The Most Precious of Cargoes is a fable so delicate yet so harrowing that when I began my translation, I was terrified I would break the spell. Translation is never simply a matter of words; it is about listening for voice, being attentive to cadence and to rhythm, to the silences between words. From the horrors of war, Jean-Claude Grumberg has woven a fable as beautiful and intricate as the prayer shawl at the heart of the story, fine threads of allegory and history, of love and devastating loss. In translating it, I have endeavored to preserve its simplicity and its jarring beauty, braiding the leitmotifs of fairy tale and fable as they play out in the omnipresent shadow of the Shoah. Theodor Adorno famously said, “There can be no poetry after Auschwitz,” but out of his own grief Jean-Claude Grumberg has fashioned something lyrical and beautiful from the ashes.
—Frank Wynne