Review by va2016 -- The Stealer of Memories

[va2016]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Stealer of Memories" by Mois Benarroch.]

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1 out of 4 stars

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This is a review of the book The Stealer of Memories by Mois Benarroch. The book has been translated by William C. This is a fiction novel.

Mois, the protagonist of the story regularly visits local cafes in Jerusalem, Israel to ponder over plots for his stories. He starts getting visions about some events. He wonders if they are memories from his other births. He realizes that those are incidents that happened in the lives of the people that he encounters. Meanwhile, he gets an anonymous request to write about someone's experiences of their holocaust days. The reader is motivated to explore how Mois manages all these occurrences and whether he finds peace with himself.

There are a few things that this reviewer likes about this book. The author meanders through his thoughts on life, consciousness, memory, etc. There is an interesting narration of an experience about dying and being born again in another body. There are sections that reflect on the Holocaust times - children mysteriously disappearing from the schools, discrimination based on culture and religion, women being used as sex slaves and for prostitution, etc. The author opines about the other authors and writing in general. There are mentions about the importance of a book, how to write a novel, how in the current times an author is given more importance than their work, etc.

After reading the first few pages of the book, it becomes obvious to the reader that the book has been machine-translated. There are awkward and incomprehensible passages throughout the book. The final section called ‘The Dialogue’ looks so bad because of machine-translation of a poem.

The formatting is pretty bad with several empty pages with no explanation or note. There are several grammar errors (for example, "I was fainted"), words with missing spaces between them, missing quotation marks, spelling mistakes and wrong word usages (using 'I' instead of 'He' or 'She'). It is impossible to comment on the writing style because it is not clear if the bad writing style is because of the poor translation or if it is the writing style of the author.

Overall, what may have been a wonderful work in the native language has turned out to be so bad because of the machine translation to English. This reviewer made sincere and repeated attempts to make sense of the story flow but was only partially successful. Although there are some good points, because of the incomprehensible story flow it becomes almost impossible to even complete reading this book. This reviewer would not recommend this book to anyone because it would be a waste of readers’ time and money. I could have given a 2 out of 4 stars rating for this book based on the positive points but because of the bad translation, bad formatting and several mechanical errors I give this book a 1 out of 4 stars.

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The Stealer of Memories
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Like va2016's review? Post a comment saying so!

[Sarda Mohan]

Such an honest review.. I am getting curious to know more about the story and am sure there would be a lot more readers like me.Hope the author comes up with a better version of the book to make it an enjoyable experience and do full justice to the original.

[va2016]

Ditto, my opinion. Thank you!

[rs1977]

the title is really catchy and your review of the content seems interesting making me want to read this book, but i am sceptical about the machine translation part alone. anyways i'll give this book a try

[va2016]

Oh, the translation is so bad. Please don't waste your time reading the translated copy. I presume the Italian work should be good, but alas, I don't know that language.

[rs1977]

Oh, the translation is so bad. Please don't waste your time reading the translated copy. I presume the Italian work should be good, but alas, I don't know that language.

The title and the plot you have described interests me a lot. It is sad, I too don't know Italian. Hmm...is there a possibility of another version 2.0 probably!

[va2016]

Well, you will have to check with the author on that, or probably check if there's a page for this book on the Internet. Thanks for your curiosity!

[Pilar Guerrero]

Thank you for this review.
The same thing happened to me when I tried to read it in order wo write a review. I'm an English teacher (Spanish is my first language) and I got totally lost in the translation. I admire you for trying to finish the book and being able to write about it.
I read another book by the same author and I just loved it! I hope the author can have his book translated again. Correcting the translation would be too long, I think.

[va2016]

Thank you for your valuable and thoughtful comments!

I understand from the author's profile that he is a respected author in his native language,
and I would really love to read all his books. I hope that he gets this book translated again, as you said.
Which book of his did you love reading? May be I will give it a shot too! Thanks.

[Pilar Guerrero]

I read and reviewed "Gates of Tangier", it was translated by a woman, and I think she captures his voice better. You are welcome to check my review of the book

[va2016]

I read and reviewed "Gates of Tangier", it was translated by a woman, and I think she captures his voice better. You are welcome to check my review of the book

Thank you so much! I will definitely give it a try!

By the way, I am an aspiring Spanish learner . I made some progress
with the learning, but lost my learning when the App on FB crashed,
and I lost all my lessons . But, would like to try again!

I will check all of your reviews and comment on them sometime!