Again on the Red Hand Books site - Red Hand's founder Richard Eccles
talks about his new edition of W.W. Worster's 1921 translation of Knut Hamsun's
Pan:
It was the first translation of this novel in to English and is in many ways still the most striking. Like Hamsun in Norwegian, Worster writes in a way that is old-fashioned, from a bygone age, in English. I wanted to celebrate those turns of phrase, the spelling conventions, the simplicity of his achievement for a new audience. For me personally, I remember reading the novel late into the night for the first time – the Norwegian original – and being by turns delighted, baffled, intrigued, astounded and utterly enamoured by this visionary writer and his poetic, ‘Danishified’, sparkling and obscure language. So, on a personal level, it feels such a culmination of a long-held dream to contribute to a new edition.
