"It's a plight I don't recall having read about, though someone like Borges might easily have written about it. Someone who loses or, better, waives their identity, and cedes it to someone else. A small country soliciting adoption or absorption by a larger power. I don't even know what it is about Roth, beyond the fact that he writes beautiful sentences. But that, finally, is all you want as a translator from your author: that he or she writes books as beautiful as the ones you would like to write. If I was cynical - which I wasn't - I would also say that Roth is in a perfect bracket for the translator: neither irredeemably obscure nor terminally established."
(Michael Hofmann, "My life with Roth," The Guardian, 31 December 2005)
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