Press
Original Scholarship
Metamorphoses of the Vampire in Literature and Film (Camden House, 2010)
"Butler, one of the most promising American comparatists of the last generation, has written an extremely enjoyable book. . . . [He] uses the tools of history and geography to read the figure of the vampire. His study might also be called: 'The Vampire: A Political History.'"
(Il Sole 24 Ore)
“'Serbian vampirism suggested the vulnerability of the House of Habsburg', writes Erik Butler in his lively study Metamorphoses of the Vampire in Literature and Film .... While it is probably safe to say that humans have been haunted by the hungry undead ever since they got a whiff of their own mortality, the vampire itself is, for Butler, a site- and time-specific thing, rather than the universally recognizable figure that Christopher Frayling has called 'as old as the world'. ... The vampire may long since have fallen prey to kitsch, its poster boy, Dracula, becoming 'a somewhat pathetic figure' (in the words of Butler) and its home more likely to be the Sunnydale of Buffy than the Boreas-whipped forests of the Carpathians, but we remain in many ways enthralled by the bloodsuckers. Perhaps the appearance of these books [on vampires] indicates, if nothing else, a desire to revisit our original fears, an impulse to go back to vampire basics."
(Times Literary Supplement)
"Butler brings to the feast . . . a rare cross-cultural perspective. . . . He also, and very convincingly, calls attention to the instability of genre that haunts vampire narratives . . . . Not merely a contribution to the cultural explication of the vampire, [this book] also touches on . . . broader . . . social transformations of both eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe . . . with elegance and intelligence."
(Victorian Studies)
"Butler succeeds in bringing a wealth of new voices from French and German scholarship to a field mostly dominated by English-language research. . . . He brings together a wealth of exciting literary, biographical, and filmic material . . . . Scholars and students interested in the monster will no doubt enjoy reading this book, and its individual chapters on the likes of Dracula and Nosferatu are a highly recommended read for courses on the subject."
(Modern Language Review)
"[This study] is interested in historical changes that brought with them certain anxieties and apprehensions for which the vampire became an ideal and multi- faceted projection screen... the author is able to cover a lot of ground."
(Monatshefte)
The Bellum Grammaticale and the Rise of European Literature (Ashgate, 2010)
"This book is a formidable introduction to a crucial, yet neglected early modern genre: the bellum grammaticale, the language (or grammatical) war, a spirited and often bloody allegorical depiction of the battle between parts of speech, genres, and elements of rhetoric for primacy in language ...a useful and insightful introduction to the Latin bellum grammaticale and its early vernacular permutations. It is a valuable scholarly addition to libraries on Neo-Latin, humanism, and the emergence of vernacular literatures."
(Renaissance Quarterly)
"In this succinct but wide-ranging study, Erik Butler presents three sixteenth- and seventeenth-century examples of the bella grammaticalia (‘language wars’), a satirical genre... [The book is] impressively argued with a wide range of reference."
(Modern Language Review)
The Rise of the Vampire (Reaktion, 2013)
“Just to say the word ‘vampire’ now is to make some readers shudder, and not for the right reasons. But reading a new study—Erik Butler’s The Rise of the Vampire—we realise that what is interesting isn’t just the vampires themselves but why they appear in the first place. . . . Butler is very good at exploring vampirism as a psychological condition as much as a physical one.”
(The Times (UK))
“The breadth of Butler’s sources is a particular strength throughout the book. . . . [His] view of what constitutes a vampire is pleasingly broad. . . . The vampire is held up as a mirror to the human psyche, representing not only the unknown in others but also that which is unknowable in ourselves. It is for this reason that vampires have been such an enduring construct, and one which we have felt compelled to flesh out and adorn.”
(PopMatters)
“[Butler] is to be congratulated on writing a shrewd and sometimes sardonic study on the origins of an ancient mystery, which in the past decade has been reduced to 50 shades of comic strip. . . . For those with a taste of the supernatural, this is an excellent guidebook. Dracula probably would have enjoyed it.”
(Washington Times)
"Butler is to be applauded for elucidating the emergence of vampire mythology in history and its progression through various cultures up to its widespread presence in today’s culture. Weaving in themes of vampirism as cultural and psychological symptoms, amplifications of themes of life and its manifold limits and complexities, Erik Butler has created a masterful compendium of ideas."
(New York Journal of Books)
The Devil and His Advocates (Reaktion, 2021)
"How is the devil portrayed over time, from the biblical writings to the present? Butler addresses this key question in this book. Through a narrative of Western history from biblical times onward, he shows how, in different cultural settings, the devil has been represented in such areas as theology, poetry, drama, music, and art. . . . Butler argues for an alternate view of the devil, one in which the devil functions as a divine instrument of truth, challenging humans regarding their morality and character. . . . Butler is effective in showing the historical development of the idea of the devil and its expression in different fields. Recommended."
(Choice)
"A highly original, enjoyable, and thought-provoking book that manages to make us look at the Bible and our belief systems in a new light is a triumph that deserves high respect and praise. In The Devil and His Advocates, the Devil has indeed found his greatest advocate in Erik Butler." (Pilgrim House)
"Butler... explores the character of the devil in literature, theology, visual art, and music from antiquity up to the present, discussing canonical authors such as Dante, Goethe, and Milton."
(Publishers Weekly)
"Butler's book is a scholarly tour-de-force citing the widest range of thinkers. From St Augustine to Nietzsche, Freud, and Foucault. And from the world of literature and the arts come Byron, Shelley, Mann, Blake, and Mozart; even Hannibal Lecter gets a mention. Notwithstanding the heavy duty material, the book remains a hellish good read."
(Fortean Times)
‘In this remarkable and thought-provoking book, Erik Butler demonstrates that far from being the goat-horned, cloven-hoofed, and barbed-tail demon of popular culture, the Devil has in fact been constantly on the move in Christian thinking . . . Like Virgil leading Dante, Butler steers the reader through the labyrinthine intricacies of early Christian philosophy, the writings of Luther and Milton, and the profane excesses of the French Decadence . . . Brimful with erudite and recherché learning, and written with a compelling combination of scintillating intelligence and apocalyptic verve, The Devil and His Advocates presents a grand sweep of Western intellectual history that amounts to an alternative history of evil in the Christian world. In Erik Butler, the Devil has found his most eloquent, sophisticated, and measured advocate to date.’
Nick Groom, Professor of Literature in English, University of Macau
Author Erik Butler takes on the usual assumptions about the Prince of Darkness and Despoiler of Souls, and places him in a much wider, more questioning, and less hysterical context than perhaps one is used to. This is long overdue . . . Told with a wry wit and an easy, but never facetious, style, Butler’s book takes us through the vexed history of Satan, revealing at every step the sheer usefulness of the grim archetype of evil to humanity. And, in fact, the invaluable role he played in the delineation of God himself."
(Magonia Review of Books)
Literary Translation
Regrowth: Seven Tales of Jewish Life Before, During, and After Nazi Occupation, by der Nister (Northwestern, 2011)
"One of the most extraordinary Yiddish writers was Pinhas Kaganovitch (1884-1950), better known under his pseudonym Der Nister (the hidden one). On the cusp of destruction he produced works of stunning psychological, stylistic, and metaphorical complexity. .... Hence it is with gratitude and pleasure that one welcomes Erik Butler’s scrupulous and caring ... translation of Vidervuks, rendered as Regrowth, a volume of very late stories, published in Moscow in 1969 almost two decades after Der Nister’s death."
(Weekly Standard)
"[Der Nister] wrote in a muted modernism, in an almost-realism tempered by a folkloric and impressionistic sensibility. Ellipses are prominent. ... We can be grateful to Erik Butler for a fluid translation that avoids weighing down Der Nister's gentle prose."
(Times Literary Supplement)
"Faithful to Der Nister’s kaleidoscopic literary style, Butler’s translation prompts readers to consider literary responses to the Holocaust within the Soviet Union, a topic fraught with tension both in Soviet and contemporary Russia."
(Tablet)
Given the inaccessibility of most of Der Nister's massive oeuvre, a new translation of a collection of seven short stories written during World War II is most welcome. Translated by Erik Butler, the collection includes three of his most realistic, thematically Jewish, and devastating stories. ... Erik Butler's felicitous translation captures the unique tone of Der Nister's prose better than any previous rendering in English.
(Jewish Ideas Daily)
The Pig in Poetic, Mythological, and Moral-Historical Perspective, by Oskar Panizza (Wakefield Press, 2016)
"We owe [Erik Butler], and Wakefield Press, thanks for giving us a sample in English of this obscure serial. For dry humor from a Decadent nihilist, it can’t be beat."
(Rain Taxi)
Disagreeable Tales, by Léon Bloy (Wakefield Press, 2015)
"Perhaps his most explicit selection of harangues and exhortations, the newly reissued Disagreeable Tales (Histoires désobligeantes, 1894) represents a unique literary genre―inspired by Villiers de L’Isle-Adam’s Cruel Tales (1883), Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Les diaboliques (1874), and the short sketches of Poe and Lautréamont."
(The Paris Review)
"Wakefield Press has been knocking it out of the park with its reissues and translations of European morbidities, and Bloy is the king of all depravities, as this collection of criminal acts, evil anecdotes, and misanthropy at its finest from the Fin de siècle French decadent bears out at last."
("Our Favorite Books from 2015," The Believer)
Pauliska or Modern Perversity, by Jacques-Antoine Révéroni, Baron de Saint-Cyr (Tartarus Press, 2018)
"Cult classic of French Gothic: first English translation coup for independent UK publisher"
(Horla, Publishing News)
"First published in 1798 and translated into English for the first time, Révéroni’s deliciously lurid novel is a heady dram of vintage gothic.... this book is a high melodrama sure to appeal to fans of the writings of Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, and other classic gothicists."
(Publisher's Weekly, Best Books)
Psychology of the Rich Aunt: Being an Inquiry, in Twenty-Five Parts, into the Question of Immortality, by Erich Mühsam (Wakefield Press, 2018)
"Translator Erik Butler is almost as relentless as Mühsam in his own dogged pursuit of a devious quarry. Few writers spat as gracefully and as dryly as Mühsam did at his best, and Butler pulls it off with American speed and enough distilled wry to keep the fangs sharp. He is also a pretty astounding polyglot. ...Wakefield Press has done the living and the dead a great service with this latest."
(Counterpunch)
At the Blue Monkey, by Walter Serner (Wakefield Press, 2020)
"[Serner] wrote four books of stories about an international demi-monde of petty criminals, hustlers, pimps, whores, spies and secret police (one of these collections, At the Blue Monkey, has now appeared in English) ... These ‘outlandish’ stories relate casual pranks and complicated grifts that are by turns comic and calamitous: some read like games of Cluedo with the players amped up on coke, while others suggest scenes pulled from a film noir, a genre they anticipate by twenty years. "
(Hal Foster, The London Review of Books)
"The first English translation of this collection comes from [the fascinating catalog of] Wakefield Press... At the Blue Monkey offers pieces of a life that don’t fit together, its mystery never solved. There’s no closure to speak of, but if it raises any questions about the nature of fiction and life, its job is done."
(SpectrumCulture)
Scholarly Translation
Felt Time: The Science of How We Experience Time, by Mark Wittman (MIT Press, 2016)
"Felt Time is a lively little disquisition, informative yet accessible; Erik Butler's crisp and clear translation from the German makes it easy to forget one is reading a translated work. Essayistic and breezily multidisciplinary, with illustrative brain diagrams and data graphs sitting alongside digressions into art, literature, and philosophy, it is both thought-provoking and, indeed, timely."
(Times Literary Supplement)
Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre, by Hans-Thies Lehmann (Routledge, 2016)
"Erik Butler's excellent translation..."
(Theater Journal)
"Erik Butler’s translation... flows well and negotiates some very difficult German structures and terms with ... lightness."
(Contemporary Theatre Review)
Atlas of Poetic Botany, by Francis Hallé with Éliane Patriarca (MIT, 2018)
"A delightful book about tropical botany... The author deserves that his words and drawings gain a large audience... The translator deserves his commendation too."
(Mark Avery)
"A volume of Seussian botanical sketches and informed musings, produced in collaboration with Éliane Patriarca and newly translated into English by Erik Butler. ... Each entry in the Atlas drops readers into a scene of Hallé’s fieldwork."
(Atlas Obscura)
"The Atlas of Poetic Botany is a charming book about tropical plants that most of us will never see in their natural surroundings. It’s therefore something of an armchair’s botanist’s delight, with easy-to-read text and wonderful illustrations. All involved in its production are to be congratulated."
(Botany One)
Atlas of Poetic Zoology, by Emmanuelle Pouydebat (MIT, 2019)
featured in "Globetrotting: Your sneak preview of books coming out in 2019 from around the world."
(New York Times)
Translation for the Stage (with Kimberly Jannarone)
Debacles, Marion Aubert (Yale Cabaret, 2017)
"Director Elizabeth Dinkova has a penchant for wildly dark comedy, and she may have found her most suitable match yet directing Marion Aubert’s Débâcles, now in its first-ever English language staging, as translated by Erik Butler and Kimberly Jannarone, at Yale Cabaret. The play sends up the French Resistance with the kind of no-holds-barred approach to comedy that might recall Terry Southern and Stanley Kubrick’s caustic satire of prospective world annihilation, Dr. Strangelove."
(New Haven Review)
Metamorphoses of the Vampire in Literature and Film (Camden House, 2010)
"Butler, one of the most promising American comparatists of the last generation, has written an extremely enjoyable book. . . . [He] uses the tools of history and geography to read the figure of the vampire. His study might also be called: 'The Vampire: A Political History.'"
(Il Sole 24 Ore)
“'Serbian vampirism suggested the vulnerability of the House of Habsburg', writes Erik Butler in his lively study Metamorphoses of the Vampire in Literature and Film .... While it is probably safe to say that humans have been haunted by the hungry undead ever since they got a whiff of their own mortality, the vampire itself is, for Butler, a site- and time-specific thing, rather than the universally recognizable figure that Christopher Frayling has called 'as old as the world'. ... The vampire may long since have fallen prey to kitsch, its poster boy, Dracula, becoming 'a somewhat pathetic figure' (in the words of Butler) and its home more likely to be the Sunnydale of Buffy than the Boreas-whipped forests of the Carpathians, but we remain in many ways enthralled by the bloodsuckers. Perhaps the appearance of these books [on vampires] indicates, if nothing else, a desire to revisit our original fears, an impulse to go back to vampire basics."
(Times Literary Supplement)
"Butler brings to the feast . . . a rare cross-cultural perspective. . . . He also, and very convincingly, calls attention to the instability of genre that haunts vampire narratives . . . . Not merely a contribution to the cultural explication of the vampire, [this book] also touches on . . . broader . . . social transformations of both eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe . . . with elegance and intelligence."
(Victorian Studies)
"Butler succeeds in bringing a wealth of new voices from French and German scholarship to a field mostly dominated by English-language research. . . . He brings together a wealth of exciting literary, biographical, and filmic material . . . . Scholars and students interested in the monster will no doubt enjoy reading this book, and its individual chapters on the likes of Dracula and Nosferatu are a highly recommended read for courses on the subject."
(Modern Language Review)
"[This study] is interested in historical changes that brought with them certain anxieties and apprehensions for which the vampire became an ideal and multi- faceted projection screen... the author is able to cover a lot of ground."
(Monatshefte)
The Bellum Grammaticale and the Rise of European Literature (Ashgate, 2010)
"This book is a formidable introduction to a crucial, yet neglected early modern genre: the bellum grammaticale, the language (or grammatical) war, a spirited and often bloody allegorical depiction of the battle between parts of speech, genres, and elements of rhetoric for primacy in language ...a useful and insightful introduction to the Latin bellum grammaticale and its early vernacular permutations. It is a valuable scholarly addition to libraries on Neo-Latin, humanism, and the emergence of vernacular literatures."
(Renaissance Quarterly)
"In this succinct but wide-ranging study, Erik Butler presents three sixteenth- and seventeenth-century examples of the bella grammaticalia (‘language wars’), a satirical genre... [The book is] impressively argued with a wide range of reference."
(Modern Language Review)
The Rise of the Vampire (Reaktion, 2013)
“Just to say the word ‘vampire’ now is to make some readers shudder, and not for the right reasons. But reading a new study—Erik Butler’s The Rise of the Vampire—we realise that what is interesting isn’t just the vampires themselves but why they appear in the first place. . . . Butler is very good at exploring vampirism as a psychological condition as much as a physical one.”
(The Times (UK))
“The breadth of Butler’s sources is a particular strength throughout the book. . . . [His] view of what constitutes a vampire is pleasingly broad. . . . The vampire is held up as a mirror to the human psyche, representing not only the unknown in others but also that which is unknowable in ourselves. It is for this reason that vampires have been such an enduring construct, and one which we have felt compelled to flesh out and adorn.”
(PopMatters)
“[Butler] is to be congratulated on writing a shrewd and sometimes sardonic study on the origins of an ancient mystery, which in the past decade has been reduced to 50 shades of comic strip. . . . For those with a taste of the supernatural, this is an excellent guidebook. Dracula probably would have enjoyed it.”
(Washington Times)
"Butler is to be applauded for elucidating the emergence of vampire mythology in history and its progression through various cultures up to its widespread presence in today’s culture. Weaving in themes of vampirism as cultural and psychological symptoms, amplifications of themes of life and its manifold limits and complexities, Erik Butler has created a masterful compendium of ideas."
(New York Journal of Books)
The Devil and His Advocates (Reaktion, 2021)
"How is the devil portrayed over time, from the biblical writings to the present? Butler addresses this key question in this book. Through a narrative of Western history from biblical times onward, he shows how, in different cultural settings, the devil has been represented in such areas as theology, poetry, drama, music, and art. . . . Butler argues for an alternate view of the devil, one in which the devil functions as a divine instrument of truth, challenging humans regarding their morality and character. . . . Butler is effective in showing the historical development of the idea of the devil and its expression in different fields. Recommended."
(Choice)
"A highly original, enjoyable, and thought-provoking book that manages to make us look at the Bible and our belief systems in a new light is a triumph that deserves high respect and praise. In The Devil and His Advocates, the Devil has indeed found his greatest advocate in Erik Butler." (Pilgrim House)
"Butler... explores the character of the devil in literature, theology, visual art, and music from antiquity up to the present, discussing canonical authors such as Dante, Goethe, and Milton."
(Publishers Weekly)
"Butler's book is a scholarly tour-de-force citing the widest range of thinkers. From St Augustine to Nietzsche, Freud, and Foucault. And from the world of literature and the arts come Byron, Shelley, Mann, Blake, and Mozart; even Hannibal Lecter gets a mention. Notwithstanding the heavy duty material, the book remains a hellish good read."
(Fortean Times)
‘In this remarkable and thought-provoking book, Erik Butler demonstrates that far from being the goat-horned, cloven-hoofed, and barbed-tail demon of popular culture, the Devil has in fact been constantly on the move in Christian thinking . . . Like Virgil leading Dante, Butler steers the reader through the labyrinthine intricacies of early Christian philosophy, the writings of Luther and Milton, and the profane excesses of the French Decadence . . . Brimful with erudite and recherché learning, and written with a compelling combination of scintillating intelligence and apocalyptic verve, The Devil and His Advocates presents a grand sweep of Western intellectual history that amounts to an alternative history of evil in the Christian world. In Erik Butler, the Devil has found his most eloquent, sophisticated, and measured advocate to date.’
Nick Groom, Professor of Literature in English, University of Macau
Author Erik Butler takes on the usual assumptions about the Prince of Darkness and Despoiler of Souls, and places him in a much wider, more questioning, and less hysterical context than perhaps one is used to. This is long overdue . . . Told with a wry wit and an easy, but never facetious, style, Butler’s book takes us through the vexed history of Satan, revealing at every step the sheer usefulness of the grim archetype of evil to humanity. And, in fact, the invaluable role he played in the delineation of God himself."
(Magonia Review of Books)
Literary Translation
Regrowth: Seven Tales of Jewish Life Before, During, and After Nazi Occupation, by der Nister (Northwestern, 2011)
"One of the most extraordinary Yiddish writers was Pinhas Kaganovitch (1884-1950), better known under his pseudonym Der Nister (the hidden one). On the cusp of destruction he produced works of stunning psychological, stylistic, and metaphorical complexity. .... Hence it is with gratitude and pleasure that one welcomes Erik Butler’s scrupulous and caring ... translation of Vidervuks, rendered as Regrowth, a volume of very late stories, published in Moscow in 1969 almost two decades after Der Nister’s death."
(Weekly Standard)
"[Der Nister] wrote in a muted modernism, in an almost-realism tempered by a folkloric and impressionistic sensibility. Ellipses are prominent. ... We can be grateful to Erik Butler for a fluid translation that avoids weighing down Der Nister's gentle prose."
(Times Literary Supplement)
"Faithful to Der Nister’s kaleidoscopic literary style, Butler’s translation prompts readers to consider literary responses to the Holocaust within the Soviet Union, a topic fraught with tension both in Soviet and contemporary Russia."
(Tablet)
Given the inaccessibility of most of Der Nister's massive oeuvre, a new translation of a collection of seven short stories written during World War II is most welcome. Translated by Erik Butler, the collection includes three of his most realistic, thematically Jewish, and devastating stories. ... Erik Butler's felicitous translation captures the unique tone of Der Nister's prose better than any previous rendering in English.
(Jewish Ideas Daily)
The Pig in Poetic, Mythological, and Moral-Historical Perspective, by Oskar Panizza (Wakefield Press, 2016)
"We owe [Erik Butler], and Wakefield Press, thanks for giving us a sample in English of this obscure serial. For dry humor from a Decadent nihilist, it can’t be beat."
(Rain Taxi)
Disagreeable Tales, by Léon Bloy (Wakefield Press, 2015)
"Perhaps his most explicit selection of harangues and exhortations, the newly reissued Disagreeable Tales (Histoires désobligeantes, 1894) represents a unique literary genre―inspired by Villiers de L’Isle-Adam’s Cruel Tales (1883), Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Les diaboliques (1874), and the short sketches of Poe and Lautréamont."
(The Paris Review)
"Wakefield Press has been knocking it out of the park with its reissues and translations of European morbidities, and Bloy is the king of all depravities, as this collection of criminal acts, evil anecdotes, and misanthropy at its finest from the Fin de siècle French decadent bears out at last."
("Our Favorite Books from 2015," The Believer)
Pauliska or Modern Perversity, by Jacques-Antoine Révéroni, Baron de Saint-Cyr (Tartarus Press, 2018)
"Cult classic of French Gothic: first English translation coup for independent UK publisher"
(Horla, Publishing News)
"First published in 1798 and translated into English for the first time, Révéroni’s deliciously lurid novel is a heady dram of vintage gothic.... this book is a high melodrama sure to appeal to fans of the writings of Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, and other classic gothicists."
(Publisher's Weekly, Best Books)
Psychology of the Rich Aunt: Being an Inquiry, in Twenty-Five Parts, into the Question of Immortality, by Erich Mühsam (Wakefield Press, 2018)
"Translator Erik Butler is almost as relentless as Mühsam in his own dogged pursuit of a devious quarry. Few writers spat as gracefully and as dryly as Mühsam did at his best, and Butler pulls it off with American speed and enough distilled wry to keep the fangs sharp. He is also a pretty astounding polyglot. ...Wakefield Press has done the living and the dead a great service with this latest."
(Counterpunch)
At the Blue Monkey, by Walter Serner (Wakefield Press, 2020)
"[Serner] wrote four books of stories about an international demi-monde of petty criminals, hustlers, pimps, whores, spies and secret police (one of these collections, At the Blue Monkey, has now appeared in English) ... These ‘outlandish’ stories relate casual pranks and complicated grifts that are by turns comic and calamitous: some read like games of Cluedo with the players amped up on coke, while others suggest scenes pulled from a film noir, a genre they anticipate by twenty years. "
(Hal Foster, The London Review of Books)
"The first English translation of this collection comes from [the fascinating catalog of] Wakefield Press... At the Blue Monkey offers pieces of a life that don’t fit together, its mystery never solved. There’s no closure to speak of, but if it raises any questions about the nature of fiction and life, its job is done."
(SpectrumCulture)
Scholarly Translation
Felt Time: The Science of How We Experience Time, by Mark Wittman (MIT Press, 2016)
"Felt Time is a lively little disquisition, informative yet accessible; Erik Butler's crisp and clear translation from the German makes it easy to forget one is reading a translated work. Essayistic and breezily multidisciplinary, with illustrative brain diagrams and data graphs sitting alongside digressions into art, literature, and philosophy, it is both thought-provoking and, indeed, timely."
(Times Literary Supplement)
Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre, by Hans-Thies Lehmann (Routledge, 2016)
"Erik Butler's excellent translation..."
(Theater Journal)
"Erik Butler’s translation... flows well and negotiates some very difficult German structures and terms with ... lightness."
(Contemporary Theatre Review)
Atlas of Poetic Botany, by Francis Hallé with Éliane Patriarca (MIT, 2018)
"A delightful book about tropical botany... The author deserves that his words and drawings gain a large audience... The translator deserves his commendation too."
(Mark Avery)
"A volume of Seussian botanical sketches and informed musings, produced in collaboration with Éliane Patriarca and newly translated into English by Erik Butler. ... Each entry in the Atlas drops readers into a scene of Hallé’s fieldwork."
(Atlas Obscura)
"The Atlas of Poetic Botany is a charming book about tropical plants that most of us will never see in their natural surroundings. It’s therefore something of an armchair’s botanist’s delight, with easy-to-read text and wonderful illustrations. All involved in its production are to be congratulated."
(Botany One)
Atlas of Poetic Zoology, by Emmanuelle Pouydebat (MIT, 2019)
featured in "Globetrotting: Your sneak preview of books coming out in 2019 from around the world."
(New York Times)
Translation for the Stage (with Kimberly Jannarone)
Debacles, Marion Aubert (Yale Cabaret, 2017)
"Director Elizabeth Dinkova has a penchant for wildly dark comedy, and she may have found her most suitable match yet directing Marion Aubert’s Débâcles, now in its first-ever English language staging, as translated by Erik Butler and Kimberly Jannarone, at Yale Cabaret. The play sends up the French Resistance with the kind of no-holds-barred approach to comedy that might recall Terry Southern and Stanley Kubrick’s caustic satire of prospective world annihilation, Dr. Strangelove."
(New Haven Review)