This announcement comes a little late, perhaps, but you know what they say.
We have another reading group up and running in Berlin and London for the world's most exciting publishing project, And Other Stories. The idea, in case you don't know, is that we read three books written in German with the aim of recommending one of them for translation. This time we collected suggestions from all kinds of people and came up with three titles:
Silke Scheuermann: Die Stunde zwischen Hund und Wolf
Antje Rávic Strubel: Sturz der Tage in die Nacht
Katrin Röggla: die alarmbereiten
We, uh, already started without you - but the next Berlin meeting is to discuss book 2, on 10 December, followed by book 3 on 14 January in Berlin - and the London meeting is also on 14 January. Last time around we were really pleased to receive a good deal of comments online, and it'd be great if people could do that again. So here's all the information in one place to help you with that. We'd need your opinions by 14 January.
If you are in Berlin, we have reading copies and PDFs and our meetings are quite short and always a totally nerdy pleasure. They're mostly in English but not exclusively so, and we'd love it if you came along. My partner-in-crime Amanda DaMarco explained how it all works in Publishing Perspectives.
Showing posts with label and other stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label and other stories. Show all posts
Saturday, 1 December 2012
Monday, 1 October 2012
Ampersand/MixLit
The publishers And Other Stories have launched their new blog Ampersand - with a special treat made out of all eight of their books so far.
Leonardo Villa-Forte has made a mashup, including parts of Clemens Meyer's story "Riding the Rails", if I'm not mistaken. It speaks volumes about something I've been thinking about recently - what we can do with literature if we abandon the idea of reading as a passive process. Beautiful.
Leonardo Villa-Forte has made a mashup, including parts of Clemens Meyer's story "Riding the Rails", if I'm not mistaken. It speaks volumes about something I've been thinking about recently - what we can do with literature if we abandon the idea of reading as a passive process. Beautiful.
Friday, 17 August 2012
Suggestions, Please
Two projects are looking for suggestions right now. The first is the Dublin literary magazine The Stinging Fly:
And secondly, our And Other Stories German-language reading group is collecting suggestions for our next round of reading. We're looking for exciting contemporary novels written by women, to redress AOS's embarrassing gender imbalance. We'll be holding meetings in November, December and January (in Berlin) to discuss each one we pick from the preliminary suggestions, with a view to proposing one of them for translation. There'll probably be a meeting in London too, but you can also comment on the books via the AOS website - and we were pleased to find that a good few people did so during the last round.
I think the last round of discussions went astoundingly well. We had an excellent turn-out of readers in Berlin and some very heated discussions. The upshot was that none of our three books ended up selected for translation, for various reasons. But don't let that stop you joining in the next round - I know we won't!
Update: Oh yeah, contact me or share suggestions in the comments section - thanks.
Our Summer 2013 issue will showcase literary translation of new and contemporary prose fiction from around the world. In conjunction with Dublin-based literary translation agency, Parkbench Publishing Services, we are now calling for submissions.Exciting, no? There's a form to fill in on the Stinging Fly website linked above.
So, if you are a translator and you know of a new writer or new writing that you think we should know about, whatever the source language may be, please get in touch.
We are particularly interested in finding/translating short stories, though excerpts from novels and novellas will also be considered.
We hope to include work by new and emerging writers and translators, alongside the work of more established practitioners.
And secondly, our And Other Stories German-language reading group is collecting suggestions for our next round of reading. We're looking for exciting contemporary novels written by women, to redress AOS's embarrassing gender imbalance. We'll be holding meetings in November, December and January (in Berlin) to discuss each one we pick from the preliminary suggestions, with a view to proposing one of them for translation. There'll probably be a meeting in London too, but you can also comment on the books via the AOS website - and we were pleased to find that a good few people did so during the last round.
I think the last round of discussions went astoundingly well. We had an excellent turn-out of readers in Berlin and some very heated discussions. The upshot was that none of our three books ended up selected for translation, for various reasons. But don't let that stop you joining in the next round - I know we won't!
Update: Oh yeah, contact me or share suggestions in the comments section - thanks.
Thursday, 14 June 2012
Where Are the Women in Translation?
Today Stefan Tobler of the top exciting British mainly-translation publishers And Other Stories tweeted that he thought "more men than women submit literary fiction. We'd love that to change! Submissions info here.... http://fb.me/1BlefTKIL"
So if you're a woman writer and think your work would work for them, do submit.
But I was thinking about why it is that more men than women get translated into English. It's definitely the case; I just called up the most recent translation database compiled by Three Percent, in this case listing first translations into English in 2011. In a strictly scientific experiment, I went down all the first names of the translated authors and highlighted the ones I thought were probably women. Then I highlighted about half of the ones where I had no idea whether they were men or women, just to be on the safe side. I made it about 80ish women authors out of 360 translated titles. The list remained really rather white - even if I'm rubbish at sexing names, we can still assume women writers accounted for only a quarter to a third of translated titles last year. Next I went down the list of translators' first names doing the same. Too many women to count, I'd say roughly half - it looked quite yellow.
Why on earth could it be? A friend of mine once suggested translators aren't averse to picking authors by how attractive they find them. I decided to neglect this theory because it would involve too much speculation on the statistical sexuality of translators, and anyway it's not usually the translators who choose what gets published in book form. Although it might be an interesting topic for a survey of translators who submit to literary magazines. Anyone?
So I have three other vague and speculative theories. Firstly, many successful women writers write genre fiction, and less genre fiction gets translated into English. Just as an example, this piece about historical fiction in Germany says about two thirds of the writers published last season are women.
And secondly there's that thing about men being more prominent in female-dominated fields. Because publishing's basically run by women (except for the upper echelons, d'oh!), fiction's basically read by women and there are more women writing than men. So the smaller number of men rise to prominence more easily than, say, in the world of investment banking, and certainly more quickly than women tend to. There's been research on this - they call it the glass elevator effect. Or maybe men have retained their privileged position from the times when publishing and writing was still male-dominated and have only let women get into the runner-up positions. Or maybe all those heterosexual women readers are buying books based on the author photo on the back. Or all the heterosexual women editors are buying translation rights based on the author photo on the back. Or the men on the awards committees are handing out prizes to their peers and buddies. Whatever the case, very many of the big guns of international fiction are men, and it's the big earners, the big award winners and the big guns who get translated into English.
Thirdly, because a lot of canonical writers get translated and re-translated, there are still plenty of dead white men to be dealt with - although this isn't reflected as strongly as it might be in the Three Percent statistics because they don't include re-translations.
I'm not sure what can be done to get more women writers into English, other than raising awareness. But on a very low level, our AOS German-language reading group is especially reading three books by women with the aim of suggesting one of them for translation. Bucking the trend slightly, I count I've translated seven women and two men so far, with two more men on my to-do list.
So if you're a woman writer and think your work would work for them, do submit.
But I was thinking about why it is that more men than women get translated into English. It's definitely the case; I just called up the most recent translation database compiled by Three Percent, in this case listing first translations into English in 2011. In a strictly scientific experiment, I went down all the first names of the translated authors and highlighted the ones I thought were probably women. Then I highlighted about half of the ones where I had no idea whether they were men or women, just to be on the safe side. I made it about 80ish women authors out of 360 translated titles. The list remained really rather white - even if I'm rubbish at sexing names, we can still assume women writers accounted for only a quarter to a third of translated titles last year. Next I went down the list of translators' first names doing the same. Too many women to count, I'd say roughly half - it looked quite yellow.
Why on earth could it be? A friend of mine once suggested translators aren't averse to picking authors by how attractive they find them. I decided to neglect this theory because it would involve too much speculation on the statistical sexuality of translators, and anyway it's not usually the translators who choose what gets published in book form. Although it might be an interesting topic for a survey of translators who submit to literary magazines. Anyone?
So I have three other vague and speculative theories. Firstly, many successful women writers write genre fiction, and less genre fiction gets translated into English. Just as an example, this piece about historical fiction in Germany says about two thirds of the writers published last season are women.
And secondly there's that thing about men being more prominent in female-dominated fields. Because publishing's basically run by women (except for the upper echelons, d'oh!), fiction's basically read by women and there are more women writing than men. So the smaller number of men rise to prominence more easily than, say, in the world of investment banking, and certainly more quickly than women tend to. There's been research on this - they call it the glass elevator effect. Or maybe men have retained their privileged position from the times when publishing and writing was still male-dominated and have only let women get into the runner-up positions. Or maybe all those heterosexual women readers are buying books based on the author photo on the back. Or all the heterosexual women editors are buying translation rights based on the author photo on the back. Or the men on the awards committees are handing out prizes to their peers and buddies. Whatever the case, very many of the big guns of international fiction are men, and it's the big earners, the big award winners and the big guns who get translated into English.
Thirdly, because a lot of canonical writers get translated and re-translated, there are still plenty of dead white men to be dealt with - although this isn't reflected as strongly as it might be in the Three Percent statistics because they don't include re-translations.
I'm not sure what can be done to get more women writers into English, other than raising awareness. But on a very low level, our AOS German-language reading group is especially reading three books by women with the aim of suggesting one of them for translation. Bucking the trend slightly, I count I've translated seven women and two men so far, with two more men on my to-do list.
Tuesday, 1 May 2012
A Call to Arms
So last night was our preliminary meeting for the And Other Stories German-language reading group in Berlin. Check the link for information on the books and writers we'll be looking at over the coming months. The idea is to run it in Berlin as a regular reading group, looking at each book on its own merits at a separate session. Then at our final session we'll also be skyping from Berlin to the simultaneous one-off London meeting to discuss all three together. How amazing is that? I do love the internet.
Anyway, my excellent partner-in-crime Amanda DeMarco and I were extremely pleased with the turnout, a whole bunch of enthusiastic booklovers, especially as some of them we didn't even know personally! Random booklovers - how fantastic is that? But there was one tiny teeny thing that made us sad, and that was that there was only one German native-speaker among them.
Now I know you German native-speakers can be quite shy and retiring, and you might feel a bit put off about talking about German books in a room full of English speakers. But really, you still ought to come along. We'd value your input and you're welcome to speak German, we really don't mind as long as you don't mind us speaking English. And we promise not to be rude about German books. I know you're out there, and you know you want to come. As Holly Johnson said.
So feel free to turn up to our actual discussion sessions at Dialogue Books, starting on Monday, 28 May. Get in touch with AOS via the link above if you have any questions. You'll love it once you get started.
Anyway, my excellent partner-in-crime Amanda DeMarco and I were extremely pleased with the turnout, a whole bunch of enthusiastic booklovers, especially as some of them we didn't even know personally! Random booklovers - how fantastic is that? But there was one tiny teeny thing that made us sad, and that was that there was only one German native-speaker among them.
Now I know you German native-speakers can be quite shy and retiring, and you might feel a bit put off about talking about German books in a room full of English speakers. But really, you still ought to come along. We'd value your input and you're welcome to speak German, we really don't mind as long as you don't mind us speaking English. And we promise not to be rude about German books. I know you're out there, and you know you want to come. As Holly Johnson said.
So feel free to turn up to our actual discussion sessions at Dialogue Books, starting on Monday, 28 May. Get in touch with AOS via the link above if you have any questions. You'll love it once you get started.
Thursday, 19 April 2012
AOS German-Language Reading Group
You may be aware of the new British publishing house And Other Stories, which works with reading groups to isolate excellent books for translation. They write:
Nino Haratischwili's Mein sanfter Zwilling
Katharina Faber's Fremde Signale
and Angelika Klüssendorf's Das Mädchen.
We'll be meeting up on the last Monday of every month to discuss one book per session. And there'll be a preliminary meeting on Monday, 30 April at 7 p.m. at Dialogue Books in Kreuzberg. Please come along if you're interested in joining in or have any questions. We have a number of reading copies to share out and look forward to seeing you. Anyone is welcome, whether English or German-speakers. And there'll also be an opportunity to read along with us elsewhere and comment on the books via the AOS website, plus one London meeting to discuss the same titles in August.
And Other Stories reading groups have been instrumental in unearthing a number of great books to publish in English. Each recent group has thrown up one or two books we are seriously considering as titles we could publish. Call it a book club or reading group – it’s about the same thing: talking about books that a bunch of people have read.My colleague Amanda Demarco and I are now setting up a group in Berlin to discuss three German-language novels:
Nino Haratischwili's Mein sanfter Zwilling
Katharina Faber's Fremde Signale
and Angelika Klüssendorf's Das Mädchen.
We'll be meeting up on the last Monday of every month to discuss one book per session. And there'll be a preliminary meeting on Monday, 30 April at 7 p.m. at Dialogue Books in Kreuzberg. Please come along if you're interested in joining in or have any questions. We have a number of reading copies to share out and look forward to seeing you. Anyone is welcome, whether English or German-speakers. And there'll also be an opportunity to read along with us elsewhere and comment on the books via the AOS website, plus one London meeting to discuss the same titles in August.
Friday, 11 November 2011
All the Lights Playlist Part 3
Here's the third and final installment of the playlist to go with Clemens Meyer's short story collection All the Lights. Do go out and buy a copy, why don't you?
Story Eleven: Riding the Rails – two men who form a bond in prison meet up again on the outside and travel around Germany pulling petty crimes. The song: KD Lang’s Ridin’ the Rails – because this is how the two imagine themselves, a romantic couple of hobos. The title (which is a long way from the original “Wir reisen”) wasn’t inspired by the song, but it could have been.
Story Twelve: Your Hair Is Beautiful – a man abandons his wife, having fallen for a prostitute he believes to be Lithuanian. The song: Joe Cocker, You Are So Beautiful – because it’s ridiculous and obsessive and OTT and imagine someone saying something like that to you. You’d want to do something nasty to them too.
Story Thirteen: A Ship Will Come – a young asylum-seeker boxes her way up through life. The song: Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life – because it’s punchy and go-getting and there’s no resisting it. And it's in Trainspotting, which a few people have compared Clemens' writing to.
Story Fourteen: Carriage 29 – a wine salesman finds himself on a train and can’t quite work out what on earth he’s doing there. The song: The Beatles’ Helter Skelter – because this is one of those Clemens Meyer stories that whirls you round and makes you dizzy and brash with confusion, just like the protagonist.
Story fifteen: The Old Man Buries His Beasts – an old man kills his animals and says goodbye to his neighbours in a dying village. I have to admit I was stumped to find a song to go with this very precisely told, melancholy story. To I crowdsourced it and my colleague Shaun Whiteside came up with Randy Newman’s Old Man – the perfect match.
Anyway, thanks for your patience, and do excuse the rather strange link choices. It's partly because a lot of material isn't available for viewing in Germany due to Youtube restrictions.
Story Eleven: Riding the Rails – two men who form a bond in prison meet up again on the outside and travel around Germany pulling petty crimes. The song: KD Lang’s Ridin’ the Rails – because this is how the two imagine themselves, a romantic couple of hobos. The title (which is a long way from the original “Wir reisen”) wasn’t inspired by the song, but it could have been.
Story Twelve: Your Hair Is Beautiful – a man abandons his wife, having fallen for a prostitute he believes to be Lithuanian. The song: Joe Cocker, You Are So Beautiful – because it’s ridiculous and obsessive and OTT and imagine someone saying something like that to you. You’d want to do something nasty to them too.
Story Thirteen: A Ship Will Come – a young asylum-seeker boxes her way up through life. The song: Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life – because it’s punchy and go-getting and there’s no resisting it. And it's in Trainspotting, which a few people have compared Clemens' writing to.
Story Fourteen: Carriage 29 – a wine salesman finds himself on a train and can’t quite work out what on earth he’s doing there. The song: The Beatles’ Helter Skelter – because this is one of those Clemens Meyer stories that whirls you round and makes you dizzy and brash with confusion, just like the protagonist.
Story fifteen: The Old Man Buries His Beasts – an old man kills his animals and says goodbye to his neighbours in a dying village. I have to admit I was stumped to find a song to go with this very precisely told, melancholy story. To I crowdsourced it and my colleague Shaun Whiteside came up with Randy Newman’s Old Man – the perfect match.
Anyway, thanks for your patience, and do excuse the rather strange link choices. It's partly because a lot of material isn't available for viewing in Germany due to Youtube restrictions.
Wednesday, 9 November 2011
All the Lights Playlist Part 1
Earlier this year I translated Clemens Meyer’s short story collection All the Lights, which you can get in good bookshops all over the UK right now, brought to you by the publishers And Other Stories. There are fifteen stories in All the Lights, and I just thought it might be fun to think up a playlist of one song to go with each story. Sort of like a translator’s soundtrack to the collection. It may not make a lot of sense to anyone else, but here it is (part 1):
Story One: Little Death – a man’s on the dole and missing his ex-girlfriend, losing his grip on life in general. The song: Richmond Fontaine’s Let Me Dream of the High Country – because of the first lines, “It’s time for him to get up, but he won’t / until he’s late." And because I met singer Willy Vlautin through Clemens. Although he’s not actually singing on this version:
Story Two: Waiting for South America – a man receives a series of postcards from a friend who says he’s come into money and gone travelling. The song: Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz, The Girl from Ipanema – because the story’s not really about Latin America, more about what we imagine it to be (among other things).
Story Three: The Shotgun, The Streetlamp and Mary Monroe – a man’s trying to go cold turkey and his girlfriend’s in bed. The song: Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender – because the first time I really met Clemens he sang this song (he was practicing for an upcoming karaoke session) and because this is a story about love and needing other people.
Story Four: Fatty Loves – a teacher doesn’t quite give into temptation, but he can’t control his physical appetite. The song: Boomtown Rats, I Don’t Like Mondays – because school can be hell for all concerned.
Story Five: Of Dogs and Horses – a man bets all he has at the races to save his dog’s life. The song: The Pioneers’ Long Shot Kick De Bucket – because it’s a song about how a horse can spoil your day.
More over the next couple of days...
Story One: Little Death – a man’s on the dole and missing his ex-girlfriend, losing his grip on life in general. The song: Richmond Fontaine’s Let Me Dream of the High Country – because of the first lines, “It’s time for him to get up, but he won’t / until he’s late." And because I met singer Willy Vlautin through Clemens. Although he’s not actually singing on this version:
Story Two: Waiting for South America – a man receives a series of postcards from a friend who says he’s come into money and gone travelling. The song: Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz, The Girl from Ipanema – because the story’s not really about Latin America, more about what we imagine it to be (among other things).
Story Three: The Shotgun, The Streetlamp and Mary Monroe – a man’s trying to go cold turkey and his girlfriend’s in bed. The song: Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender – because the first time I really met Clemens he sang this song (he was practicing for an upcoming karaoke session) and because this is a story about love and needing other people.
Story Four: Fatty Loves – a teacher doesn’t quite give into temptation, but he can’t control his physical appetite. The song: Boomtown Rats, I Don’t Like Mondays – because school can be hell for all concerned.
Story Five: Of Dogs and Horses – a man bets all he has at the races to save his dog’s life. The song: The Pioneers’ Long Shot Kick De Bucket – because it’s a song about how a horse can spoil your day.
More over the next couple of days...
Monday, 23 May 2011
How To Get Your Name in a Book
There are several ways to get your name in a book. You could become one of those crazed serial killers who get gruesome true crime books written about them. You could launch a celebrity career and get someone to ghostwrite your memoirs. You could write your own book. You could translate a book. You could marry a writer and get him or her to dedicate their next book to you.
All rather time-consuming though, I'm sure you'll agree. So you'll be very glad to hear there's now a much faster way to get your name in a book: simply subscribe to And Other Stories. True to their philosophy of involving editors, readers, translators, critics, literary promoters and academics in their decision-making processes, And Other Stories give you quite some buck for your subscription bang:
All rather time-consuming though, I'm sure you'll agree. So you'll be very glad to hear there's now a much faster way to get your name in a book: simply subscribe to And Other Stories. True to their philosophy of involving editors, readers, translators, critics, literary promoters and academics in their decision-making processes, And Other Stories give you quite some buck for your subscription bang:
- uniquely numbered, limited first edition copies
- you will be thanked by name as a subscriber in the next 2 or 4 (depending on subscription) books we print
- you will be warmly invited to contribute to our plans and choice of future books
- and you will have that warm glow of knowing you have made the publishing of these books possible.
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
Help Find Other Stories
For those of you who like to wield the power of your literary taste, especially if you're in or near London, you really need to catch up with And Other Stories. The new British publisher uses reading groups to help choose its titles - including my forthcoming Clemens Meyer translation, ahem. The next meet-up for the German reading group is on 27 March, but you can also read texts and join the discussion online. Plus there are sample translations available for those who want to have a say without learning the language first.
And you can read more about how it all works on a brand new Berlin-based blog by the name of Readux, where Catherine Stupp has interviewed founder Stefan Tobler.
And you can read more about how it all works on a brand new Berlin-based blog by the name of Readux, where Catherine Stupp has interviewed founder Stefan Tobler.
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
Clemens Meyer, All the Lights
The fine upstanding people of And Other Stories have announced it in their newsletter, so I don't have to keep it to myself any longer. I've been biting my tongue for weeks and weeks now, so here goes - I'm currently translating Clemens Meyer's second book for them, Die Nacht, die Lichter. It's a collection of excellent short stories that won the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair when it came out in 2008. I sincerely think it's some of the very best German writing around, and I'm not just saying that because Meyer took me to the races last summer.
Translating the stories is tricky but incredibly rewarding. At times I find myself gazing into space, marvelling at how good they are and how lucky I am to be working on them. But most of the time they suck me in and make me frown in concentration, suspending real life all around me. I have to stay at home to work on them rather than translating in my office where there are other people present, partly because the work is quite draining. And it actually helps sometimes if I have a slight hangover.
The book should be out in the autumn of this year. If you can't wait (and who can blame you), there are two stories published online, at The Guardian and Brooklyn Rail.
We're changing the title slightly, because the literal translation, ummm, rhymes. And while And Other Stories are pretty damn daring publishing translated short stories (not a terribly fashionable thing to do), even they don't want to go as far as launching a book on the British public with a rhyming title.
Translating the stories is tricky but incredibly rewarding. At times I find myself gazing into space, marvelling at how good they are and how lucky I am to be working on them. But most of the time they suck me in and make me frown in concentration, suspending real life all around me. I have to stay at home to work on them rather than translating in my office where there are other people present, partly because the work is quite draining. And it actually helps sometimes if I have a slight hangover.
The book should be out in the autumn of this year. If you can't wait (and who can blame you), there are two stories published online, at The Guardian and Brooklyn Rail.
We're changing the title slightly, because the literal translation, ummm, rhymes. And while And Other Stories are pretty damn daring publishing translated short stories (not a terribly fashionable thing to do), even they don't want to go as far as launching a book on the British public with a rhyming title.
Monday, 3 January 2011
Things I Am Looking Forward To in 2011
One of my favourite German rituals is the New Year's Eve tradition of "lead-pouring". You take little plugs of lead (actually aluminium these days), melt them down over a candle, and then pour them into cold water to see what shape they make and predict your fate for the coming year. Of course it's all in the interpretation, but this year I got a saxophone. Make of that what you will. I also had a fortune cookie that told me to "be patient and optimistic" - and chose not to apply that to my love life.
There a few German books I'm really looking forward to in 2011, in two different areas.
Firstly, in the patient and optimistic sector, two debuts of which I have no idea when they'll be coming out: novels by Jan Brandt and Sebastian Polmans. Brandt is a geezer about town I vaguely know, alway impeccably dressed and surrounded by hordes of women, and I'm curious to find out whether his writing's any good. So far I've heard one short story and was impressed - but found it slightly too smooth. The book's allegedly being published by Dumont. And Polmans was my favourite at the Open Mike competition a while back. He seems to write with a spirit of adventure and excitement, so again I'm very curious as to what his debut with Suhrkamp will bring us.
Secondly, I predict a major anti-chauvinist backlash against the likes of Thilo Sarrazin, in fiction and non-fiction. The most obvious title in this category is the essay volume Manifest der Vielen, edited by Hilal Sezgin and featuring pieces by all sorts of sensible writers. The publishers promise writing about their lives in Germany, home and identity, being a Muslim or a non-Muslim, focusing on critical analysis and personal stories rather than terms like migrants, Muslims, Germans, etc. Out in February from Blumenbar.
And after the exhilarating presence of "migrant writers" from all sorts of places all over last year's shortlists and awards (with Melinda Nadj Abonji taking almost every prize going for her beautiful but plot-disadvantaged novel about Hungarian-Serbian immigrants to Switzerland), this year promises more. Zsuzsa Bánk, feted back in 2002 for her debut Der Schwimmer, returns with a big fat novel about Hungarians and Germans growing up together, Die hellen Tage. Out in February from Fischer. And the same month sees the long-awaited follow-up to My Official Favourite German Book Ever, Selim Özdogan's Die Tochter des Schmieds. Called Heimstraße 52 (Aufbau), it follows the protagonist Gül and her family from Turkey to Germany, where Özdogan shows typical dramas, childhoods and working lives in Germany's industrial boomtime. Think Small Island applied to Germany. I love it already, and I think 2011 will be the year when writers whose parents came from abroad but who grew up in Germany, Austria and Switzerland themselves really come into their own. The postmigrant generation in your face, dude.
On the translation front, I'm looking forward to all sorts of goodies. First and foremost Helene Hegemann's Axolotl Roadkill in English, translated by - er, me. Out in April from Constable & Robinson. Then my translation of My Second Favourite German Book Ever, Inka Parei's The Shadowboxing Woman, published I'm not quite sure when by Seagull Books. Then I have two gorgeous young adult/children's titles by the delightfully talented Rusalka Reh coming out with AmazonCrossing in May and August.
Translations on the "to be reviewed" pile include Thomas Pletzinger's celebrated novel Funeral for a Dog, translated no doubt extremely well by Ross Benjamin, and Daniel Glattauer's Love Virtually, an internet romance romp rendered into English by husband-and-wife team Katharina Bielenberg and Jamie Bulloch. Both spring releases, I believe. I'm looking forward to two short books brought to us by Peirene Press - Matthias Politycki's Next World Novella (trans. Anthea Bell) and Austrian Alois Hotschnig's Maybe This Time, translated by my buddy Tess Lewis. Oh, and I don't know if it's actually coming out this year or not, but Open Letter are doing Benjamin Stein's jewel The Canvas.
Plus, 2011 sees the first books from the wonderful people at And Other Stories, who have confirmed two titles so far from Iosi Havilio (Argentina) and Juan Pablo Villalobos (Mexico). And who knows, maybe they'll discover a German writer to share with the English-speaking world as well. You certainly need to check them out if you haven't already.
So, join me in exercising patience and optimism, and let us all play our saxophones for fantastic German books in 2011.
There a few German books I'm really looking forward to in 2011, in two different areas.
Firstly, in the patient and optimistic sector, two debuts of which I have no idea when they'll be coming out: novels by Jan Brandt and Sebastian Polmans. Brandt is a geezer about town I vaguely know, alway impeccably dressed and surrounded by hordes of women, and I'm curious to find out whether his writing's any good. So far I've heard one short story and was impressed - but found it slightly too smooth. The book's allegedly being published by Dumont. And Polmans was my favourite at the Open Mike competition a while back. He seems to write with a spirit of adventure and excitement, so again I'm very curious as to what his debut with Suhrkamp will bring us.
Secondly, I predict a major anti-chauvinist backlash against the likes of Thilo Sarrazin, in fiction and non-fiction. The most obvious title in this category is the essay volume Manifest der Vielen, edited by Hilal Sezgin and featuring pieces by all sorts of sensible writers. The publishers promise writing about their lives in Germany, home and identity, being a Muslim or a non-Muslim, focusing on critical analysis and personal stories rather than terms like migrants, Muslims, Germans, etc. Out in February from Blumenbar.
And after the exhilarating presence of "migrant writers" from all sorts of places all over last year's shortlists and awards (with Melinda Nadj Abonji taking almost every prize going for her beautiful but plot-disadvantaged novel about Hungarian-Serbian immigrants to Switzerland), this year promises more. Zsuzsa Bánk, feted back in 2002 for her debut Der Schwimmer, returns with a big fat novel about Hungarians and Germans growing up together, Die hellen Tage. Out in February from Fischer. And the same month sees the long-awaited follow-up to My Official Favourite German Book Ever, Selim Özdogan's Die Tochter des Schmieds. Called Heimstraße 52 (Aufbau), it follows the protagonist Gül and her family from Turkey to Germany, where Özdogan shows typical dramas, childhoods and working lives in Germany's industrial boomtime. Think Small Island applied to Germany. I love it already, and I think 2011 will be the year when writers whose parents came from abroad but who grew up in Germany, Austria and Switzerland themselves really come into their own. The postmigrant generation in your face, dude.
On the translation front, I'm looking forward to all sorts of goodies. First and foremost Helene Hegemann's Axolotl Roadkill in English, translated by - er, me. Out in April from Constable & Robinson. Then my translation of My Second Favourite German Book Ever, Inka Parei's The Shadowboxing Woman, published I'm not quite sure when by Seagull Books. Then I have two gorgeous young adult/children's titles by the delightfully talented Rusalka Reh coming out with AmazonCrossing in May and August.
Translations on the "to be reviewed" pile include Thomas Pletzinger's celebrated novel Funeral for a Dog, translated no doubt extremely well by Ross Benjamin, and Daniel Glattauer's Love Virtually, an internet romance romp rendered into English by husband-and-wife team Katharina Bielenberg and Jamie Bulloch. Both spring releases, I believe. I'm looking forward to two short books brought to us by Peirene Press - Matthias Politycki's Next World Novella (trans. Anthea Bell) and Austrian Alois Hotschnig's Maybe This Time, translated by my buddy Tess Lewis. Oh, and I don't know if it's actually coming out this year or not, but Open Letter are doing Benjamin Stein's jewel The Canvas.
Plus, 2011 sees the first books from the wonderful people at And Other Stories, who have confirmed two titles so far from Iosi Havilio (Argentina) and Juan Pablo Villalobos (Mexico). And who knows, maybe they'll discover a German writer to share with the English-speaking world as well. You certainly need to check them out if you haven't already.
So, join me in exercising patience and optimism, and let us all play our saxophones for fantastic German books in 2011.
Friday, 1 October 2010
Literary Translation in the States and Britain
Anna Gielas has a cheerful (not) article about the dearth of translations in the USA in Die Zeit (in German). If you follow these things in English, you won't learn all that much, but it's interesting in that she talks to Riky Stock of the German Book Office, and the translators Esther Allen and Edith Grossmann.
I also like the way she doesn't bother brow-beating over why heavy German literature is to blame - because it's not, nothing much else gets translated either.
In fact, she points out:
But linguists and other experts see the lack of translations as a sign of a serious phenomenon: "English has become an invasive species," says Esther Allen from the Center for Literary Translation at Columbia University in New York. The language does not work as a lingua franca, as many claim. "Instead of taking in literature from other languages, it drowns it out and overwrites it – both in the USA and the rest of the world," says Allen. The German situation confirms her statement: 87 percent of the total 4155 literary titles translated last year were originally written in English.
Which brings us back to that "International" Literature Prize I wrote about on Wednesday...
Thanks to Harvey Morell for sending me the link. I'll just go and drink some bleach now.
Except no! I won't! Because Stuart Evers has a cheerful (really) article in The Guardian about my friends at And Other Stories, a "radical and community-based initiative, focusing on promoting great writing in translation".
Evers writes:
But can it really work? I would say yes. The whole operation seems carefully planned, well thought-out and radical not so much because of the involvement of reading groups, but in its acceptance of the reality of literary publishing. And Other Stories fully accepts that what they do is not just niche – it's a niche within a niche within a niche. The size of the opportunity for sales is tiny; tiny that is unless you know who you are selling to.
Hooray!? I've put the Domestos back under the sink.
I also like the way she doesn't bother brow-beating over why heavy German literature is to blame - because it's not, nothing much else gets translated either.
In fact, she points out:
But linguists and other experts see the lack of translations as a sign of a serious phenomenon: "English has become an invasive species," says Esther Allen from the Center for Literary Translation at Columbia University in New York. The language does not work as a lingua franca, as many claim. "Instead of taking in literature from other languages, it drowns it out and overwrites it – both in the USA and the rest of the world," says Allen. The German situation confirms her statement: 87 percent of the total 4155 literary titles translated last year were originally written in English.
Which brings us back to that "International" Literature Prize I wrote about on Wednesday...
Thanks to Harvey Morell for sending me the link. I'll just go and drink some bleach now.
Except no! I won't! Because Stuart Evers has a cheerful (really) article in The Guardian about my friends at And Other Stories, a "radical and community-based initiative, focusing on promoting great writing in translation".
Evers writes:
But can it really work? I would say yes. The whole operation seems carefully planned, well thought-out and radical not so much because of the involvement of reading groups, but in its acceptance of the reality of literary publishing. And Other Stories fully accepts that what they do is not just niche – it's a niche within a niche within a niche. The size of the opportunity for sales is tiny; tiny that is unless you know who you are selling to.
Hooray!? I've put the Domestos back under the sink.
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
And Other Stories Wins Funding
And more good news - not quite up on their website, but there's a press release out there somewhere.
The fantastic and fantastically different publishing/reading/general wonderfulness project And Other Stories has received the OK for Arts Council funding. That means they can publish four translated books in 2011! As Maureen Freely puts it:
Most reading groups tackle only the most middle of the middlebrow fiction out there – and publishers tend to follow - whereas this kind of network can and will tackle challenging and unusual literature from all kinds of writers.
I'm so, so pleased for them - I've been following And Other Stories very closely but at a distance imposed by geography, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the project develops now that it's finally "real".
Congratulations, Stefan!
The fantastic and fantastically different publishing/reading/general wonderfulness project And Other Stories has received the OK for Arts Council funding. That means they can publish four translated books in 2011! As Maureen Freely puts it:
Most reading groups tackle only the most middle of the middlebrow fiction out there – and publishers tend to follow - whereas this kind of network can and will tackle challenging and unusual literature from all kinds of writers.
I'm so, so pleased for them - I've been following And Other Stories very closely but at a distance imposed by geography, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the project develops now that it's finally "real".
Congratulations, Stefan!
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
Get Into And Other Stories
I've mentioned in the past that a select group of British book lovers and translators is in the process of setting up a not-for-profit publishing house showcasing international fiction. The project now has a name - And Other Stories - and is already launching into discussion of what books to translate.
And you too can join in. Yes, you - provided you read German, Spanish and/or Portuguese. You don't even have to be in any particular country. They've set up three discussion groups on LibraryThing, for Portuguese books, Spanish books and of course German books, looking at titles by Anne Weber, Gabriele Petricek, Susann Pásztor and Katharina Hacker for the time being. The idea, I believe, is to single out the best ones to actually publish in English. Now how exciting is that?
Watch this space for more breaking news.
And you too can join in. Yes, you - provided you read German, Spanish and/or Portuguese. You don't even have to be in any particular country. They've set up three discussion groups on LibraryThing, for Portuguese books, Spanish books and of course German books, looking at titles by Anne Weber, Gabriele Petricek, Susann Pásztor and Katharina Hacker for the time being. The idea, I believe, is to single out the best ones to actually publish in English. Now how exciting is that?
Watch this space for more breaking news.
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