and there’s even time for a brief encounter with someone *very* familiar to regular blog readers – on y va? ***** Belgian writer Marguerite Yourcenar’s Nouvelles orientales (translated in 1985 by Alberto Manguel as Oriental Tales) is a collection of ten stories, each taking us to what the writer sees as ‘the east’. Perhaps it’s best to clarify from the off that her east is probably not what we’d have in mind, and while there are a few stories set in Asia, the majority play out in the Balkans or the…