Today my translation of Claude Aveline’s radio play, “La Baleine de Jonas”, or “Jonah’s Whale”, has come out in Delos Journal at the University of Florida. I invite you to check it out. It’s accompanied by a long commentary, which together with the translation represents months of unpaid work. My reward is in offering it to you to read, like cooking a meal and inviting you to eat with me.
“Jonah’s Whale” humorously retells the famous Biblical story of Jonah, but it’s told from the whale’s point of view (though it never was a whale but rather a big fish). Claude Aveline has read between the lines and developed the speech and thoughts of Jonah, a cantankerous prophet who doesn’t want his enemies, the Ninevites, to be saved by his God. He wants them to be destroyed. Nothing has changed in the world since Jonah’s day.
Delos Journal is behind a paywall, so if you subscribe (that is, pay) you can read my work and the work of other translators here: https://journals.upress.ufl.edu/delos/article/view/2001/2357
The painting above is Jonah and the Whale by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625), Munich Alte Pinakothek.
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