Lost in Translation [Hardcover]

STEVEN HARVEY is a professor of English at Young Harris College. The author of A Geometry of Lilies: Life and Death in an American Family, he was a MacDowell Colony Fellow in 1994. He lives in north Georgia.

From the author of A Geometry of Lilies comes a new collection of essays focusing on the exotic in the ordinary of everyday life. Steven Harvey's words illuminate and entertain as he ruminates on such topics as love of family, of students and teaching, of place and tradition, and of how language itself can transform experience.

Separate as the essays are, they all tell the same story, and though they bear different titles, they all could be called "Lost in Translation." In each essay, the self is brought against a new world or two worlds into conflict, the soul shedding a husk of its former life in the encounter. Such losses, the essays say, are the leavings of our changes and the price we pay for becoming. Some part of our true selves, Harvey notes, finds voice only in such translations—in engagement with others on others' terms—and this is the part we cannot live without.

Harvey breathes lyricism and beauty into ordinary hours. He rummages time and place and arranges knick-knacks so that the pages exhilarate.

Harvey established himself with his first collection, A Geometry of Lilies, as a master of the personal essay. Lost in Translation surpasses the achievement of the first.

The appeal of these personal essays lies in the eclectic choice of topics and the intriguing directions Harvey pursues. His skill with language brings a poetic sensibility to the insights that are revealed. His book will appeal to readers who enjoy the unexpected in an essay.