I left work early to go meet a shining queen. She incidentally played an accidental role in me finding Flipkart, so this does merit a mention. In other news, she plans to leave for Korea in a month or so and was asking me if I could get her a Lonely Planet Korea, used or second hand.
Hmm, conflict of interest.
So we decided to take a stroll around and try hunting it down. We passed a couple of streetside sellers, none of them with anything as eclectic as an LP Korea - well, one guy did have a second-hand Lonely Planet South India in French - which made us stop for a bit. Turned out he also had a bunch of books in foreign languages, all at the going rate of INR25 per book / 5 for 99 . . . here’s the five I picked:
FRENCH
Les Annees Saddam
Les Années Saddam - Saman Abdul Majid
The author, Saman Abdul Majid was Saddam Hussain’s personal translator (English and French) for over 15 years. He was thus privy to most conversations Saddam had with Diplomats and reporters alike. In “The Saddam Years”, names like Jean-Marie Le Pen and Dan Rather get dropped with reckless abandon. The dust having settled, Mr. Majid is now with Al-Jazeera Qatar.
Shameless Plug 1: Flipkart has one in Spanish - El Verdadero Sadam, and I’m not sure if it’s the same one. The book’s also out of stock, which means I’ll never find out.
L'obsession anti-americaine
L’Obsession Anti-Americaine - Jean-François Revel
“To measure and explain the gap between vision and reality is the objective of this book”.
Even in my weak French wouldn’t I doubt this objective one bit. Having briefly flirted with Jean-François Revel’s Ni Marx Ni Jésus - Without Marx or Jesus (she was deep - I was shallow and way out of my league), this would definitely be a better approach. Given that French Fries were renamed Freedom Fries in the name of patriotism, who better to shed light onto The Anti-American Obsession than a Frenchman.
Shameless Plug 2: Flipkart has Anti-Americanism (English Edition)
ITALIAN
Il partigiano Johnny
Il partigiano Johnny - Beppe Fenoglio
I barely speak or understand any Italian, and Johnny The Partisan will keep me occupied for the better part of the next two years. At a 500 odd pages, these are odds I just can’t beat. I plan to read just a page a day, make annotations, slowly grasp words and conjugations and hopefully things will sail smooth once I touch page 251. How hard can it be, I did once sing Bella Ciao with this fine troupe of performing artists.
Or maybe I can just try renting the movie and pretend I read the book. We’ll see.
SPANISH
Libro de Buen Amor
[El] Libro de Buen Amor - Juan Ruiz
An autobiographical book about the sexcapades escapades of an Archpriest, moreover one that was written in the early 14th Century? I’ll be damned (maybe I’ll get to meet Juan then). My Spanish can barely stand, even when it gets support from French … I’ll probably end up gifting it to someone Spanish I know. And to think she was suggesting I read Poet In New York / Poeta En Nueva York. Federico Garcia Lorca doesn’t stand a chance.
Shameless Plug 3: Flipkart has The Book of Good Love, but for an English Translation, why is the description in Spanish??
POLISH
Dziennik Bridget Jones
Dziennik Bridget Jones - Helen Fielding
This one’s a bit of a wild card, for:
1> The only diary I recall having read is that of Anne Franke.
2> My Polish is limited to one word - Dziennik - meaning “diary (of)”.
To be fair, a Polish friend of mine from Bielsko-Biała once tried to give me a crash course in Polish so that I could better appreciate what everyone in Poland has been splitting their sides over. If you must know, it involves a YouTube video of Polish President Lech Kaczyński. Now the video is a montage of their President to the soundtrack of Rammstein’s “Ich will” with Polish subtitles.
Hmm, learn Polish through German in 3:58.
Apparently, I’m not the only one who found this challenging. So along came the YouTube video of Polish President Lech Kaczyński with English Subtitles! Bet you didn’t see that coming…
All you have to do now is compare the Polish subtitles to the English ones. Heil, mein Führer!
If you’ve made it this far and are still wondering “Whatever happened to the damn Lonely Planet Korea??”, well, didn’t find one. If anyone has a copy that you no longer need, kindly send it across to the below address:
Flipkart.com, 1st Floor,
No. 447/C, 1st A Cross,
12th Main, 4th Block,
Opp. BSNL Telephone Exchange,
Koramangala,
Bangalore - 560034
Karnataka, India.
Any Polish language teachers are also free to drop by at the above address. Unless you are a supporter of President Kaczyński. In which case I’d rather you called first.
Till then, as they say in Seoul - Kombei!
