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“... them for their good humour and craftsmanship. English readers can now judge for themselves, for Guido Waldman’s stunning translation of the complete collection conveys all their cheek, delicacy and self-deprecating humour. He has allowed himself space and, against La Fontaine’s tightly controlled prosody, opts for ‘loose-limbed, conversational ...”

“... The weightless characters who track about in Jean Echenoz’s novels are granted a sense now and again that that’s where they are, in someone else’s story, fulfilling burlesque routines not of their own devising. They’re not great thinkers, merely see-through functionaries of the plot. There’s a droll exchange marking one of these twinges of self-awareness in an early novel called Cherokee – named for the Forties song, not for the Native Americans as such – between the driver of a Deux-Chevaux and his captive passenger: ‘ “We could take you somewhere ...”

“... this book) and, for that matter, of the more sprightly Oxford World’s Classics rendering (by Guido Waldman). Boccaccio is close to being untranslatable, and this is largely because his textual culture was not a literal translator’s culture. He wanted his readers to be unsettled by the Decameron into retelling his tales. He actively wanted them to ...”