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  • PEN Atlas Q&A: Dorthe Nors

    Interview by Theodora Danek

    A term that has often been mentioned in connection to your work is ‘women’s fiction’. What do you think of the term? 

    I don’t like it at all. At all! I mean, they’re writers, and writers are writers, it’s not gender-based. Sometimes when you’re a female writer you get the impression that you’re not considered to be a true writer. A real writer is, of course, a man who is a bit older than fifty. That’s a real writer. This is of course something that women struggle with and we should continue to fight against. Because I’m not a female writer, I’m not a women’s writer, I write about their existence and women have an existence on an equal basis to men. Therefore, we should not be labelled by gender.

    Your protagonist is often described as ‘an older woman’, but she’s just over forty – not actually that old!

    She’s not even halfway into her life, because maybe she will be 90 or 100. We get older and older, so she’s just in the first half of her life. She’s a middle-aged woman. But in a man’s world, she is of course past her prime.

    How has your writing books about a middle-aged woman been received?

    I mean, I’m nominated for the Man Booker, which is pretty good, but apart from that I try not to read too many reviews. Most of the ones I’ve seen are extremely positive and they get the voice, they get the theme. They understand that it is about being paralysed in an existential way, and also that the book is trying to investigate the relationship between urbanism and rural life, and between the landscape and urban, modern life.

    It’s interesting that it’s been perceived through a women’s lens. I guess it’s another example of how women writers are always seen as women, and men are seen as writing about the human existence in general.

    Exactly. And I do think that I write about existential structures that are completely equal to those of a woman, but I choose to write with a female protagonist. I once discussed this with another writer, who is also a woman, who said that there is a tendency for women to have male protagonists in order to escape that, being labelled. And that’s just too sad. We’re full blown existences. We’re real human beings. I kind of insist on writing with a woman in front.

    This is very much a novel about town versus countryside. It seems to me that there’s a lot of guilt wrapped up in your character’s approach to this issue.

    Sonja is one of a generation in Denmark, and probably all over Europe and the US, that has been very urbanised, almost self-deported from the rural areas that we grew up in. In order to have status we had to urbanise ourselves. When you do that, it means that you let go of some values and some rooting and some essence of yourself that you can’t return to. It’s the whole problem of loving a place, feeling connected to a place, and then being disconnected from and unable to return to that place. And that goes for the family members that you leave behind – for the friends, the landscape – you become an estranged human being, which leads to a certain kind of solitude and loneliness.

    So that loneliness exists because we’re all uprooted?

    We’re disconnected and uprooted. And Sonja lives in a city where she has no family; cousins, sister, parents, all those people who make us feel grounded and connected live somewhere else. This is pretty normal for urbanites – that they’ve left family behind.

    After reading your novel, I read several articles about touch deprivation, because Sonja’s only way to have a human connection that includes touch is to get a massage. That is such a striking way to encapsulate what modern loneliness is all about: that you can’t even get anyone else to touch you apart from by paying for it.

    This is also a very urban thing; you’re supposed to use the relationships you have for something. You’re not just in a relationship because you like somebody, you’re in a relationship because you need something from the other person. Another aspect of the urban relationship is that you know you can be ditched. You can be fired from any kind of relationship that you’re in, and then drift on to the next one. Which makes it very frail all the time; you always have to deliver something for the relationship. In comparison, if you look at the relationships people have in traditionalist societies, I mean in villages or small communities, they don’t necessarily have to deliver anything because people are stuck with each other anyway in that environment, and that makes it less lonely. You’re less on trial every day.

    It sounds like the urban relationship is like a marketplace.

    It is. It is cost benefit: what can I get from this? And if you don’t get what you want from this relationship, you can just choose another relationship. You can cast out that friendship. I remember having a conversation with a woman in Copenhagen once where I actually complained about that side of urban life, that relationships weren’t that deep and they would often end at a certain point. She said, that’s the beauty of it because nothing’s fixed. If you don’t like to be caught up in something and rooted down, that is the place you’re supposed to live.

    But you left Copenhagen!

    I did. I lived there for several years, but then I had this international breakthrough and spent a lot of time abroad. And I thought, I’m going to get the hell out of here. When I lived in Copenhagen, I missed the landscape so incredibly; I missed being somewhere open, so I took myself out of there.

    I was very amused to read that Sonja, your protagonist, is a translator, and your book is, in a sense, a send-up of the literary establishment. Does it mirror experiences that you’ve had?

    Definitely. Some publishers are so commercial that they treat books like bricks. Others are very thorough, very good. I’ve been very lucky, but if you go to very big commercial houses, they treat some books as if they were… milk.

  • A conversation with Dorthe Nors

    A term that has often been mentioned in connection to your work is ‘women’s fiction’. What do you think of the term? 

    I don’t like it at all. At all! I mean, they’re writers, and writers are writers, it’s not gender-based. Sometimes when you’re a female writer you get the impression that you’re not considered to be a true writer. A real writer is, of course, a man who is a bit older than fifty. That’s a real writer. This is of course something that women struggle with and we should continue to fight against. Because I’m not a female writer, I’m not a women’s writer, I write about their existence and women have an existence on an equal basis to men. Therefore, we should not be labelled by gender.

    Your protagonist is often described as ‘an older woman’, but she’s just over forty – not actually that old!

    She’s not even halfway into her life, because maybe she will be 90 or 100. We get older and older, so she’s just in the first half of her life. She’s a middle-aged woman. But in a man’s world, she is of course past her prime.

    How has your writing books about a middle-aged woman been received?

    I mean, I’m nominated for the Man Booker, which is pretty good, but apart from that I try not to read too many reviews. Most of the ones I’ve seen are extremely positive and they get the voice, they get the theme. They understand that it is about being paralysed in an existential way, and also that the book is trying to investigate the relationship between urbanism and rural life, and between the landscape and urban, modern life.

    It’s interesting that it’s been perceived through a women’s lens. I guess it’s another example of how women writers are always seen as women, and men are seen as writing about the human existence in general.

    Exactly. And I do think that I write about existential structures that are completely equal to those of a woman, but I choose to write with a female protagonist. I once discussed this with another writer, who is also a woman, who said that there is a tendency for women to have male protagonists in order to escape that, being labelled. And that’s just too sad. We’re full blown existences. We’re real human beings. I kind of insist on writing with a woman in front.

    This is very much a novel about town versus countryside. It seems to me that there’s a lot of guilt wrapped up in your character’s approach to this issue.

    Sonja is one of a generation in Denmark, and probably all over Europe and the US, that has been very urbanised, almost self-deported from the rural areas that we grew up in. In order to have status we had to urbanise ourselves. When you do that, it means that you let go of some values and some rooting and some essence of yourself that you can’t return to. It’s the whole problem of loving a place, feeling connected to a place, and then being disconnected from and unable to return to that place. And that goes for the family members that you leave behind – for the friends, the landscape – you become an estranged human being, which leads to a certain kind of solitude and loneliness.

    So that loneliness exists because we’re all uprooted?

    We’re disconnected and uprooted. And Sonja lives in a city where she has no family; cousins, sister, parents, all those people who make us feel grounded and connected live somewhere else. This is pretty normal for urbanites – that they’ve left family behind.

    After reading your novel, I read several articles about touch deprivation, because Sonja’s only way to have a human connection that includes touch is to get a massage. That is such a striking way to encapsulate what modern loneliness is all about: that you can’t even get anyone else to touch you apart from by paying for it.

    This is also a very urban thing; you’re supposed to use the relationships you have for something. You’re not just in a relationship because you like somebody, you’re in a relationship because you need something from the other person. Another aspect of the urban relationship is that you know you can be ditched. You can be fired from any kind of relationship that you’re in, and then drift on to the next one. Which makes it very frail all the time; you always have to deliver something for the relationship. In comparison, if you look at the relationships people have in traditionalist societies, I mean in villages or small communities, they don’t necessarily have to deliver anything because people are stuck with each other anyway in that environment, and that makes it less lonely. You’re less on trial every day.

    It sounds like the urban relationship is like a marketplace.

    It is. It is cost benefit: what can I get from this? And if you don’t get what you want from this relationship, you can just choose another relationship. You can cast out that friendship. I remember having a conversation with a woman in Copenhagen once where I actually complained about that side of urban life, that relationships weren’t that deep and they would often end at a certain point. She said, that’s the beauty of it because nothing’s fixed. If you don’t like to be caught up in something and rooted down, that is the place you’re supposed to live.

    But you left Copenhagen!

    I did. I lived there for several years, but then I had this international breakthrough and spent a lot of time abroad. And I thought, I’m going to get the hell out of here. When I lived in Copenhagen, I missed the landscape so incredibly; I missed being somewhere open, so I took myself out of there.

    I was very amused to read that Sonja, your protagonist, is a translator, and your book is, in a sense, a send-up of the literary establishment. Does it mirror experiences that you’ve had?

    Definitely. Some publishers are so commercial that they treat books like bricks. Others are very thorough, very good. I’ve been very lucky, but if you go to very big commercial houses, they treat some books as if they were… milk.

    Interview by Theodora Danek

  • PEN Atlas Q&A: Saša Stanišić

    Interview by Tasja Dorkofikis.

    Before the Feast is set in Fürstenfelde, a small village in the former GDR, on the day before its annual feast. Why did you decide to set your story there? Do you know the area well? And is this central European location and scenery important to your writing?

    I had a mosaic kind of tale in mind which was based on a really small village in the Bosnian mountains, a place where the ancestors of my family lived for centuries. The village is on the verge of disappearing; only about 20 people live there today. I wanted to write the stories of those still remaining, the legends of the region, its beauty and horrors, in order to keep something, anything alive and save it from being forgotten.

    Soon I realized that this kind of approach was more of a documentary project than a fictional one. I continued the research but stopped the writing.

    The topics of decay, disappearance, life and death in remote areas didn’t cease to interest me even after my work in that village was done. And so I created my own village, in which I could write fictional prose as much as I liked, and placed it in Germany’s northeast where many problematic issues of German and European societies are visible – unemployment of the youth, a strong right-wing movement, the loneliness of old people and so on.

    I didn’t have a very deep knowledge of the region, which is why I spent a lot of time in Uckermark and did research, talked to people, read and learned. It is a region with a literary tradition of its own, but not much has been written in recent times.

    I found that many stories from ‘my’ ancestors’ village were very similar in their core to stories I was being told or researched in Uckermark. There is something beautiful in the fact that such different cultural landscapes share similar motives and story-telling devices, which in the end means that Europe is nothing more than a village itself. A big and angry one, eerie and manifold, but in the end just a village.

    You thank the people of Furstenberg, Furstenfelde and Furstenwalde at the end of your novel. How much is the book based on real local history?

    I actually never went to those places (except Fürstenwerder). The thank-you note is itself fiction, since everybody is always trying to find the ‘real’ in fiction.

    There is a bit of local history revolving around the end of World War II which I took as the background for one story; also bits of GDR history are relevant. But there is much more invented history and even pieces from Bosnia which I used and transferred to Germany without changing too many parameters.

    The book was never meant to be a fictional mirror of history. It even plays with the fact that history is always different depending on who is writing it. The winners, the losers, the historians, the authors of fictions.

    In the novel the local historical archive is mysteriously broken into and stories escape, allowing myths and memories flow through the village during the night. Why this fascination with collective memory and the past?

    As a writer I am fascinated by memory (and its flaws) as a constituent of our present lives. I cannot write honestly about a 90-year-old former soldier without trying to understand his views on war as a young man or his thoughts on the military and his own time spent with a weapon.

    Collective memory is a kind of a myth in itself. There is almost never such a thing as complete agreement on how historical events unfolded, because there is always that one person who will say, ‘I don’t believe,’ and, ‘This is how it went,’ no matter how much evidence would prove him wrong.

    Even written records are never complete and perhaps not even correct, or they’re forged; in any case, many might say they are not to be trusted. I like the mistrust.

    I like the flaws of remembrance and the insecurities of biographies. I am not interested in the past as a moment in time but in the present as a carryover of all the memories and dealings in and with the past.

    The village of Furstenfelde is in decline. Is writing about this place your way of keeping it alive?

    Not really. Maybe it would be so if it actually existed. While dealing with the past of the village of my ancestors, I realized that I am either a fiction writer, or a journalist or a museum curator, but never all of those things together.

    Also – unfortunately? – fiction can’t save much from disappearance. It might provide insight for those who are interested and maybe even create a good story which will forever become a part of the cultural heritage of a place, but only a fantasist would give it actual healing powers.

    This novel has a wonderfully rich host of local characters, from an aged painter, a teenage bell-ringer and a suicidal ex-soldier to the vixen who lives in the nearby forest. The reader has a strong feeling that the animals, people and landscape are all connected together. In fact, the book is often narrated by a collective ‘we’. Who are ‘we’ in the story? And why did you decide on this constantly shifting perspective?

    In creating a mosaic of a village I kind of wanted the mosaic itself to have a voice which was stronger than its singular pieces. Only a ‘we’ could provide such force.

    Also, ‘we’ is very often used in rural contexts, for example in conversations. It provides a sense of unity and agreement, and at the same time it divides ‘us’ (the villagers) from ‘them’ (the outside world), thus creating a strong group feeling which always has more credibility and strength than one single voice.

    The ‘we’ in the story is a kind of collective voice of the village itself. I tried to imagine how it would sound if all the people who ever lived in this place merged into one. It would be protective towards the village since it consists of the village, it would be harsh because times were mostly harsh, but it would also be sensible and even poetic because of all the sensible and poetic voices that have lived in Fürstenfelde. And so on: the aim was to create a kind of a choir with singers long dead and some still alive, always singing, because a village is never quiet, not even in its darkest hours.

    You arrived in Germany with your parents at the age of 14, having fled the war in former Yugoslavia. You now write your books in German. Beyond the Feast is stylistically very rich with wonderfully surprising changes in tone and timescale. Tibor Fischer in the Independent said that you manage to ‘put a bit of Balkan fun into the Reich’. Do you think that the fact that German is your second language contributes to your linguistic inventiveness? How has your mother tongue affected your writing?

    Not much really. I have no idea what Balkan fun actually is, I lived there only for those 14 years and the last one or two were not really fun. People tend to believe that writing has much to do with our biographical upbringing. That might be true for some people but for me writing only has to do with the actual topic I am writing about. For me a good writer of fiction is someone who can adapt to any milieu, setting, person and bring it to life on the page – no matter how far away this milieu, setting and person is from the writer’s background.

    So the answer would be: I am linguistically inventive because the language is there to be linguistically reinvented – if, and only if, it works for a story and a character’s way of speech.

    How do you feel about your adopted homeland?

    It is very hard to think about such a complicated, manifold, unreal construct as a ‘country’ as if it were a hat. Even hats are not really simple. But simpler than ‘Germany’. I’ll try:

    I don’t really know how I feel about the very complicated hat Germany. It is colourful. To wear it makes me happy at times, sad at times, angry at times, confused at times. I like to wear it because it doesn’t really fit me or anyone else. Sometimes I must lift it for couple of weeks and put another hat on since it tends to get narrower over time. France is a good alternative hat.

    Anthea Bell, who translated both your novels, is a wonderful translator. She has been widely praised for this and for her other translations. How do you work with her and with your other translators?

    There are no words to describe the beauty, precision and literary quality of Anthea’s work. May she live and translate forever.

    I enjoy working with translators in general. They are the best readers: very focused and critical.

    Find out more about Before the Feast, published by Pushkin Press.

    Find out more about How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone on English PEN’s World Bookshelf including a free, downloadable reading guide.

  • Writing, recreating, surviving

    Translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne 

    The Year 1977

    The gulls walked along the beach

    inscribing track marks in the sand.

    Then once again flew out to sea

    and left their track marks in the sand.

    How brutally it fell, that year, the tragedy!

    Then came the water,

    sea-spray, silk,

    and washed away the tracks. Inland

    the palm trees, mangos,

    acacias

    from the collection of poems Mangrove

     

    My brother Juan was killed with a shotgun by the manager of his farm in the gulf of Urabá, in northern Colombia, one night in April 1977. He died at thirty-six. Juan and I had a close friendship; my affection for him was boundless. Words cannot measure the grief I felt at his death.

    At the time, I was twenty-six years old, and I had been writing more or less regularly for eight years. I was working on a book of short stories I never tried to publish, a collection of poems that also remained unpublished and a short novel which ultimately did not work and which, years later, I rewrote and published as a long short story. I had developed a certain aptitude for seeing the literary possibilities in those events that we call real and perhaps this is why I quickly realised that Juan’s death had the qualities of a tragedy. The aesthetic qualities, I mean. That was all it took.

    Although I was devastated by his death, I studied it coldly, as a craftsman might study a fallen tree and calculate the size and shape of the canoe that might be made from it. Obviously, I had qualms before I started to write the novel, since it meant exploiting family tragedy to create literature; nevertheless I started to write.

    Thirty-six years have passed since Juan’s death; thirty-one since In the Beginning was the Sea was first published. After so much time, it is difficult to know which details in the novel are taken from life and which are incidents or places that I had to imagine, invent, or infer from other events in order that the novel could take form and become real. With the passing years, the facts which, though simple, had been difficult to comprehend even at that time, in that place, gradually disintegrated and crumbled, losing their reality. The novel, by contrast, has survived – kept alive by readers – and it could be said that it is more truthful or more real than the events that prompted it.

    Over the years many people read the novel, which was regularly reprinted. Perhaps it will continue to find readers for some years yet and come to be the sole trace of what happened on that night in April 1977 on a beautiful beach hemmed in by sea and forest just south of Panama.

    The novel was my attempt to prevent everything being swept away by the wind. I no longer have any qualms of conscience about having written it. Now, it seems obvious to me that literary works stem, and have always stemmed, from memories, whether recent or remote, whether our own or those of others. Where else could they originate?

    I believe that it is impossible for human beings to fashion out of whole cloth – still less to create – that only nature, or God, can create and we are left to work with what already exists: recreating, reinventing, that is to say recalling it in all its horror and its harmony.

    It is our safeguard against death.

  • 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) 

  • Geography of Secrets

    Nihad Sirees, author of the PEN award-winning The Silence and the Roar, writes for PEN Atlas about his memories of growing up in Aleppo, Syria, and the way his sensual memories of the past now struggle with the violence and horror of the present

    Here in Rhode Island, I lie in bed at night where lately sleep does not come easily. The news coming from my home city of Aleppo has started to wear out my nerves. The war continues there, and from this faraway place, the war seems to me even more fierce and more destructive. I keep tossing and turning in my bed, tired from chasing sleep while alone. Huda, my late wife, died six years ago, and my worries over my daughter and my son in Aleppo are growing every day. I think of my daughter’s pleas for me to leave Syria, because the regime is killing the intellectuals in the country, and putting the blame on the opposition. Since I left Aleppo, the violence has intensified and became more brutal. No city or village in Syria has been spared from the destruction machine of the regime. Now the war is going on in the oldest city of the world and the most exotic city in history.

    The entrance to the Aleppo Citadel has been shelled, and part of its wall was damaged. This 1,000 year old citadel sits on top of a hill in the middle of the city which grew and extended around it. It is a place where the secrets of history are kept. As children, we used to climb the hill surrounding the citadel on which it sits, looking over the city like a vulture protecting it from the mice of darkness. At that time, we were eager to discover some of the citadel’s secrets. The elders used to tell us there was a deep subterranean passage, leading far from the citadel to parts of the city, used to supply foodstuffs to the citadel when it was surrounded by invaders so that the defenders would be able to resist them. The Aleppans used to move into the citadel at times of attacks, and shut its gates. This passage was critical at both times of war and peace, when the ruler of the city would run away if the population rose against him. It was also used by lovers who used to go discreetly in and out. But we could not find the passage, though everyone knew it existed.

    I remember one day they started to demolish an old house to construct a new building on the site. Excavations were going on when a dark passage was unearthed. It was part of a canal that ran under the city homes, just like the subway tunnels in some cities now. The vaulted ceiling was built with stones, while water flowed from its source and spread throughout the ancient city.

    That was a very important moment in my life as a boy. My friends and I went down to examine it. It was a real world of magic and at the same time scary. We waded in the water that came from Hilan, a village to the north of the city. In every home, there was a well connected with the canal running under the ground.

    In my novel The North Wind I wrote about how men used to hide in their homes from the eyes of the Ottoman Recruiting Units which were looking for young men to draft to fight in the First World War. When these young men felt the danger of these units which raided their homes, they went into the wells to hide in the canal, where their neighbors supplied them with food by ropes. It was also used by burglars and lovers. They would sneak out of the well at night to carry out their business, and then go down again into this ramified world that could take them to wherever they wanted.

    The alleys in the ancient city, some of which are no more than 1.5 meters wide, diverged irregularly. Rooftops are attached and linked to each other. Since they are flat, it is easy to walk across them, moving from one rooftop to another. It is very suitable for burglars and those running away from the police, or from their parents or from jealous spouses. I myself used to move around these rooftops, to enjoy watching other people’s homes from the top. When I was a boy, before I was a teenager, there was a house where I saw a pretty young woman lying on a mattress beside a fountain in the courtyard. She used to wear bright, colored, see-through dresses. She would toss around waiting for someone, who never came. Was the world empty of men? I wondered.

    Lately I heard that the fighting between the government troops and the opposition was taking place in the old city, which has resulted in the destruction of many houses there. This news scared me to death, and brought to mind my first visit to the Bahsita quarter in the heart of the old city. Bahsita is a place every young man must have visited at least once in his lifetime, either to have sex with a woman, or just to watch the women there. It is full of narrow alleys and houses like the traditional houses in the old city (I have described this quarter in my novel The Pastoral Comedy). In the evening the quarter becomes crowded with both visitors and spectators, while women sit in the courtyard of their houses, or in front of their houses in the narrow alleys wearing the scantiest clothes to expose their bodies to attract customers. There were also street vendors who sell sandwiches and tonic drinks for the men to restore their energy after they had sex, which was in most cases quick, but enjoyable. In this place I lost my innocence when I was sixteen years old. An experienced friend took me there to visit a woman who was in her forties, who, he said, understands young virgin boys, and helps them with patience. Indeed, he was right, because she understood my awkwardness at that time.

    News of the battles going on in Aleppo’s ancient souk, and the fires that burnt a large number of shops there, made me think about the souk which is called al Medina, that is “the city” and considered the backbone of our lives. Al Medina is a network of narrow streets and alleys lined with shops on both sides, even though the alley is two meters wide or even less. For each trade there is a market, and discovering these thirty seven souks is an exciting tour I used to take before the holidays. These alleys are eight kilometers long and occupy seven hectares, all covered with vaulted roofs, and lit by the rays of sun through small windows at the top. More than twenty khans (caravanserais) occupy a part of these souks, decorated with striking architectural designs. These khans in the past were commercial centers receiving the convoys shuttling the Silk Road. Today they are very important commercial and industrial centres in the Syrian economy.

    Discovering these souks filled me with joy in my boyhood. In every step I discovered a new and surprising secret, in particular, the Niswan Souk “the women’s market” which specialises in selling women’s stuff, from bridal dresses, to underwear and lingerie. Usually, the souk is crowded with women, and with one visit to the souk, one can discover what women wear for their husbands to make them continue to love them. In a shop window I once saw a two-piece underwear set which flashes with a light when touched by the husband. I wanted to discover the secrets of the world of these souks and khans. So I wrote the television series The Silk Market which observed and recorded the social, economic and political life in the 1950s to the early 1960s, in a period full of political turmoil. The series was filmed in the actual places, the traditional old souks, khans, alleys and homes in Aleppo, where the battles are taking place now, and where the government forces are bombing them using warplanes and artillery… Oh, my God!

    It is not only the stones dating back to antiquity, but also the inhabitants of the city that keep its secrets. Foreign travelers and writers could not uncover the secrets of this city. They presented to their readers the surface image only, while the inner image remained uncovered, in particular the community of Allepian women, and their relationships. Specifically, a hidden phenomenon called the ‘intimate girls’.

    Every Aleppian knew or had once heard about those intimate girls in the society of Aleppo. In order to understand the secret of this long tradition we should know that the local society used to separate women from men. However, women developed relationships with the same sex, even on an emotional level, for they were seeking a passionate and intimate social daily relationship. Men prevented their wives and daughters from mingling with men, but they allowed relationships with other women. Such a relationship developed sometimes, to its utmost limits, with men’s consent, or at least with their silence. We know the importance of music in the city. You can hardly find a home in the city without the musical instrument, the Oud, and some parents allowed their daughters to learn music and singing in order to have parties at home. Women used their musical skills in their daily meetings, especially, the intimate girls who used to meet on a certain day of the week. There, every woman would sit beside her girl friend, whom she calls Abla. They would sit very close to each other, wearing revealing clothes, singing and flirting. They would address each other with love lyrics, and dance together, caressing and kissing.

    A long time ago I heard about these relationships and the intimate girls. I decided to write about those women so I wrote a novel A State of Passion. When I began my journey of study and research for the novel I found the only thing written about this in past literature was a few lines in the Comparable Aleppo Encyclopedia which addressed the linguistic, cultural and social aspects of the city. Therefore I set out to interview dozens of the well-known intimate girls, their acquaintances or relatives. The result was amazing. I discovered a wondrous hidden world of women’s relations, whose mainstay was friendship, love, intimacy, music, singing and dancing. It was a world of love, jealousy, betrayal, touching, and most often a world of sexual intimacy. A world where women with traditional lives and a husband away from home 12 hours a day found pleasure and emotional life without cheating on him with another man

    I hope that the words I used to describe my city, Aleppo, do not become some kind of obituary for a dead city.

    About the Author

    Nihad Sirees is a civil engineer who lives in Aleppo. His novels include Cancer, The North Winds, A Case of Passion, and Noise and Silence. Of his many television dramas the most widely acclaimed, Silk Market, set in Aleppo during the political turmoil of the 1950s, was shown throughout the Middle East, in Germany and in Australia. His latest series, Al Khait Al Abiadh (‘The First Gleam of Dawn’), provides a frank depiction of the country’s government-controlled media. After increasing surveillance and pressure from the Syrian government, Nihad Sirees left Syria in 2012. He is currently at Brown University in the US on an International Writers Fellowship until the end of February 2013.

    Additional Information

    Nihad Sirees is touring the UK this month. He is appearing with Golan Haji and Robin Yassin-Kassab at the Southbank Centre on the 29th of January. To find out more information please follow this link.

    He is also appearing at Waterstones Piccadilly on the 30th of January, alongside Malu Halasa and Ghalia Kabbani. To find out more about this event please follow this link.

    The Silence and the Roar is translated by Max Weiss.

    Nihad Sirees is interviewed by his UK publisher Pushkin Press below:

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZXj06ZJSK0]

     

  • Publishers' highlights for 2013

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

    And Other Stories – Stefan Tobler, Publisher

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

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

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

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

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

     

    Arcadia – Gary Pulsifer, Publisher

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

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

     

    Bloomsbury – Bill Swainson, Senior Commissioning Editor

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

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

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

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



    Doubleday – Jane Lawson, Editorial Director 

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

     

    Europa Editions – Daniela Petracco, UK Director

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

    Faber and Faber – Lee Brackstone, Editorial Director, Fiction

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

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

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

     

    Granta/Portobello Books – Laura Barber, Editorial Director 

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

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

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



    Harvill Secker – Liz Foley, Publishing Director 

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

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

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

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

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

     

    Pushkin Press – Adam Freudenheim, Publisher and Managing Director

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

     

    Weidenfeld & Nicholson – Kirsty Dunseath, Fiction Publishing Director 

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

     

  • Publishers’ highlights for 2013

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

    And Other Stories – Stefan Tobler, Publisher

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

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

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

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

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

     

    Arcadia – Gary Pulsifer, Publisher

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

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

     

    Bloomsbury – Bill Swainson, Senior Commissioning Editor

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

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

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

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



    Doubleday – Jane Lawson, Editorial Director 

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

     

    Europa Editions – Daniela Petracco, UK Director

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

    Faber and Faber – Lee Brackstone, Editorial Director, Fiction

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

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

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

     

    Granta/Portobello Books – Laura Barber, Editorial Director 

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

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

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



    Harvill Secker – Liz Foley, Publishing Director 

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

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

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

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

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

     

    Pushkin Press – Adam Freudenheim, Publisher and Managing Director

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

     

    Weidenfeld & Nicholson – Kirsty Dunseath, Fiction Publishing Director 

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