Jim Underwood obituary
Jim Underwood, who has died aged 78, was a varied, thoughtful and intelligent translator, whose work was published under the name JA Underwood.
From the early 1970s until his death, he was one of the key figures in bringing to a wide audience many remarkable works of French and German literature. I was lucky enough to commission two of his translations for Penguin Classics: Walter Benjamin’s One-Way Street and Other Writings, and Grimmelshausen’s novel Simplicissimus, the latter a mass of 17th-century military argot, puns and violent slapstick, all of which he handled with aplomb. He lived just long enough to enjoy his translation’s marvellous reviews.
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