Kate Briggs

Part-essay and part-memoir, This Little Art is a manifesto for the practice of literary translation. Taking her experience translating Roland Barthes' lectures at the College de France as her starting point, Kate Briggs offers a portrait of translation as a compelling, complex, and formative activity. Building on Barthes' late work, Briggs explores the philosophical and aesthetic facets of translation alongside...

In an opulent villa near the English Channel lives a family. The father has a safe, a spanner, a candle, and a maid called Rose. The son has a swing, a croquet set, a raincoat, a car. Some members of the family read crime novels to fall asleep (the father), some instead of sleeping (the son), and some to ease...

Helen and her young baby, Rose, are awake. It is first thing on a new morning. They move, they rest, they communicate; Rose feeds. Thoughts and associations travel far beyond the remit of the front room in their rented flat, which they pace, and which, alive with them, continually becomes new. Their delicate balance is interrupted by the delivery of...