That Mad Ache

That Mad Ache , set in high-society Paris in the mid-1960’s, recounts the emotional battle unleashed in the heart of Lucile, a sensitive but rootless young woman who finds herself caught between her carefree, tranquil love for 50-year-old Charles, a gentle, reflective, and well-off businessman, and her sudden wild passion for 30-year-old Antoine, a hot-blooded, impulsive, and s...

That Mad Ache , set in high-society Paris in the mid-1960’s, recounts the emotional battle unleashed in the heart of Lucile, a sensitive but rootless young woman who finds herself caught between her carefree, tranquil love for 50-year-old Charles, a gentle, reflective, and well-off businessman, and her sudden wild passion for 30-year-old Antoine, a hot-blooded, impulsive, and struggling editor. As Lucile explores these two versions of love, she vacillates in confusion, but in the end she must choose, and her heart’s instinct is surprising and poignant. Originally published under the title La Chamade , this new translation by Douglas Hofstadter returns a forgotten classic to English. In Translator, Trader , Douglas Hofstadter reflects on his personal act of devotion in rewriting Françoise Sagan’s novel La Chamade in English, and on the paradoxes that constantly plague any literary translator on all scales, ranging from the humblest of commas to entire chapters. Flatly rejecting the common wisdom that translators are inevitably traitors, Hofstadter proposes instead that translators are traders, and that translation, like musical performance, deserves high respect as a creative act. In his view, literary translation is the art of making subtle trades in which one sometimes loses and sometimes gains, often both losing and gaining at the same time. This view implies that there is no reason a translation cannot be as good as the original work, and that the result inevitably bears the stamp of the translator, much as a musical performance inevitably bears the stamp of its artists. Both a companion to the beloved Sagan novel and a singular meditation on translation, Translator, Trader is a witty and intimate exploration of words, ideas, communication, creation, and faithfulness.

弗朗索瓦丝·萨冈

Françoise Sagan（1935—2004）

法国天才女作家，一代人的青春同义词。拥有漂亮的外表、敏感的心灵和避重就轻的天赋，喜欢写作、赛马、飚车、酗酒，结交演艺界、政界的朋友，任由官司缠身。

十八岁时，她凭借小说《你好，忧愁》获得了法国批评家奖。一生中发表了二十部长篇小说、十一部剧作、若干短篇小说及散文，也参与创作电影和歌曲。

六十三岁时，她撰写了自己的悼词：“一九五四年，她以一本薄薄的小说《你好,忧愁》出道，这部小说成为了一桩世界性丑闻。她的一生和她的作品同样愉快而又轻率，她的隐没则成为一个只属于她自己的丑闻。”