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The duty to write

Journalist-turned-freedom-fighter Mikail Eldin writes for PEN Atlas on his experience of the Chechen wars, and how writing a memoir is a way to honour fallen friends, who risked their lives to ensure he might live to tell their story

Translated from the Russian by Anna Gunin

When I began working on my book The Sky Wept Fire, my friends would often ask if it was wise to write about all this so candidly. I agreed with them, it wasn’t wise, but added that it was something I had to do. It wasn’t wise in terms of my own safety, but I had to do it. It was a duty of honour. While I was undergoing that never-ending hell of war, I filmed and photographed everything I could, yet remained aware that all the footage and photos could go missing. And that is just what happened. I was left with nothing but my memories. And it wasn’t a hankering after fame that motivated me to write a memoir. Writing about myself simply seemed more honest, more truthful, because you didn’t need to rely on other people’s sources. And what’s more, writing in this form allowed me to loosen ever so little the red-hot chains of the memories of that hell. To survive a war doesn’t mean you know how to live an ordinary civilian life. You become painfully, profoundly aware of an abyss between you and the world. People don’t understand you, and you have difficulty understanding them. And this abyss cannot be bridged, neither by you nor by them. That’s why it was so important to tell people that we are the same as them. Or we were, at any rate, before our souls were chewed up by the war… We shared the same joys and dreams, the same hopes for love and domestic warmth. We were defending not just our principles, our right to our dreams, but also the right of all people everywhere to have them, and we paid with our dreams, with our messed up fates. This isn’t an attempt to reproach peaceful civilians in their peaceful lives. It’s an attempt to offer a hand to the world across the abyss of alienation. We didn’t choose the war. But the war chose us, chose our generation. And so our generation had to dive into its fiery crater at the turn of the century.Steering clear of the politics, I tried to focus on the war itself. Or rather on the transformation undergone by a peaceful and apolitical person. Looking deep within yourself helps you see that metamorphosis better, understand it more clearly. In war, a person is forever poised between the human and the diabolical, between cruelty and mercy. And your choice, your ability not to lose your humanity is what determines your duty for the rest of your life. Your knowledge of your own self. When you write about war, it is so very hard to be objective. At moments like that it’s important to remember you’re no longer a warrior, you’re a journalist now; an impartial chronicler and witness. And then you have to remember that even in the hell of the concentration camp, you came across humans, true human beings. But it’s simply impossible to be impartial in the proper sense of the word.Here in exile you cannot get used to living simply for life’s sake, to a life without the usual circle of friends, without your beloved albeit dangerous work. It’s hard to adjust to being merely one among thousands of immigrants. Without any name, experience or education, without a motherland; with a dark and suspicious past and a shaky, nebulous future. It doesn’t matter if in reality you are experienced and educated … The initial intoxication of freedom passes. Then you sober up. And you find yourself drowning in a swamp of depression. Yearning for everything that you can never get back. For your motherland, who rejected you merely because you had principles that you were willing to defend. And then you involuntarily return to that life where you meant something to yourself and to the world. Where you did something needed by the people and the motherland. Something we believed in.So what is this duty of honour? It is the chief, perhaps the only reason why I took up writing – the duty I owed to my fallen brothers-in-arms. We were idealists; our only aim was freedom. We learnt to believe in God during this war. To believe genuinely. For belief helped keep insanity at bay. This writing was what my comrades had wanted me to do more than anything. And it was why they tried their hardest to help me survive. Often risking their own lives. This was their dying wish. It was important for me to get through to people: None of us sought war for war’s sake or for the sake of glory. War cripples the souls and breaks the fates of everyone, including those doing the fighting. This should never happen again, not in any land. We will only be able to call ourselves rational beings when we learn to understand one another. And so my writing is an attempt to talk candidly about that hell, to help people understand us. It is not just my own story, but that of all those who will never be able to tell theirs.About the author Mikail Eldin worked as a journalist, before taking up arms himself in the conflict with Russia. He eventually left Chechnya in fear for his life and secured political asylum in Norway, where he now lives. His most recent book is The Sky Wept Fire. About the translatorAnna Gunin is a Russian literary translator. Along with poetry, film and theatre translation, she has translated authors such as German Sadulaev, Denis Gutsko and Pavel Bazhov. Her most recent translation is The Sky Wept Fire by the Chechen poet and journalist Mikail Eldin. Additional informationMikail will be appearing at the ‘Writing in Conflict’ event at Woolfson & Tay, on 26 November, from 7pm. For more information and how to book, please see here.

November 21, 2013
Publishers' highlights for 2013

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

And Other Stories – Stefan Tobler, Publisher

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

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

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

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

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

Arcadia – Gary Pulsifer, Publisher

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

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

Bloomsbury – Bill Swainson, Senior Commissioning Editor

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

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

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

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

Doubleday – Jane Lawson, Editorial Director

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

Europa Editions – Daniela Petracco, UK Director

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Faber and Faber – Lee Brackstone, Editorial Director, Fiction

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

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

Finally, in the summer, we will publish the epic German bestseller and winner of The German Book Prize, In Times of Fading Light

by Eugen Ruge, translated by Anthea Bell. In unforgettable style, Ruge documents the social, political and cultural history of East Germany through the prism of one family across the best part of the twentieth century. There are shades of Jonathan Franzen here, but Ruge’s novel is definitively its own thing over almost 600pages of shimmering prose.

Granta/Portobello Books – Laura Barber, Editorial Director

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

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

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

Harvill Secker – Liz Foley, Publishing Director

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

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

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

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

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

Pushkin Press – Adam Freudenheim, Publisher and Managing Director

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

Weidenfeld & Nicholson – Kirsty Dunseath, Fiction Publishing Director

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

January 10, 2013
Publishers’ highlights for 2013

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

And Other Stories – Stefan Tobler, Publisher

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

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

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

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

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

Arcadia – Gary Pulsifer, Publisher

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

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

Bloomsbury – Bill Swainson, Senior Commissioning Editor

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

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

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

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

Doubleday – Jane Lawson, Editorial Director

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

Europa Editions – Daniela Petracco, UK Director

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Faber and Faber – Lee Brackstone, Editorial Director, Fiction

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

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

Finally, in the summer, we will publish the epic German bestseller and winner of The German Book Prize, In Times of Fading Light

by Eugen Ruge, translated by Anthea Bell. In unforgettable style, Ruge documents the social, political and cultural history of East Germany through the prism of one family across the best part of the twentieth century. There are shades of Jonathan Franzen here, but Ruge’s novel is definitively its own thing over almost 600pages of shimmering prose.

Granta/Portobello Books – Laura Barber, Editorial Director

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

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

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

Harvill Secker – Liz Foley, Publishing Director

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

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

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

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

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

Pushkin Press – Adam Freudenheim, Publisher and Managing Director

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

Weidenfeld & Nicholson – Kirsty Dunseath, Fiction Publishing Director

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

January 10, 2013
Lydia Cacho has gone

In this week’s PEN Atlas piece, Sanjuana Martinez pays tribute to her friend and colleague Lydia Cacho who has been forced to temporarily flee their native Mexico in the wake of terrifying deaths threats.

Translated by Amanda Hopkinson and Cat LucasI am writing this from the heart. There is no other way for me to do it. Lydia Cacho is not just a colleague and fellow journalist, but has been a friend of mine for years. We are united by a passion for our profession, by our commitment to the causes both of women and human rights, and of course by a friendship filled with affection and solidarity.The work that Lydia Cacho does in Mexico is as indispensable as the air we breathe. Her investigative journalism aims to remove the decadent layers of political corruption, both in business and in government.We know that nowadays independent and critical journalism has become a high risk profession, but Lydia has spent seven years living under impending threats from the people in power that she has so bravely identified in her work.Her books are her evidence of it. The most recent, Esclavas del Poder: un viaje al corazón de la trata sexual de mujeres y niñas en el mundo edited by Grijalbo (Slavery Inc: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking) is an in-depth investigation not only into human trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation and financial gain, but also into the people in power who profit from it. In addition there are her newspaper columns, which have become essential reading due to the amount of information they contain, stuffed with facts that shed light on subjects that normally would remain concealed because of the vested interests of differing sources of power.When a journalistic career is characterised by constant criticism and denunciation, it is sadly not unusual to be treated as a discomforting presence, and so become persecuted and banned from numerous professional outlets. What is unusual is for the State to remain impervious to all the death threats that Cacho and so many other journalists have received. And what is shameful is that a journalist like Lydia Cacho, under threat of death, is forced into temporary exile to save her life and her life’s work.She is not the only one. A number of Mexican media professionals have found themselves forced into exile thanks to the indifference of Felipe Calderon’s government has shown towards more than 100 crimes against journalists that have gone unpunished.In Lydia’s case the lack of governmental action is particularly alarming. Since 2009, the Inter-American Court on Human Rights (IACHR) has been calling on the government to take precautionary measures for her protection, but Calderon and his negligent officials (from the Ministry of the Interior and the failed Special Prosecutor for Crimes Committed Against Journalists) have consistently ignored the urgency of adopting such measures. It is obvious that they would prefer not to come to the defence of a critical voice.In the meantime, the journalist has been subject to accusations and persecution from one source after another. On this most recent occasion [29 July 2012] the message was clear: “We already told you, vile bitch, don’t mess with us. We can see that you haven’t learnt from that little trip that we gave you. Next time we get you, you’ll be cut into little pieces, and that’s how we’ll send you home, idiot.”No prizes for guessing where the threat comes from. It originates in organised crime linked to political power. Lately, Lydia has been highly critical of the PRI [Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or Institutional Revolutionary Party]and of other parties in government in the many different states of the Republic, whilst her work on the networks that deal with sexual exploitation have revealed the disgusting abuses of many famously corrupt PRI officials.Mexico is now second only to Thailand in the extent of its sexual trafficking. It is a haven for traffickers who collaborate with regional governors in order to maximise their already substantial profits, then expend them in the exploitation of thousands more women and children.Lydia has always worked on a wide range of issues: she denounces paedophiles, but also corrupt politicians, members of the State who abuse human rights, authorities that exploit migrants, and legislators who refuse to review the law in favour of women’s rights. With her pen, she defends the most deserving of social sectors: indigenous communities, children, homosexuals, migrants, sex workers, and a whole range of other vulnerable groups. Her information sources have enabled her to build up a comprehensive archive of predators.As independent journalists, we know that difficult times are approaching regarding freedom of expression. The PRI has never been a model of respect for our members or our craft. Hindsight is revealing. And one only needs to look at what has happened in the last month for examples of attacks on the media, for example on the daily Monterrey newspaper El Norte. Censorship is the monster with a thousand heads, which never reveals its actual self but appears in myriad forms, such as that of the news service MVS, whose pressure on leader-writer John Ackerman led him to resign rather than yield to the silence of political complicity.Persecution is still in its earliest stages. The swords of Damocles drawn in order to silence independent or critical voices are advancing stealthily. The silence among colleagues who benefit from the present power structure is palpable. Pathetic attempts to cover up corruption, crimes and abuses are apparently far more important that the life of a single journalist, which counts for nothing in Mexico.No doubt there will be many who dream of a country without independent journalists; others will breathe a sigh of relief when critical journalists are exiled; and the rest of the shameless lowlifes will rejoice at the prospective demise of investigative journalism. But it won’t happen, make no mistake.Some of us have decided to continue the fight. Lydia Cacho will soon return. She is not prepared to leave her home, her loved ones, her friends. Nor will she abandon her country. This break is simply to allow her to work on a security strategy that will allow her to sustain her work in future.To those who dream of a Mexico where journalism submits to political power, I warn you: do not let yourselves be deceived. Such a day will never come. There will always be voices prepared to defend the truth, to fight to uncover the dark corners of the power structure, and to expose the content of its filthy sewers. All in good time. Only lies are in a hurry.Insisting on freedom, independent journalists like us are answerable only to our sources, to the human beings who trust us to tell their stories; not to the government, nor to politicians of any party. We owe it to the quest for truth, for justice, and to the victory of the common good.Sensing the fetid breath of evil at our backs only serves to give us the wings to fly higher. To the prophets of evil, to those governors that prefer silence, I suggest you don’t become over-confident. I remind you of the words of Bertolt Brecht: When truth is too weak to defend itself, it has to go on the attack.So it will be.The original version of this piece, ‘Lydia Cacho, se va’ was published on SINEMBARGO.MX, and has been translated and published on the
PEN Atlas with the permission of the author.

About the Author

Multi-award winning Mexican journalist Sanjuana Martinez was born in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico in 1963. Her work focuses on issues related to the defence of human rights, gender violence, terrorist activity and organised crime in Mexico, the United States and Europe. Martinez has been subject to threats, harassment and persecution for her reporting since 2006, in retaliation for writing about alleged links between child sexual abuse and the Catholic Church in Mexico, and was the focus of a PEN International action to mark Women’s Day in 2009.Martinez, who has worked for a range of major media outlets in Mexico, now works as a freelance journalist, and is also a regular contributor to one of Mexico’s leading daily newspapers, La Jornada.

About the Translators

Amanda Hopkinson has been active in Human Rights and literature throughout her life. Much of her writing has been concerned with and for, and influenced by publications on, human rights and freedom of expression. She has contributed, through writing, translating and editing, regularly to the magazine Index on Censorship. As an academic, she has been involved in establishing both Swansea and Norwich as ‘cities of refuge’, offering a haven to refugee writers. She has long supported the goals of PEN, a founding and enthusiastic member of PEN Writers in Translation committees, both in the US and UK, and is an active member of English PEN’s Writers at Risk Committee.Cat Lucas is Writers at Risk Programme Manager at English PEN, responsible for campaigning on behalf of PEN’s cases of concern around the world. She graduated from University College London in 2007 with a BA in French and Spanish. Her translations of poetry and short stories by Cuban writer Jorge Olivera Castillo have been published in the magazine Index on Censorship and online.

Additional Info

Lydia Cacho is an award-winning author, journalist and women’s rights activist. Following the publication of her book on child pornography inMexicoin 2005, she was illegally arrested, detained and ill treated before being subjected to a year-long criminal defamation lawsuit. She was cleared of all charges in 2007 but has continued to be the target of harassment and threats due to her investigative journalism. In August 2012, she was forced to temporarily flee her native Mexico in the wake of particularly terrifying death threats.In addition to her work as a journalist, she founded and directs the Refuge Centre for Abused Women of Cancun and is president of the Centre for Women’s Assistance, which aids victims of domestic violence and gender discrimination.Lydia Cacho was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize for an International Writer of Courage in 2010.

Slavery Inc: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking

Published by Portobello Books: 6 September 2012‘Illegal, inhuman, and impervious to recession, there is one trade that continues to thrive, just out of sight. The international sex trade criss-crosses the entire globe, a sinister network made up of criminal masterminds, local handlers, corrupt policemen, wilfully blind politicians, eager consumers, and countless hapless women and children. In this ground-breaking work of investigative reporting, the celebrated journalist Lydia Cacho follows the trail of the traffickers and their victims from Mexico to Turkey, Thailand to Iraq, Georgia to the UK, to expose the trade’s hidden links with the tourist industry, internet pornography, drugs and arms smuggling, the selling of body organs, money laundering, and even terrorism.’English PEN will be co-hosting the launch of Lydia’s latest book Slavery Inc: The Untold Story of International Sex Trafficking (translated by Elizabeth Boburg) and belatedly presenting her with her PEN Pinter Prize at the Free Word Centre on 29 August. Please join us for what promises to be a fascinating discussion, and to show your support for Lydia. Event details here.

August 16, 2012