Finishing the Singing Festival

Yesterday I finished translating La fête chantée, a book on Native American themes by the French writer J.M.G. Le Clézio. Boy, it took me some time to finish this! Le Clézio is one of the few writers whose interest in the Old Way is genuine and serious; whose vision of the world is much determined by his long-time experience of living with a tribe in Panama. The book is full of sympathy toward a world that was destroyed by the conquistadores. The long chapter on the Relacion de Michoacan tells the story of the pre-Columbine society that to our eyes looks like a parallel world displaced in time. I'm hoping the book will be published in January 2005 or so.