Every year, I set myself a reading challenge. These are sometimes small'read more poetry; read older books'and sometimes quite large. More than a decade ago, I spent an entire year reading nothing but writing in translation, an experience that fundamentally reoriented my literary habits. Part of my annual resolution is to devote each summer to filling in a major blind spot. I finished Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, for example, over three years, cracking open one gray Vintage volume every June. And one year, my goal was to get my hands on The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt. I had been hearing about the novel for years from writers and critics but could not find a copy. First published in 2000, DeWitt's debut sold well but fell quickly out of print, stranding it in that curious creative purgatory reserved for the deeply loved but commercially overlooked. It became more legend than literature: People whispered about a mind-expanding book crammed with Greek letters, a...
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