“I let these years slip through my fingers like a stream of dry, glinting sand.”
Eva
is a coming-of-age story told in fluid, stream-of-consciousness prose that takes readers through the eponymous main character’s orthodox Jewish girlhood to marriage to, finally, independence and sexual freedom. Originally published in 1927 by Dutch writer Carry van Bruggen
(
1881-1932), the experimental novel expresses Eva’s dawning sense of self and expanding subjectivity. Burdened all of her life by feelings of shame, Eva overcomes this legacy of her upbringing at the end of the novel and declares that it is “bodily desire that makes love acceptable.” For the first time, Jane Fenoulhet has made this important, modernist novel accessible to English-language readers, her deft translation capturing the rich expressiveness of van Bruggen’s original Dutch. In insightful accompanying commentary, Fenoulhet describes how, just as the novel depicts the becoming of both Eva and her creator, so too can the translation be seen as the translator’s own becoming. Fenoulhet also describes the challenges of translating van Bruggen’s dynamic, intense narrative, which necessitated deep personal engagement with the novel.