Dancing on Ropes

''Full of lively stories ... leaves the reader with an awed respect for the translator''s task'' EconomistWould Hiroshima have been bombed if Japanese contained a phrase meaning ''no comment''? Is it alright for missionaries to replace the Bible''s ''white as snow'' with ''white as fungus'' in places where snow never falls? Who, or what, is Kuzma''s mother, and why was Nikita Khrushchev so threat...