Goran’s Great Escape
Just for fun, I checked out Goran’s Great Escape from the library. I already read The Day Adam Got Mad, but I wanted to make sure that this was, in fact, the same book. This version was translated by Polly Lawson and published in 2011. The Day Adam Got Mad is from 1993 with Barbara Lucas as translator.
Both translations turned into good books. I can’t compare t
he two side-by-side as I did for Mardie/Mischievous Meg, but the couple of lines I remember from The Day Adam Got Mad were translated with equal humor and whimsy in Goran’s Great Escape. Both Lucas and Lawson have translated other Astrid Lindgren works with good results. The original title in Swedish featured an Adam, so if I had to choose a translation I guess I would go with The Day Adam Got Mad, for no other reason than the name is more faithful.
The Day Adam Got Mad was one of the first books I read for this project. Goran’s Great Escape is one of the last.
“But on this Easter Day, Goran was angry. You could ask why he was in such a terribly bad mood that day. We will never know.”
reading astrid 