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Tag: Peirene press

  • What is the real cost of the Sochi Winter Olympics?

    Hamid Ismailov investigates the underside of the Sochi Olympics for PEN Atlas: while the Western media focuses on LGBT rights, there is also the shocking unheard story of migrant labourers held in captivity, mercury and uranium deposits from construction work, jingoism, corruption and worse

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the Olympics, be it in the summer or winter, and this includes Sochi. From a very early age, in our Soviet childhoods, we were encouraged to wake up in the middle of the night to watch our ice hockey team playing in Sapporo or Calgary, cheering when they would beat the Canadian team and weeping as they lost to the Czechs. There was an iconic Soviet song at the time: ‘We seek victory, nothing else, but victory for us all, and we don’t give a damn about the cost’. Nowadays, with hindsight, I’m a bit disturbed by these words.In my novel, The Dead Lake, published by Peirene Press this February, I looked at the Soviet nuclear site in Semipalatinsk, which was one of the key sites in the nuclear race between the USSR and the US to produce the deadliest bombs – another example of when we didn’t give a damn about the cost. What I tried to describe in this book is what happens when countries and their elites try to jump higher than the rest of the world – speaking figuratively, it results in their trousers tearing. And those who are left to pay the price or who are left naked in the metaphor are not the elites themselves, but the little people.I find the same disturbing signs with the Sochi Olympics. Here again, the Russian authorities, under President Putin, took up the same motto: ‘We seek victory, nothing else, but victory for us all, and we don’t give a damn about the cost’ – in order to establish the image of Russia as a re-emerging global super-power.First of all, the literal cost of this Olympics is, at a modest estimate, over £30billion – this is as much as all previous winter games combined. When I ask my Russian friends why it’s so excessive, as though the organisers are going to present every single participant and spectator with a personal hand-made snow-flake, they reply with this popular Russian joke:’There was once a tender put out to build an object, and three organisations bid for it. First, an organisation of migrant workers put forward their application: “We’ll build the object very quickly for three million, but no warranties.” Then the state organisation offered their bid: “We’ll build it for six million, but slowly and with guarantees.” Then a bunch of crooks and gangsters bid for the same tender: “It’ll cost nine million: three million to you, three million to us, and then we’ll hire the migrants to build it for three million.”‘Russian authorities vehemently deny allegations of corruption, but both Russian and Western journalists have reported many cases reminiscent of this joke… My BBC colleagues Lucy Ash and Anastasia Uspenskaya are running a series of investigative programmes looking into this problem, as well as other problems regarding the so-called ‘cost’ of the Sochi Olympics. Their conclusion is: the Olympics have brought to Sochi, and to Russia as a whole, an array of new first-class sports complexes, hotels, jobs, entertainment, as well as amnesty to Khodorkovsky and Pussy Riot, yet in the shadows of that shiny, glossy and encouraging facade there are many untold, darker stories.The Western media have focused a great deal on LGBT rights, but after President Putin’s confession to Andrew Marr that he ‘has gay friends’ it seems that the issue was dropped from the headlines… Less is known in the West about the issue of widespread abuse of migrant workers’ human rights, workers who’d been building the Olympic complex in great numbers. There are reported cases of migrants being severely beaten-up by Cossack vigilante groups, encircled like cattle and kept in metal hangars for several days without food and water, in the middle of the cold winter. Many of them were later deported by force and without any payment for their work.The unpredictable environmental costs of this showcase of Russian might are another worry for local and international activists. On the one hand, activists are worried about the proximity of the gigantic Olympic facilities to the Caucasian and Sochi National Park, with its rare plant and animal species, some of them under threat of extinction. On the other hand, facilities built on the hills by the seashore are under threat of landslides, according to activists, and the excessive use of concrete foundations and stilts may affect the structure of the ground and of the underground aquifers of mineral waters. There were also many concerns about the newly-built cargo port and fears that mercury and uranium deposits might become hazardous because of inappropriate construction work on the slopes. Moreover, while building these facilities on the shore, hundreds if not thousands of ordinary people’s houses were demolished without their consent and in some cases without any compensation…Once again, the same philosophy: ‘We seek after gain so much that we don’t give a damn about the cost’. These poor people are still campaigning for a boycott of the Games. Their voices though remain unheard.About the authorHamid Ismailov is an Uzbek journalist and writer who was forced to flee Uzbekistan in 1992 and came to the United Kingdom, where he took a job with the BBC World Service. His works are banned in Uzbekistan. He published dozens of books in Uzbek, Russian, French, German, Turkish and other languages. Hamid Ismailov translated Russian and Western classics into Uzbek, and Uzbek and Persian classics into Russian and some Western languages.Additional informationThe Dead Lake will be launched with three events. The author, Hamid Ismailov, and his publisher, Meike Ziervogel, would be delighted if you could join them. Booking is essential.Tuesday 25th February: Peirene Experience, with music & dramatic performance at Big Green Bookshop.Thursday 26th February: Peirene Supper Club at Book & Kitchen. Join the author for an evening of delicious food, good conversation and great literature.Saturday 1st March: Peirene Salon: An evening of literature, dinner and drink at the publisher’s house.

  • 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) 

  • Three Years Old: the reality of publishing translated fiction

    What does the future hold for the publishing of literature in translation? Stefan Tobler from And Other Stories takes us through the independents, small presses, social enterprises and community interest companies using innovative ways to publish work from around the worldOn the 5th October 2010 our first subscriber signed up to help make our first books happen (the four books by Juan Pablo Villalobos, Clemens Meyer, Deborah Levy and Iosi Havilio that were published in late 2011). As the first UK publisher to appeal for subscribers in decades, perhaps centuries, we see that date as our real launch moment and birthday. In other words, And Other Stories is turning three this week!It has been said that the reason to start a publishing house is normally an editorial impulse. There’s the sense that something is missing in the world of books and a company is born. That is true in And Other Stories’ case, and is no doubt true of all the other publishers who publish literature in translation as part of their list.But after the initial impulse – what is the reality for publishers of translated fiction? There is a general feeling in the UK and US that more people are publishing literature in translation and that there is a growing acceptance of it. Is everything sorted now, then? Well, not quite. Our third birthday seems a good moment to talk about the publishing of literature in translation, focusing particularly on our case as it is what I’m qualified to talk about.A number of publishers have been doing great translated books for decades, but it is also a good sign that new presses are springing up, including Peirene Press, Stork Press, Clerkenwell Press, MacLehose Press and ourselves, all in the last six years.Each press that publishes in translation is different, publishing different proportions of translated literature and different kinds of books. Some publish translations occasionally, such as Old Street Publishing’s recent Operation Massacre by Rodolfo Walsh; Harvill Secker does roughly 50% of its list in translation; our list is currently roughly 70% translated, while Peirene Press and Stork Press publish only translated works. Some focus more on crime and popular fiction and some more on literary authors whose writing might take many readers out of their comfort zones. Some find room for both.My sense at the start was that there was no lack of publishing houses bringing out crime in translation (and publishers who could tell their Stieg Larsson copycats from the genuinely interesting French, German, Cuban and Japanese crime writers). What I felt we lacked in the English-speaking world were enough publishers of extraordinary, surprising writing.I knew that to publish the kind of fresh, often foreign, mind-blowing fiction that I and many other people often thought was missing in the English-speaking world, the only sensible option, financially, might be not to have a normal commercial set-up. If the publishing house was not going to tailor its offering to Richard & Judy’s taste, we should plan to do without extra overheads (such as an office) and appeal to like-minded readers for their support.And Other Stories registered as a Community Interest Company or CIC in 2010. It was limited by guarantee, but with not-for-private-profit characteristics.  A social enterprise, in other words. This makes clear at a fundamental level that our aims are different to investor- or shareholder-driven publishing companies where all decisions are ultimately about increasing profits and keeping the investors happy. Of course, in order to be able to continue our work in the long-term, we can’t lose money. The ‘community interest’ mission in our case means publishing works of literary value, re-investing profits in the company in order to pay translators well, and developing and mentoring new talent in the publishing industry, including debut writers and emerging editors and translators. (For at least half of our foreign-language authors we have commissioned great translators’ first book-length translations, giving them a foot in the door.)The not-for-private-profit nature of the company has meant it has been (somewhat!) easier to apply for and receive funding support. In our current credit-crunched decade of austerity in the UK, the Arts Council’s funds have been cut repeatedly by the government. Established organisations find they are no longer regularly funded and must apply to the same National Lottery-funded Grants for the Arts pot that we are applying to. The competition is intense. We received two Grants for the Arts in 2010-2011 and 2012. This year we were recommended for funding by the Arts Council’s application assessor who applauded our work, but in the end the funding did not stretch to cover our project. Of course, we have sent another application in to the Arts Council already. And we are looking to follow the American arts model and appeal for philanthropy and private donors, as well as continuing to apply to other institutes to fund at least some of the translation costs. Thanks to English PEN’s Writers in Translation programme, the translation of Villalobos’ second book Quesadillas was funded and we were able to bring the author to England for a brilliant week of events in Norwich, Bath and London that culminated in a performance to an audience of over 200 people at Rich Mix, East London, that almost had a cow on stage. (Almost!)Not only is funding uncertain these days; sales are too. In 2012, during the crisis that almost led to Waterstones’ demise, orders dried up for publishers. Something similar could happen again. Moreover, fiction at the literary, surprising end of the spectrum does not tend to sell well unless the author has been shortlisted for major prizes or is a public figure. Maybe because it takes a few years for people to work out what the surprising author is doing. We were over the moon that our English author Deborah Levy was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Swimming Home. However, translated works are not eligible for the Man Booker, which does not help sales prospects for most of our brilliant literary authors. (When Down the Rabbit Hole became the first translation to be on the Guardian First Book Award shortlist it helped immensely. It has sold 8,000 copies so far.)With funding and sales uncertain, an area of support that has been invaluable to us from the start is subscriptions. We now have around 700 people subscribing in advance to each of our books. I had seen some American publishers like Open Letter Books and Ugly Duckling Presse offer subscriptions of their books and remembered subscribers’ names at the back of some very, very old library books and it seemed like something we could do and link to a community of readers, writers and translators. To show our genuine gratitude for their up-front support, we thank subscribers by name in the back of the books; send them their books in advance of the retail publication date; invite them to special social and literary events for subscribers; give them free tickets to public events (such as Villalobos’ Rich Mix event) and extra goodies now and then (for example, postcards designed by our authors). It is a club of like-minded people whose broad support allows us to take creative risks and not be reliant on investors’ agendas.Necessity breeds invention and we feel we are part of a wave of innovative publishers of literary translations, including Peirene Press and Berlin-based Frisch & Co who choose to publish fiction that is neither easily definable nor an easy sell: Peirene’s first book in 2010 was Véronique Olmi’s
    Beside the Sea – about a struggling mother killing her two children. It was not an immediate bestseller, but it is becoming a real favourite with discerning readers. Frisch & Co’s first books are just out this year and contain real gems: including Carlos Busqued’s debut novel Under This Terrible Sun which I am keen to read, having already heard great things about it from our Argentine author Iosi Havilio and some knowledgeable Buenos Aires booksellers. Peirene Press pioneered direct-to-reader approaches such as pop-up shops and literary salons; we started translators’ reading groups to find great books and set up a subscription model in addition to retail sales; Frisch & Co have looked to make books economically possible by partnering with translators and foreign publishers and only publishing them as ebooks.It is no exaggeration to say that for us, with our kind of new literary fiction, mainly in translation, our subscribers keep us going. They trust us to find new writers for them. The next deadline for new subscribers is our third birthday: 5th October 2013, for anyone who wants to help us publish the Albanian writer Elvira Dones’ novel Sworn Virgin. And that is something we will be celebrating. Stefan-blogger_300x226About the authorStefan Tobler is the publisher at And Other Stories, a young publishing house whose acclaimed books include Swimming Home and Black Vodka by Deborah Levy and Down the Rabbit Hole and Quesadillas by Juan Pablo Villalobos. Stefan Tobler is also a literary translator from Portuguese and German.

  • The Art of the Novella

    In this week’s second PEN Atlas dispatch, Meike Ziervogel from Peirene Press makes the case for the novella, charting the history of the form, and reflecting on her experience publishing great novellas in translation from around Europe

    “To reduce the novella to nothing more than a short novel is like saying a pony is a baby horse.” (George Fetherling, Canadian poet and novelist)

    When I set up Peirene, I knew I wanted to concentrate on publishing contemporary European novellas which had never been translated into English. I love the novella form and believe that many modern novels tend to be over-written. Too much description, too much repetitive dialogue, too much information copied straight from Wikipedia.  I, as the reader, feel spoon-fed, sometimes even force-fed. I wonder if I am being deprived of the opportunity to use my imagination.

    Let’s take the modern Catalan classic, Stone in a Landslide by Maria Barbal, (translated into English by Laura McGloughlin and Paul Mitchell). It’s a miracle of compression. In a mere 120 pages we get the complete life story of an old woman, covering the entire 20th
    century. I still remember when I finished reading it. I was amazed how this book covers everything there is to cover in a person’s life: love, hate, war, peace, loss, joy, passion, desire, loneliness. How did the author achieve this? Through the narrative voice – simple, almost naïve at times and yet beautifully wise. I often return to this story in my mind, although I read it five years ago.

    A novella is a short work of fiction. It is a film for the mind – short enough to read in one sitting, but large enough to provide a satisfying read. A full-length novel often aims to deliver a complete world-view. If you present a baddy then you need a police inspector to tell you that this person is a baddy and why. The world inside the story must be kept in balance – and sometimes this has the effect of simply confirming the reader’s worldview.

    A novella, on the other hand, prefers to focus on one view or one voice, highlights one feeling, portrays one psychological human trait. It zooms in on one aspect of a story. By doing so, it prompts us, the readers, to fill in the larger picture. It provokes us to think and use our imagination.

    For example in Beside the Sea by Veronique Olmi (translated from French by Adriana Hunter), we see the world entirely through the eyes of a mother who cannot cope. For her the world has become a dark, dangerous place. We believe her and follow her. Nowhere in the story does another character tell us what to make of this woman. We are left to judge for ourselves. The author shows us the protagonist without telling us what to think.

    The novella as an art form came before the modern novel. One Thousand and One Nights, written in the 10th century, is one of the earliest examples of serialised novellas. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1386-1400) followed suit.

    During the Renaissance the novella developed into a literary genre in France and Italy. The Decameron (1353) by Giovanni Boccaccio and Heptaméron (1559) by the French Queen, Marguerite de Navarre, stand as two outstanding examples. Then in the late 18th and early 19th century the novella became fashionable in Germany. The Black Spider (1842) by Jeremais Gotthelf and Immenseen (1849) by Theodor Storm still make haunting reads today.

    There are many examples of great novellas across the years. Many famous films have drawn from novellas, such as A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.

    For me, reading is a creative act. Literature presents a wonderful tool to analyse and understand ourselves better. A text should serve as a springboard  to engage our mind, our intellect, our imagination.

    The novella is the perfect form to sharpen and make use of our creative reading skills. At best plot, voice and structure form a complete whole and each of those three aspects supports the other with an intensity made possible by the novella’s obligation to focus.

    This month Peirene will publish Mr Darwin’s Gardener by Kristian Carlson, translated from the Finnish by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah. Like Dylan Thomas in Under Milk Wood, Carlson evokes the voices of an entire village. They are held together by an impressively tight narrative structure.

    But also in Anglo-Saxon writing the novella is making a come back. Last year two beautifully short books were short listed for the Booker: The Lighthouse by Alison Moore and Swimming Home by Deborah Levy.

    About the Author

    Meike Ziervogel is a writer and publisher. She grew up in northern Germany and came to London in 1986 to study Arabic language and literature. She has worked as a journalist for Reuters in London and Agence France Presse in Paris. In 2008 she founded Peirene Press, an award-winning independent publishing house that specialises in the foreign literature in English translation. In 2012 Meike was voted as one of Britain’s 100 most innovative and influential people in the creative and media industries, the Time Out and Hospital Club 100 list. Meike’s first novel ‘Magda’ was published by Salt in April 2013.

    Additional Information

    To find out more about Peirene Press, please see here.

    Meike has also been interviewed here about her first novel, Magda, that tells the story of the wife of Joseph Goebbels.

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  • The Mussel Feast

    Birgit Vanderbeke introduces PEN Atlas readers to her book The Mussel Feast – a subtly political work that is steeped in metaphor – and her experience of penning her first novel at such a poignant moment in German history

    Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch

    In the beginning there was a discussion between the future author of The Mussel Feast and her friend Christiane. It was one of those discussions which used to take place around the kitchen table with a bottle of Italian red wine.

    The question being debated was whether the ‘mussel’ was a suitable feminist symbol for genital womanhood, as Christiane thought, or just a poor, vulgar image, as the future author said.

    Their discussion ended with the words, ‘Just you watch, I’ll show you how a mussel metaphor works.’

    All harmless stuff so far.

    That was in summer 1989.

    In August, the East started to collapse. The people did a runner, gathering in the embassies in Prague and Budapest. Demonstrations were held on Mondays, these demonstrations got larger and larger, and during that month I wrote The Mussel Feast with the television on all the time.

    The book that resulted belongs to the genre of German ‘Wendeliteratur’, and it has an outsider status within the genre because it is the only book on the subject of ‘reunification’ which was written before the fall of the Wall.

    At the time it was not difficult to speculate on what the future of the GDR might be, as there were only few options. Either the Central Committee would decide to act against the demonstrators as the Chinese had shortly before on Tiananmen Square, and the whole thing would turn bloody – which, given the global political climate was hard to imagine, although it could not be ruled out altogether – or the outcome would be what the poet Volker Braun described succinctly and conclusively a year later (i.e. after it had all happened) in his poem ‘Property’: ‘My country is going to the West’.  

    I must have sensed that this is what would happen. Of course I didn’t know what it would feel like when this country went to the West, but I could remember very precisely what it had felt like when I had come to the West (I didn’t go, I was brought along, aged five at the time). So, without having an exact idea of what form the impending political developments would take, I was about as sceptical of them as Volker Braun would be sad a year later.

    In March 1990, with the final election of the East German parliament, which was also the first democratic one, the history of the two Germanies took its course. Also in March – parallel to the momentous events – the history of The Mussel Feast took its course. The book found a small, but classy publishing collective in Berlin, which immediately sent it, without the author’s knowledge and only just in time, to a member of the jury for the Ingeborg Bachmann competition.

    I was invited to the competition in Klagenfurt, but didn’t want to go, because although I had the courage to write, I lacked it to appear in front of a television audience. In five minutes I learned what PR is and also that small, but classy publishing houses need it, too.

    I won the prize by accident because the favourite was disqualified, upsetting the balance of the jury. In such cases they like to get behind outsiders. I was a no name. A joker.

    On 31 July 1990, the day of the currency reform, the unknown Birgit Vanderbeke became, at a stroke, a well-known author in the German-speaking world.

    The Mussel Feast appeared at the end of August and was immediately pulled to pieces by everyone – furiously, sometimes angrily, sometimes polemically and spitefully, too. Even in Germany, where reviews can often be vicious, such an onslaught is rare for a debut novel. On the verge of reunification, German euphoria was at its zenith. Although my book was read and butchered as a family story, there was something else in there, something which wasn’t just private, but political. And in no way euphoric.

    I was not the only one to be attacked; that same summer the German literary critics did all in their power – and with some success – to destroy the ‘grand old lady’ of East German literature, Christa Wolf. In her novella, What Remains, Christa Wolf had tried to look back and reassess the past carefully and seriously, instead of joining in with the German–German rejoicing and wooing her readers with the idea of ‘blooming landscapes’, which Chancellor Helmut Kohl had promised his brothers and sisters in the East.

    On 3 October 1990, reunification day, the Frankfurt Book Fair was taking place. The first print run of The Mussel Feast had been fairly modest and sold out quickly. In that year this sort of thing was a catastrophe for literary publishers, for all the printers in the country had huge contracts. The new German Länder needed new school text books, and these had to be printed in a hurry. I missed the Christmas market, and in the first of many annual royalty statements I saw the figure, inked in by hand, of 8,028 copies sold.

    But the booksellers loved this book; I was invited to hundreds of readings. The readers loved it. After some years in which the German landscape didn’t bloom at all (my financial situation did, however, and splendidly) and the initial enthusiasm had given away to a severe hangover, the critics forgot that they had torn the book to shreds. In the meantime it had become a great success in Spain and Italy, and I had left Germany. The Mussel Feast helped me buy a little house in France, and one day my little book, the outsider, which had been born in a historical no man’s land, became a classic and appeared on school reading lists.

    By the way, no one knows exactly how this mussel metaphor works, because I haven’t told anyone. 

    And isn’t it normal for pupils to hate the authors whose books they have to read?

    About the Author

    Birgit Vanderbeke, born in 1956, is one of Germany’s most successful literary authors. She has written 17 novels. The Mussel Feast – Das Muschelessen-  was her first publication and won the most prestigious German language literature award, The Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. The book was published in 1990 and has never been out of print since. It has been translated into all major European languages, including French, Spanish and Italian.

    About the Translator

    Jamie Bulloch has already translated Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman by FC Delius (Peirene No 3) and Sea of Ink by Richard Weihe (Peirene No 9) for Peirene. He has worked as a professional translator from German since 2001. He is also the author of A Short History of Tuscany and Karl Renner: Austria.

    Additional Information

    Birgit Vanderbeke is one of a stellar line-up of writers who have been selected to read at this year’s European Literature Night in London on 15th May. European Literature Night London takes place on 15 May 2013 at the British Library, for more information  please visit the British Library website and the Eunic website.

    Jachym Topol will also be part of the ELN delegation, you can read his PEN Atlas piece online.

    The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke, translated by Jamie Bulloch is published by Peirene Press.