International Booker interview: How Sarah Timmer Harvey translated ‘What I’d Rather Not Think About’

Two questions lie at the heart of Jente Posthuma’s deceptively simple Dutch novel What I’d Rather Not Think About. What if one-half of a pair of twins no longer wants to live? What if the other can’t live without them? The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood and tells of their adult lives: how her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely. Praising the author, the prize jury remarked, “[Posthuma] skilfully inflects tragedy with unexpected humour and provides a multifaceted look at the search for meaning in the aftermath of suicide.”

Reconstruction, Timmer Harvey’s translation of stories written by the Dutch-Surinamese writer Karin Amatmoekrim, was published by Strangers Press in 2020 as part of their Verzet! Series, and their translation of Thistle by Nadia de Vries will be published by The New Menard Press in 2024. Timmer Harvey’s own Dutch-language poetry and prose translations have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation, Asymptote, Gulf Coast Journal, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. Born in Australia, she lived and worked in the Netherlands for 14 years before moving to New York City in 2013.

The translator spoke about learning...

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