“Rich and often funny. . . . While exploring questions about ambiguity, order, pronouns, and even the use of A.I., Hahn’s study of literary translation widens into a reflection on the broader mysteries of language.”
—The New Yorker

“This is one of the best books I’ve ever read about translation, and also one of the best books I’ve read about Shakespeare. Hahn celebrates and expounds the diverse choices of Shakespearean translators into a vast array of the world’s languages, illuminating the almost magical alchemy required to translate ‘gold into gold.’ This very funny, wise, playfully erudite book will thrill and enlighten anyone with even a passing interest in language and literary style.”
—Emily Wilson, translator of The Odyssey and The Iliad

“Hahn delights in how translators have conveyed the intricacies and nuances—and hopefully even jokes—through languages with different sounds, rhythms and word order. . . . A kind of master class in translation, a chronicle of the author’s healthy obsession, and a great way to catch up with Shakespeare’s work. We should know how people experience Shakespeare worldwide if, as Harold Bloom taught us, his work was ‘the invention of the human.’ Hahn’s tour makes a lovely case for that.”
—The New York Times

“Hahn provides a series of illuminating glimpses into the problem-solving that is integral to the craft, while exulting in Shakespeare’s capacity to resonate with audiences encountering him in Bengali, Chinese, German or Kurdish. . . . A deliciously fresh reading of Shakespeare. . . . It is a stirring celebration of the plurality of languages.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“Are Shakespeare’s jokes actually funny in French? Why might Hamlet be even longer in Japanese? You will find the answers to these and many more fascinating questions in If This be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation. Daniel Hahn is a remarkable translator, writer, and editor, a dedicated supporter of literature and knowledge, and he has written this gem of a book which is clearly the outcome of decades of hard work and dedication, and passion, really, for the art of storytelling.”
—Elif Shafak, author of There Are Rivers in the Sky

“For those who care deeply about language, and about Shakespeare, and about the courage of those who try to render him in a foreign tongue, this will be a treasured book.”
—James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare

“This lovely, expansive book illustrates Shakespeare’s global reach in languages from Afrikaans to Yiddish—but it also reveals how much can be found, rather than lost, in translation—poetically, culturally, and imaginatively.”
—Emma Smith, author of This Is Shakespeare

“I’ve just finished, and loved, If This Be Magic. It’s a fresh and vivid way to think about Shakespeare; it’s so witty and knowledgeable, so alive to the ways in which language resists reduction. It feels like attending the most fascinating lecture of the term, like learning made swift and sharp and generous.”
—Katherine Rundell, New York Times bestselling author of Impossible Creatures

“In If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation, Daniel Hahn considers all that goes into rendering the Bard across languages and cultures. The prospect of Hahn writing on either of these topics would be enticing enough; the combination [is] such stuff as dreams are made on.”
—Words Without Borders

“In If This Be Magic, his learned but cheerful and chatty book, Hahn makes an enthusiastic case for translators as Shakespeare’s natural heirs, forced by the scale of the challenge into matching his knack for innovation and irreverence. . . . No challenge in Shakespeare’s text is so tricky that he can’t find a translator who has come up with a solution worth celebrating. . . . This is a book that forces any reader to think deeply about the building blocks of Shakespeare’s language.”
—Financial Times