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I’ve talked before about literary translation, in a sense: In my post about translating poetry. But today there’s something more unique to talk about, having to do with what translating a novel can teach you about yourself and your writing craft.

You might remember that some time ago I wrote a novel called The Storytelling Cat. Indeed, I started writing it about a month after saying “I won’t write another novel”. Never trust a writer, huh? What you might have noticed is that there’s also a Greek version available for download on Home for Fiction.

The vast majority of my readers don’t speak Greek. Still, I decided to translate The Storytelling Cat into Greek – on a whim, almost – for two reasons: i) it completes the third part of my quasi-Greek-trilogyIf you suspect I might translate the other two novels too at some point, you might be right! (supplemented by Apognosis and The Other Side of Dreams); ii) it’s set on the island of Lemnos, and I wanted to experiment with the local idiom in literary form.

What I didn’t expect was that this literary translation – written in less than two weeks – would reveal a ton of things about my creativity, my writing, and who I am as a writer.