Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia (Cultural Memory in the Present Series) Book

While this short (80 pages) "Reader's Guide" to Henryk's Sienkiewicz' Trilogy, With Fire and Sword, The Deluge and Fire in the Steppe is by no means essential to understanding or wading your way through the combined 3500 pages of Sienkiewicz's paean to Poland and her people, it is useful for understanding the general challenges of good translation and the author's own struggles with his original American translator. My only complaint is that I suspect each of the little sections could really have been expanded into much more deeply revealing essays. As it is, with the exception of The Art of Translation, they read as mere epilogues or perhaps prologues.