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  • Recommended Summer Reading in Translation from PEN Atlas

    Need a good book to go with the good weather? In the lead-up to this evening’s English PEN Summer Party, Marina Warner, James Meek, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Blake Morrision, and many more offer their tips for what to read in translation this summer

     

    D.J. Taylor

    I’d like to recommend Stefan Chwin’s Death in Danzig, translated from the Polish by Philip Boehm, an eerie evocation of the immediate aftermath of the Second World War in which Polish families begin to recolonise the city from which the Russians drove them out, and the stories old and new inhabitants mysteriously commingle.  The novel dates from 1995 and the translation was published in 2005.

     

    Linda Grant

    A Tale of Love and Darkness, by Amos Oz, translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange.  In 1952, Amos Oz’s mother committed suicide. This monumental, heart-breaking, extremely funny memoir seeks the reasons why against the backdrop of the family’s arrival in Thirties Palestine.

     

     Francesca Segal

    Beware of Pity, by Stefan Zweig translated by Anthea Bell.  Dark, subtle, psychologically astute – I read page after page with a hand clapped over my mouth in horrified fascination. A young Austro-Hungarian cavalry officer entangles himself with the crippled daughter of a rich landowner, blurring the lines of love and pity and plunging – we watch him do it, tumbling in slow motion – ever deeper into a deception from which no good could ever come. Zweig is a magnificent storyteller.

     

    Joe O’Connor

    I recommend Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago, (latest translation by Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Peaver), which I’m reading at the moment, a maddeningly complicated novel that shouldn’t work at all but which draws you in slowly and subtly. Written in Russian, unpublished, banned, first published in the west in Italian, then translated back into Russian, its own journey is as circuitous and inspiring as those of the characters.

     

    Marina Warner

    Emile Habiby, Saraya, The Ogre’s Daughter translated by Peter Theroux Ibis. Inspired by a Palestinian variation on the fairy tale of Rapunzel, it’s a philosophical fable for our time, written in 1991, undiminished in its eloquence about the tensions and the high hopes that continue to be part of daily life in the region.

     

    Ben Faccini

    I’ve long been an admirer of Francophone writing from sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb. I have particularly loved works by Tierno Monénembo, Ahmadou Kourouma, Alain Mabanckou and Leonora Miano. Many are available in English, but not enough. I was lucky recently to read a manuscript of Leonora Miano’s latest work, La Saison de l’Ombre. It’s not yet translated, but it is brimming with power and inventiveness. Moving northwards to Morocco, and written in a completely different style, I’m still haunted by the horror and beauty of Tahar Ben Jelloun’s This Blinding Absence of Light translated by Linda Coverdale.  

     

    Elizabeth Kostova

    Admittedly, I’m biased in this recommendation, but readers of English can take a strange and wonderful trip to the beach this summer:  Bulgarian novelist Angel Igov’s new book, A Short Tale of Shame, translated by Angela Rodel and published by Open Letter.

     

    Carmen Bugan

    Pablo Neruda’s Memoirs, translated by Hardie St Martin, is a hugely enjoyable book: it is a moving insight into how personal experience brings about the birth of the poetic voice, and it offers a treasured view into a Chilean childhood.

     

    David Hewson

    Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli translated by Frances Frenaye. This is an extraordinary book written by an extraordinary man. Levi was a doctor who was exiled to the south by Mussolini during the 1930s. The book is a gripping, moving and occasionally very funny insight into a world most of us never knew existed: the rural communities of the Mezzogiorno, where superstition and vendettas were daily events. I reread from time to time and always find something new. One of the more astonishing facets of the book is that Levi wrote it while on the run from the Nazis in Florence. Had they caught him he would probably have been dead, both as a Jew and a communist.

     

    Blake Morrison

    Friedrich Christian Delius’s Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman (Peirene Press) follows the inner and outer journey of a German woman as she makes her way across Rome, over the course of an hour, one day in 1943 – a compelling story of innocence on the one hand and Nazism on the other, told in a single 120-page sentence, excellently translated by Jamie Bulloch.

     

    Miranda France

    In Small Memories, José Saramago (Harvill Secker) recalls a 1920s Portuguese childhood full of wonder and warmth – poverty and hardship too. All writers are formed to a degree by their childhoods and here, in distillation, are the ideas and experiences that shaped the future Nobel prize winner. Margaret Jull Costa’s translation perfectly captures Saramago’s sly humour.

     

    Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

    Ashes of the Amazon by Milton Hatoum and translated by John Gledson. This is a vivid family saga about a clash of values, the personal and political, art versus materialism and militarism, reliable and unreliable memory and ultimately a story of Brazil. Better still, it does not serve up yet more magic realism, once a flight into unexplored literary spheres, now a clichéd expectation of South American writing.

     

    James Meek

    The translation I’ve read recently that has given me the most to think about, that affected me most strongly, is Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of the Iliad. It is as if all European literature since has been one great house, and Homer stands in the doorway; alone, he has come from the outside.

     

     

  • 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.

  • PEN Atlas recommends: ITD2012 speakers on their favourite translated books

    To celebrate the annual International Translation Day symposium, taking place tomorrow at King’s Place, London, Tasja Dorkofikis asks speakers to recommend their favourite books and writers in translation

    Amanda Hopkinson, experienced translator, academic, and co-curator of Notes & Letters, recommends…

    Raised from the Ground  by Jose Saramago, trans. Margaret Jull Costa and published by Harvill Secker this month.

    This early work by Portuguese Nobel Prizewinner Jose Saramago, translated by perhaps our most garlanded Portuguese literary translator Margaret Jull Costa, shows intellectual inventiveness and political militancy blended in a profound and humorous historical novel. The theme is the landless peasantry that were Saramago’s own immediate forebears and was written at a time when he was suffering persecution and then exile at the behest of the Salazar dictatorship. Raised from the Ground is at once a vivid depiction of rural poverty and a rallying cry for activism.

    Slavery Inc: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking by Lydia Cacho, translated by Elizabeth Boburg  and published by Portobello Books.

    Lydia Cacho is a one-person expert/ investigator/reporter on that most confusing of crimes: human trafficking. She is categorical, and has the facts to back her, that this is globalised big business run by consortia of criminals, corrupt police and politicians. Women and children thus exploited may be deluded but are not willing victims of their own transportation and degradation. Rarely has a book had a more appropriate title than $laveryInc.

    Briony Everroad,editor at Harvill Secker, recommends…

    Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City by Guy Delise, translated by Helge Dascher and published by Jonathan Cape and Vintage.

    I first came to love graphic novels, or perhaps I should say graphic memoirs in this context, when I read Ethel & Ernest by Raymond Briggs. Then I was swept away by Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. So I was delighted to discover Guy Delisle a few years later through his graphic travelogue Pyongyang.

    Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City is a powerful documentation of Guy Delisle’s year in Jerusalem with his family. His partner works for Médecins Sans Frontières and he tries to sketch and write, in between taking his kids to school.  Delisle isn’t religious, so it comes across as even-handed observations of this most incredible and perplexing of places. He’s also strikingly honest, admitting when he doesn’t know the history behind certain zones and boundaries or the events that led to them, and so the reader learns as he learns.  I work on (non-graphic) fiction for the most part, and speaking as someone who can’t even draw a stick figure, I am fascinated by the techniques he uses: the powerful wordless frames, the sparing but effective use of colour, his son’s speech bubbles crammed with letters which spill to the end of the frame. His writing style is direct and at times very moving, and Helge Dascher captures it perfectly in the translation. In Jerusalem Delisle offer a wonderful new perspective on a city which is so often the focus of the world’s attention.

    Sarah Hesketh,Events and Publications Manager at the Poetry Translation Centre, recommends…

    Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius, translated by Jamie Bulloch and published by Peirene.

    It’s rare that I’m able to read a book in one sitting, but Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman is structured as just one, single, book-length sentence, and so it invites complete immersion for a few hours. It’s a book that happens in real time – it takes just the length of the narrator’s walk to church on a January afternoon in 1943, and it captures perfectly that suspension of time that a heavily pregnant woman feels when she is waiting to give birth, as well as the sense of a whole continent on the cusp.  

    Alexandra Buchler, Director of Literature Across Frontiers, recommends…

    Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke, translated by Cindy Carter and published by Corsair.

    I recommend this book because it is a must-read for anyone interested in China’s recent transformations and the corruption of a regime which did the unimaginable: fuse the political doctrine of communism with capitalist license, and because it is a such a powerful example of high-quality literature making a political statement. Like some of the masterpieces of 20th
     century literature this book is the opposite of a “good read”: it is sad and heavy, it speaks about a situation of surreal absurdity, conveying a truth that must be said and cannot be shirked.

    Geraldine D’Amico, co-curator of Notes & Letters and curator of Folkestone Book Festival, recommends…

    To the End of the Land by David Grossman, translated by Jessica Cohen and published by Vintage.

    Grossman movingly captures the pain of a mother fearing for the life of her son but above all it is a book about the deep damage caused by war onto people and landscape alike. Lovers are destroyed, innocence is impossible, death is lurking everywhere. One woman alone tries to fight this, rekindle love, give birth to a father and keep her son alive through the magic of words. The fact Grossman’s son was killed as he was writing this book obviously makes it even more poignant but regardless of his personal tragedy, this is a true masterpiece.

    Rosa Anderson, coordinator of Fiction Uncovered, recommends…

    School for Patriots by Martin Kohan, translated by Nick Caistor and soon to be published by Serpent’s Tail.

    Set in Argentina during the Falklands War, it’s an intriguing – and unsettling – investigation into the relationship between power and sex.

    Sophie Lewis, editor-at-large at And Other Stories and translator from French, recommends…

    Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector, translated from Brazilian Portuguese by Alison Entrekin and published by New Directions.

    I read this book in a state of guilt at being settled in Rio for more than a year yet knowing so little of Lispector’s writing – she is considered one of the greatest 20th century Brazilian writers. Yet what I found in reading this book (and now others by her) was very little to tell me about Brazil and so much to think about, both bigger and smaller than this country,: mood, sensation, place vanishing into specks under the microscope, dialogue in a vortex of thought – genuinely transcendent writing.