I was reading Sarah’s post on Transtromer and got onto talking about the Samuel Charters’s translation of Transtromer’s Baltics, a chapbook-length poem published in 1975 on Oyez Press.
This translation is hard to find. I’ve seen it selling for between £40 - £80. Imagine my shock when I went to Amazon.com and found several copies available at around $60-$110, and one copy via Powell’s bookshop for FIVE DOLLARS.
$5!!!!
Could it be the same book? Amazon didn’t give details of the translator, but it’s definitely Baltics by Tomas Transtromer, published in 1975 on Oyez Press. What else can it be?
I ordered it. The postage cost double that of the book, but that’s still only about £8 in total. It should arrive in a couple of weeks. But I still can’t believe it. There must be a catch. There must be something wrong…
