The Translator’s Heart in Winter

A love story and an adventure, The Heart in Winter is a unique novel, presenting the translator with fantastic but demanding material. Kevin Barry and Michaela Buruiană will discuss how to transport the readers of the English and Romanian editions to Butte, Montana in 1891, a space and time so far from their own. What are the linguistic choices that allow a novel to be simultaneously epic, gothic and comic?

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Kevin Barry is the author of four novels, most recently The Heart in Winter, and three short story collections, including, That Old Country Music. His awards include The Impac Dublin Literary Award, The Goldsmiths Prize, The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, The EU Literature Prize and The Sunday Times Short Story Prize. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. Kevin also works as a screenwriter and a playwright. His most recent play is The Cave which was staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in summer 2025. His stories and essays regularly appear in The New Yorker, Harpers, Granta and elsewhere. He co-edits and publishes Winter Papers, Ireland's annual anthology for the arts. He is a member of Aosdána. Originally from Limerick city, Kevin lives in County Sligo.

Mihaela Buruiană is a literary translator and writer. She has translated over 60 books from English and French, mostly literary fiction, but also children’s literature and non-fiction. Mihaela has translated a number of contemporary Irish writers, Sally Rooney (Normal People, Beautiful World, Where Are You), Naoise Dolan (Exciting Times, The Happy Couple), Maggie O’Farrell (Hamnet, I Am, I Am, I Am, and her children’s books Where Snow Angels Go, When the Stammer Came to Stay, and The Boy Who Lost His Spark), Ferdia Lennon (Glorious Exploits, Kevin Barry (Night Boat to Tangier), and she is currently working on The Heart in Winter). Mihaela has published a collection of short stories (Pe cine iubești mai mult?/Whom Do You Love More? – n’autor an imprint of Nemira Publishing House, 2023). She has recently completed her first novel.

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