Dancing on Ropes

Anna Aslanyan is a journalist, translator and public service interpreter. She contributes to the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian and other UK-based publications, writing about books and arts. Her translations from Russian include Post-Post Soviet? Art, Politics and Society in Russia at the Turn of the Decade, a collection of essays edited by Ekaterina Degot et al. (University of Chicago Press, 2013); contemporary short stories for Best European Fiction (Dalkey Archive, 2013, 2018); and A Journey to Inner Africa, a 19th-century travelogue by Egor Kovalevsky (Amherst College Press, 2020). Her popular history of translation, Dancing on Ropes: Translators and the Balance of History, was published by Profile in May 2021.

Translation is a matter of life and death - and not only because it is poorly paid. That's the thrilling, rather chilling, message of this wonderful history by translator and interpreter Anna Aslanyan, who blesses jaw-dropping and entertaining tales with an insider's insight