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Tag: Middle East

  • PEN Atlas Q&A: Otto Dov Kulka

    Interview by Tasja Dorkofikis, PEN Atlas editor

    Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death combines your experience of Auschwitz as a boy between September 1943 and January 1945, your ‘private mythology’, with deep historical analysis and understanding, which you have acquired as a historian later in life. At what point did you decide to combine these two individual perspectives?

    It always was with me. However, in my scholarly work I have strictly separated these two dimensions while completely avoiding the mentioning of my autobiographical experience as a boy in Auschwitz. There was no place for exploring my own past in my historical research, which was always based on documentary, mostly archival material, and its analysis and evaluation. But this was not the case the other way around. Auschwitz was ever present, but only in my diaries and dreams and, from a certain point on, also in tape-recorded monologues, where I dived into the ‘Landscapes’ that I have called the Metropolis of Death. In these ‘Landscapes’ my reflective thoughts as a historian were already present.

    You recorded your memories of Auschwitz and you kept them private for a long time. Why did it take you so long to make your recordings public?

    I started the recordings in 1991 and continued until 2001. All these recordings and my diaries existed for my self-understanding only and, as mentioned above, I regarded it as illegitimate to mix them with my scholarly, strictly impersonal research (for example: an article on the Familienlager found in the appendix of my book – written in the ’70s) but when I was diagnosed with advanced cancer fifteen years ago, after an operation and chemotherapy, the surgeon told me that I had only two to three years to live. This was in 1997.

    I decided to have the recordings and diaries typed up, and did another recording, to round off the series. I consulted a publisher friend and told him that I wanted the texts to be part of my literary estate. He said there was a chance that they might be considered for publication and that I had to make up my mind about this. I gave the transcript to a few colleagues and friends to read, and had a selection translated into English. But for a long time I doubted whether these texts could reach anyone other than me. I sent the English text to a few colleagues abroad, and first and foremost to Ian Kershaw, with whom I have worked together in research and exchanged ideas for years. Ian and others analysed and commented on it in great depth. But the first to hear some of the recordings was my friend, the historian Saul Friedländer, who a few years earlier published his book When Memory Comes. Saul told me unequivocally that I must publish. All of them tried to persuade me to make this manuscript accessible to the public. But it took me another decade to decide. Only after publishing three major documentary and research projects between 1997 and 2010, on which I was working many years before, was I ready to embark on the new road of publishing my ‘non-scholarly’ work.

    You survived Auschwitz in Familienlager, or ‘Family Camp’ allowing families to be housed together, their heads unshaved and wearing civilian clothes. You describe it yourself in the book as a ‘miracle, whose meaning no one understood’. The history of the family camp is relatively unknown to the general public. Can you tell our readers more about the role of the Red Cross in this part of the Holocaust’s history?

    I have written a scholarly article on the history of the so-called Family Camp based on the documentary material that I discovered in one of the German archives. You will not find a trace of my personal experiences in this article, written in 1980. It appears as the appendix in the book Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death. I refer to it in my book and not the other way around. But beyond the documentation mentioned in my article, I did not research further on the role of the Red Cross during the Nazi-period. I only wish to clarify here that the documents include an exchange of letters and negotiations between Adolf Eichmann’s department in the Main Security Office of the SS and the German Red Cross, and between the German Red Cross and the International Red Cross in Genève. The negotiations discussed the question of a possible visit to the Ghetto of Theresienstadt and a Jewish camp in the East, which could have been identified as the Family Camp in Auschwitz, by the International Red Cross.

    You talk about the cultural life in the camp, about concerts, performances and classes. You say that these experiences ‘form the moral basis of your approach to culture, to life, almost to everything. Historical, functional, and normative values and patterns of life were transformed into something in the order of absolute values’. How do you think this was possible?

    What I mean here is that the education that went on, even in the world of the children’s block of the Family Camp, was unprecedented. Since education is, in its essence, always oriented to the future and the future was the only thing that certainly did not exist for those children and their educators in Auschwitz, it was not performed for any other purpose than for its own existence. That makes the values underlying this education ‘into something in the order of absolute values’.

    The book describes some ‘fond memories’ like classes in history and literature, a friendship with a young man who gave you his copy of Crime and Punishment, or an image of blue skies above the camp, signifying for you: ‘the colour of summer, the colour of tranquility, the colour of forgetting.’ How do you think these positive memories managed to stay with you, and were even possible?

    The only possible answer I have is my existence, and the fact that those memories are living with me and shaped my entire life.

    Your book tries to look at how your memory preserved and processed the trauma of Auschwitz.  This is, of course, a very personal and unique process. You experienced Auschwitz as a 10-11 year old boy who was confronted on a daily basis with images of death and atrocities. How do you think this differs from experiencing Auschwitz as an adult? From remembering it?

    We, the children in the children-and-youth barrack, were not directly exposed to the atrocities that were part of the daily life of the adult inmates. But we were of course aware of the presence of the Great Death and of, what I call in my diaries and in the book, the ‘Unalterable Law of the Great Death’, meaning that there was no way out of Auschwitz and we were all doomed to die there. Through these metaphors and other abstractions I have been able to internalise and express the world of these atrocities.

    You describe an episode when a children’s choir learnt to sing ‘Ode to Joy’ in a lavatory barrack where the acoustics were good. You wonder in the book whether the choice of music and that particular text was an act of defiance, expressing belief in absolute values despite the reality of the camp, or a case of ‘extreme sarcasm.’ Which interpretation do you lean towards?

    In my professional life as a teacher at the university I am trying to understand and convey my understanding of absolute values, of the humanistic interpretation of history, including this period. But the other case you mention is always present within me with all its ambivalence. My own attempt to understand this history and my approach to it is shaped by this polarity.

    The ‘Immutable Law of Death’, the ultimate certainty that one was going to die, was how you saw what was happening in Auschwitz. Yet you survived through chance. ‘However much I know that I must be caught. I always know, too, that I must be spared. It’s a kind of circle’. You talk about this a lot in your book and about other images of escape and return. Are you finally free from them now?

    No.

    What do you think is the role of ideology when exploring the history of the final solution? And how is scholarship and understanding of that period at all possible when one is faced with events of such utter horror?

    There is a very nice sentence that often appears in the rhetoric of commemoration: ‘What happened in this period was perpetrated by humans to other humans.’ In my eyes this is not much more than a truism. What happened then was perpetrated by humans who have devoted themselves to a radical racialist ideology or were ruled by it. They believed in it or believed in its necessity to ‘save’ the nation or even the world from what they regarded as disastrous, universalist ‘Jewish spirit’ and its bearers were the Jews. This ‘redemptive anti-Semitism’ was the very core of national socialist ideology and the imperative behind the attempt at the ‘Final Solution’. Once this ideology and its charismatic leadership were defeated, or in other words, when Germany was liberated from them, most of the former perpetrators returned to being normal liberal citizens of post-war European society.

    After your visit in Auschwitz in 1978 you never went there again. Why?

    The impressions of my return to the deserted landscapes of the ruins of Auschwitz in 1978 were so powerful and are imprinted in my memory and imagination so deeply, that I am not willing to reshape or overwrite them. These were my own childhood landscapes, in which I always find a kind of freedom, which exists only for me. I am always afraid that I will be alienated from these impressions through receiving different images.

    You moved to Israel when you were still very young and your father stayed in Czechoslovakia. What does Israel mean to you?

    I moved to Israel in the year 1949 at the age of 16 in the awareness that I am participating in the great historical event of the return of an exiled and dispersed nation to its ancient homeland. This also meant for me and my generation an attempt to create a new society based on humanistic values and the active participation in the revival of an ancient language and the creation of a modern culture built on a historical heritage. My father first stayed in Prague, with his new family. But in 1968, after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which crushed the dream of the Prague Spring, he joined me.

    About the editor

    Tasja Dorkofikis is the editor of the PEN Atlas as well as a freelance editor and publicist. She used to work as Publicity Director at Random House and most recently at Portobello Books as Associate Publisher and Commissioning Editor. Tasja shares her time between London and a small village in Vaud in Switzerland.

    Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death recently won the the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize 2014. The book was translated by Ralph Mendel.

    The memoir explores Otto Dov Kulka’s haunting memories of a childhood spent in Auschwitz. Breaking years of silence, it is now translated into 17 languages.

    Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death is available from Penguin.

  • Syria – the betrayed uprising

    Samar Yazbek, journalist, author and winner of an English PEN Writers in Translation award, turns our attention back to Syria, the cynicism of the regime, the influence of outside powers, and how these combine at a great cost to the people

    Translated from the Arabic by Emily DanbyThree years have passed since the start of the Syrian uprising, enough time to transform the citizens’ peaceful calls for democracy into a two-sided, armed conflict comprising all manners of criminality and human rights abuse.Bashar al-Assad’s regime stands alone as it faces the results of what has happened in Syria: total and unprecedented damage to the country’s infrastructure. The most serious harm has been to the nation’s social fabric and civil harmony, committed in order for the regime to keep its grip on power. The regime has sustained this grip with the help of countries from around the world that have chosen to conspire with the regime for their own benefit, rather than choose the humanitarian option of rescuing a people standing up to systematic execution. As a result, the concept of revolution has lost its meaning and revolution has become war: a battle between multiple armed factions, among which Jihadist groups are playing the major role. Syrian society – and the nature of its struggle – has been transformed because of the violent subjugation by Assad. Syria has become a dark and taunted society where the only contending urges are to kill and to stay alive.Behind all of this is the sectarian problem, exploited by the regime through a form of tribalism in which the policies of expulsion and sectarian massacre have been brutally implemented. The aim has been to turn the revolution away from its goal of establishing democracy, and to attract a form of Sunni Jihadist fanaticism that will stand in confrontation with the Alawite equivalent.So, the Assad regime is continuing its hard-line siege of all areas refusing to surrender to its rule. Women and children are dying of hunger in areas previously controlled by armed resistance groups. Government aircrafts have launched an assault of rockets and bombs against rebel areas and targeted some of them with chemical weapons, as was the case in Ghouta in August 2013. Such towns have become open graves, engulfing all civilians who had not fled their homes.The revolution has strayed from its goal of establishing democracy, and Syria has become a nation still united but threatened with the possibility of division. Among the ranks of the armed resistance, various opposing factions have appeared, none of which express nationalist ideals with the same fervour as they do their non-nationalist visions, such as that of an Islamic state, visions tucked in their gun cartridges… This is the result that Assad has been striving for, during three years of relentless killing and continued incitement to all manner of violence between countrymen. Assad’s behaviour in this respect earns him status as one of the most notable war criminals in human history. This all brings the Syrian crisis to its most complex point yet, where the fighting threatens to grow into a war that would turn the country into a single mass grave, one for Syrians of every political orientation – pro-government and rebel alike.It’s worth mentioning that there are still many proponents of civic democracy within the uprising. Among these are human rights campaigners, activists, and others working with people on the ground. However, due to the lack of support and funds to implement their proposals they do not constitute a very influential movement, not when compared with the well-funded militias and Islamists. Moreover, the voices of these moderates are dispersed, since they have proven unable to create a strong, united movement; meanwhile the political entity representing the revolution remains weak and divided.Neither is there any sign of volition from the international community to help and protect those remaining in Syria. All indications suggest that the world and its governments have agreed to let the conflict take its most protracted and violent course. The international community seems to think its only option is to endure the continued killing of Syrian civilians caught between two sets of suicidal nihilists: the regime and the armed Jihadists. The world and its governments will one day have to witness their shameful place in the history books, when they have ceased watching the slaughter in silent neutrality. About the author

    Samar Yazbek is a Syrian writer and journalist, born in Jableh in 1970. She is the author of several works of fiction. Her novel, Cinnamon, is to be published by Arabia Books later this year. An outspoken critic of the Assad regime, Yazbek has been deeply involved in the Syrian uprising since it broke out on 15 March 2011. Fearing for the life of her daughter she was forced to flee her country and now lives in hiding. Her book A Woman in the Crossfire published by Haus won an English PEN Writers in Translation award in 2012. She was also chosen as the PEN Pinter International Writer of Courage in 2012, sharing the prize with the British winner Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.

    About the translator

    Emily Danby is a translator of literary and media Arabic with a particular interest in women’s writing and the literature of the Levant. After graduating from the University of Oxford, Emily became an apprentice on the British Centre for Literary Translation mentorship scheme and has since worked on translations of fiction by authors from Sudan, Palestine and the Levant. Emily has collaborated with Samar Yazbek in translating a number of her works of journalism and fiction. 

  • PEN Atlas: literary dispatches from Turkey

    Maureen Freely introduces an exclusive new e-book from PEN Atlas
    , collecting some of the best dispatches from Turkey, at a moment when the country is in the midst of great changes, both political and literary

    There was a time, and it was not very long ago, when even our best-informed and most outward-looking readers could not name a single Turkish writer. In 2004, when Orhan Pamuk achieved quite sudden world fame with his sixth novel (his fourth to be translated into English), more than a few of his reviewers expressed astonishment that a country ‘like that’ could produce a writer of his sophistication. His subsequent prosecution for insulting Turkishness only served to encourage the belief that he must be an aberration, owing nothing to the cultural void from which the knights of world literature had rescued him. This illusion was disrupted by the arrival of Elif Shafak who, though writing in a very different vein, with very different takes on religion, feminism, and indeed literature, was just as good at taking stories rooted in Turkey to world audiences.That and the growing popularity of Turkey as a holiday destination made readers more curious.  The number of Turkish authors being translated into English went from 11 in the last decade of the last century to 41 in the first decade of this one, and 25 in the last three years alone.In the past year, more than 20 Turkish writers have come to this island to launch or speak about their work. Most came under the auspices of the British Council, working in conjunction with the Turkish Ministry of Culture, the London Book Fair, English PEN, and other dedicated partners. There were more than 30 events in 15 venues across 4 UK cities. Most were about literature, not politics, though politics is never far away in the lives and works of Turkish writers. For those who wished to engage more deeply with such questions, there was a roundtable on freedom of expression hosted by English PEN at which a diverse group of Turkish novelists, poets, publishers, and journalists met an equally diverse group of London-based novelists, lawyers, and activists.At this and the many other events I attended, either as a participant or a member of a standing-room only audience, there was one question that kept coming back. Why has it taken the English-speaking world so long to notice Turkey? There is, of course, no single answer. You might say that – especially since the end of the Second World War – it has been very hard to read. Like many of the new nations in the Cold War era, it was economically weak, but it never had to liberate itself from an empire. Before becoming a republic, it was an empire. It was also, officially, a democracy, but with a military that was not shy to step in and shut it down whenever it deemed necessary. It was staunchly anti-Communist, and staunchly authoritarian. It is still authoritarian, except that now the enforcers are not secularists but Islamists.In Turkey today, as in Turkey yesterday, you pick up a pen at your own risk. Though the tradition of speaking truth to power is old and rich, the conversation was until very recently constrained, even kettled. The penal code is still full of laws that can send writers to prison. The new anti-terror laws and the expanding definitions of terrorism now allow for the indefinite detention of writers viewed as dangerous. But that has not silenced Turkey’s dissenting writers, who continue to speak out for democratic change with ever greater ingenuity, imagination, and force.During the recent Gezi protests, the Turkish mainstream media stayed at home. The media moguls were too deeply involved in the ruling party’s development deals to risk angering an increasingly autocratic prime minister. It was the social media that kept the protesters in touch, and (thanks to the efforts of a spontaneous army of Twitter translators) it connected them with the outside world as never before.So today we are publishing an e-book containing our first collection of dispatches, commissioned and posted by PEN Atlas over the past year. Some come from writers who have already seen their books published in English; some are appearing in English for the first time. Some have been translated; some were composed in English. Quite a few were written from the heat of the Gezi protests; others offer quiet reflections, mining the past, or imagining the future. All are open letters, inviting us to write back.From Mario Levi and Hakan Gunday to Kaya Genc and Ayfer Tunc, this collection offers many riches and insights and invites you to read further.About the authorMaureen Freely is the author of seven novels (Mother’s Helper, The Life of the Party, The Stork Club, Under the Vulcania, The Other Rebecca, Enlightenment and – most recently – Sailing through Byzantium) as well as three works of non-fiction (Pandora’s Clock, What About Us? An Open Letter to the Mothers Feminism Forgot, and The Parent Trap). The translator of five books by the Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk (Snow, The Black Book, Istanbul: Memories of a City, Other Colours and The Museum of Innocence), she is active in various campaigns to champion free expression. She also works with campaigns aiming to promote world literature in English translation. She has been a regular contributor to the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent and the Sunday Times for two decades, writing on feminism, family and social policy, Turkish culture and politics, and contemporary writing. 

  • Publishers’ highlights in 2014: part 1

    Chase away those stormy blues with a new book for the new year. PEN Atlas asks UK publishers about the translated books they are excited about publishing in 2014 – an exciting list of books to look forward to this year, so clear your shelves! Publishers include Pushkin Press, Peirene, Istros Books and more, with a second installment from other publishers next week

     

    Eric Lane – Dedalus

    We have begun 2014 with Diego Marani’s first detective novel, God’s Dog, translated by Judith Landry, set in the near future with Italy a theocratic state ruled by the Vatican. Described as ‘energetic and trenchant’ in The Independent.February sees Before and During by Vladimir Sharov, translated by Oliver Ready. This is one of, if not the most, extraordinary novel we have ever published. My view of Stalin will never be the same again.In March there is the first English translation by Alan Yates of  Raimon Casellas’  fin-de-siècle masterpiece Dark Vales. A Catalan classic full of darkness and foreboding. 

    Jane Lawson, Editorial Director – Doubleday 

    The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver by Chan Koonchung (May 2014, translated from the Chinese by Nicky Harman).  Humorous and erotic Chinese road novel about the love life of a hapless drifter whose life is upturned when he falls in love with the statue of a young girl from Beijing- the second novel from the author of The Fat Years. 

    Susan Curtis-Kojakovic, Director – Istros Books

    Hamam Balkania by Vladislav Bajac (Serbia) translated by Randall A Major – An ambitious look into the power structures of the Ottoman Empire, juxtaposed with musings on contemporary concepts of identity and faith. (January 2014)Mission London by Alek Popov (Bulgaria) translated by Daniela and Charles Edward Gill de Mayol de Lupe  – Combining the themes of corruption, confusion and outright incompetence, Popov masterly brings together multiple plot lines in a sumptuous carnival of frenzy and futile vanity, allowing the illusions and delusions of post-communist society to be reflected in their glorious absurdity! (April 2014)Death in the Museum of Modern Art by Alma Lazarevska (Bosnia) translated by Celia Hawkesworth – Avoiding the easy traps of politics and blame, Lazarevska reveals a world full of incidents and worries so similar to our own, and yet always under the shadow of the snipers and the grenades of the Bosnian war. (June 2014)False Apocalypse by Fatos Lubonja (Albania) translated by John Hodgson – 1997, a tragic year in the history of post-communist Albania.  This is one man’s story of how the world’s most isolated country emerged from Stalinist dictatorship and fell victim to a plague of corruption and flawed ‘pyramid’ financial schemes which brought the people to the edge of ruin. (October 2014)The Great War by Aleksandar Gatalica (Serbia) translated by Will Firth – In the centenary year of the start of WWI, we finally have a Serbian author taking on the themes of a war that was started by a Serb assassin’s bullet. Following the destinies of over seventy characters, on all warring sides, Gatalica depicts the destinies of winners and losers, generals and opera singers, soldiers and spies, in the conflict that marked the beginning of the Twentieth Century. (October 2014) 

    Rowan Cope, Senior Editor – Little Brown, Abacus and Virago

    Here are our four highlights for fiction in translation in 2014 from across our lists – we’ve got some fantastic titles coming up.I’m hugely excited about Patrick Deville’s novel Plague and Cholera (Little, Brown hardback, Feb 2014, translated by J.A. Underwood), which is a rich, fascinating and gripping fictional portrait both of the real historical figure of Dr Alexandre Yersin, a game-changing microbiologist and explorer, and of the turbulent early years of the twentieth century. It was a notable bestseller and shortlisted for every major literary award in France.Spanish debut novelist Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera’s The Awakening of Miss Prim (Abacus, June 2014, translated by Sonia Soto) is a charming, quirky tale of love, literature, philosophy and the pleasure to be found in the little things in life – I hope it will appeal to readers who loved novels such as The Elegance of the Hedgehog.Malice by Keigo Higashino (Little, Brown, October 2014, translated by Alexander O. Smith): Malice is the most acclaimed novel in Keigo Higashino’s bestselling series featuring police detective Kyochiro Kaga. Kaga is one of the most popular creations of Japan’s bestselling novelist and appears in a dozen novels, several TV series and a handful of major motion picture adaptations.The Stone Boy by Sophie Loubière (February 2014, translated by Nora Mahoney): The Stone Boy is an award-winning and darkly atmospheric French psychological thriller with an unforgettable elderly heroine – Madame Préau. 

    Juliet Mabey, Publisher – Oneworld

    We have a growing list of fiction in translation, which has been actively expanded over the last year with acquisitions from Korea, China, Israel, and Russia, and have a particularly strong list of translated novels for 2014.The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly is one of the highlights of this year’s list. Written by the multi-award winning author Sun-Mi Hwang and translated by Chi-Young Kim, it has been on the Korea bestseller list continuously for more than a decade, selling in excess of two million copies. A modern fable-esque classic with strong philosophical themes, it features a spirited hen’s quest for freedom and self-determination, and has been compared to E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web and Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Illustrated by London-based Japanese artist Nomoco, it will launch in April at the London Book Fair where Hwang is Author of the Day as part of this year’s Korean Focus.The Space Between Us by Iranian bestselling author Zoya Pirzad and translated from the Persian by Amy Motlagh is publishing in February, a follow up to Things We Left Unsaid, which we published in 2012. Dubbed the Anne Tyler of Iran, [Pirzad has written] a poignant, wistful story about belonging and otherness, pride and prejudice, and brilliantly paints the Iranian landscape of complex social conventions and private emotional conflict.Revolution Street by Amir Cheheltan is translated from the Persian by Paul Sprachman and publishes in March. In this critically acclaimed and searing novel – Cheheltan’s first to be translated into English – power and corruption in post-revolutionary Iran are exposed through the actions of two men who scheme to exploit the chaos and confusion for their own benefit. Both torturers in one of Tehran’s most notorious prisons and in love with the same woman, their machinations take them deep into Tehran’s underworld of criminals and provocateurs, in an unusual tragi-comic tale of rivalry and revenge.The Hilltop by Assaf Gavron and translated from the Hebrew by Steven Cohen won the prestigious Bernstein Award in Israel, where it hit the bestseller lists on publication. Publishing here in November, and described by one reviewer as “probably the best political novel to be written in Israel”, it documents a warped and psychotic society in Israel’s Wild West – the establishment of a new settlement in the West Bank. A specialist at showing both sides of the equation, Gavron explores his subject with subtle complexity, humor and great insight into the human condition, portraying a multi-layered reality that encourages readers to make their own judgments. 

    Meike Ziervogel, Publisher – Peirene Press

    In 2014 Peirene will publish its Coming-of-Age series, three stories about our individual struggles to reach maturity in an ever-changing world.The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov, translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfiled: A haunting tale about the environmental legacy of the Cold War. ‘Hamid Ismailov has the capacity of Salman Rushdie at his best to show the grotesque realization of history on the ground.’ Literary Review (February 2014)The Blue Room by Hanne Ortavik, translated from the Norwegian by Deborah Dawkin: A mother-daughter relationship that will send a chill down your spine. ‘A book for all daughters… A book that will get under your skin.’ Elle (June 2014)Under the Tripoli Sky by Kamal Ben Hameda, translated from the French by Adriana Hunter.  A fascinating portrait of a pre-Gaddafi Libyan society on the verge of change. ‘Neo-realistic characters that could have stepped straight out of a Vittorio de Sica film.’ Cultures Sud (September 2014) 

    Laura Barber, Editorial Director – Granta Books & Portobello Books

    This year kicks off in sinister style with reissue of six books by the great Sicilian author, Leonardo Sciascia, whose powerful exploration of Sicily’s gritty criminal underworld shows him to be a master storyteller across a variety of literary genres, from novels and short stories to detective fiction and true crime.On a lighter note, the satirist Dimitri Verhulst imagines the consequences of the second coming in Christ’s Entry into Brussels (translated by David Colmer).In April, we have a new dispatch from the inimitable Jacek Hugo-Bader, whose Kolyma Diaries (translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) record his vodka-fuelled experience of travelling 2000 kilometres through the former Soviet Gulag to meet the inhabitants of this grim land as they eke out an existence or transform themselves into oligarchs.And in May, we have Nightwork, a darkly comic coming-of-age story set during the Russian occupation from the celebrated Czech writer, Jáchym Topol, translated by Marek Tomin.Later in the year, we have A Short Stop on the Road From Auschwitz, a shattering literary memoir by Göran Rosenburg, the son of Holocaust survivors (translated from Swedish by Sarah Death), and Walter Kempowski’s Swansong ’45 (translated from German by Shaun Whiteside), a monumental collection of first-hand accounts that brings to life the last days of World War II.Finally, in December, Jenny Erpenbeck’s The End of Days (translated from German by Susan Bernofsky) which is a story of the 20th century traced through the various possible lives of one woman and was last year’s winner of the Hans Fallada Prize. 

    Adam Freudenheim, Publisher and Managing Director – Pushkin Press

    As a publisher specializing in fiction from around the world it’s always difficult to choose highlights for the year, so focussing on just two writers whose work appears with us in English for the first time this spring and with apologies to other Pushkin writers I’ve not been able to include, here goes.Song for an Approaching Storm by Peter Fröberg Idling is an atmospheric thriller set in one tense month in 1950s Cambodia.  The story is told in three sections, each giving the perspective of one character in a love triangle.  The rub comes in that one of the three is Saloth Sar, who twenty years later would become known to the world as Pol Pot. First published in Swedish in 2012, Song for an Approaching Storm is an original and moving debut novel beautifully translated by Peter Graves. (March 2014)Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda was a sensation on publication in Holland in 2010.  It went to number one on the bestseller list, was nominated for every Dutch literary prize going – and won five of them – and is being translated into eight languages.  Buwalda’s book is a family saga in which things go rather terribly wrong for one Dutch family in the 1990s and 2000s.  Set in Holland, Beligium and California, Bonita Avenue is a terrific, page-turning book that – as one critic put it – feels like a cross between the work of Jonathan Franzen and Stieg Larsson!  Jonathan Reeder has translated this larger-than-life debut novel. (April 2014) 

  • Publishers' highlights in 2014: part 1

    Chase away those stormy blues with a new book for the new year. PEN Atlas asks UK publishers about the translated books they are excited about publishing in 2014 – an exciting list of books to look forward to this year, so clear your shelves! Publishers include Pushkin Press, Peirene, Istros Books and more, with a second installment from other publishers next week

     

    Eric Lane – Dedalus

    We have begun 2014 with Diego Marani’s first detective novel, God’s Dog, translated by Judith Landry, set in the near future with Italy a theocratic state ruled by the Vatican. Described as ‘energetic and trenchant’ in The Independent.February sees Before and During by Vladimir Sharov, translated by Oliver Ready. This is one of, if not the most, extraordinary novel we have ever published. My view of Stalin will never be the same again.In March there is the first English translation by Alan Yates of  Raimon Casellas’  fin-de-siècle masterpiece Dark Vales. A Catalan classic full of darkness and foreboding. 

    Jane Lawson, Editorial Director – Doubleday 

    The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver by Chan Koonchung (May 2014, translated from the Chinese by Nicky Harman).  Humorous and erotic Chinese road novel about the love life of a hapless drifter whose life is upturned when he falls in love with the statue of a young girl from Beijing- the second novel from the author of The Fat Years. 

    Susan Curtis-Kojakovic, Director – Istros Books

    Hamam Balkania by Vladislav Bajac (Serbia) translated by Randall A Major – An ambitious look into the power structures of the Ottoman Empire, juxtaposed with musings on contemporary concepts of identity and faith. (January 2014)Mission London by Alek Popov (Bulgaria) translated by Daniela and Charles Edward Gill de Mayol de Lupe  – Combining the themes of corruption, confusion and outright incompetence, Popov masterly brings together multiple plot lines in a sumptuous carnival of frenzy and futile vanity, allowing the illusions and delusions of post-communist society to be reflected in their glorious absurdity! (April 2014)Death in the Museum of Modern Art by Alma Lazarevska (Bosnia) translated by Celia Hawkesworth – Avoiding the easy traps of politics and blame, Lazarevska reveals a world full of incidents and worries so similar to our own, and yet always under the shadow of the snipers and the grenades of the Bosnian war. (June 2014)False Apocalypse by Fatos Lubonja (Albania) translated by John Hodgson – 1997, a tragic year in the history of post-communist Albania.  This is one man’s story of how the world’s most isolated country emerged from Stalinist dictatorship and fell victim to a plague of corruption and flawed ‘pyramid’ financial schemes which brought the people to the edge of ruin. (October 2014)The Great War by Aleksandar Gatalica (Serbia) translated by Will Firth – In the centenary year of the start of WWI, we finally have a Serbian author taking on the themes of a war that was started by a Serb assassin’s bullet. Following the destinies of over seventy characters, on all warring sides, Gatalica depicts the destinies of winners and losers, generals and opera singers, soldiers and spies, in the conflict that marked the beginning of the Twentieth Century. (October 2014) 

    Rowan Cope, Senior Editor – Little Brown, Abacus and Virago

    Here are our four highlights for fiction in translation in 2014 from across our lists – we’ve got some fantastic titles coming up.I’m hugely excited about Patrick Deville’s novel Plague and Cholera (Little, Brown hardback, Feb 2014, translated by J.A. Underwood), which is a rich, fascinating and gripping fictional portrait both of the real historical figure of Dr Alexandre Yersin, a game-changing microbiologist and explorer, and of the turbulent early years of the twentieth century. It was a notable bestseller and shortlisted for every major literary award in France.Spanish debut novelist Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera’s The Awakening of Miss Prim (Abacus, June 2014, translated by Sonia Soto) is a charming, quirky tale of love, literature, philosophy and the pleasure to be found in the little things in life – I hope it will appeal to readers who loved novels such as The Elegance of the Hedgehog.Malice by Keigo Higashino (Little, Brown, October 2014, translated by Alexander O. Smith): Malice is the most acclaimed novel in Keigo Higashino’s bestselling series featuring police detective Kyochiro Kaga. Kaga is one of the most popular creations of Japan’s bestselling novelist and appears in a dozen novels, several TV series and a handful of major motion picture adaptations.The Stone Boy by Sophie Loubière (February 2014, translated by Nora Mahoney): The Stone Boy is an award-winning and darkly atmospheric French psychological thriller with an unforgettable elderly heroine – Madame Préau. 

    Juliet Mabey, Publisher – Oneworld

    We have a growing list of fiction in translation, which has been actively expanded over the last year with acquisitions from Korea, China, Israel, and Russia, and have a particularly strong list of translated novels for 2014.The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly is one of the highlights of this year’s list. Written by the multi-award winning author Sun-Mi Hwang and translated by Chi-Young Kim, it has been on the Korea bestseller list continuously for more than a decade, selling in excess of two million copies. A modern fable-esque classic with strong philosophical themes, it features a spirited hen’s quest for freedom and self-determination, and has been compared to E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web and Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Illustrated by London-based Japanese artist Nomoco, it will launch in April at the London Book Fair where Hwang is Author of the Day as part of this year’s Korean Focus.The Space Between Us by Iranian bestselling author Zoya Pirzad and translated from the Persian by Amy Motlagh is publishing in February, a follow up to Things We Left Unsaid, which we published in 2012. Dubbed the Anne Tyler of Iran, [Pirzad has written] a poignant, wistful story about belonging and otherness, pride and prejudice, and brilliantly paints the Iranian landscape of complex social conventions and private emotional conflict.Revolution Street by Amir Cheheltan is translated from the Persian by Paul Sprachman and publishes in March. In this critically acclaimed and searing novel – Cheheltan’s first to be translated into English – power and corruption in post-revolutionary Iran are exposed through the actions of two men who scheme to exploit the chaos and confusion for their own benefit. Both torturers in one of Tehran’s most notorious prisons and in love with the same woman, their machinations take them deep into Tehran’s underworld of criminals and provocateurs, in an unusual tragi-comic tale of rivalry and revenge.The Hilltop by Assaf Gavron and translated from the Hebrew by Steven Cohen won the prestigious Bernstein Award in Israel, where it hit the bestseller lists on publication. Publishing here in November, and described by one reviewer as “probably the best political novel to be written in Israel”, it documents a warped and psychotic society in Israel’s Wild West – the establishment of a new settlement in the West Bank. A specialist at showing both sides of the equation, Gavron explores his subject with subtle complexity, humor and great insight into the human condition, portraying a multi-layered reality that encourages readers to make their own judgments. 

    Meike Ziervogel, Publisher – Peirene Press

    In 2014 Peirene will publish its Coming-of-Age series, three stories about our individual struggles to reach maturity in an ever-changing world.The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov, translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfiled: A haunting tale about the environmental legacy of the Cold War. ‘Hamid Ismailov has the capacity of Salman Rushdie at his best to show the grotesque realization of history on the ground.’ Literary Review (February 2014)The Blue Room by Hanne Ortavik, translated from the Norwegian by Deborah Dawkin: A mother-daughter relationship that will send a chill down your spine. ‘A book for all daughters… A book that will get under your skin.’ Elle (June 2014)Under the Tripoli Sky by Kamal Ben Hameda, translated from the French by Adriana Hunter.  A fascinating portrait of a pre-Gaddafi Libyan society on the verge of change. ‘Neo-realistic characters that could have stepped straight out of a Vittorio de Sica film.’ Cultures Sud (September 2014) 

    Laura Barber, Editorial Director – Granta Books & Portobello Books

    This year kicks off in sinister style with reissue of six books by the great Sicilian author, Leonardo Sciascia, whose powerful exploration of Sicily’s gritty criminal underworld shows him to be a master storyteller across a variety of literary genres, from novels and short stories to detective fiction and true crime.On a lighter note, the satirist Dimitri Verhulst imagines the consequences of the second coming in Christ’s Entry into Brussels (translated by David Colmer).In April, we have a new dispatch from the inimitable Jacek Hugo-Bader, whose Kolyma Diaries (translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) record his vodka-fuelled experience of travelling 2000 kilometres through the former Soviet Gulag to meet the inhabitants of this grim land as they eke out an existence or transform themselves into oligarchs.And in May, we have Nightwork, a darkly comic coming-of-age story set during the Russian occupation from the celebrated Czech writer, Jáchym Topol, translated by Marek Tomin.Later in the year, we have A Short Stop on the Road From Auschwitz, a shattering literary memoir by Göran Rosenburg, the son of Holocaust survivors (translated from Swedish by Sarah Death), and Walter Kempowski’s Swansong ’45 (translated from German by Shaun Whiteside), a monumental collection of first-hand accounts that brings to life the last days of World War II.Finally, in December, Jenny Erpenbeck’s The End of Days (translated from German by Susan Bernofsky) which is a story of the 20th century traced through the various possible lives of one woman and was last year’s winner of the Hans Fallada Prize. 

    Adam Freudenheim, Publisher and Managing Director – Pushkin Press

    As a publisher specializing in fiction from around the world it’s always difficult to choose highlights for the year, so focussing on just two writers whose work appears with us in English for the first time this spring and with apologies to other Pushkin writers I’ve not been able to include, here goes.Song for an Approaching Storm by Peter Fröberg Idling is an atmospheric thriller set in one tense month in 1950s Cambodia.  The story is told in three sections, each giving the perspective of one character in a love triangle.  The rub comes in that one of the three is Saloth Sar, who twenty years later would become known to the world as Pol Pot. First published in Swedish in 2012, Song for an Approaching Storm is an original and moving debut novel beautifully translated by Peter Graves. (March 2014)Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda was a sensation on publication in Holland in 2010.  It went to number one on the bestseller list, was nominated for every Dutch literary prize going – and won five of them – and is being translated into eight languages.  Buwalda’s book is a family saga in which things go rather terribly wrong for one Dutch family in the 1990s and 2000s.  Set in Holland, Beligium and California, Bonita Avenue is a terrific, page-turning book that – as one critic put it – feels like a cross between the work of Jonathan Franzen and Stieg Larsson!  Jonathan Reeder has translated this larger-than-life debut novel. (April 2014) 

  • Living by the pen

    What is the cost of going on the payroll for a writer in Turkey? Kaya Genç weighs up the rewards and risks of working for a major paper, the trade-off between authorial freedom and institutional backing, and his simple solution for protecting free speech In April 2007 I was forced to make a decision which seemed important to me at the time.I was trying to make up my mind about whether I should work full time at Newsweek magazine’s Turkish edition. My attempts at convincing the magazine’s editor that I would be more valuable if I worked freelance had failed. His offer was a full time job. ‘I am not interested in hiring a freelancer, I want to pay you a proper wage,’ he said, clarifying his position. This would have been an easy choice had money been my sole concern. It was not. I cared for what I used to think at the time as my ‘authorial freedom’ and this was why I wanted to work as a freelancer.Write for Newsweek, earn money, buy time, and finish your novel, my inner voice said.But the editor reminded me that the category of freelance writers simply didn’t exist in Turkey. Freelance writers couldn’t earn enough money to pay their rent. They were not taken as seriously as their formally employed colleagues. If you wanted respect you needed to become part of your publication’s institutional structure. Simply feeding it from the sidelines wouldn’t do.You were either with them in the office getting paid, or against them in your living room not getting paid. With a handful of notable exceptions, the individual writer devoid of any institutional affiliations didn’t really exist in Turkey.So I reconsidered the situation and my decision became a no-brainer. I accepted the offer, moved into the office and started working.Only a few days had passed behind my new desk before I got a call from the editor of a Turkish literary magazine where I had been publishing essays and short stories for the past few years. The magazine had come to symbolise my pre-Newsweek existence. It paid its contributors little but provided them with a valued literary space.When I received the call that day I wondered whether the editor would ask for a new contribution or inform me about a fan letter.It turned out to be quite a different matter.’The state prosecutor has received a complaint about one of your short stories,’ he informed me in a nervous voice. ‘We went to a preliminary meeting with the prosecutor yesterday. You’ll need to visit him first thing tomorrow. This is serious business, Kaya. The plaintiff wants you to be tried in court.’In 2007 a political court case could very easily become a death warrant. Only a few months had passed since the assassination of Hrant Dink, an independent, Armenian journalist who was murdered by a gang of ultra-secular nationalists in central Istanbul after receiving a prison sentence. His assailants believed that Dink’s views were treacherous and decided to silence him.Dink was part of a group of writers whom the mainstream media had dubbed variously as ‘liberals‘, ‘renegades’ or ‘traitors’. At the time I couldn’t see the curious bond connecting all those authors. They were independent; writers who couldn’t rely on big institutions to protect them. They worked as editors or publishers or academics or columnists but in spirit they were all freelance.They were different from intellectuals who were closely affiliated with powerful institutions. When a writer from the latter group wrote an inflammatory piece about, say, the customs of Turkey’s Kurds, his newspaper would immediately pay the legal costs of the libel case that followed. In Turkish we define their situation with the expression, arkası sağlam, which means you’re well-connected: powerful people have your back. Because they were arkası sağlam people, those nationalist columnists could continue penning their articles without having to worry about their future.But if you were a freelancer with no real connection to a major institution and no wings to protect you, you would be made to pay the legal costs on your own. This was a nice tactic which served to destabilise the financial positions of freelancers, and keep them silent. In this country when a group of institutionalised intellectuals want to dominate the political discourse, the first thing they try to get rid of is the independent writer. This had long been the case: in 1932 after the launch of a magazine called Kadro (‘Cadre’), Turkey’s free thinkers were employed by the state. Their new status as defenders of the state apparatus and its reforms changed not only their intellectual careers but also that of Turkey’s left.By accepting Newsweek’s offer I felt as if I, too, had become an institutionalised intellectual. My independent wings had been severed. The freedom they had provided was no more. Of course, the severing had its advantages, too. My editor reassured me that the magazine would stand by me if a court case was indeed opened.This was good news. If the Turkish state decided to come after me, a news magazine would protect me. I took the dummy issue of the magazine, which had my name printed on one of its pages and headed to the offices of the state prosecutor. There I had the very unpleasant experience of having to defend a fictional story.The narrator of my story spoke ironically and so only the complete opposite of what he said could be attributed to me, I explained. My explanation was as curious as the situation that demanded it. The narrator of my story was an occidentialist who adored western civilisation beyond all measure. I said I was making fun of him by way of using him as my narrator. His voice was designed to outrage the reader. That someone had filed a complaint was proof of the story’s success.And, after all, wasn’t it a work of fiction? What the characters said represented their views, not mine.What the characters said in this particular story was intended to be ironic. My pontifications about the meaning of irony and its rhetorical use seemed to have convinced the prosecutor. He seemed to accept that I was simply a well-meaning young man who had been gravely misunderstood. As I left his office I felt as if I had talked shop with a literature professor rather than defended myself before a state prosecutor.A week passed.No word from the prosecutor.On Monday I learned that the prosecutor decided against opening a case. I felt relieved and yet I couldn’t really tell whether it was my rhetorical skills that had saved me from the wrath of the law. I sensed that something else might have played a role. As I thought more about the matter I became convinced that had I not brought along the copy of Newsweek which bore my name and that of the Washington Post company on its pages, the result might have been different. So the moral to draw from this episode was quite clear. I had been saved thanks to  my decision to stop freelancing.

    * * *

    In countries like Turkey where the literary market offers you only a flimsy hope of living by your pen, being a professional author places you in a very curious position. The road to authorship, when you first enter it, feels like a dead end. Nobody seems to dream, let alone seriously consider, that making a living by one’s pen can become a person’s goal in life.  Consider, for example, how my generation of prospective Turkish writers had the traumatic experience of witnessing the older generation of authors being tried and then killed in broad daylight. Consider how we witnessed their fate as the Turkish state and ultra-secular nationalists came after them and bullied them and threatened them and forced them to flee their country and live in exile in fear of their lives.Consider how we witnessed them being bullied by political columnists who in desperate attempts to control them and force them into changing their views leaked details of their personal lives. I still remember how a newspaper columnist questioned a leading novelist’s sales figures, claiming that it was impossible for such an author to make a living by his pen: the implication was that the novelist’s popularity was a fabrication and that he was in pay of some shadowy institution in a western country.This was the lesson we were forced to learn: being an individual voice in this country would have the automatic result of labeling you as a traitor, a greedy liberal, an enemy of the holy state. Become anonymous and pen nasty articles about free thinking intellectuals, a voice seemed to tell us, destroy the reputations of those who dare start literary careers under their real names. The same voice said that the honourable craft of literature belonged to those who devoted their labours to national leaders or ideals or symbols without asking anything in return. Devotion and duty were the things that really mattered. Literature was a calling, writing was a duty, speaking the national tongue was an obligation. Why did we even ask to be paid for those patriotic acts?Selling your work to editors and publishers also had the sinister implication that words could be exchanged, that they had material value, that they could be used for something other than propaganda.Tragically, the first generation of republican authors accepted these views willingly. But things didn’t change much by the time I made my way into Turkey’s literary market. When people attempted to make a living writing essays and reviews following a path well-trodden by many in London and in New York, they were immediately branded as hacks or suspicious figures who paid too much attention to materialistic, instead of idealistic values.Again, the implication of this bullying was clear. The writing business belonged and should continue to belong to the wealthy —to those who never needed money. The elite had the right to write and speak; others were silenced through this moralistic mirror in which they were portrayed as greedy and decadent figures.There is no better way of showing your gratitude and appreciation for a writer’s work than paying them properly. For more than ninety years of republican history Turkish freelancers had been silenced either by state institutions which employed them or by the lack of a proper literary market. But as I look around and try to see how other authors from my generation are doing nowadays, I see how they no longer share the old state ideas which make freelance authors suspect in the eyes of the intellectual community. On the contrary, they are increasingly joining the ranks of independent writers. I know, from experience, that it won’t be state patronage or employment by special institutions that will save them from the cold realities of pessimism, poverty and prosecution. No, don’t make them part of the state apparatus or turn them into ideologues or employ them as editors: if you want those writers to succeed, just pay them. This is an edited version of Kaya Genç’s speech delivered for the International Authors Forum which met in Istanbul on 1st November 2013. The International Authors Forum is a forum for discussion, debate and collective action between authors’ organisations worldwide. Its focus is on protecting authors and ensuring that legislation, particularly in the area of copyright and related rights, enables authors to be paid fairly for the use of their work.  About the authorKaya Genç is a novelist and essayist from Istanbul. His work has appeared in the Paris Review Daily, the Guardian, the Financial Times, the London Review of Books blog, Salon, Guernica Magazine, Sight & Sound, the Millions, the White Review, the New Inquiry, the English PEN Atlas, the Rumpus, Index on Censorship, the Guardian Weekly, HTMLGIANT, Songlines, and Pank, among others. L’Avventura (Macera), his first novel, was published in 2008. Kaya has a PhD in English literature. He is the Istanbul correspondent of the Los Angeles Review of Books and is currently working on his second novel.

    Additional Information

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    For more on Kaya Genç and his writing visit his website.

  • Yule love these books in translation – 2013

    Want some expert advice on what to read in translation? Then look no further. Top writers, literary scouts, critics and festival directors recommend books to give – and devour – during the festive season. Enjoy!

     Lisa Appignanesi, writer  Chasing the King of Hearts by Hannah Krall, translated by Phillip Boehm (Peirene Press).  This short, taut novel conveys more about the Second World War in Poland than many a thicker volume. In a series of brief scenes, at once moving and surreal, the great writer, Hannah Krall, takes us through the extraordinary journey of one woman searching for her beloved husband who has disappeared from the Warsaw ghetto. Her quest takes her through broken teeth, changed identities, casual rape and more, before ultimately landing her in Auschwitz. The echoes of my parents’ experience, which I wrote in Losing the Dead (Virago), astonished me and gave me a greater sense of the reality of trajectories that now often seem unthinkable. This is an unsentimental novel about hard histories. It’s also moving and yes, at times funny. For anyone and everyone who loves literature. Claire Armitstead, literary editor, The GuardianThe Light and the Dark by Mikhail Shishkin, translated by Andrew Bromfield (Quercus). Shishkin is one of Russia’s greatest living writers – the only one to have won all three of his country’s big literary prizes – and his epistolary novel takes a metaphysical approach to life, love and war through a series of letters between two lovers, who appear to be living in different periods of history. Vovka is a soldier fighting in China in the early 20th century, while Sasha’s letters describe life in a Soviet city half a century later. Conflict, it suggests, is the great existential dislocator, which can only be challenged by love, faith and patience. ‘Time will be back in joint when we meet again.’ Geraldine D’Amico, festival director, Folkestone Literary Festival, and Spoken Word Curator, King’s Place Pig’s Foot by Carlos Acosta, translated by Frank Wynne (Bloomsbury).  This is a wonderful romp of a book, the story of three generations spanning a hundred years of Cuban history through poverty, revolutions and dreams. Acosta is a passionate and sensual raconteur and the book is packed with energy, colours and feelings. Julian Evans, writer and literary criticA Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kiš translated by Duska Mikic-Mitchell (Dalkey Archive) & Mark Thompson’s Birth Certificate (Cornell University Press). When Mark Thompson started writing Birth Certificate, his biography of Danilo Kiš, Kiš’s work was all but out of print in English. Dalkey Archive Press has since re-translated five of his books, among them the superb anti-totalitarian flush of stories, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich.  Kiš’s brilliant novelistic consciousness, his ability to draw the reader into a more imaginative relation with history, has yet to dawn fully upon us, so read Birth Certificate in tandem with Dalkey’s translations to appreciate why Milan Kundera called him Europe’s ‘great and invisible’ talent, and give Mark Thompson’s spirited and idiosyncratic book to any relative who professes to be a little blasé about conventional biographies. It will rouse them from their Christmas slumber. Kapka Kassabova, writer, translator, literary criticPushkin Hills by Sergei Dovlatov, translated by Katherine Dovlatov (Alma) introduces us – better late than never – to the author of The Zone, one of Russia’s most original modern writers. The translation by his daughter Katherine Dovlatov is a triumph in itself. This bitterly witty and startlingly vivid autobiographical novel set at the Pushkin Estate where the unpublished writer-narrator tries to get a grip on reality, is a modern classic that would delight all literary readers, and in addition those with a taste for satirical writing and those interested in off-beat stories of dissident Soviet life. Chasing the King of Hearts by Hanna Krall (Peirene Press) is a masterpiece novella by the Polish journalist and author, masterfully translated by Philip Boehm. It tells the real story of a young woman in Nazi Europe who won’t give up though everything tells her to. Packed with finely shocking humour and almost magical in its impact on the reader, I can’t imagine anyone alive who wouldn’t be buoyed and swept away by it. Koukla MacLehose, literary scoutAstragal by Albertine Sarrazin, translated by Patsy Southgate (New Directions & Serpent’s Tail 2014)When this autobiographical novel first appeared more than 40 years ago it was a sensation. The author had written it while in jail and it follows her life closely after her escape from a prison for young women. Albertine was born in Algeria and had been abandoned as a baby. She was adopted at the age of two by a middle class couple in their fifties. She was abused at the age of ten by an uncle and in spite of being a brilliant pupil she quickly rebelled. When she was 15, after a robbery which went badly wrong, she was disowned by her parents and sent to a special institution where she was to remain for six years. It is from there that, a few months before her 20th birthday, she jumped out of a window 10 metres above the ground in the middle of the night and broke her ankle (specifically a bone called the ‘astragal’). She managed to crawl to the road and lay in the middle of it until a van stopped. The young driver – Julien – got out to help her. He was to be the love of her life. Julien had himself been in prison several times and they became soul mates immediately. After various adventures in which Julien had to choose between two women, is sent back to prison and Albertine becomes a prostitute to survive, they finally find each other.What makes this book very special is the extraordinary voice. The use of language is amazingly assured, with striking images and juxtaposition of words which astonish because they are so real, so perfectly accurate, whether describingphysical pain, anger or joy. There is humour, an immense love for life, and real vitality. It also feels so incredibly authentic. Rosie Goldsmith, journalist, European Literature Network The Silence and the Roar by Nihad Sirees, translated by Max Weiss (Pushkin Press). This book introduced me to the great cultural city of Aleppo; to the literature of Syria; to a remarkable story and man; great characters and a grippingly-good story (beautifully translated by Max Weiss); to a writer of wit. His warmth, love of history and homeland – in spite of current exile – are inspirational. This slim volume gave me so much – and reminded me of what Syria has lost, is suffering and needs to protect – its culture. Michele Hutchinson, publisher, translatorThere are some wonderful Dutch language poets
    being translated into English at the moment. Try for example, Judith Wilkinson’s translations of Toon Tellegen’s work or Martinus Nijhoff’s classic Awater (Anvill Press). Last month, Archipelago Books published a new selection of Hugo Claus’ poems, Even Now, beautifully translated by David Colmer and printed on lovely, thick, creamy paper. I was totally blown away by it. An elegant gift for any poetry lover, young or old. Lucy Popescu, literary critic The following four books are the perfect present for those interested in human rights and fighting injustice.Horses of God (Granta) by Mahi Binebine translated by Lulu Norman. Based on the 2003 suicide bombings of Casablanca’s Grand Hotel, the book is narrated from beyond the grave. Binebene movingly portrays the path from disillusionment to violence and Horses of God is a timely reminder of how poverty crushes hope and breeds hatred. A fine translation. A small masterpiece, Chasing the King of Hearts by Hanna Krall (Peirene Press) is set in Nazi-occupied Poland and describes the experiences of a young woman who is determined to rescue her husband from a concentration camp. It’s beautifully structured and Krall’s stunning prose is crisply translated by Philip Boehm. In Quesadillas (And Other Stories), Juan Pablo Villalobos uses a child’s perspective to describe the corruption and economic volatility of 1980s Mexico. Quesadillas is gloriously absurd, celebrates the fantastical, and plays with notions of magic realism. It is his delight in language that marks out Villalobos as a writer of distinction. He is well served by Rosalind Harvey’s flawless translation. I am only half way through but absolutely loving The Assassin from Apricot City by Witold Szablowski (Stork Press). It’s terrific reportage from contemporary Turkey written by an award-wining Polish journalist. Szablowski covers honour killings, gender difference, immigration, Islamophobia and more. If, like me, you love the works of Ryszard Kapuściński this is the book for you. Hard-hitting prose in a limber translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Rebecca Servadio, literary scoutI would like to recommend Davide Longo’s The Last Man Standing, translated by Silvester Mazzarella (MacLehose Press). This book had me rooted to the spot unable to breathe until I finished it and then silent as I thought it over for a long time. It is a semi dystopian novel and a road movie – where The Road by Cormac McCarthy meets Le Cite des Enfants Perdu. Jane Southern, literary scoutIf I Close My Eyes Now by Edney Silvestre, translated from the Brazilian Portugese by Nick Caistor (Doubleday).  A Brazilian novel which combines a coming-of-age theme with murder. A mutilated woman’s body is found by two 12-yr-old boys, who find the authorities less than interested when they try to report it, so they end up investigating themselves, only to uncover sexual cruelty, misogyny and corruption at the heart of 1960s Brazil. Catherine Taylor, publisher, literary criticThe Infatuations, by Javier Marias, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa (Hamish Hamilton).  A young editor, Maria, becomes obsessed with the Perfect Couple she observes daily in a Madrid cafe, imagining every aspect of their lives. When the man is murdered, apparently by a random lunatic, Maria goes from outsider status into being drawn intimately into the complex scenario. This is typical Marias – ambiguous, shocking, wholly erudite, with sinister undertones and philosophical asides, impeccably translated as always by Margaret Jull Costa. The perfect gift for someone who prefers their crime psychological rather than visceral. Sylvie Zannier, literary scout The book in translation which impressed me the most this year is not a newcomer but a book published in 2009, Karl Ove Knausgaard’s first volume of his six-part autobiographical masterpiece. Starting with A Death in the Family, the Norwegian author’s existential journey is terribly addictive. I can’t wait to revisit his world and mind with the second book, A Man in Love, published in paperback by Vintage and ready to be consumed over the holiday. And a few books to look out for in the New Year (or to be read now in the original language): Koukla MacLehose, literary scoutThe Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair by Joël Dicker, translated by Sam Taylor (MacLehose Press). Not out yet, but almost, so this is your reading for the New Year. A 27 year old Swiss man from Geneva who dared to write an American novel! Be prepared, its 670 pages long! But frankly, you’ll devour them. It’s like sitting with the first volume of Stieg Larsson, you just want to understand who is behind all this and you just go on.The setting is New Hampshire America and it reads absolutely like a translation of an American novel. It is also certainly inspired by the cinema, films like Chinatown or The Big Sleep. The pace is fantastic and the last 100 pages completely overturn all the suspicions you had earlier. Simply brilliant.The novel wanders between the summer of 1975, when a 15 years old girl named Nola Kellergan disappears in the town of Aurora, and 2008 – the year of Obama’s election – when her body is finally found. The story is told by a young writer, Markus Goldmann, who decides to visit his former literature teacher and mentor- and famous writer himself, Harry Quebert – who lives on the outskirts of Aurora near the sea, to help him find again inspiration…Rebecca Servadio, literary scoutThe book I would most like to recommend – The Diary of the Fall by Michel Laub translated from the Brazilian Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa (Harvill Secker May 2014) – is I fear only out in the New Year. It is such a wise, beautiful book with an almost savage visceral power. It is a coming of age story about a family and why we are who are. My coup de coeur is a book called Chaplin’s Last Dance by Fabio Stassi, translated from Italian by Stephen Twilley and published by Portobello Books in April 2014.  It is a love letter to silent cinema and Chaplin himself.

  • A literature in search of its language

    Ciwanmerd Kulek charts the ongoing struggle for the Kurdish language, and whether being a language that is now more written than spoken threatens it in new and troubling ways‘I am ready to die for Germany,’ said Ciwan Haco, the world-famous Kurish musician, in a recent interview for a Turkish TV channel, ‘because it gave me my freedom, my language. Not for Turkey, not for Syria, not for Iraq or Iran – but for Germany… Do you see how bitter this is?’ It was hard not to notice the bitterness in the face of the singer who had fled his homeland, the Kurdish region of Syria, because he had not been free and couldn’t sing in his native language there. Many things have changed over the years in the four countries mentioned by Haco – between which almost all the population and territory of Kurdistan is split. In particular, technological changes have broadened perspectives, bringing new challenges and expectations.One of the hottest issues for the Kurdish population in Turkey– where most of Kurdistan is, and where most Kurds live (according to Turkish sources there are 13-14 million of Kurds there, while Kurdish researchers say 20 million) – is education in the mother tongue, an issue which dominates disputes between the Turkish government and Kurdish political movements. The challenge, or as some like to put it ‘the threat’, posed by the 21st century for Kurds is not the struggle to exist as such, but the struggle to exist within their own language, to preserve and promote it without it being destroyed by  repressive regimes. According to some, current discussion of linguistic rights in Turkey suggests that Kurdish is no longer a forbidden language and ‘Kurdishness’ no longer a suppressed identity as it was until recently. They argue that we have reached a good standard of democracy and solved a big part of the problem – whereas the Kurds regard even discussions about the legitimacy of mother tongue education as an outrage.The beginning of this academic year in Turkey has revealed new problems. 160,000 public school students have chosen additional Kurdish lessons in their 5th and 6th grades. But giving the right to choose an optional two-hour weekly course for only 5th and 6th grade students is not enough. Reports say that in some places parents are actively deterred from choosing Kurdish courses for their children. To make matters worse not a single Kurdish language teacher has been appointed in 2013 even though ‘900 students have graduated from the Kurdish Teaching programmes so far,’ according to Prof. Kadri Yıldırım, vice president of Mardin Artuklu University, the most prominent and active official institute carrying out studies in that area. And while Prof. Yıldırım fights to voice the expectations of families and graduates, he cannot conceal his frustration at the negligence of the administration and the ministry of education. Kurdish intellectuals are concerned that Kurdish has the status of an ancient relic or curio, confined to few academic institutions, away from the energy and resources of everyday life.A couple of decades ago, teaching in Kurdish, or even abolishing the language ban itself, would have helped the language greatly. At that time, most Kurdish people lived in the countryside with limited access to schooling. They rarely needed to speak Turkish, except for military service, or in some rare official cases. However, mass destruction of Kurdish villages and migration to cities, especially in the beginning of the 1990s, brought new patterns of behaviour introduced by modern life. The Kurdish people began to feel the urge to preserve their language and culture in the face of this modernisation. The issue of language began to be as significant as that of land. That is why the recent legal amendments, described as a ‘package of democratisation’ by the government, including changes like the freedom to use characters like W, X and Q that are common in the Kurdish Latin alphabet, were far from meeting people’s expectations and were seen as too little too late. It’s hard now to explain to new generations that it used to be forbidden to use those characters in official documents. And that is why, indeed, the 263 books published in Kurdish last year don’t give much consolation to those dissatisfied with the slowness of the process, even though the number is the highest in the history of the Turkish Republic, during most of which a single written Kurdish word could cause great suffering.Kurdish publications in the past were very few and almost all of them appeared abroad. After the launch of Kurdistan (1898) in Cairo, the first newspaper published in Kurdish, some short-lived journals were published from 1908 to 1919 in Istanbul, the capital of Ottoman Empire at the time. The literary magazine Hawar (1932), published in Damascus in Syria, was the first publication in the Kurdish Latin alphabet common among the Kurdish population in Syria, Turkey and the diaspora. The first Kurdish novel, Şivanê Kurmanca (1935), was published in Yerevan in Armenia, a republic of the Soviet Union at that time.The reintroduction of the Kurdish language was helped by the publication of other invaluable works by intellectuals exiled in Europe, together with a law in 1992 which ended the language ban. The millennium brought an atmosphere of semi-freedom and greater tolerance.However,the situation is still far from ideal. We might have more people reading or writing in Kurdish, but we have fewer people speaking in Kurdish. Over the years the language has gradually been given less space in the relentless assimilation policy pursued by the state. Loss of language is as shocking as land sliding away from under your feet. The fact is, people don’t only want to be at home, but they also want to ‘feel at home’ in their own language, especially after their suffering over the years; they want to escape the assimilation process which forces them out of their ‘homes’.Due to this political situation, there isn’t a single Kurdish author with even a year of schooling in his native language living in his homeland. If the government keeps erasing the Kurdish language from people’s minds, memories and daily routines, Kurdish poets and writers will resemble prehistoric figures who just add Kurdish names and phrases randomly in their works, like the characters in Marquez’s town of Macondo, who forgot the names of objects and had to name them again.We must let the Kurdish language travel along its natural path, not be hampered by politics. Maybe this is the only remedy for past suffering: to eradicate and heal trauma, we need to free language, so that it can flow through the dreams of its people and nourish its literature.About the authorCiwanmerd Kulek was born in 1984 in the Kurdish region of Turkey, in a village in the south-eastern part of the country, and has lived in Bismil, a small town by the river Tigris, in the Diyarbakır province, where he works as a teacher of languages. He graduated from the Foreign Language Teaching Department of the Middle East Technical University in Ankara in 2006. He is the author of three novels in Kurdish, published by the Diyarbakir-based press Weşanên Lîs, Nameyekji Xwedêre (A Letter To God, 2007), Otobês (The Bus, 2010), Zarokên Ber Çêm (Children By The River, 2012). He has translated literary works from English, Spanish and Turkish into Kurdish, by writers such as J. M. Coetzee (Disgrace) and William Faulkner (As I Lay Dying), while other translations by Gabriel García Márquez (Cronica de una muerte anunciada), Juan Rulfo (El Llano en llamas), James Joyce (Dubliners) and Orhan Pamuk (White Castle) are being prepared for publication.

  • PEN Atlas Q&A: Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, winner of the Jan Michalski Prize 2013

    Recently announced winner of the 2013 Jan Michalski Prize, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi answers questions from Tasja Dorkofikis for PEN Atlas, charting the works, influences and world-view of Iran’s most important living writer

    Translated from the Farsi by Sahar DelijaniThose in power in Iran consider your work to be subversive, though you yourself say that your books are not deliberately political. What do you think are the roles of a writer and of literature? Especially in a country where there are limits on free expression?I have never been a political activist, but I have pondered political issues as a citizen, and political thoughts have always been reflected in my work. Nevertheless, what has been and will be of fundamental importance to me is to create literature. A writer can have whatever role he likes. The important thing is to not let the lack of freedom of speech conquer your inner freedom, especially because man lives mostly in his mind and a man who is also a writer lives even more exclusively in his mind.Your early writing focuses on periods of social and cultural transformation in Iran. Kelidar and Missing Soluch chronicle a historical period when people migrated from the country to cities. Have you always been interested in this shift in society?Social and historical changes are the most important events in the life of a writer. The period and works that you refer to had to be written from the perspective of an ever-changing history. One of the aspects of my work as a writer was to pay attention to history, both to classic Persian literature and the modern literature of the last century. The same goes for what I have learned from world literature.Your writing breaks many taboos and approaches subjects previously left unsaid. Your presentation of the Iran–Iraq war is brutal and unsparing, and life for your characters in general is violent and full of anguish. Do you think that the current reality remains equally difficult? Are people less alienated from each other now?Breaking taboos has to do with maintaining that inner freedom that I spoke about earlier. The violence and anxiety is the particularity of the period in which I have lived. Living in a country and a society that was attacked by its neighbor, Iraq, both during, before and after the war was not easy at all, and I was affected by all the violence and hurt and pain. It is evident that there have been changes in Iranian society, which have made it different from the decade of revolution, war and atrocities. However, in my experience, reality has never been easy. The type of estrangement between people has changed too, which now manifests itself mostly in the gap between poverty and wealth.Both Missing Soluch and Kelidar feature very strong and complex female characters. How do you see female roles in Iran nowadays? And how did you choose the main female character in Missing Soluch?Women in Iranian society today are going through a constant struggle to break the tough husk of the past. The female protagonists of Missing Soluch and Kelidar come at the closing points of a three-four thousand year period, and they represent  a moment of change in the social history of our country. And this fact always reminds me of Thomas Mann who said that the writing of important works comes at the end of a certain historical period. Hence, for instance, Kelidar and Missing Soluch were created during a certain historical context when nomadic life had shifted to a sedentary one and the relationship between landowners and the peasantry had disintegrated, resulting in the cities being filled with those same peasantry leaving their villages behind. It has to be said that during the literary creation of my work, I was not bound by any of these rules. I have, since then, thought about them and now I am answering your questions. In any case, I have to say that women have always been clearly lauded in Persian legends and epics and during the ceremony for the Jan Michalski Prize I read a poem in praise of woman, earth, water and fertility that you heard.The Colonel is set towards the end of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) and depicts the impact of events from the Shah being deposed to the Islamic Revolution and the war on Iran’s citizens. The Colonel’s family is deeply divided along various political lines and the overall image of society is very bleak.  You said during the PEN World Voices Festival:  ‘[The] Iran I write about is in conflict with itself.’ What did you mean by this statement?If you read The Colonel once more you will understand even more deeply the painful explanation of this conflict. The Colonel is about a pressed and pressured Iran. The Iran of The Colonel (1983-1985) is very different from the Iran of today. Unfortunately there is no more colonel, or his children. But our society is full of beautiful young people today among whom I imagine there are more than a few of the descendants of the colonel.The main character, an aged soldier, is both progressive and traditional. He kills his wife for humiliating him, yet he is a sympathetic character. Why did you decide to present him in this way?The wife of the colonel—a general who refuses to take part in the repressive war and is first imprisoned and then removed from the military of the second Shah Pahlavi—is used against him. The military and aristocratic salons use his wife to humiliate this patriotic general and bring him to his knees; a man/colonel who undoubtedly has a traditional past in the most hidden angles of his mind.Your prose has a very distinctive style, it is both poetic and raw at the same time. Could you describe your stylistic influences?  Are they mainly Iranian, or from elsewhere?Without doubt, Persian poetry is part of my formation and mould. Can one recognise a writer who has been tied to the classic and modern literature of his country without Persian poetry? I cannot speak about my writing style but through the words of Leo Tolstoy: behind every literary work, its writer stands.When you first moved to Tehran from the countryside you did various jobs, and among other things, you worked as an actor. Have theatre and film influenced your writing?Theatre is how I came to know about the literature of serious classical drama. Before that I only read books and I loved reading, but in my theatre course I came to learn more about the differences between the two. Hence I have undoubtedly been influenced by theatre. The same goes for cinema, as long as there were serious films and serious artists who made those films. But since the period of those filmmakers is over, I have not gone to the cinema.The Colonel has never been published in Iran. It could have been published by the underground press and you decided against it. Can you tell us why you took this decision, and how likely is its publication now?I cannot say for sure if it will be published or not. But I do not agree with the underground publication of the book. I detest any secret and hidden work and I believe in the same clarity and transparency to which you referred to in my work. And this is my essence: should a work that has been written in the language of Roudaki, Sa’di, Rumi and Dehkhoda be published or not?You said during the PEN World Voices Festival: ‘As a writer I embarked on a path of creating epic narratives of my country, which necessarily contain a lot of history which has not been written. But in doing that I have been required to have a lot of patience, perseverance and very few expectations from life.’ You clearly had to accept a lot for your writing. If you look back, would you have done anything differently?It is of course not possible to go back to the past. But were it possible, I would be the same, with perhaps more effort to learn. 

    About the author

    Mahmoud Dowlatabadi was born in 1940 in Dowlatabad, northwest Iran and is a writer and actor, known primarily for his realist stories focussing on rural life. His writing draws from his own experiences, such as helping his father with farming, tending flocks, and reading Persian folklore in his youth. He attended high school in Tehran and later joined the Anahita Drama group. In 1975 he was arrested and spent a year in prison.

    Dowlatabadi began writing in the 60′s and has published many novels, novellas, short story collections and plays. His first story, The Pit of Night, was published in 1962 in the Anahita Literary Magazine. Other major works include his 1968 novel, The Tale of Baba Sobhan which was filmed as Khak (Earth / dust) in 1972 by Masud Kimiai. Between 1977 and 1984 he wroteKalidar, a novel about a persecuted family and a classic of Persian literature. His most recent novel The Colonel was shortlisted for the Haus der Kulturen Berlin International Literary Award in 2009. The 2013 Jan Michalski Prize was awarded on 13 November to Mahmoud Dowlatabadi for his novel The Colonel. 

    About the interviewertasja dorkofikis photo (2)Tasja Dorkofikis is the editor of the PEN Atlas as well as a freelance editor and publicist. She used to work as Publicity Director at Random House and most recently at Portobello Books as Associate Publisher and Commissioning Editor. Tasja shares her time between London and a small village in Vaud in Switzerland. About the translator

    Sahar Delijani (2)Sahar Delijani was born in Iran and grew up in California. She was born in Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran in 1983, the same year both her parents were arrested due to their political activism against the Islamic regime. In 1996, when she was 12 years old, her parents decided to move to Northern California to join her mother’s family. Delijani was registered in a middle school, starting from 7th grade.

    In 2002, Delijani gained a place at the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a BA degree in Comparative Literature. In 2006, after having met her husband at Berkeley, she moved to Turin, Italy, where she has lived ever since.

    Her debut novel, Children of the Jacaranda Tree, will be published in more than 70 countries and translated into 25 languages. It is published in the UK by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

    Additional information

    The Colonel is published by Haus, and translated by Tom Patterdale.

  • PEN Atlas Q&A: Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, winner of the Jan Michalski Prize 2013

    Recently announced winner of the 2013 Jan Michalski Prize, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi answers questions from Tasja Dorkofikis for PEN Atlas, charting the works, influences and world-view of Iran’s most important living writer

    Translated from the Farsi by Sahar DelijaniThose in power in Iran consider your work to be subversive, though you yourself say that your books are not deliberately political. What do you think are the roles of a writer and of literature? Especially in a country where there are limits on free expression?I have never been a political activist, but I have pondered political issues as a citizen, and political thoughts have always been reflected in my work. Nevertheless, what has been and will be of fundamental importance to me is to create literature. A writer can have whatever role he likes. The important thing is to not let the lack of freedom of speech conquer your inner freedom, especially because man lives mostly in his mind and a man who is also a writer lives even more exclusively in his mind.Your early writing focuses on periods of social and cultural transformation in Iran. Kelidar and Missing Soluch chronicle a historical period when people migrated from the country to cities. Have you always been interested in this shift in society?Social and historical changes are the most important events in the life of a writer. The period and works that you refer to had to be written from the perspective of an ever-changing history. One of the aspects of my work as a writer was to pay attention to history, both to classic Persian literature and the modern literature of the last century. The same goes for what I have learned from world literature.Your writing breaks many taboos and approaches subjects previously left unsaid. Your presentation of the Iran–Iraq war is brutal and unsparing, and life for your characters in general is violent and full of anguish. Do you think that the current reality remains equally difficult? Are people less alienated from each other now?Breaking taboos has to do with maintaining that inner freedom that I spoke about earlier. The violence and anxiety is the particularity of the period in which I have lived. Living in a country and a society that was attacked by its neighbor, Iraq, both during, before and after the war was not easy at all, and I was affected by all the violence and hurt and pain. It is evident that there have been changes in Iranian society, which have made it different from the decade of revolution, war and atrocities. However, in my experience, reality has never been easy. The type of estrangement between people has changed too, which now manifests itself mostly in the gap between poverty and wealth.Both Missing Soluch and Kelidar feature very strong and complex female characters. How do you see female roles in Iran nowadays? And how did you choose the main female character in Missing Soluch?Women in Iranian society today are going through a constant struggle to break the tough husk of the past. The female protagonists of Missing Soluch and Kelidar come at the closing points of a three-four thousand year period, and they represent  a moment of change in the social history of our country. And this fact always reminds me of Thomas Mann who said that the writing of important works comes at the end of a certain historical period. Hence, for instance, Kelidar and Missing Soluch were created during a certain historical context when nomadic life had shifted to a sedentary one and the relationship between landowners and the peasantry had disintegrated, resulting in the cities being filled with those same peasantry leaving their villages behind. It has to be said that during the literary creation of my work, I was not bound by any of these rules. I have, since then, thought about them and now I am answering your questions. In any case, I have to say that women have always been clearly lauded in Persian legends and epics and during the ceremony for the Jan Michalski Prize I read a poem in praise of woman, earth, water and fertility that you heard.The Colonel is set towards the end of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) and depicts the impact of events from the Shah being deposed to the Islamic Revolution and the war on Iran’s citizens. The Colonel’s family is deeply divided along various political lines and the overall image of society is very bleak.  You said during the PEN World Voices Festival:  ‘[The] Iran I write about is in conflict with itself.’ What did you mean by this statement?If you read The Colonel once more you will understand even more deeply the painful explanation of this conflict. The Colonel is about a pressed and pressured Iran. The Iran of The Colonel (1983-1985) is very different from the Iran of today. Unfortunately there is no more colonel, or his children. But our society is full of beautiful young people today among whom I imagine there are more than a few of the descendants of the colonel.The main character, an aged soldier, is both progressive and traditional. He kills his wife for humiliating him, yet he is a sympathetic character. Why did you decide to present him in this way?The wife of the colonel—a general who refuses to take part in the repressive war and is first imprisoned and then removed from the military of the second Shah Pahlavi—is used against him. The military and aristocratic salons use his wife to humiliate this patriotic general and bring him to his knees; a man/colonel who undoubtedly has a traditional past in the most hidden angles of his mind.Your prose has a very distinctive style, it is both poetic and raw at the same time. Could you describe your stylistic influences?  Are they mainly Iranian, or from elsewhere?Without doubt, Persian poetry is part of my formation and mould. Can one recognise a writer who has been tied to the classic and modern literature of his country without Persian poetry? I cannot speak about my writing style but through the words of Leo Tolstoy: behind every literary work, its writer stands.When you first moved to Tehran from the countryside you did various jobs, and among other things, you worked as an actor. Have theatre and film influenced your writing?Theatre is how I came to know about the literature of serious classical drama. Before that I only read books and I loved reading, but in my theatre course I came to learn more about the differences between the two. Hence I have undoubtedly been influenced by theatre. The same goes for cinema, as long as there were serious films and serious artists who made those films. But since the period of those filmmakers is over, I have not gone to the cinema.The Colonel has never been published in Iran. It could have been published by the underground press and you decided against it. Can you tell us why you took this decision, and how likely is its publication now?I cannot say for sure if it will be published or not. But I do not agree with the underground publication of the book. I detest any secret and hidden work and I believe in the same clarity and transparency to which you referred to in my work. And this is my essence: should a work that has been written in the language of Roudaki, Sa’di, Rumi and Dehkhoda be published or not?You said during the PEN World Voices Festival: ‘As a writer I embarked on a path of creating epic narratives of my country, which necessarily contain a lot of history which has not been written. But in doing that I have been required to have a lot of patience, perseverance and very few expectations from life.’ You clearly had to accept a lot for your writing. If you look back, would you have done anything differently?It is of course not possible to go back to the past. But were it possible, I would be the same, with perhaps more effort to learn. 

    About the author

    Mahmoud Dowlatabadi was born in 1940 in Dowlatabad, northwest Iran and is a writer and actor, known primarily for his realist stories focussing on rural life. His writing draws from his own experiences, such as helping his father with farming, tending flocks, and reading Persian folklore in his youth. He attended high school in Tehran and later joined the Anahita Drama group. In 1975 he was arrested and spent a year in prison.

    Dowlatabadi began writing in the 60′s and has published many novels, novellas, short story collections and plays. His first story, The Pit of Night, was published in 1962 in the Anahita Literary Magazine. Other major works include his 1968 novel, The Tale of Baba Sobhan which was filmed as Khak (Earth / dust) in 1972 by Masud Kimiai. Between 1977 and 1984 he wroteKalidar, a novel about a persecuted family and a classic of Persian literature. His most recent novel The Colonel was shortlisted for the Haus der Kulturen Berlin International Literary Award in 2009. The 2013 Jan Michalski Prize was awarded on 13 November to Mahmoud Dowlatabadi for his novel The Colonel. 

    About the interviewertasja dorkofikis photo (2)Tasja Dorkofikis is the editor of the PEN Atlas as well as a freelance editor and publicist. She used to work as Publicity Director at Random House and most recently at Portobello Books as Associate Publisher and Commissioning Editor. Tasja shares her time between London and a small village in Vaud in Switzerland. About the translator

    Sahar Delijani (2)Sahar Delijani was born in Iran and grew up in California. She was born in Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran in 1983, the same year both her parents were arrested due to their political activism against the Islamic regime. In 1996, when she was 12 years old, her parents decided to move to Northern California to join her mother’s family. Delijani was registered in a middle school, starting from 7th grade.

    In 2002, Delijani gained a place at the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a BA degree in Comparative Literature. In 2006, after having met her husband at Berkeley, she moved to Turin, Italy, where she has lived ever since.

    Her debut novel, Children of the Jacaranda Tree, will be published in more than 70 countries and translated into 25 languages. It is published in the UK by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

    Additional information

    The Colonel is published by Haus, and translated by Tom Patterdale.