The real novelty of the book is that it introduces Ekelöf in a number of very different languages: Arabic, Greek, Kurdish (Kurmanji and Sorani), Persian, Russian, Turkish, and German. Furthermore, these interpretations received their final shape during a workshop at the Swedish Institute in Alexandria, where all the translators met for several days, discussing difficult passages, sharing their experiences. That the daunting task of rendering Ekelöf into a different tongue can be both frustrating and inspiring becomes evident in the concluding essays, which bear testimony to the translators’ efforts.
English is not one of the languages in our book, nor is French. Translations into these languages already abound. Instead, we have focused on the East, this time, thereby wishing to high-light the rich inspiration that Ekelöf derived from his Oriental studies. Our guides in this adventure have been the German translator Klaus-Jűrgen Liedtke and the Swedish arabist Tetz Rooke, (who recently translated Tawfiq al-Hakim’s stageplay Al-Sultan al-Ha’ir into Swedish). Professor Bo Utas, a famous scholar of Persian, shared with us of his deep personal knowledge about Ekelöf.
Reading Gunnar Ekelöf through these different lenses, you will discover new glimpses of his evasive and nomadic soul, and marvel at the beauty of his works.
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