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Tag: Europe

  • Ghentish Talent – Graphic Novels from Flanders

    Michele Hutchison takes us on a far-ranging tour of the European comics scene, with a focus on the beautiful, moving and innovative graphic novels coming out of Belgium

    Graphic novels are hot. One of the most talked about books of 2012 was Chris Ware’s Building Stories, an interactive graphic novel in a box – possibly better described as a game – published by Jonathan Cape. It looks stunning but makes for challenging reading. A lot is required of the reader or ‘story-builder’. And then there was the shortlisting of two graphic novels for the Costa Awards, one of which, Mary Talbot’s Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes, illustrated by her husband, Bryan, won the Biography category. This was actually seen as controversial by some in the UK. In fact I’d almost completely forgotten about that narrow-minded view that graphic novels aren’t real literature, or art for that matter. It seems so dated to me, and it’s probably for that  reason that we ended up with two terms in the first place – ‘comics’ for character-driven series and the more serious-sounding ‘graphic novels’ for single volume stories-in-pictures.

    Outside of the UK things look rather different. In America there is less critical resistance, super-hero comics are an integral part of popular culture, while arty graphic novels have long been accepted as part of high culture. The US comics industry prizes, the Eisner Awards were established as far back as 1988.  In last week’s Publishing Perspectives  Duncan Jepson pointed out that graphic novels also have a long tradition in Asia, which interestingly he believes might be related to having a more visual written language made up of pictorial symbols.

    Franco-Belgian comics also have deep roots. Think of Asterix, Tintin, Lucky Luke and Suske en Wiske (translated in the US as Willy and Wanda). Yet alongside these series created by teams of writers and illustrators and often aimed at a children’s audience, there is now a thriving graphic novel scene in Belgium – more specifically in Flanders where the Sint Lucas Art Academy in Ghent is churning out a wide array of talent from its Illustration course. One of their most famous alumni is the young graphic novelist Brecht Evens, whose stunningly-illustrated books The Wrong Place and The Making Of have been published in English by Cape in the UK and across the pond by Drawn & Quarterly to great critical acclaim. (As an aside, I confess to being one of his translators, along with Laura Watkinson, and for the first book, Rhian Heppleston.)

    Brecht Even’s lush and complex watercolour panoramas have made him most hip artist on the scene right now. He was the obvious choice to curate a show of Flemish graphic talent at Angouleme Comics Festival last month – which sees 200,000 visitors descending on a small town in France. In ‘La Boite à Gand’, Brecht chose to showcase four other illustrators with whom he’d trained at the Sint Lucas: Brecht Vandenbroucke, Hannelore Van Dijck, Lotte Vandewalle and Sarah Yu Zeebroek. Not all of them make books yet and the exhibition made the overlap between contemporary art and graphic art very clear. Brecht Vandenbroucke has just published an entirely textless first book, White Cube, which was the subject of much foreign interest at the festival. The explosions of colour are indeed reminiscent of ‘the other Brecht’s’ work.

    General agreement that graphic novels are in vogue hasn’t yet translated into an increase in sales figures, I hear from editors and graphic novelists alike. On the High Impact tour, I talked at length to another fantastic Flemish talent, author of the beautiful and moving When David Lost His Voice, Judith Vanistendael, who told me that rights to her books have been sold in countries like Korea and Egypt but she feels that most of the hype is still confined to conversations and awareness of graphic storytelling rather than it being a money-earner. Her works still mainly reach a niche audience and are not yet mainstream. In the Dutch-language market, this translates to sales figures of up to ten thousand copies, which represents major success in the field.

    Producing books in colour is expensive, debutants generally have to make do with black-and-white line drawings which scan more easily. Yet small specialist publishing houses like Self-Made Hero and Drawn & Quarterly do manage to maintain high production values for their books. Young entrepreneur and director of Self-Made Hero, Emma Hayley, told me she was actually planning on doing more graphic novels in translation and it seems that others are listening to the jungle drums too. With subsidies available to cover translation costs from Dutch, we might be seeing a lot more of that Ghentish talent.

    Incidentally, the Grand Prix Angouleme this year went to a Dutchman, Willem, who lives in France and produces a cartoon for Charlie Hebdo. It coincided with the Dutch Literary Foundation producing their first comics offensive: Ten Graphic Novelists from Holland.

    A name to watch out for there is Tim Enthoven whom I came across when he was still finishing his graduation project. The project, his as yet untranslated book, Binnenskamers, was published in 2011, and like his Flemish contemporaries, his work also crosses over into the field of contemporary art.

    About the Author

    Michele Hutchison (Solihull, 1972) worked in publishing in the UK before moving to the Netherlands in 2004. She now works as an editor at a Dutch literary publishing house and as a freelance translator. Writers she has translated include Joris Luyendijk, Rob Riemen, Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer and Simone van der Vlugt.

     Additional Information

    Article in Publishing Perspectives about the British attitude to graphic storytelling

    Film on ‘La Boite à Gand’ featuring Brecht Evens (in French)

    The Flemish Literature Funds (for subsidy information and the free publication Bangarang, Comics from Flanders)

    My blog for the Dutch Literary Foundation, Judith Vanistendael on the High Impact Tour

    London Super Comics Con: 24-25th February

    Angouleme Comic Festival 2013

     

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  • Tadeusz Różewicz and The Struggle for Poetry

    For PEN Atlas this week, Basia Howard writes about Tadeusz Różewicz, Poland’s most translated author, considered by many to be of the same stature as Szymborska and Milosz. His memoir Mother Departs, published by Stork Press next month, describes the war he survived, his artistic journey and the experiences that forged his poetic conscience

     

    They were so happy

    the poets of old

    They were like children

    and a tree was their world

     

    What can I hang for you

    on the branch of a tree

    where iron rain

    fell brutally

     

    Tadeusz Różewicz is Poland’s pre-eminent living author. His writings include poetry, drama, prose and film scripts. He was awarded the European Prize for Literature in 2007.

    The first English-language edition of his poetry was published in the ’60s in fine translations by Adam Czerniawski that helped build his reputation internationally as one of the greatest writers of the immediate postwar years. This was followed over the next decades by a steady flow of his work in English translations, on both sides of the Atlantic.

    Różewicz was born in 1921. His youth was cut short by the Second World War. His home town of Radomsko was one of the first to fall when Germany invaded, and he joined the Home Army partisans to fight the Nazi occupation. Europe’s collective tragedy was magnified by his family’s personal tragedy when in 1944 Tadeusz’s elder brother and mentor, Janusz – also a poet, and an intelligence officer in the Underground resistance – was captured and murdered by the Gestapo. Also, we have to infer from the fact of his mother’s Jewish descent that the family had to evade the constant threat of extermination posed by the Nazi regime. During the war they moved repeatedly, always one step ahead of the raids and mass arrests.

    Tadeusz Różewicz began writing for the underground press. But for him the Holocaust and all the War’s other atrocities signified both the death of God and the death of poetry. Later he tried to replace the religious experience with an aesthetic one – he  studied Art History at Kraków’s great Jagiellonian University –  but he soon realised that it was futile: “I turned away… the source of creative work, I thought, can be ethics.”

    And so in his poetry he rejected all the adornments of rhyme and metre. He stripped it down to the bone, to the essentials.

     

    After the end of the world

    after death

    I found myself in the midst of life

    creating myself

    building life

    people animals landscapes

     

    this is a table I said

    this is a table

    on the table there is bread a knife

    the knife is for cutting the bread

    bread feeds people

                   

    man must be loved

    I was learning night and day

    what must be loved

    man I answered

     

    He was writing, he said, for survivors, tasked with the reinvention of devalued language and proving that poetry could, and must, be written after Auschwitz – but through an awareness of Auschwitz:

     

    behind clean glass

    lies the stiff hair

    of those suffocated in the gas chambers

    there are pins in the hair

    and bone combs

     

    The simple stark testament of a poet who was a participant and witness in history continues to fall on receptive ground worldwide. Różewicz has been translated into over 40 languages, making him Poland’s most translated author.

    He is also an innovative playwright.  His drama The Card Index presented the modern European everyman, an antihero with no fixed name or identity.  Różewicz proved to be visionary in his choice of subject matter, writing as early as the 1960s about overpopulation and environmental disaster, as well as about the futility and immorality of war, about depression and the loss of moral compass in modern consumerist society. But all this is told through the spectrum of a new form, which he’s relentlessly invented and searched for – he believes this is the task of art. And although austerity and brutal honesty define Różewicz’s most celebrated poetry, his new forms, especially in the theatre, also embrace the humour and irony that he sees as the saving grace of the modern world.

    Różewicz has been quietly and consistently present in the English-speaking world for over 40 years. Today at 91, he’s still speaking to us, and indeed in 2012 he wrote a clowning parody of Hamlet to illustrate our cultural deflation and confusion.

    Stork Press is about to publish Różewicz’s memoir Mother Departs. It is a biography – told through a kaleidoscope of different genres and the different voices of his family, set against the dark epic backdrop of a country ripped apart, invaded and repressed throughout the 20th century. Tadeusz Różewicz’s vision has not changed during the seven decades of his literary career. But Mother Departs adds to our understanding of the discordant forces that shape a writer. Wars, religion, poverty, politics all do so – but so do the kitchen-table actualities of family love. This is absolutely fundamental to Różewicz. 

    After the War he wrote:

     

    I am  twenty-four

    led to the slaughter

    I survived

     

    Ever since, he has written about all of us who have endured and survived, because we must. Now in Mother Departs he brings us face to face with those closest to him, whom long ago he lost.

     

    About the author

    Photo-BasiaBasia Howard (aka Barbara Bogoczek) is a translator and interpreter based in London. She has had a strong working relationship with Tadeusz Różewicz, publishing his poetry (ARC Press) and drama (Marion Boyars) in collaboration with Tony Howard. She has also translated the work of Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska and many other Polish poets. She often works in theatre and with the Polish Cultural Institute. She is a legal interpreter and is also a member of the Translators Association / Society of Authors.  Her most recent publication is the poet Ewa Lipska’s novel Sefer (AU Press).  Please see this link for more about the novel. Her translations have been published in the UK, USA, Australia, Canada, Holland and Poland, and have appeared in the New York Times and on the London Underground.

    Mother Departs is published by Stork Press in March.

    Additional Information

    You can read more about Tadeusz Różewicz at Culture.pl, the online magazine promoting Polish Culture abroad, run by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland.

    They also host a full resource library concerning Polish literature.

  • Publishers’ highlights in 2013: part 2

    In part 2 of our Publishers’ Highlights for PEN Atlas, we find out about Japanese crime fiction from Little Brown, Balkan stories from Istros Books, Iranian memoirs from Oneworld Publications, and many more 

     Bitter Lemon Press – François von Hurter, PublisherI would like to mention four translated works of fiction to be published in 2013, all by authors we have published before. In the case of Carofiglio this will be our fifth novel by him. These are examples of our policy to introduce, and then support authors over the long run.The Crack in the Wall
     
    by Claudia Piñeiro, translated by Miranda France. Our third novel by this author. Contemporary Buenos Aires is the setting for this story, a city whose lovely neighbourhoods are being scarred by ruthless property development. Piñeiro, as always, has dressed up her social criticism and scathing analysis of what is happening to her country today in an elegant psychological thriller. And again, for Piñeiro, no one is free of evil, not the protagonist of the novel, not even the victim of the crime.Baksheesh
    , is by a young Istanbul woman writer called Esmahan Aykol and translated by Ruth Whitehouse. Like its predecessor Hotel Bosphorus
    , it is a literary crime novel set in her beloved city. Sharp observation and wry, sexy humour expose Western prejudices about Turkey as well as Turkish stereotyping of Europeans. The Turkish way of life, including politics and womanising, is vividly evoked. This time the focus, as evident from the title, is on the corruption pervasive in Stanbouli life.The Sound of One Hand Killing
     by Teresa Solana, translated by Peter Bush. In this, the third in her satirical murder mystery series about Barcelona, Catalan novelist Teresa Solana mercilessly punctures the pretensions of New Age quacks who promote pseudo-science and pseudo-spirituality.The Silence of the Wave
     by Gianrico Carofiglio, translated by Howard Curtis. This will be our fifth title by this bestselling author, but the first with a new hero, carabiniere Roberto Marias. Every Monday and Thursday, Roberto Marías crosses Rome on foot to arrive at his psychiatrist’s office. There, he often sits in silence, stumped by the ritual. He remembers when, as a child, he used to surf with his father. He remembers the years he spent working as an under-cover agent. He has lived an intoxicating and crushing life, but now his psychiatrist’s words, the hypnotic strolls through Rome, and a meeting with a woman named Emma—who like Roberto is ravaged by a profound guilt—are beginning to revive him. And when eleven-year-old Giacomo asks Roberto to help him conquer his nightmares, Roberto at last achieves a true rebirth. This is not a crime novel like the others by Carofiglio we’ve published, but an aching story about human faults, frailties, and fathers and sons. Clerkenwell Press – Goeff Mulligan, Publisher1913
    by Florian Illies translated by Shaun Whiteside to be published in August 2013:1913
    by Florian Illies is a dazzling portrait of a year that changed everything, told by interweaving the stories of artists, writers and even the occasional dictator.  It is currently number 1 in the German bestseller lists. Dedalus – Eric Lane, PublisherThe Mussolini Canal
    by Antonio Pennacchi, translated by Judith Landry is one of the great achievements of contemporary Italian fiction. It gives 100 years of Italian history as seen through the eyes of a family of northern peasants, the Peruzzi. At the heart of the book is the draining of the Pontine Marshes outside Rome in the 1930s by Mussolini and his decision to settle the reclaimed land with 30,000 peasants sent from Northern Italy. In Italy it won the Strega Prize in 2010 and has sold more than 400,000 copies in hardcover.Before and During
    by Vladimir Sharov, translated by Oliver Ready from Russian. This is one of the most unusual books Dedalus has published, and we are known for unusual books. Sharov has been described as an amalgam of Tolstoy, Dostoievski and Soljenitsyn and one Russian critic coined the term magic historiography to describe Sharov’s work.Barbara
    by Jorgen-Frantz Jacobsen, translated by W. Glyn Jones. Set in the Faroes at the end of the 18th century this Danish language novel tells the story of Barbara, a Moll Flanders-type character who marries three clergyman and has uncontrollable lust for life and men. Written in the 1930s it is now a Danish classic  and the subject of a highly successful Danish feature film.My Little Husband
    by Pascal Bruckner, translated by Mike Mitchell. A short novel from one of France’s most controversial philosophers which has an Amazonian beauty over 6-feet tall marrying a 5 feet 6 inch dentist. The marriage is very happy but every time they have a child the husband shrinks.The Dedalus Book of Lithuanian Literature
    edited by Almantas Samalavicius with five translators. Dedalus is committed to bringing more fiction from small linguistic areas of Europe into English. Having done an anthology from Estonian we celebrate Lithuanian’s very varied literature before moving on to an anthology of Slovakian Literature.Gallic Press – Jane Aitken, Managing DirectorAll our titles are translations from French and we have eight titles to publish this year, including two more noir novels from the late Pascal Garnier, written in his wonderfully spare but powerful prose.In April we will be publishing The President’s Hat
    by Antoine Laurain (translated by Louise Rogers Lalaurie and Gallic), a wonderfully witty fable and rich portrait of political and cultural life in France during the Mitterrand years. From the moment company accountant, Daniel Mercier, takes President Mitterrand’s hat from a brasserie in Paris, its transformative powers capture the reader’s imagination in this highly original, inventive and magical novel.In a complete change of pace for September, Monsieur Le Commandant
    by Romain Slocombe (translated by Jesse Browner) is an epistolary novel set in 1942. French Academician and Nazi sympathiser Paul-Jean Husson writes to his local SS Officer. Tormented by an illicit passion for Ilse his German daughter-in-law, Husson confesses to taking a terrible decision that will devastate several lives including his own. The book was inspired by the author’s discovery that his mother had been concealing her Jewish heritage from her new family her whole married life. It is gripping and shocking in the same measure.The final novel we would like to mention and which we are honoured to be publishing is a modern classic of French fiction, by celebrated author Michel Déon. The Stripling Boy
    , translated by Julian Evans, which we will publish in December, is the story of Jean Arnaud, growing up in the troubled inter-war years in France. In this picaresque novel, Michel Déon’s sharp sense of comedy and insight into social hypocrisy, and his concern for sexual happiness as well as moral goodness, combine to make an irresistible entertainment. Little Brown – Rowan Cope, Commissioning EditorWe have a fantastic year for fiction in translation ahead of us in 2013 across our LB/Abacus, Virago and Trapdoor imprints.We have an especially strong selection of clever, gripping crime and thriller titles this year. Salvation of a Saint
     by the Japanese superstar writer Keigo Higashino comes out in February and reprises some characters from his brilliant The Devotion of Suspect X
    . Also on our Abacus imprint in June we launch a celebrated and bestselling Italian author, Maurizio de Giovanni, whose chilling novel The Crocodile
     transports the reader to modern-day Naples.  We will have a new Inspector Ferrara novel from Michele Giuttari in July, entitled The Dark Heart of Florence
    .     And in March on our Trapdoor imprint we’ll publish Swedish bestselling author Marie Hermanson’s The Devil’s Sanctuary
    , a heart-stopping psychological thriller.Parinoush Saniee is another international bestselling author whom we are proud to be publishing, especially as she suffered years of censorship in her native Iran. The banned novel that became a huge bestseller in her home country, Saniee’s The
     Book of Fate
    is the story of Iran during the second half of the twentieth-century, told through the life of an Iranian woman. We will publish as a Little, Brown hardback in April.An ordinary woman’s experience of war and revolution is also the substance of Mercè Rodoreda’s classic In Diamond Square 
    – vivid and poignant, it’s an unforgettable portrait of the Spanish Civil War in Barcelona and has been championed by Gabriel García Márquez and Diana Athill. It will be a Virago hardback in March.We will also bring out handsome new Abacus editions of our Primo Levi classics If This is a Man / The Truce
    , The Wrench 
    and The Mirror Maker
    , in April and July. MacLehose Press – Katharina Bielenberg, Associate PublisherMacLehose Press celebrates its Fifth Anniversary in 2013, with twenty-three books being published in translation.Dany Laferrière’s autobiographical The Enigma of the Return 
    is a haunting blend of prose and poetry (translated from French by David Homel). Windsor Laferrière, a writer with a block, returns to Haiti from Canada and faces the grim truth of life in his homeland – but it is there that he finds his words again. Beautiful, full of insight, and hugely compelling.Outsiders
         is a bold collection of stories by Italian writers including Roberto Saviano, the Wu Ming Collective, Carlo Lucarelli and Simona Vinci. Their protagonists find themselves on society’s perimeters, but Vinci’s piece, “Another Kind of Solitude”, suggests that this is not such a bad place to be. Each of the six has a different translator, showcasing new and established talent.Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything
     is Daniela Krien’s impressive first novel (translated from German by Jamie Bulloch) set the sleepy East German countryside in the summer of 1990. It’s the story of an extraordinary intense love affair between a sixteen-old-girl and an older man, at the same time a delicately poised account of Germany’s transition to reunification. Krien has managed to produce a powerful, poetic narrative and some brilliant Zola-esque characters with a remarkable economy of language.Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s essential, elemental novel The Sorrow of Angels
     (translated from Icelandic by Philip Roughton) continues the trilogy that began with Heaven and Hell 
    (2010). Stefánsson’s universe is harsh and yet unbelievably beautiful; he sends his two protagonists on an incredible journey, dangling them over abysses both metaphorical and actual. Rarely has a writer got so close to the core of what it is to be human in an inhospitable world.In late 1961, months after Vasily Grossman’s epic Life and Fate was “arrested” by the Soviet authorities, he took off to Armenia to rewrite a poor translation of another writer’s novel. An Armenian Sketchbook
     (translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler) is remarkably candid memoir, discursive about the country he finds himself in, reflective about himself, and ultimately foreshadowing his death in 1964.A second posthumous translation from MacLehose Press this year is of Joan Sales’ Uncertain Glory 
    (from the Catalan by Peter Bush), the first novel to tell the story of the Spanish Civil War from the loser’s – the Catalan – perspective. Written in 1956, it is an epic tale of lost ideals, lost love and lost youth. In Spain it has been recognised as the masterpiece of the Spanish Civil War in that it succeeds in capturing the war in all its complexity. Off Press – Marek Kazmierski, founding publisher and translatorDark Flashes
    by Irit Amiel – a book of poems on the theme of the Holocaust from a Jewish writer who survived the War hiding in a ghetto in Poland.Boys and Girls in Poland
    by Przemek Gulda – a collection of short stories covering themes of adolescence and alienation in Central Europe.Notes from an Island
    by Wioletta Grzegorzewska – short stories on the theme of modern migration from an upcoming Polish writer who lives on the Isle of Wight. Istros Books – Susan Curtis-Kojkovic, Founding DirectorThis year, we have split our titles into two new series: Best Balkan Books 
    and Books from the Edge. 
    By grouping the Balkan books together, we want to profile them as phenomena in their own right, capitalising on the wild and exciting elements associated with the region in order to attract readers to these original and rewarding group of writers from Romania, Montenegro and Serbia. The Fairground Magician
    is one of these titles: a beautifully crafted selection of short stories which won its author – Jelena Lengold – the European Prize for Literature, 2011.  It is translated by Celia Hawkesworth.And continuing with female authors from the region, we have a highly original tale of betrayal and mystery told through the eyes of a twelve year old boy falling in love for the first time, in Cecilia Stefanescu’s Sun Alley
    ,     translated by Alexandra Coliban.Books from the Edge
     are those countries which lie partly outside the Balkans and partly in: the fruitful borderland of ‘the Edge’. This year’s titles come from Croatia and – for the first time– from Turkey. We are planning to present both books and their authors at the London Book Fair 2013, where Turkey will be the country of focus, and Croatia will have a national stand for the first time. The Aziz Bey Incident
    is a novella that follows the life of a melancholic Tambur player from Istanbul, written by one of Turkey’s most respected and accomplished writers, Ayfer Tunc, and it will be translated by Stephanie Ateş. And  in the same series A Handful of Sand
    by Marinko Koscec was published last week, and is ”a love story and an ode to lost opportunity” translated by Will Firth. Peirene Press – Meike Ziervogel, PublisherPeirene Press curates its books in series. Each year we publish three world-class contemporary European novellas linked by a common theme. I am very excited about our 2013 series ‘Turning Point: Revolutionary Moments’
    . Our new series will feature three impressive stories written by internationally renowned female authors about important historically moments described from within a domestic setting. The first title, The Mussel Feast
    by German Birgit Vanderbeke (translated by Jamie Bulloch) will be published in February. The German modern classic was inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall but operates as a family drama. In June we will bring out Mr Darwin’s Gardener
    by Finnish Kristina Carlson (translated by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah), a postmodern Victorian novel about faith versus knowledge. And in September Hanna Krall’s Chasing the King of Hearts
    (translated from the Polish by Philip Boehm) will follow. The beautiful love story spanning 60 years from the Warsaw Ghetto to Israel is bound to bring tears to the readers’ eye. Stork Press – Joanna Zgadzaj, Publishing DirectorThis year we’re are trying something new, with our 2013 country focus on Poland. We are also launching our new Stork Crime line so it will be an exciting time for us.In March we’re publishing Tadeusz Różewicz’s Mother Departs
    (translated by Barbara Bogoczek, edited and introduced by Tony Howard). Różewicz is widely seen as the greatest living Polish writer. His memoir Mother Departs
    is a unique mix of prose and poetry, of the joy of life and the agony of loss, a portrait of the author’s mother Stefania and of her indelible influence on her family. No collection of Różewicz’s prose has ever been published in English so we’re deeply honoured to be releasing his latest masterpiece.In April our Stork Crime line kicks off with Mariusz Czubaj’s 21:37
    (translated by Anna Hyde). When we first read this book, it was Czubaj’s hero Rudolf Heinz that convinced us that we wanted to publish his story. Heinz is at once a successful criminologist renowned for his skill at profiling serial killers, and a deeply flawed and extremely human hero. It’s an electrifying, twisted story kicking off with the discovery of the mutilated bodies of two young priests, and bringing Heinz head-to-head with a killer who likes to play games.Joanna Jodełka’s debut novel Polychrome
    (translated by Danusia Stok), publishing in June, will be our second crime novel of the year, but makes for a lighter read than 21:37
    .  Two bodies are found, one of an art restorer, the other of man who runs a homeless shelter. Maciej Bartol is on the case, but, as usual, his mother is not too happy.A real treat comes in November with our final publication of the year, award winning journalist Witold Szabłowski’s The Assassin from Apricot City
    (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones). Szabłowski makes his way to the most remote Turkish villages and towns to meet young girls who run away from honour killings, wives forced by their husbands into prostitution, immigrants from Africa who dream of a better life, and Kurdish journalists and freedom fighters. It’s a multi-voiced and mesmerising portrait of contemporary Turkey, which lingers in the mind long after you finish reading. Oneworld Publications – Juliet Mabey, PublisherWe publish a few translations every year, and in 2013 we are particularly excited about publishing Revolution Street 
    by the Iranian novelist Amir Cheheltan (September), translated by Paul Sprachman. Cheheltan has enjoyed critical success in Iran and his novels have been published in ten languages, but this is his first to be published in English. Set in the 1980s against the roiling aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, it offers a rather dark tale of power, corruption, and love. A young woman is loved by two men who have something else in common: they are both torturers in one of Tehran’s most notorious prisons. When one becomes dangerously infatuated with the other’s fiancé, he sets out to win her, by fair means or foul, taking him deep into Tehran’s underworld of criminals and provocateurs and ultimately unleashing the powers of the state. This tragicomic novel is the first in a marvelous trilogy about everyday lives in contemporary Iran.In May we are also releasing the mass market paperback edition of Things We Left Unsaid
    ,     the prize-winning debut by one of Iran’s most prominent writers, the brilliant Zoya Pirzad, translated from the Persian by Franklin Lewis. Focusing on the dreams and discontent of a young housewife, it was a massive bestseller in Iran and winner of four prestigious awards. We are already at work translating Pirzad’s next book, which follows a man at three stages in his life, as a young boy, as a father and as an old man, each exploring issues of love and friendship across community and traditional boundaries, and the conflicts they bring within the family. Verso – Leo Hollis, Editor  Verso is committed to publishing the best work in every language. In 2013 we are planning to translate work from Chinese, Italian, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Portuguese and German across a complete range of subjects including literary fiction, philosophy, politics and memoir. Here are a few highlights:Altai: A Novel
    by Wu Ming (Italy) and translated by Shaun Whiteside, the sequal to the international best seller Q, Altai is a gripping historical novel of identity, danger and betrayal set in 16th century Venice and ConstantinopleChe Wants to See You
    by Ciro Bustos (Argentina) the searing memoir of Che Guevara’s Argentinian right hand man, who was with him in his last days in the jungle in Bolivia. Translated by Ann Wright.The Girl Who Stole my Holocaust
    by Noam Chayut (Hebrew) a brilliant account by an Israeli officer of life in the IDF, and how a chance meeting with a Palestinian girl changed his life. Translated by Tal Haran.Aisthesis
    by Jacque Ranciere (France) The major work of aesthetic philosophy of one of the most important thinker in France today.   Translater by Zakir Paul.The Lives of Things
    by Jose Saramago (Portugal) published for the first time, the early stories from the Nobel Prize winning novelist. Tanslated by Giovanni Pontiero.F: Hu Feng’s Prison Years
    by Mei Zhi (China). A true life account of one of China’s most famous dissidents and life in the camps under Mao. Translated by Gregor Benton.

  • Publishers' highlights in 2013: part 2

    In part 2 of our Publishers’ Highlights for PEN Atlas, we find out about Japanese crime fiction from Little Brown, Balkan stories from Istros Books, Iranian memoirs from Oneworld Publications, and many more 

     Bitter Lemon Press – François von Hurter, PublisherI would like to mention four translated works of fiction to be published in 2013, all by authors we have published before. In the case of Carofiglio this will be our fifth novel by him. These are examples of our policy to introduce, and then support authors over the long run.The Crack in the Wall
     
    by Claudia Piñeiro, translated by Miranda France. Our third novel by this author. Contemporary Buenos Aires is the setting for this story, a city whose lovely neighbourhoods are being scarred by ruthless property development. Piñeiro, as always, has dressed up her social criticism and scathing analysis of what is happening to her country today in an elegant psychological thriller. And again, for Piñeiro, no one is free of evil, not the protagonist of the novel, not even the victim of the crime.Baksheesh
    , is by a young Istanbul woman writer called Esmahan Aykol and translated by Ruth Whitehouse. Like its predecessor Hotel Bosphorus
    , it is a literary crime novel set in her beloved city. Sharp observation and wry, sexy humour expose Western prejudices about Turkey as well as Turkish stereotyping of Europeans. The Turkish way of life, including politics and womanising, is vividly evoked. This time the focus, as evident from the title, is on the corruption pervasive in Stanbouli life.The Sound of One Hand Killing
     by Teresa Solana, translated by Peter Bush. In this, the third in her satirical murder mystery series about Barcelona, Catalan novelist Teresa Solana mercilessly punctures the pretensions of New Age quacks who promote pseudo-science and pseudo-spirituality.The Silence of the Wave
     by Gianrico Carofiglio, translated by Howard Curtis. This will be our fifth title by this bestselling author, but the first with a new hero, carabiniere Roberto Marias. Every Monday and Thursday, Roberto Marías crosses Rome on foot to arrive at his psychiatrist’s office. There, he often sits in silence, stumped by the ritual. He remembers when, as a child, he used to surf with his father. He remembers the years he spent working as an under-cover agent. He has lived an intoxicating and crushing life, but now his psychiatrist’s words, the hypnotic strolls through Rome, and a meeting with a woman named Emma—who like Roberto is ravaged by a profound guilt—are beginning to revive him. And when eleven-year-old Giacomo asks Roberto to help him conquer his nightmares, Roberto at last achieves a true rebirth. This is not a crime novel like the others by Carofiglio we’ve published, but an aching story about human faults, frailties, and fathers and sons. Clerkenwell Press – Goeff Mulligan, Publisher1913
    by Florian Illies translated by Shaun Whiteside to be published in August 2013:1913
    by Florian Illies is a dazzling portrait of a year that changed everything, told by interweaving the stories of artists, writers and even the occasional dictator.  It is currently number 1 in the German bestseller lists. Dedalus – Eric Lane, PublisherThe Mussolini Canal
    by Antonio Pennacchi, translated by Judith Landry is one of the great achievements of contemporary Italian fiction. It gives 100 years of Italian history as seen through the eyes of a family of northern peasants, the Peruzzi. At the heart of the book is the draining of the Pontine Marshes outside Rome in the 1930s by Mussolini and his decision to settle the reclaimed land with 30,000 peasants sent from Northern Italy. In Italy it won the Strega Prize in 2010 and has sold more than 400,000 copies in hardcover.Before and During
    by Vladimir Sharov, translated by Oliver Ready from Russian. This is one of the most unusual books Dedalus has published, and we are known for unusual books. Sharov has been described as an amalgam of Tolstoy, Dostoievski and Soljenitsyn and one Russian critic coined the term magic historiography to describe Sharov’s work.Barbara
    by Jorgen-Frantz Jacobsen, translated by W. Glyn Jones. Set in the Faroes at the end of the 18th century this Danish language novel tells the story of Barbara, a Moll Flanders-type character who marries three clergyman and has uncontrollable lust for life and men. Written in the 1930s it is now a Danish classic  and the subject of a highly successful Danish feature film.My Little Husband
    by Pascal Bruckner, translated by Mike Mitchell. A short novel from one of France’s most controversial philosophers which has an Amazonian beauty over 6-feet tall marrying a 5 feet 6 inch dentist. The marriage is very happy but every time they have a child the husband shrinks.The Dedalus Book of Lithuanian Literature
    edited by Almantas Samalavicius with five translators. Dedalus is committed to bringing more fiction from small linguistic areas of Europe into English. Having done an anthology from Estonian we celebrate Lithuanian’s very varied literature before moving on to an anthology of Slovakian Literature.Gallic Press – Jane Aitken, Managing DirectorAll our titles are translations from French and we have eight titles to publish this year, including two more noir novels from the late Pascal Garnier, written in his wonderfully spare but powerful prose.In April we will be publishing The President’s Hat
    by Antoine Laurain (translated by Louise Rogers Lalaurie and Gallic), a wonderfully witty fable and rich portrait of political and cultural life in France during the Mitterrand years. From the moment company accountant, Daniel Mercier, takes President Mitterrand’s hat from a brasserie in Paris, its transformative powers capture the reader’s imagination in this highly original, inventive and magical novel.In a complete change of pace for September, Monsieur Le Commandant
    by Romain Slocombe (translated by Jesse Browner) is an epistolary novel set in 1942. French Academician and Nazi sympathiser Paul-Jean Husson writes to his local SS Officer. Tormented by an illicit passion for Ilse his German daughter-in-law, Husson confesses to taking a terrible decision that will devastate several lives including his own. The book was inspired by the author’s discovery that his mother had been concealing her Jewish heritage from her new family her whole married life. It is gripping and shocking in the same measure.The final novel we would like to mention and which we are honoured to be publishing is a modern classic of French fiction, by celebrated author Michel Déon. The Stripling Boy
    , translated by Julian Evans, which we will publish in December, is the story of Jean Arnaud, growing up in the troubled inter-war years in France. In this picaresque novel, Michel Déon’s sharp sense of comedy and insight into social hypocrisy, and his concern for sexual happiness as well as moral goodness, combine to make an irresistible entertainment. Little Brown – Rowan Cope, Commissioning EditorWe have a fantastic year for fiction in translation ahead of us in 2013 across our LB/Abacus, Virago and Trapdoor imprints.We have an especially strong selection of clever, gripping crime and thriller titles this year. Salvation of a Saint
     by the Japanese superstar writer Keigo Higashino comes out in February and reprises some characters from his brilliant The Devotion of Suspect X
    . Also on our Abacus imprint in June we launch a celebrated and bestselling Italian author, Maurizio de Giovanni, whose chilling novel The Crocodile
     transports the reader to modern-day Naples.  We will have a new Inspector Ferrara novel from Michele Giuttari in July, entitled The Dark Heart of Florence
    .     And in March on our Trapdoor imprint we’ll publish Swedish bestselling author Marie Hermanson’s The Devil’s Sanctuary
    , a heart-stopping psychological thriller.Parinoush Saniee is another international bestselling author whom we are proud to be publishing, especially as she suffered years of censorship in her native Iran. The banned novel that became a huge bestseller in her home country, Saniee’s The
     Book of Fate
    is the story of Iran during the second half of the twentieth-century, told through the life of an Iranian woman. We will publish as a Little, Brown hardback in April.An ordinary woman’s experience of war and revolution is also the substance of Mercè Rodoreda’s classic In Diamond Square 
    – vivid and poignant, it’s an unforgettable portrait of the Spanish Civil War in Barcelona and has been championed by Gabriel García Márquez and Diana Athill. It will be a Virago hardback in March.We will also bring out handsome new Abacus editions of our Primo Levi classics If This is a Man / The Truce
    , The Wrench 
    and The Mirror Maker
    , in April and July. MacLehose Press – Katharina Bielenberg, Associate PublisherMacLehose Press celebrates its Fifth Anniversary in 2013, with twenty-three books being published in translation.Dany Laferrière’s autobiographical The Enigma of the Return 
    is a haunting blend of prose and poetry (translated from French by David Homel). Windsor Laferrière, a writer with a block, returns to Haiti from Canada and faces the grim truth of life in his homeland – but it is there that he finds his words again. Beautiful, full of insight, and hugely compelling.Outsiders
         is a bold collection of stories by Italian writers including Roberto Saviano, the Wu Ming Collective, Carlo Lucarelli and Simona Vinci. Their protagonists find themselves on society’s perimeters, but Vinci’s piece, “Another Kind of Solitude”, suggests that this is not such a bad place to be. Each of the six has a different translator, showcasing new and established talent.Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything
     is Daniela Krien’s impressive first novel (translated from German by Jamie Bulloch) set the sleepy East German countryside in the summer of 1990. It’s the story of an extraordinary intense love affair between a sixteen-old-girl and an older man, at the same time a delicately poised account of Germany’s transition to reunification. Krien has managed to produce a powerful, poetic narrative and some brilliant Zola-esque characters with a remarkable economy of language.Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s essential, elemental novel The Sorrow of Angels
     (translated from Icelandic by Philip Roughton) continues the trilogy that began with Heaven and Hell 
    (2010). Stefánsson’s universe is harsh and yet unbelievably beautiful; he sends his two protagonists on an incredible journey, dangling them over abysses both metaphorical and actual. Rarely has a writer got so close to the core of what it is to be human in an inhospitable world.In late 1961, months after Vasily Grossman’s epic Life and Fate was “arrested” by the Soviet authorities, he took off to Armenia to rewrite a poor translation of another writer’s novel. An Armenian Sketchbook
     (translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler) is remarkably candid memoir, discursive about the country he finds himself in, reflective about himself, and ultimately foreshadowing his death in 1964.A second posthumous translation from MacLehose Press this year is of Joan Sales’ Uncertain Glory 
    (from the Catalan by Peter Bush), the first novel to tell the story of the Spanish Civil War from the loser’s – the Catalan – perspective. Written in 1956, it is an epic tale of lost ideals, lost love and lost youth. In Spain it has been recognised as the masterpiece of the Spanish Civil War in that it succeeds in capturing the war in all its complexity. Off Press – Marek Kazmierski, founding publisher and translatorDark Flashes
    by Irit Amiel – a book of poems on the theme of the Holocaust from a Jewish writer who survived the War hiding in a ghetto in Poland.Boys and Girls in Poland
    by Przemek Gulda – a collection of short stories covering themes of adolescence and alienation in Central Europe.Notes from an Island
    by Wioletta Grzegorzewska – short stories on the theme of modern migration from an upcoming Polish writer who lives on the Isle of Wight. Istros Books – Susan Curtis-Kojkovic, Founding DirectorThis year, we have split our titles into two new series: Best Balkan Books 
    and Books from the Edge. 
    By grouping the Balkan books together, we want to profile them as phenomena in their own right, capitalising on the wild and exciting elements associated with the region in order to attract readers to these original and rewarding group of writers from Romania, Montenegro and Serbia. The Fairground Magician
    is one of these titles: a beautifully crafted selection of short stories which won its author – Jelena Lengold – the European Prize for Literature, 2011.  It is translated by Celia Hawkesworth.And continuing with female authors from the region, we have a highly original tale of betrayal and mystery told through the eyes of a twelve year old boy falling in love for the first time, in Cecilia Stefanescu’s Sun Alley
    ,     translated by Alexandra Coliban.Books from the Edge
     are those countries which lie partly outside the Balkans and partly in: the fruitful borderland of ‘the Edge’. This year’s titles come from Croatia and – for the first time– from Turkey. We are planning to present both books and their authors at the London Book Fair 2013, where Turkey will be the country of focus, and Croatia will have a national stand for the first time. The Aziz Bey Incident
    is a novella that follows the life of a melancholic Tambur player from Istanbul, written by one of Turkey’s most respected and accomplished writers, Ayfer Tunc, and it will be translated by Stephanie Ateş. And  in the same series A Handful of Sand
    by Marinko Koscec was published last week, and is ”a love story and an ode to lost opportunity” translated by Will Firth. Peirene Press – Meike Ziervogel, PublisherPeirene Press curates its books in series. Each year we publish three world-class contemporary European novellas linked by a common theme. I am very excited about our 2013 series ‘Turning Point: Revolutionary Moments’
    . Our new series will feature three impressive stories written by internationally renowned female authors about important historically moments described from within a domestic setting. The first title, The Mussel Feast
    by German Birgit Vanderbeke (translated by Jamie Bulloch) will be published in February. The German modern classic was inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall but operates as a family drama. In June we will bring out Mr Darwin’s Gardener
    by Finnish Kristina Carlson (translated by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah), a postmodern Victorian novel about faith versus knowledge. And in September Hanna Krall’s Chasing the King of Hearts
    (translated from the Polish by Philip Boehm) will follow. The beautiful love story spanning 60 years from the Warsaw Ghetto to Israel is bound to bring tears to the readers’ eye. Stork Press – Joanna Zgadzaj, Publishing DirectorThis year we’re are trying something new, with our 2013 country focus on Poland. We are also launching our new Stork Crime line so it will be an exciting time for us.In March we’re publishing Tadeusz Różewicz’s Mother Departs
    (translated by Barbara Bogoczek, edited and introduced by Tony Howard). Różewicz is widely seen as the greatest living Polish writer. His memoir Mother Departs
    is a unique mix of prose and poetry, of the joy of life and the agony of loss, a portrait of the author’s mother Stefania and of her indelible influence on her family. No collection of Różewicz’s prose has ever been published in English so we’re deeply honoured to be releasing his latest masterpiece.In April our Stork Crime line kicks off with Mariusz Czubaj’s 21:37
    (translated by Anna Hyde). When we first read this book, it was Czubaj’s hero Rudolf Heinz that convinced us that we wanted to publish his story. Heinz is at once a successful criminologist renowned for his skill at profiling serial killers, and a deeply flawed and extremely human hero. It’s an electrifying, twisted story kicking off with the discovery of the mutilated bodies of two young priests, and bringing Heinz head-to-head with a killer who likes to play games.Joanna Jodełka’s debut novel Polychrome
    (translated by Danusia Stok), publishing in June, will be our second crime novel of the year, but makes for a lighter read than 21:37
    .  Two bodies are found, one of an art restorer, the other of man who runs a homeless shelter. Maciej Bartol is on the case, but, as usual, his mother is not too happy.A real treat comes in November with our final publication of the year, award winning journalist Witold Szabłowski’s The Assassin from Apricot City
    (translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones). Szabłowski makes his way to the most remote Turkish villages and towns to meet young girls who run away from honour killings, wives forced by their husbands into prostitution, immigrants from Africa who dream of a better life, and Kurdish journalists and freedom fighters. It’s a multi-voiced and mesmerising portrait of contemporary Turkey, which lingers in the mind long after you finish reading. Oneworld Publications – Juliet Mabey, PublisherWe publish a few translations every year, and in 2013 we are particularly excited about publishing Revolution Street 
    by the Iranian novelist Amir Cheheltan (September), translated by Paul Sprachman. Cheheltan has enjoyed critical success in Iran and his novels have been published in ten languages, but this is his first to be published in English. Set in the 1980s against the roiling aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, it offers a rather dark tale of power, corruption, and love. A young woman is loved by two men who have something else in common: they are both torturers in one of Tehran’s most notorious prisons. When one becomes dangerously infatuated with the other’s fiancé, he sets out to win her, by fair means or foul, taking him deep into Tehran’s underworld of criminals and provocateurs and ultimately unleashing the powers of the state. This tragicomic novel is the first in a marvelous trilogy about everyday lives in contemporary Iran.In May we are also releasing the mass market paperback edition of Things We Left Unsaid
    ,     the prize-winning debut by one of Iran’s most prominent writers, the brilliant Zoya Pirzad, translated from the Persian by Franklin Lewis. Focusing on the dreams and discontent of a young housewife, it was a massive bestseller in Iran and winner of four prestigious awards. We are already at work translating Pirzad’s next book, which follows a man at three stages in his life, as a young boy, as a father and as an old man, each exploring issues of love and friendship across community and traditional boundaries, and the conflicts they bring within the family. Verso – Leo Hollis, Editor  Verso is committed to publishing the best work in every language. In 2013 we are planning to translate work from Chinese, Italian, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Portuguese and German across a complete range of subjects including literary fiction, philosophy, politics and memoir. Here are a few highlights:Altai: A Novel
    by Wu Ming (Italy) and translated by Shaun Whiteside, the sequal to the international best seller Q, Altai is a gripping historical novel of identity, danger and betrayal set in 16th century Venice and ConstantinopleChe Wants to See You
    by Ciro Bustos (Argentina) the searing memoir of Che Guevara’s Argentinian right hand man, who was with him in his last days in the jungle in Bolivia. Translated by Ann Wright.The Girl Who Stole my Holocaust
    by Noam Chayut (Hebrew) a brilliant account by an Israeli officer of life in the IDF, and how a chance meeting with a Palestinian girl changed his life. Translated by Tal Haran.Aisthesis
    by Jacque Ranciere (France) The major work of aesthetic philosophy of one of the most important thinker in France today.   Translater by Zakir Paul.The Lives of Things
    by Jose Saramago (Portugal) published for the first time, the early stories from the Nobel Prize winning novelist. Tanslated by Giovanni Pontiero.F: Hu Feng’s Prison Years
    by Mei Zhi (China). A true life account of one of China’s most famous dissidents and life in the camps under Mao. Translated by Gregor Benton.

  • Publishers’ highlights for 2013

    This week PEN Atlas asks UK publishers about the translated books they are excited about publishing in 2013 – an intriguing list of books to look forward to this year, so clear your bookshelves! Publishers include And Other Stories, Bloomsbury, Europa Editions, Faber and Faber, Pushkin Press and more…

    And Other Stories – Stefan Tobler, Publisher

    In 2013 we will pursue our slightly mad idea of publishing mainly translations, alongside some select books originally written in English, among them Deborah Levy’s astounding collection of stories Black Vodka
    in February.

    Our first translation this year will be Oleg Pavlov’s Captain of the Steppe
    (April 2013, translated by Ian Appleby). The winner of the Russian Booker Prize and Solzhenitsyn Prize, among others, Pavlov is a highly acclaimed author. Think Kafka’s The Trial
    meets Catch-22
    : this is a largely comic novel that vividly exposes the absurd and tragic circumstances of an all but forgotten military camp where the guards are almost prisoners.

    We will follow a new edition of Juan Pablo Villalobos’s incredible, Guardian First Book Award shortlisted Down the Rabbit Hole
    (April 2012, translated by Rosalind Harvey) with his second book, Quesadillas
    (September, also translated by Rosalind Harvey). Quesadillas is a novel for our moment – about social issues such as inequality and poverty; about what happens when a minority of powerful people mess everything up for everyone else. It’s also about growing up in a big family (where all the children have Hellenic names like Aristotle and Orestes). It’s more punk than Down the Rabbit Hole and the humour is even blacker.

    Rodrigo de Souza Leão’s All Dogs are Blue
    (August, translated by Zöe Perry and myself) is a fiery and humorous tale of life in a Rio insane asylum – and never has an asylum had a more engaging, amusing guide. Our narrator appears more worried about his widening girth and the Rio funk blaring from the nearby favela that keeps him awake at night than anything more sinister. He’s loco-lite. All Dogs are Blue 
    burst onto the Brazilian literary scene in 2008. Its raw style and comic invention were something entirely new. But as fate would have it, it would be the last masterpiece Rodrigo de Souza Leão wrote. He died that year, aged 43. His work is currently being filmed. Our editor Sophie Lewis and I had come to the book independently and loved it. It was an easy choice.

    Iosi Havilio’s Paradises
    (October) is our final translation of 2013, translated by Beth Fowler. This intriguing, brilliantly new novel from Iosi Havilio takes up some themes and characters from his debut Open Door
    (which we published in 2011). Its rebellion is in writing a story about a woman with a young child, who just wants a normal life. If that is possible. Havilio and Paradises in particular have already been singled out by the most influential Argentinean critic, Beatriz Sarlo (author of the study Borges). Havilio finds just the right, understated tone as he presents real, complex people in the full mystery of their unexpected reactions and interactions. His books divide their readers – you’ll love them or hate them! And I think that’s a good thing, isn’t it?

     

    Arcadia – Gary Pulsifer, Publisher

    The two new titles I am especially excited about this year are Gunnar Staalesen’s latest crime novel Cold Hearts,
    translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and set in Norway’s second city of Bergen, and Africa, My Passion
     by Corinne Hofmann, translated from the German by Peter Millar. We will be reprinting earlier EuroCrime titles by Staalesen to coincide with release of the new novel, as well as a reprint of Hofmann’s The White Masai 
    – Hofmann’s memoirs have sold over 150,000 copies for us and millions worldwide.

    We are also reprinting They Were Counted
    , Book I of Count Miklos Banffy’s marvellous Transylvanian trilogy which charts the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as seen through the eyes of two very different cousins.  Paddy Leigh Fermor provided the foreword and the trilogy has taken off across Europe with Chinese rights most recently sold.  A true classic of world literature.  The translation from the Hungarian is by Countess Banffy and Patrick Thursfield, winners of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for Book III.

     

    Bloomsbury – Bill Swainson, Senior Commissioning Editor

    In 2013 Bloomsbury will be publishing three very different but outstanding novels from Cuba, France and Israel – each also an exceptional work of translation:

    Delphine de Vigan: Nothing Holds Back the Night
    (July – translated from the French by George Miller) – The third novel to be published in English by the best-selling author of No and Me
    , Nothing Holds Back the Night was nominated for eight of France’s top literary prizes, winning two of them (including the FNAC). It marks a huge step forward for this gifted novelist, combining humour, intellectual honesty, emotional sensitivity and a disarming clarity of expression in a masterpiece of autofiction about the author’s mother.

    Zeruya Shalev: The Remains of Love 
    (August – translated from the Hebrew by Philip Simpson) – Zeruya Shalev’s electrifying new novel – she is the author of Love Life
    , Husband and Wife
    and Late Family
     – is at once a meditation on the state of modern Israel and a profound exploration of family, yearning, compromise and the insistent pull of the past.

    Carlos Acosta: Pig’s Foot
    (October – translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne) – Carlos Acosta is best known as one of the world’s top ballet dancers, spellbinding audiences with towering performances in the likes of Spartacus and Romeo and Juliet. Pig’s Foot, four years in the writing, sets out to tell an alternative history of Cuba from the slave trade to the revolution and beyond as seen through the eyes of its less than reliable narrator, Oscar Mandinga. Rumbustious, darkly funny, defiant and ultimately moving, it’s an astonishing first novel.



    Doubleday – Jane Lawson, Editorial Director 

    If I Close My Eyes Now
    by Edney Silvestre (May), translated by Nick Caistor, a prize-winning Brazilian debut in the tradition of I’m Not Scared and Stand by Me
    . Set in 1960s small-town Brazil, two boys discover the body of a dead woman while playing near a mango plantation. They refuse to accept the official line about her death and together with an old man and a nun, they uncover the real motives behind her murder. Compelling and moving, this tale of loss of innocence coupled with a riveting crime plot and social commentary marks a new phase in contemporary Brazilian writing. 

     

    Europa Editions – Daniela Petracco, UK Director

    Viola Di Grado: 70% Acrylic 30% Wool
    (January, translated by Michael Reynolds):

    Viola Di Grado was 23 when her debut novel was published in Italy.  It was a runaway success and went on to win the Campiello First Novel Award and was shortlisted as a finalist for the Strega Prize.

    The tragic death of her father plunges Camelia and her mother into a depression so deep it stops time and voids words of meaning, and only decapitating flowers and morbidly customising clothes offer relief. A budding romance with shop owner Wen seem to offer a way out, and as he teaches her Chinese ideograms, Camelia comes to see the world anew. But Wen has troubles of his own…. and as Camelia is left behind by her mother’s recovery, the story winds up to a devastating conclusion.  

    Ioanna Karystiani: Back to Delphi(
    March, translated by Konstantine Matsoukas):

    Ioanna Karystiani is one of Greece’s foremost writers, author of The Jasmine Isle
    and winner of the Greek National Book Award.

    Viv Koleva is a woman with a heavy secret.  The novel opens as she takes a trip to Delphi with her grown-up son Linus.  They wander among the ruins, Viv single-mindedly trying to infect her son with her enthusiasm for the ancient art and myths.  But Linus remains taciturn and withdrawn.  By degrees we find out that Linus is a convicted criminal. And his mother too has a lot to answer for. Back to Delphi is a powerful novel about the responsibility parents carry for the actions of their children, and their ultimate helplessness. 

    May will be busy for Europa. We are kicking off our Noir Season with the reissue – and Europa UK launch, having recently secured UK rights – of Jean-Claude Izzo’s Marseilles Trilogy
    : Total Chaos, Chourmo
    and Solea
    (Total Chaos used to be published in the UK by Arcadia but it’s been out of print for some time now, Chourmo and Solea have not been published before in the UK).  With a brand new Introduction by Massimo Carlotto and translated by Howard Curtis.

    The Marseilles Trilogy, featuring ex-cop Fabio Montale, is a classic of European crime fiction, the catalyst for the foundation of an entire literary movement, Mediterranean Noir.   

    The trilogy’s plot centres on ex-cop Fabio Montale and his fight against villains in the grittier side of Marseilles.  Innocence is fleeting, everyone is flawed and everything is in flux. Izzo’s novels show us the simmering anti-immigrant sentiments flowing through southern France as the intersections of competing interests of right-wingers, the mafia, and Arab immigrants combine to wreak havoc onto Montale’s increasingly complicated life.

    We are also launching Garlic, Mint and Sweet Basil
    , a little book of unpublished/selected writings by Jean-Claude Izzo, a love song to Marseilles, its inhabitants and the earthy flavours of its cuisine.

    Also in May, we will publish the new novel by Massimo Carlotto translated by Antony Shugaar. At the End of a Dull Day
    is a wonderfully sleazy story of crime and corruption in which Carlotto proves just how good he is at creating a central character, both morally dubious and unsympathetic, and compelling all the same.  

    Giorgio Pellegrini has been living an “honest” life for eleven years.  But his lawyer has been deceiving him and now Giorgio is forced into service as an unwilling errand boy for an organized crime syndicate.  A sharp insight into the intersecting worlds of corrupt politics and organised crime.

     Another title to watch in our Noir Season is Patrizia Rinaldi’s Three, Imperfect Number
    (August, translated by Antony Shugaar). Two bodies, one a celebrity’s, the other unidentified. Each is found in a football stadium, in the foetal position and without signs of violence. A daring challenge left by a psychopath for the police? Unassuming Commissario Martuscello is in charge of the investigation, with the aristocratic inspector Liguori, and superintendent Blanca Occhiuzzi, who, blind from birth, relies on her intuition to see much farther than her colleagues. Saturated with an exotic musicality, this is something different for fans of crime fiction and lovers of literary fiction alike.

     

    Faber and Faber – Lee Brackstone, Editorial Director, Fiction

    In 2013 Faber will publish three new writers in translation for the first time, from wildly different corners of the globe. The first of these will be Sicilian writer Giorgio Vasta’s incendiary debut, Time on my Hands
    , translated by Jonathan Hunt, set in Palermo in the late ’70s. Ian Thomson reviewing the Italian edition in the TLS said it is ‘without question one of the most important novels to emerge from Italy in the past ten years.’

    In May, a month after Vasta, we will publish the young Argentine writer, Patricio Pron. One of Granta’s Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists, Pron’s novel, My Fathers’ Ghost is Climbing in the Rain 
    translated by Mara Lethem, is again set in the ’70s during Argentina’s dirty wars. The ambition and style of the novel bring to mind early Kundera, and Juan Gabriel Vasquez has called it ‘a moving exploration of guilt and memory, and an unflinching study of what history can do to us.’

    Finally, in the summer, we will publish the epic German bestseller and winner of The German Book Prize, In Times of Fading Light
     
    by Eugen Ruge, translated by Anthea Bell. In unforgettable style, Ruge documents the social, political and cultural history of East Germany through the prism of one family across the best part of the twentieth century. There are shades of Jonathan Franzen here, but Ruge’s novel is definitively its own thing over almost 600pages of shimmering prose. 

     

    Granta/Portobello Books – Laura Barber, Editorial Director 

    This year brings new books from two Granta authors who made their English-language debuts last year: Peter Stamm, who follows his acclaimed novel Seven Years with a collection of stories called We’re Flying 
    (translated from the German by Michael Hoffman), which charts with extraordinary precision the impulses that determine the course of ordinary lives. And from the young Latin American author of the novel Faces in the Crowd comes Sidewalks (translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney), a series of literary journeys around the margins of metropolitan life that demonstrates Valeria Luiselli’s equal virtuosity as a writer of non-fiction.

    Portobello welcomes three new authors, from France, Italy and Japan.  A Meal in Winter 
    by Hubert Mingarelli (translator tbc) – an English-language debut for a prize-winning French writer, this novel is a miniature masterpiece: a sparse, stunning story of three SS officers who share a meal with their Jewish prisoner and face a chilling choice. Fabio Stassi’s Charlie Chaplin’s Last Dance
     (translated from the Italian by Stephen Twilley) is a brilliantly inventive novel about the final years of Charlie Chaplin’s life, which is both a vivacious portrait of a comic legend and a love letter to the era of silent cinema: a must-read for fans of The Artist
    . Strange Weather in Tokyo
         by Hiromi Kawakami (translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell) – just long-listed for the Man Asia Prize, already a best-seller across Europe and soon to be a movie, this is a short, simple and incredibly touching story of modern Japan and old-fashioned romance.

    And finally, a Portobello book that shows not so much what is lost in translation as what is found: Multiples
    : 12 Stories in 18 Languages by 61 Authors
    .  Masterminded by Adam Thirlwell and featuring an all-star international line-up of writers from Zadie Smith to Alejandro Zambra, via Javier Marias, Etgar Keret and Jeffrey Eugenides, this is an ingenious game of literary Chinese whispers, in which stories pass from hand to hand, from language to language, changing all the while, with surprising, thought-provoking, and frequently funny results.   



    Harvill Secker – Liz Foley, Publishing Director 

    Revenge
     is a collection of short stories from one of my favourite writers, Yoko Ogawa, translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder, which we will publish in January. These are beautifully dark and creepy. Hilary Mantel calls her ‘original, elegant, very disturbing’.

    On the thriller front, we have the The Andalucian Friend 
    by Alexander Söderberg in March. This is translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith. It’s the first in an international crime trilogy that we’re very excited about. It centres around a young woman who gets caught up in the activities of two warring crime families and finds that the police force investigating them is as dangerous as the criminals themselves.

    In April we have the second volume of the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard’s magnum opus, A Man in Love.
    Everyone in the office is obsessed with these books – they are completely addictive in a way that it’s impossible to explain. The first volume, A Death in the Family
    , was broadly about the author’s father’s death and this one is about love and marriage, but again it’s actually about so much more than this and is everything you want from a novel. This is translated by Don Bartlett.

    In May we have Harvill favourite Manuel Rivas’ All is Silence
    , translated from the Galician by Jonathan Dunne. This is a novel about young friends growing up in Galicia and becoming entangled with the local crime lord. This book was shortlisted for the Rómulo-Gallegos-Prize.

    Finally our lead translated title for the year is, unsurprisingly, Jo Nesbo’s Police
    (translated by Don Bartlett), which we have scheduled for the autumn. We’re also excited to be publishing the second Harry Hole book in the series, Cockroaches
    , later in the year so that the series will finally be complete for English-language readers.

     

    Pushkin Press – Adam Freudenheim, Publisher and Managing Director

    This year Pushkin Press will continue its focus on international fiction, but from a wider array of languages.  In January we publish the powerful, timely yet also funny and sensuous The Silence and the Roar 
    by Syrian writer Nihad Sirees, translated by Max Weiss.  In April, for the first time in English, we publish a wonderful century-old Greek book called A Tale Without a Name 
    by Penelope Delta, translated by Mika Provata-Carlone – a fable for our times if ever there was one, about a corrupt kingdom brought to its senses by a prince who realises that if only people would work together the world would be a happier place indeed.  In May, something completely different as acclaimed cult Japanese writer Ryu Murakami comes to the Pushkin Press list for the first time. We’re thrilled to be publishing Murakami’s major new novel From the Fatherland, with Love 
    translated by Ralphy McCarthy, Charles De Wolf and Ginny Tapley Takemori, alongside the first UK publication of his modern classic Coin Locker Babies
    ,     translated by Stephen Snyder, and two other titles.  If you haven’t yet experienced a Murakami novel, you’re in for a shock and a treat!

     

    Weidenfeld & Nicholson – Kirsty Dunseath, Fiction Publishing Director 

    In July next year we are publishing the English translation of Gregoire Delacourt’s fantastic novel The List of My Desires
    (La liste de mes envies), translated by Anthea Bell. Set in the French town of Arras, it is the story of Jocelyne who runs her own dressmaking shop. She’s 47, overweight, a little bored with her husband, and perhaps a little disappointed with the way her life has turned out, measuring it against what her teenage self had imagined. But then is she really unhappy? She has her weekends away, her friendships, her sewing blog, her work and its small pleasures…Then her best friends persuade Jocelyn to enter the Euromillion lottery and she wins. She could do anything with the money, change her life completely, but what does she really want? And what if changing your life isn’t all it is cracked up to be…? La liste de mes envies
    has been a number one bestseller in France, on the bestseller lists now for ten months, with rights sold in 27 countries.  

     

  • Publishers' highlights for 2013

    This week PEN Atlas asks UK publishers about the translated books they are excited about publishing in 2013 – an intriguing list of books to look forward to this year, so clear your bookshelves! Publishers include And Other Stories, Bloomsbury, Europa Editions, Faber and Faber, Pushkin Press and more…

    And Other Stories – Stefan Tobler, Publisher

    In 2013 we will pursue our slightly mad idea of publishing mainly translations, alongside some select books originally written in English, among them Deborah Levy’s astounding collection of stories Black Vodka
    in February.

    Our first translation this year will be Oleg Pavlov’s Captain of the Steppe
    (April 2013, translated by Ian Appleby). The winner of the Russian Booker Prize and Solzhenitsyn Prize, among others, Pavlov is a highly acclaimed author. Think Kafka’s The Trial
    meets Catch-22
    : this is a largely comic novel that vividly exposes the absurd and tragic circumstances of an all but forgotten military camp where the guards are almost prisoners.

    We will follow a new edition of Juan Pablo Villalobos’s incredible, Guardian First Book Award shortlisted Down the Rabbit Hole
    (April 2012, translated by Rosalind Harvey) with his second book, Quesadillas
    (September, also translated by Rosalind Harvey). Quesadillas is a novel for our moment – about social issues such as inequality and poverty; about what happens when a minority of powerful people mess everything up for everyone else. It’s also about growing up in a big family (where all the children have Hellenic names like Aristotle and Orestes). It’s more punk than Down the Rabbit Hole and the humour is even blacker.

    Rodrigo de Souza Leão’s All Dogs are Blue
    (August, translated by Zöe Perry and myself) is a fiery and humorous tale of life in a Rio insane asylum – and never has an asylum had a more engaging, amusing guide. Our narrator appears more worried about his widening girth and the Rio funk blaring from the nearby favela that keeps him awake at night than anything more sinister. He’s loco-lite. All Dogs are Blue 
    burst onto the Brazilian literary scene in 2008. Its raw style and comic invention were something entirely new. But as fate would have it, it would be the last masterpiece Rodrigo de Souza Leão wrote. He died that year, aged 43. His work is currently being filmed. Our editor Sophie Lewis and I had come to the book independently and loved it. It was an easy choice.

    Iosi Havilio’s Paradises
    (October) is our final translation of 2013, translated by Beth Fowler. This intriguing, brilliantly new novel from Iosi Havilio takes up some themes and characters from his debut Open Door
    (which we published in 2011). Its rebellion is in writing a story about a woman with a young child, who just wants a normal life. If that is possible. Havilio and Paradises in particular have already been singled out by the most influential Argentinean critic, Beatriz Sarlo (author of the study Borges). Havilio finds just the right, understated tone as he presents real, complex people in the full mystery of their unexpected reactions and interactions. His books divide their readers – you’ll love them or hate them! And I think that’s a good thing, isn’t it?

     

    Arcadia – Gary Pulsifer, Publisher

    The two new titles I am especially excited about this year are Gunnar Staalesen’s latest crime novel Cold Hearts,
    translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and set in Norway’s second city of Bergen, and Africa, My Passion
     by Corinne Hofmann, translated from the German by Peter Millar. We will be reprinting earlier EuroCrime titles by Staalesen to coincide with release of the new novel, as well as a reprint of Hofmann’s The White Masai 
    – Hofmann’s memoirs have sold over 150,000 copies for us and millions worldwide.

    We are also reprinting They Were Counted
    , Book I of Count Miklos Banffy’s marvellous Transylvanian trilogy which charts the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as seen through the eyes of two very different cousins.  Paddy Leigh Fermor provided the foreword and the trilogy has taken off across Europe with Chinese rights most recently sold.  A true classic of world literature.  The translation from the Hungarian is by Countess Banffy and Patrick Thursfield, winners of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for Book III.

     

    Bloomsbury – Bill Swainson, Senior Commissioning Editor

    In 2013 Bloomsbury will be publishing three very different but outstanding novels from Cuba, France and Israel – each also an exceptional work of translation:

    Delphine de Vigan: Nothing Holds Back the Night
    (July – translated from the French by George Miller) – The third novel to be published in English by the best-selling author of No and Me
    , Nothing Holds Back the Night was nominated for eight of France’s top literary prizes, winning two of them (including the FNAC). It marks a huge step forward for this gifted novelist, combining humour, intellectual honesty, emotional sensitivity and a disarming clarity of expression in a masterpiece of autofiction about the author’s mother.

    Zeruya Shalev: The Remains of Love 
    (August – translated from the Hebrew by Philip Simpson) – Zeruya Shalev’s electrifying new novel – she is the author of Love Life
    , Husband and Wife
    and Late Family
     – is at once a meditation on the state of modern Israel and a profound exploration of family, yearning, compromise and the insistent pull of the past.

    Carlos Acosta: Pig’s Foot
    (October – translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne) – Carlos Acosta is best known as one of the world’s top ballet dancers, spellbinding audiences with towering performances in the likes of Spartacus and Romeo and Juliet. Pig’s Foot, four years in the writing, sets out to tell an alternative history of Cuba from the slave trade to the revolution and beyond as seen through the eyes of its less than reliable narrator, Oscar Mandinga. Rumbustious, darkly funny, defiant and ultimately moving, it’s an astonishing first novel.



    Doubleday – Jane Lawson, Editorial Director 

    If I Close My Eyes Now
    by Edney Silvestre (May), translated by Nick Caistor, a prize-winning Brazilian debut in the tradition of I’m Not Scared and Stand by Me
    . Set in 1960s small-town Brazil, two boys discover the body of a dead woman while playing near a mango plantation. They refuse to accept the official line about her death and together with an old man and a nun, they uncover the real motives behind her murder. Compelling and moving, this tale of loss of innocence coupled with a riveting crime plot and social commentary marks a new phase in contemporary Brazilian writing. 

     

    Europa Editions – Daniela Petracco, UK Director

    Viola Di Grado: 70% Acrylic 30% Wool
    (January, translated by Michael Reynolds):

    Viola Di Grado was 23 when her debut novel was published in Italy.  It was a runaway success and went on to win the Campiello First Novel Award and was shortlisted as a finalist for the Strega Prize.

    The tragic death of her father plunges Camelia and her mother into a depression so deep it stops time and voids words of meaning, and only decapitating flowers and morbidly customising clothes offer relief. A budding romance with shop owner Wen seem to offer a way out, and as he teaches her Chinese ideograms, Camelia comes to see the world anew. But Wen has troubles of his own…. and as Camelia is left behind by her mother’s recovery, the story winds up to a devastating conclusion.  

    Ioanna Karystiani: Back to Delphi(
    March, translated by Konstantine Matsoukas):

    Ioanna Karystiani is one of Greece’s foremost writers, author of The Jasmine Isle
    and winner of the Greek National Book Award.

    Viv Koleva is a woman with a heavy secret.  The novel opens as she takes a trip to Delphi with her grown-up son Linus.  They wander among the ruins, Viv single-mindedly trying to infect her son with her enthusiasm for the ancient art and myths.  But Linus remains taciturn and withdrawn.  By degrees we find out that Linus is a convicted criminal. And his mother too has a lot to answer for. Back to Delphi is a powerful novel about the responsibility parents carry for the actions of their children, and their ultimate helplessness. 

    May will be busy for Europa. We are kicking off our Noir Season with the reissue – and Europa UK launch, having recently secured UK rights – of Jean-Claude Izzo’s Marseilles Trilogy
    : Total Chaos, Chourmo
    and Solea
    (Total Chaos used to be published in the UK by Arcadia but it’s been out of print for some time now, Chourmo and Solea have not been published before in the UK).  With a brand new Introduction by Massimo Carlotto and translated by Howard Curtis.

    The Marseilles Trilogy, featuring ex-cop Fabio Montale, is a classic of European crime fiction, the catalyst for the foundation of an entire literary movement, Mediterranean Noir.   

    The trilogy’s plot centres on ex-cop Fabio Montale and his fight against villains in the grittier side of Marseilles.  Innocence is fleeting, everyone is flawed and everything is in flux. Izzo’s novels show us the simmering anti-immigrant sentiments flowing through southern France as the intersections of competing interests of right-wingers, the mafia, and Arab immigrants combine to wreak havoc onto Montale’s increasingly complicated life.

    We are also launching Garlic, Mint and Sweet Basil
    , a little book of unpublished/selected writings by Jean-Claude Izzo, a love song to Marseilles, its inhabitants and the earthy flavours of its cuisine.

    Also in May, we will publish the new novel by Massimo Carlotto translated by Antony Shugaar. At the End of a Dull Day
    is a wonderfully sleazy story of crime and corruption in which Carlotto proves just how good he is at creating a central character, both morally dubious and unsympathetic, and compelling all the same.  

    Giorgio Pellegrini has been living an “honest” life for eleven years.  But his lawyer has been deceiving him and now Giorgio is forced into service as an unwilling errand boy for an organized crime syndicate.  A sharp insight into the intersecting worlds of corrupt politics and organised crime.

     Another title to watch in our Noir Season is Patrizia Rinaldi’s Three, Imperfect Number
    (August, translated by Antony Shugaar). Two bodies, one a celebrity’s, the other unidentified. Each is found in a football stadium, in the foetal position and without signs of violence. A daring challenge left by a psychopath for the police? Unassuming Commissario Martuscello is in charge of the investigation, with the aristocratic inspector Liguori, and superintendent Blanca Occhiuzzi, who, blind from birth, relies on her intuition to see much farther than her colleagues. Saturated with an exotic musicality, this is something different for fans of crime fiction and lovers of literary fiction alike.

     

    Faber and Faber – Lee Brackstone, Editorial Director, Fiction

    In 2013 Faber will publish three new writers in translation for the first time, from wildly different corners of the globe. The first of these will be Sicilian writer Giorgio Vasta’s incendiary debut, Time on my Hands
    , translated by Jonathan Hunt, set in Palermo in the late ’70s. Ian Thomson reviewing the Italian edition in the TLS said it is ‘without question one of the most important novels to emerge from Italy in the past ten years.’

    In May, a month after Vasta, we will publish the young Argentine writer, Patricio Pron. One of Granta’s Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists, Pron’s novel, My Fathers’ Ghost is Climbing in the Rain 
    translated by Mara Lethem, is again set in the ’70s during Argentina’s dirty wars. The ambition and style of the novel bring to mind early Kundera, and Juan Gabriel Vasquez has called it ‘a moving exploration of guilt and memory, and an unflinching study of what history can do to us.’

    Finally, in the summer, we will publish the epic German bestseller and winner of The German Book Prize, In Times of Fading Light
     
    by Eugen Ruge, translated by Anthea Bell. In unforgettable style, Ruge documents the social, political and cultural history of East Germany through the prism of one family across the best part of the twentieth century. There are shades of Jonathan Franzen here, but Ruge’s novel is definitively its own thing over almost 600pages of shimmering prose. 

     

    Granta/Portobello Books – Laura Barber, Editorial Director 

    This year brings new books from two Granta authors who made their English-language debuts last year: Peter Stamm, who follows his acclaimed novel Seven Years with a collection of stories called We’re Flying 
    (translated from the German by Michael Hoffman), which charts with extraordinary precision the impulses that determine the course of ordinary lives. And from the young Latin American author of the novel Faces in the Crowd comes Sidewalks (translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney), a series of literary journeys around the margins of metropolitan life that demonstrates Valeria Luiselli’s equal virtuosity as a writer of non-fiction.

    Portobello welcomes three new authors, from France, Italy and Japan.  A Meal in Winter 
    by Hubert Mingarelli (translator tbc) – an English-language debut for a prize-winning French writer, this novel is a miniature masterpiece: a sparse, stunning story of three SS officers who share a meal with their Jewish prisoner and face a chilling choice. Fabio Stassi’s Charlie Chaplin’s Last Dance
     (translated from the Italian by Stephen Twilley) is a brilliantly inventive novel about the final years of Charlie Chaplin’s life, which is both a vivacious portrait of a comic legend and a love letter to the era of silent cinema: a must-read for fans of The Artist
    . Strange Weather in Tokyo
         by Hiromi Kawakami (translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell) – just long-listed for the Man Asia Prize, already a best-seller across Europe and soon to be a movie, this is a short, simple and incredibly touching story of modern Japan and old-fashioned romance.

    And finally, a Portobello book that shows not so much what is lost in translation as what is found: Multiples
    : 12 Stories in 18 Languages by 61 Authors
    .  Masterminded by Adam Thirlwell and featuring an all-star international line-up of writers from Zadie Smith to Alejandro Zambra, via Javier Marias, Etgar Keret and Jeffrey Eugenides, this is an ingenious game of literary Chinese whispers, in which stories pass from hand to hand, from language to language, changing all the while, with surprising, thought-provoking, and frequently funny results.   



    Harvill Secker – Liz Foley, Publishing Director 

    Revenge
     is a collection of short stories from one of my favourite writers, Yoko Ogawa, translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder, which we will publish in January. These are beautifully dark and creepy. Hilary Mantel calls her ‘original, elegant, very disturbing’.

    On the thriller front, we have the The Andalucian Friend 
    by Alexander Söderberg in March. This is translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith. It’s the first in an international crime trilogy that we’re very excited about. It centres around a young woman who gets caught up in the activities of two warring crime families and finds that the police force investigating them is as dangerous as the criminals themselves.

    In April we have the second volume of the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard’s magnum opus, A Man in Love.
    Everyone in the office is obsessed with these books – they are completely addictive in a way that it’s impossible to explain. The first volume, A Death in the Family
    , was broadly about the author’s father’s death and this one is about love and marriage, but again it’s actually about so much more than this and is everything you want from a novel. This is translated by Don Bartlett.

    In May we have Harvill favourite Manuel Rivas’ All is Silence
    , translated from the Galician by Jonathan Dunne. This is a novel about young friends growing up in Galicia and becoming entangled with the local crime lord. This book was shortlisted for the Rómulo-Gallegos-Prize.

    Finally our lead translated title for the year is, unsurprisingly, Jo Nesbo’s Police
    (translated by Don Bartlett), which we have scheduled for the autumn. We’re also excited to be publishing the second Harry Hole book in the series, Cockroaches
    , later in the year so that the series will finally be complete for English-language readers.

     

    Pushkin Press – Adam Freudenheim, Publisher and Managing Director

    This year Pushkin Press will continue its focus on international fiction, but from a wider array of languages.  In January we publish the powerful, timely yet also funny and sensuous The Silence and the Roar 
    by Syrian writer Nihad Sirees, translated by Max Weiss.  In April, for the first time in English, we publish a wonderful century-old Greek book called A Tale Without a Name 
    by Penelope Delta, translated by Mika Provata-Carlone – a fable for our times if ever there was one, about a corrupt kingdom brought to its senses by a prince who realises that if only people would work together the world would be a happier place indeed.  In May, something completely different as acclaimed cult Japanese writer Ryu Murakami comes to the Pushkin Press list for the first time. We’re thrilled to be publishing Murakami’s major new novel From the Fatherland, with Love 
    translated by Ralphy McCarthy, Charles De Wolf and Ginny Tapley Takemori, alongside the first UK publication of his modern classic Coin Locker Babies
    ,     translated by Stephen Snyder, and two other titles.  If you haven’t yet experienced a Murakami novel, you’re in for a shock and a treat!

     

    Weidenfeld & Nicholson – Kirsty Dunseath, Fiction Publishing Director 

    In July next year we are publishing the English translation of Gregoire Delacourt’s fantastic novel The List of My Desires
    (La liste de mes envies), translated by Anthea Bell. Set in the French town of Arras, it is the story of Jocelyne who runs her own dressmaking shop. She’s 47, overweight, a little bored with her husband, and perhaps a little disappointed with the way her life has turned out, measuring it against what her teenage self had imagined. But then is she really unhappy? She has her weekends away, her friendships, her sewing blog, her work and its small pleasures…Then her best friends persuade Jocelyn to enter the Euromillion lottery and she wins. She could do anything with the money, change her life completely, but what does she really want? And what if changing your life isn’t all it is cracked up to be…? La liste de mes envies
    has been a number one bestseller in France, on the bestseller lists now for ten months, with rights sold in 27 countries.  

     

  • High Impact from the Low Countries

    We begin PEN Atlas in 2013 with Michele Hutchison, who reports on the ‘High Impact’ tour that will bring Dutch authors to the UK later this month

    ‘If there is any relationship between literature and nationality at all, it is a very strained one indeed,’ critic and director of the famed Athenaeum bookshop, Maarten Asscher once wrote in an essay on the misconception that the Dutch are ‘due’ the Nobel Prize. (1) The essay itself is interesting; he argues that the Dutch obsession with consensus means they only ever submit a single candidate, which gives the impression of ‘stagnancy’. But that’s beside the point, the concept of a national literature is a trap I’ve found myself falling into in recent years in my attempts to get to know the local canon.

    Naturally I have identified tendencies in Dutch literature – the Calvinistic background, quiet introspection, naturalistic novels with few characters and little plot. The great writer W.F. Hermans criticised this tendency; ‘boring’ is how he labelled most Dutch novels.(2) An initiative by the Netherlands Embassy in London, in partnership with Flanders House, aims to send a wrecking ball at this cliché.

    Six top Dutch-language writers will tour the UK from 14th
    -19th
    January 2013 in a project named ‘High Impact’, a rather incongruous name on first glance when thinking about that quiet introspection. The Dutch are usually shy of making an impact with their art or literature – those sticking their heads above the parapet tend to be knocked down – but perhaps things are changing.

    I contacted the Embassy to enquire about the thinking behind High Impact and heard back from Jan van Weijen, head of the pleasingly-named Department of Dutchness. This is what he said:“Flanders and The Netherlands have an extensive common cultural heritage and share a language, Dutch. Its literature is vibrant and encapsulates a sea breeze. Outward-looking and incorporating foreign influences, it clearly matches an UK audience.” I also talked to the tour’s curator, international literature specialist Rosie Goldsmith and she said, “the Dutch and Flemish are honestly up there with the best. It is always a pleasure to interview them, not only because they speak excellent English but because I believe our countries and cultures share a great affinity.”   

    So: vibrant, outward-looking, multicultural, with an affinity to the UK? Let’s take a look at the writers involved and what kind of impact they might have. Flemish writer Peter Terrin, who recently won the top Dutch literary prize, the AKO, with his latest novel Post Mortem, works with a filleting knife more than a hammer; his novels are dark, cool, composed affairs. The prize-winning novel, which will be published in 2014 by MacLehose Press, is a study of the impotence of writing in the face of personal tragedy; it is a post-modern puzzle, demonstrating his technical mastery. Wielding a sabre is Ramsey Nasr, just coming to the end of his term as Dutch Poet Laureate. Nasr is half-Palestinian, half-Dutch and knows how to thrill with special effects. His poems are audacious, bombastic, colourful affairs. The collection Heavenly Bodies, published by Banipal provides a good taster of his work.

    Herman Koch is practically a household name now, after his international hit The Dinner. A comedian and actor as well as a writer, he makes his impact with humour. Covering the non-fiction field, there is Belgian writer Lieve Joris who has written extensively on Africa and has now turned her hand to China. Her forthcoming book on the commercial relationship between China and Africa sounds immensely promising and will certainly add to the debate. Geert Mak  will join the last two days of the tour. His magnum opus, In Europe, Travels Through the Twentieth Century brought him international recognition. ‘Mak’s artful interleaving of personal stories with epic events is a constant reminder of the human scale of history’ wrote The New Yorker.

    Chika Unigwe hails from Nigeria but has made her home in Antwerp. I have just finished reading On Black Sister’s Street, published by Jonathan Cape, a Dickensian novel telling the story of four African prostitutes trying to make new lives for themselves in Antwerp. The novel has a tragic ending and the characters remind me of some of Lieve Joris´s studies. Last but not least, Judith Vanistendael will showcase her artistic talents. Both of her graphic novels have been published in English by selfmadehero. The first, Dance to the Light of the Moon is an autobiographical telling of her relationship with a Togolese asylum seeker; it is as incisive and evocative as her second, When David Lost His Voice, a cancer story.  Her novels have great emotional impact.

    The tour’s creators are right, you’d be wrong to expect quiet introspection from this selection of the best that the Low Countries have to offer at the moment. And the Dutch, with their expertise in export are sensible to join together with the Flemish to focus on exporting their common cultural riches.

    *

    The High Impact tour will take place from 14th
    -19th
    January 2013 and stops in Oxford, Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield, Norwich and London. Please see     www.highimpact-tour.nl and www.highimpacttour.com. Follow my live blogs from the tour:

    Twitter: @HighImpactTour

    Facebook community: High Impact

    About the Author

    Michele Hutchison (Solihull, 1972) worked in publishing in the UK before moving to the Netherlands in 2004. She now works as an editor at a Dutch literary publishing house and as a freelance translator. Writers she has translated include Joris Luyendijk, Rob Riemen, Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer and Simone van der Vlugt.

    Additional Links

    Interview with Sam Garrett on translating The Dinner: http://www.letterenfonds.nl/en/entry/245/translators-in-the-spotlight

    Michele Hutchison on Herman Koch, author of The Dinner, for PEN Atlas: https://pentrandata.bulletserve.net/entertainment-for-the-middle-classes-the-success-of-herman-koch/

    Notes

    1. “‘The 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature should go to the Netherlands’ – a misconception of national proportions” in De Gids, issue 5/6.
    2. “Unsympathetic Characters”, in Dutch Literary Journal, vol 4, 2013

     

  • Yule love these books in translation

    This week, PEN Atlas asks a selection of writers, scouts, literary festival directors, translators and publishers to recommend some great literature in translation to tuck into over the festive break. Peter Florence, Damian Barr and Koukla MacLehose are amongst our contributors…

     

    Peter Florence, Hay Festival Director

    ‘I loved the quiet desperation of Valeria Luiselli’s Mexican/NY novel Faces in The Crowd (Granta, £12.99) and it’s exploration of translations and disappearances. It’s wonderfully translated by Christina MacSweeney. Andres Neuman’s Traveller of the Century – translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia (Pushkin Press, £12.99) – sends a stranger into post-Napoleonic Mitteleuropa in a fabulous whirl of sex and philosophy and history. The other book that just astounded me is the Norwegian phenomenon A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard and translated by Don Bartlett (Harvill Secker, £17.99).  It’s an incomparably naked and familiar portrait of a family that’s been, not unreasonably, likened to Proust. Elif Shafak’s masterpiece Honour (Viking, £12.99) travels back generations from a Kurdish family in 70s London to the banks of the Euphrates. This novel is written in English though her other novels are often written in Turkish. A perfect partner for the Knausgaard and the Shafak is Angharad Price’s The Life of Rebecca Jones (MacLehose Press, £10) which she has worked with Lloyd Jones to translate from the Welsh original.  It’s a quiet masterpiece about 20th century technology impacting on Welsh rural life.’

     

    Damian Barr, Shoreditch and Soho House, Literary Host, writer

    ‘I recommend Valeria Luiselli’s Faces in the Crowd, translated by Christina MacSweeney, (Granta, £12.99), definitely not magical realist yet definitely magical, this is the story of a contemporary novelist haunted by a 1920s poet. Haunting, vibrant, and often funny.’

     

    Jonathan Ruppin, Web Editor, Foyles

    ‘The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura, translated by Satoko Izumo and Stephen Coates, (Corsair, £9.99) – winner of the 2009 Oe Kenzaburo Prize. As well as being a sharp alternative thriller with some sinister political overtones, this story of a pickpocket drawn into a plot that spirals out of control offers a fascinating outsider’s perspective on Tokyo life and some deliciously uncomfortable moral ambiguity. This is perfect for anyone who likes their crime on the noir side and their criminals brooding and enigmatic.’

     

    Geoff Mulligan, Publisher Clerkenwell Press

    ‘I would recommend HHhH by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor (Harvill Secker, £16.99). It deals with weighty matters – the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and the plan to kill Heydrich – with a light touch, and it asks interesting questions about the interpretation of history. It’s a novel for anyone interested in literature or history.’

     

    Bill Swainson, Senior Commissioning Editor, Bloomsbury

     ‘Three completely different but outstanding books I (re)discovered this year were: the controversial Louis Ferdinand Céline’s brilliant, dark modernist classic Journey to the End of the Night, first translated by Ralph Mannheim in the 1970s for John Calder, published in 1991 and now reissued with introduction and notes on the excellent Alma Classics list (£9.99); Michael Politycki’s unnerving Next World Novella about man slowly facing up to the reality of who he is, translated by Anthea Bell for Peirene Press (£8.99); and Carlos Gemmero’s  fascinating investigative novel about the legacy of the Falklands war in the Argentina of the 1990s, The Islands (£10), translated by Ian Barnett, published by And Other Stories, who, like Alma and Peirene, have brought a fresh burst of energy into UK publishing.’

     

    Philip Gwyn Jones, Publisher, Granta

    ‘Karl Ove Knausgaard is not Norway’s Proust, as some claim, but like all the great writers entirely and only himself in all his troubling originality. He is a great storyteller who dislikes happy endings, a great biographer who dislikes simplifications, and a great analyst who dislikes theories. His first volume of My Struggle, A Death in the Family translated by Don Bartlett (Harvill Secker, £17.99) is for whichever member of your family has been to purgatory and survived.’

     

    Stefan Tobler, Publisher, And Other Stories, translator

    ‘I’ve got a soft spot for novels set in villages with odd characters and odd goings-on. Mr Weston’s Good Wine by T. F. Powys, for example. This novel hit that spot for me. Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s Sátántangó (Tuskar Rock, £12) with its luxurious sentences and his translator George Szirtes’ brilliance are pleasures to be savoured. Give it to someone who wants to read a future Nobel Prize winner before everyone else – as long as they don’t mind a leisurely pace.’

     

    Koukla MacLehose, Literary Scout

    ‘For 2012 I’d like to recommend Where I Left my Soul by Jerôme Ferrari, translated by Geoffrey Strachan (MacLehose Press, £12). It is really an astonishing piece of writing. Very disturbing; it goes deep deep inside the human soul. A lieutenant writes to his captain long after they have gone separate ways. They had met in Indochina, the disaster of Dien Bien Phu. The former with immense admiration for the latter. They find each other again in the horrors of the Algerian war. Everything one reads about any war sounds like it. Think of Abu Graib, Al Qaida, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia… any situation which involves tracking down informers and using whatever  means to get the ones in charge thinking it will then stop all the others. When Babchenko was writing his book about the Russians in Chechnya, he was not saying different things. ‘You got me but that is nothing, for we will go on and on until you will have to leave’  says the Algerian prisoner. Have we not seen this over and over again?  It concerns all of us because it tries to get to the core of what it is to be human, to try – and fail most of the time – to keep one’s dignity in extraordinary circumstances, to live with the shame, the fear, the violence it engenders… I think it’s a great book.’

     

    Philip Cowell, Head of Programmes, English PEN

    ‘I wholeheartedly recommend The World Record: International Voices from Southbank Centre’s Poetry Parnassus (Bloodaxe Books, £10) a magical book of poems representing poets from every country that took part in the Olympic and Paralympic Games, supported by English PEN’s Writers in Translation programme. Put together by editors Neil Astley and Anna Selby, this is a book full of the sounds and shapes of things the world can make. I loved it so much I forgot to go to sleep one night.

    Here’s Bryan Thao Worra of Laos: “Night arrives, then day. The moon, the sun, the rain and waves./ A few other things, maybe something someone will write down./ Maybe not”. And here’s Kārlis Vērdiņš of Latvia: “I was bringing you a little cheese sandwich.”  This book is full of that kind of leap, that kind of surprise. It’s in many ways a book of surprises, a book of the philosophy of the possibility of surprise, and being surprised, of still being able to be surprised. Poetry reminds us we’re alive. The World Record, most importantly, knows what it’s doing – knows that the best poetry celebrates both the whole world and our tiny corner of it. This book knows the poet is our local world hero. The poems draw lines in every sense: “we’re waiting for the wind/ like two flags on a border” (Nikola Madzirov Shadows Pass Us By). The whole enterprise questions where we draw the line when it comes to the imagination. How far can you go with a poem that has come so far?’

     

  • Walking the Tightrope: Globalisation and Localism

    Michele Hutchison explores the globalisation debate for PEN Atlas. Do authors consciously write for an international market and, if so, what does that means for authenticity?

    For the past two years, the literature department at IULM university in Milan has been investigating the idea that globalisation might be influencing the production of world literature – major novelists are intentionally writing for a global audience and this could affect the style and content of their novels. The literature department culminated their study with an international conference last week to which I was invited, along with a variety of critics, writers, academics and translators.

    A name most frequently brought up in relation to the theory is Kazuo Ishiguro, who has admitted he aims to write a plainer kind of prose that translates easily; I fear he may have instigated this whole shebang. Other prime examples are Orhan Pamuk who has been accused of neatly condensing and packaging Turkishness for a foreign audience (in cahoots with his translator, apparently) and Salman Rushdie who might have capitalised on a version of Indianness aimed to exoticise and to sell books. Both these writers are seen as writing for a global audience, moving away from the local and specific, sometimes provoking political controversy by being ‘unfaithful to’ or ‘betraying’ their roots. 

    Tim Parks who teaches at IULM, has also proposed lesser-known writers for this trend, such as the excellent Swiss and Dutch writers, Peter Stamm and Gerbrand Bakker, because of their pared-down writing style and lack of culture-specific politics. I guess he would add Flemish writer Peter Terrin, recently published in English by MacLehose Press, if he read him. His claustrophobic, existential novel The Guard is set in a non-specific European urban apartment building in the near future and written in a wilfully clinical style. It subtly references Camus, Beckett and the Belgian surrealists, but always remains compelling and direct.

    The obvious counter-argument is that the market might select precisely those books that do speak to an international readership and translate un-problematically (i.e. do not require explanatory footnotes). It is certainly the view I hold and matches my experience of pitching Dutch books to foreign editors. Editors like books which give a sense of the place they are set in without the reader getting bogged down in specifics. They also look for accessibility and universal themes. Commerce dictates a particular formula. Look at the kinds of novels that have proved hugely successful in translation, in particular the crime wave from Scandinavia: Stieg Larsson, Hening Mankell, Karin Fossum, Jo Nesbo, plot-driven thrillers with a cool, slightly spooky setting. 

    Peter Stamm was at the conference and was given the chance to air his views on the subject. He began by explaining that being Swiss means having a complex, diffuse identity. The Swiss do not need a national literature to define who they are. ‘Books don’t take place in nations, but in the mind.’ On his style, he said that he deliberately avoids Helveticisms, he likes neutral language with no colouring so that images can easily form in the readers’ minds. He travels a lot and so his novels are set in other Western locations – Paris, Munich, Chicago and Norway, yet ‘Swiss life’ is contained in most of his books in some way.

    Some of Stamm’s thoughts were echoed by Mexican writer, Jorge Volpi, who claimed similarly that, ‘all novels take place in imaginary space’. His own novels are set in Germany, France and the US. It was only when he was published in Spain that he realised, to his great surprise, that he was considered ‘an exotic Mexican writer’. He repeatedly had to defend himself against the question – why had a Mexican written about Germany. The only possible answer was: why not? This points to a second requirement, potentially at odds with the globalisation trend – authenticity. Apparently one can only write authentically about what one knows. Commercially successful literature might then walk a tightrope between the local and the global, packaging the local as universal. What this means for Volpi and others daring to write about things not connected to their ‘roots’ remains to be seen.

    About the Author

    Michele Hutchison (Solihull, 1972) worked in publishing in the UK before moving to the Netherlands in 2004. She now works as an editor at a Dutch literary publishing house and as a freelance translator. Writers she has translated include Joris Luyendijk, Rob Riemen, Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer and Simone van der Vlugt.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • The Wizard and the Ghetto

    For PEN Atlas this week, Antonia Lloyd-Jones tells the story of a Polish hero, Janusz Korczak, the children’s author who ran an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto

    “Who would you like to be when you grow up?” Janusz Korczak asked a class of boys. “A wizard,” one of them replied. The others started laughing, and the boy felt embarrassed, so then he said: “I’m sure I’ll be a judge like my father, but you asked who we’d like to be.” That was in 1929, and four years later Kaytek the Wizard was published, the story of a wayward boy who develops extraordinary magical powers.

    Janusz Korczak is a household name in Poland, but this remarkable man really deserves to be far better known to the wider world, as a writer and as a pioneer of children’s rights. To celebrate Korczak’s life, the Polish parliament passed a resolution to make 2012 the Year of Janusz Korczak.

    Janusz Korczak was the pen name of Dr. Henryk Goldszmit (1878–1942), a paediatrician and child psychologist who famously ran a central Warsaw orphanage for Jewish children, using his own innovative principles. He not only wrote books for children, but also about children, in particular how they should be treated by adults.

    As an educator, he was one of the first defenders of children’s rights. Writer and academic Eva Hoffman describes him as her hero, saying that Korczak’s “educational beliefs were informed less by theory than by large-minded humanism. He believed in the full dignity of children… and their need for love and respect.”

    On gaining his medical diploma in 1905, Korczak worked at the Berson and Bauman Children’s Hospital in Warsaw, an institution that provided free health care for Jewish children. After serving as an army doctor in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905, he became in 1909 the head of a new city-centre orphanage. As Eva Hoffman puts it, “he ran it like a microcosmic democracy.” The children not only helped with domestic chores on work shifts for which they were paid, but had their own parliament and court. If anyone broke the internal legal code – including Korczak and the few other staff members too – their case was “tried” and a suitable penalty applied, though forgiveness, fairness, and leniency were the defining features of this justice. The orphanage also had its own newspaper. So the orphans learned not just practical skills for life and how to be responsible citizens, but ethical values, such as love, sympathy, respect, and how to act for the common good.

    Korczak managed to exercise these principles in difficult circumstances within the atmosphere of prejudice against Jews that prevailed in inter-war Poland. Society was divided, with Jews at best treated as second-class citizens, and at worst abused, making it doubly hard for the orphans to find their way in life. Raising money for the orphans and for deprived children to go on summer holidays in the countryside required a constant effort to which Korczak was entirely devoted throughout his life.

    Perhaps the most enduring fact about Korczak is that when the Nazis occupied Poland in 1939 and forced all the Jews to live in ghettos, he never abandoned the two hundred children in his care. The diary he wrote in the final months of his life, when the orphanage had been moved into the Warsaw ghetto, is poignant proof of his total dedication to them. Despite extreme conditions in the overcrowded ghetto, where starvation and typhoid were a constant threat and people were dying in the streets, Korczak continued to organize every possible sort of intellectual and spiritual provision for the children, such as concerts, plays, talks, and discussions of philosophy.

    An eye-witness account by the pianist Władysław Szpilman describes the tragic final procession of Korczak and the orphans across the ghetto to the Umschlagplatz, from where the transports left for the death camps: “He told the orphans they should be happy, because they were going to the countryside…. When I ran into them on Gęsia Street they were walking along, singing in chorus, beaming… and Korczak was carrying two of the smallest, also smiling, in his arms, and telling them something amusing.” True to his convictions to the end, he died with the children in the gas chamber at Treblinka concentration camp. It happened in early August 1942.

    Korczak left behind a large written legacy including books on education – the most famous of which is How to Love a Child (1918) – stories, plays, essays, letters, and of course novels and stories for children. The best known is King Matt the First (1922), the story of an orphaned prince who inherits his father’s throne at a very young age. Despite the efforts of his ministers and other adults to prevent him from being more than just a figurehead or to save his country from war, Matt goes through recognizable stages of development, rebelling against the adults to gain his independence, learning how to be an adult himself, and forging an identity through relationships with others and some difficult experiences.

    Kaytek the Wizard (1933), recently published in English by Penlight Press in the US, aimed to be the answer to every child’s dream of freeing him or herself from the endless control of adults, and then shaping the world to his or her own designs. From the very start Korczak based the book on suggestions made by children with lively imaginations about how they would behave if they had magical powers. For instance, he had come across educational methods at a school for “morally neglected” delinquent boys, where the students were asked what they would do if they were invisible. “If I was invisible I’d play tricks on policemen,” said one boy, “I’d take his gun and kick him.” “I’d go to the cinema for free,” said another. But a different boy said: “If I was invisible I’d help everyone… I wouldn’t play tricks or make people sad.”

    Their replies are recognizable in the behaviour of Kaytek, who sometimes uses his magic powers to do people favours, and sometimes to cause wilful mischief. Like them, Kaytek is a troubled boy, a little rascal who can’t conform and please the grown-ups, however hard he tries.

    “Every child should be able to find a book that is close to his heart,” said Korczak. But he also believed that literature should give guidance. Just as King Matt finds out that being king involves huge responsibility and that his decisions can backfire on him, so Kaytek discovers that his powers have limits and that misusing his magic spells can do harm and cause sorrow.

    Although this is the first translation of Kaytek the Wizard into English, a number of Korczak’s books have appeared in English and other languages. Kaytekhas previously been published in German, Spanish, Hebrew, and most recently French. If 2012 is to be the Year of Janusz Korczak, with luck it will also be the year in which he becomes more widely known in the English-speaking world.

    About the Author

    Antonia Lloyd-Jones is a full-time translator of Polish literature. Her published translations include fiction by several of Poland’s leading contemporary novelists, including The Last Supper by Paweł Huelle, for which she won the Found in Translation Award 2008. Her most recent translations include Ryszard Kapuściński: A Life by Artur Domosławski (Verso, September 2012), and A Grain of Truth by Zygmunt Miłoszewski (Bitter Lemon, September 2012), a crime novel.  She also translates reportage, poetry, and books for children. Her published translations for children include Little Chopin by Michał Rusinek, and the novel Kaytek the Wizard by Janusz Korczak. She loves translating children’s books as it gives her a perfect excuse to read lots of them. 

    Additional Information

    Kaytek the Wizard will be launched in London on Friday 16th November, 6.30pm at the Polish Embassy. Books will be sold by The New Leaf Bookshop, an independent bookshop in Pinner, North West London. You can find out more information at this link.

    To find out more about the Year of Janusz Korczak please see this link. Children can click this link to visit their own version of the site.

    A play about Korczak’s life runs at the Unicorn Theatre until the 11th November.

    The photographs for this article were provided by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and will be appearing as part of an exhibition at European House in January.
     

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