Edith Grossman (born March 22, 1936) is an award-winning American Spanish-to-English

literary translator. She is one of the most important translators of Latin American fiction in the past
century, translating the works of Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel laureate Gabriel Garca
Mrquez, Mayra Montero, Augusto Monterroso, Jaime Manrique, Julin Ros and of lvaro Mutis.
In a speech delivered at the 2003 PEN Tribute to Gabriel Garca Mrquez, in 2003, she explained her
method:
Fidelity is surely our highest aim, but a translation is not made with tracing paper. It is an act of
critical interpretation. Let me insist on the obvious: Languages trail immense, individual
histories behind them, and no two languages, with all their accretions of tradition and culture,
ever dovetail perfectly. They can be linked by translation, as a photograph can link movement
and stasis, but it is disingenuous to assume that either translation or photography, or acting for
that matter, are representational in any narrow sense of the term. Fidelity is our noble purpose,
but it does not have much, if anything, to do with what is called literal meaning. A translation
can be faithful to tone and intention, to meaning. It can rarely be faithful to words or syntax, for
these are peculiar to specific languages and are not transferable.
[1]

She and Gregory Rabassa were given an unprecedented compliment from Gabriel Garca Mrquez when
he revealed that he prefers reading his own novels in their English translation.
[2]

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Grossman now lives in New York City. She received a B.A. and M.A.
from the University of Pennsylvania, did graduate work at UC Berkeley, and received a Ph.D. from New
York University. Her career in translation began when in 1972 a friend, Jo-Anne Engelbert, asked her to
translate a story for her collection of short works by an early, fairly obscure, Argentine avant-garde
writer, Macedonio Fernndez.
[3]
That experience marked the change in Grossman's professional
trajectory, from one of scholarship and criticism to that of translator. Her translation of Miguel de
Cervantes's Don Quixote, published in 2003, is considered one of the finest translations of the Spanish
masterpiece in the English language, praised by such author/critics as Carlos Fuentes and Harold
Bloom.
[4]
She received the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation in 2006. In 2010, Edith Grossman
was awarded the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute Translation Prize for her 2008 translation of Antonio
Muoz Molina's A Manuscript of Ashes.
Contents
[hide]
1 Selected translations
o 1.1 Miguel de Cervantes
o 1.2 Gabriel Garca Mrquez
o 1.3 Mario Vargas Llosa
o 1.4 Ariel Dorfman
o 1.5 Mayra Montero
o 1.6 lvaro Mutis
o 1.7 Other Works
2 External links
3 References
Selected translations[edit]
Library resources about
Edith Grossman

Resources in your library
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By Edith Grossman
Resources in your library
Resources in other libraries
Miguel de Cervantes[edit]
Don Quixote, Ecco/Harper Collins, 2003.
Gabriel Garca Mrquez[edit]
Love in the Time of Cholera, Knopf, 1988.
The General in His Labyrinth, Penguin, 1991.
Strange Pilgrims: Stories, Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.
Of Love and Other Demons, Knopf, 1995.
News of a Kidnapping, Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
Living to Tell the Tale, Jonathan Cape, 2003.
Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Vintage, 2005.
Mario Vargas Llosa[edit]
Death in the Andes, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996.
The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.
The Feast of the Goat, Picador, 2001.
The Bad Girl, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
In Praise of Reading and Fiction: The Nobel Lecture, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
Dream of the Celt, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.
Ariel Dorfman[edit]
Last Waltz in Santiago and Other Poems of Exile and Disappearance, Penguin, 1988.
In Case of Fire in a Foreign Land: New and Collected Poems from Two Languages, Duke
University Press, 2002
Mayra Montero[edit]
In the Palm of Darkness, HarperCollins, 1997.
The Messenger: A Novel, Harper Perennial, 2000.
The Last Night I Spent With You, HarperCollins, 2000.
The Red of His Shadow, HarperCollins, 2001.
Dancing to "Almendra": A Novel, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
Captain of the Sleepers: A Novel, Picador, 2007.
lvaro Mutis[edit]
The Adventures of Maqroll: Three Novellas, HarperCollins, 1992.
The Adventures of Maqroll: Four Novellas, HarperCollins, 1995.
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, NYRB Classics, 2002.
Other Works[edit]
Jos Luis Llovio-Menndez, Insider My Hidden Life as a Revolutionary in Cuba, Bantam Books,
1988.
Augusto Monterroso, Complete Works & Other Stories, University of Texas Press, 1995.
Julin Ros, Loves That Bind, Knopf, 1998.
Eliseo Alberto, Caracol Beach: A Novel, Vintage, 2001.
Julin Ros, Monstruary, Knopf, 2001.
Pablo Bachelet, Gustavo Cisneros: The Pioneer, Planeta, 2004.
Carmen Laforet, Nada: A Novel, The Modern Library, 2007.
The Golden Age: Poems of the Spanish Renaissance, W.W. Norton, 2007.
Antonio Muoz Molina, A Manuscript of Ashes, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008.
Why Translation Matters, Yale University Press, 2010.
Luis de Gngora, The Solitudes, Penguin, 2011.
Carlos Rojas, The Ingenious Gentleman and Poet Federico Garcia Lorca Ascends to Hell, Yale
University Press, 2013.
External links[edit]
Interview in Guernica Magazine about "Don Quixote"
Edith Grossman's lecture, "Translating Cervantes," delivered at the IDB Cultural Center in
Washington, D.C.
PEN audio interview with Gregory Rabassa and Edith Grossman
[dead link]

Podcast Interview with Paula Shackleton BookBuffet.com
References[edit]
1. Jump up^ Grossman, Edith. "Narrative Transmutations". PEN American Centre.
Retrieved 26 April 2014.
2. Jump up^ Padgett, Tim (October 8, 1990), "Battling over Bolvar's
Soul", Newsweek 116 (15): 70, retrieved 2008-03-17.
3. Jump up^ "Gabriel Garca-Mrquez's Translator Speaks Up for Translations," Huff Post
Books, March 15 2010,http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/15/gabriel-garcia-
marquezs-t_n_499693.html, accessed 19 April 2014.
4. Jump up^ By Carlos Fuentes. "Tilt" New York Times 2 November 2003. Accessed 2010-
08-04
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1936 births
Living people