Edward Snow, that most sensitive and deft translator of Rilke's poetry, has outdone himself by rendering the German writer's prose classic in all its eerie, crepuscular shadings....Every sentence glistens here, as childhood and manhood, past and present uncannily merge, while Malte, the protagonist-narrator, teaches himself to see. The result is a treasure to savor slowly and gratefully.--Phillip Lopate
Reading Rilke in English, one faces three doors: read Edward Snow, read a lesser translator, or learn German. Just as Snow has produced masterpieces in the past, his rendering of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge is a revelation. Though I had read the volume before with curiosity, I found Snow's version a page-turner. I devoured it like a velociraptor.--Mary Karr
This book has been central for many young poets, in many languages, for generations. Now, Edward Snow has created a fresh, inviting version in English.--Robert Pinsky
This brilliant new translation walks right off the page into the streets of Paris and into the recessed corridors of memory and impassioned imagination.... Sentence by sentence, Snow releases the hallucinatory revelations of a mind creating its own indelible tracks between 'curiosity and dread, ' between shocking estrangement and almost unbearable sympathy. I first read the Notebooks in earlier translations fifty years ago; they have never felt so radiant, so nuanced, so immediately yet enduringly prophetic.--Peter Sacks