Category Archives: Post-world

Conversations with translators: Sarah Ardizzone

September 10, 2021 By in Events, Post-world Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

For the last few years, I’ve had the pleasure of being an interviewer for the ‘Writers Aloud’ podcast produced by the Royal Literary Fund. This has given me the opportunity to go and record conversations with a range of the fascinating biographers, poets, non-fiction writers, novelists and playwrights who have held RLF fellowships.

The latest interview to be released was particularly special for me: I have wanted to meet Sarah Ardizzone since I read Just Like Tomorrow, her translation of Faïza Guène’s Kiffe kiffe demain, as my choice for France back in 2012. A translator with an impressive track record of bringing stories outside the mainstream of French literature into English, Ardizzone inspires me with her longstanding commitment to amplifying underrepresented voices and broadening the range of Francophone works available to anglophone readers. (Her translation of Bessora & Barroux’s graphic novel, Alpha: Abidjan to Garde du Nord, a Book of the month of mine back in 2019, is a great example of this.)

Released in two parts, the conversation on the podcast covers a lot of ground. The first episode focuses on the challenge of finding equivalencies for slang and dialect, the lengths Ardizzone went to in bringing Guène’s work into English and the responsibilities that come with working with literature from traditionally marginalised communities. I was particularly interested to hear about the concept of ‘dosage’ – the level of idiomatic language a writer chooses to include in their work – and the loaded significance of the double ‘f’ in Kiffe kiffe demain.

The second part draws on Ardizzone’s experiences studying with the world-renowned French acting movement coach Jacques Lecoq at his eponymous Paris theatre school and explores how performance feeds into her translations. It also touches on how a shift in the way publishers handle markers of difference on the page may reveal a greater acceptance of diversity in storytelling and the ongoing need for challenging those in positions of power to rethink rules.

The timing of the podcasts’ release is serendipitous too: it comes just ahead of the publication by Cassava Republic of Ardizzone’s translation of Faïza Guène’s latest book to come into English, Men Don’t Cry, on October 12, 2021. Judging by Guène and Ardizzone’s past work, it will be a compelling and necessary read.

If you get a chance to read the book or listen to the interview, I’d love to know what you think!

Book of the month: Patrícia Melo

August 31, 2021 By in Book of the month, Post-world, South America, The stories Tags: , , , , , , , 7 Comments

This #WITMonth, my reading has had a particular flavour. In October, I’ll be the inaugural Literary Explorer in Residence at the Cheltenham Literature Festival (theme: ‘Read the World’). One of the events I’ll be involved in is chairing a discussion about ‘Crime Fiction Around the World’ between celebrated writers Ragnar Jónasson, Mark Sanderson and Manjiri Prabhu.

As a result, I’ve been using the summer holiday to catch up on some of the world’s most intriguing who/how/whydunnits, with the help of recommendations gleaned from social media and more knowledgeable bloggers in this field, among them Marina Sofia, a contributor to Crime Fiction Lover and one of the driving forces behind Corylus Books. Female-authored highlights from recent weeks include: The Aosawa Murders by Ritu Onda, translated by Alison Watts, and Divorce Turkish Style by Esmahan Aykol, translated by Ruth Whitehouse.

For me, one of the fascinating things about crime stories that travel is the contrasting ways that regional norms around criminality, detection and punishment shape page-turners based on concepts of right and wrong. A murder mystery set in a country with the death penalty may land awkwardly for readers unused to the idea of criminals being executed; an investigation proceeding in a city where limitations on resources or infrastructure mean that the sort of forensic techniques commonly available in the global North are off-limits presents an author with contrasting choices to those confronting, say, Jo Nesbø. Meanwhile, varied conventions around interrogation practices and the handling of evidence may mean that the unravelling of a particular crime has the potential to play out rather differently depending on where it takes place and who is telling the story.

Bestselling Brazilian author Patrícia Melo embraces this issue in The Body Snatcher, translated by Clifford Landers. Presenting a narrator-protagonist who considers himself morally ‘neutral, to tell the truth’ and is well aware that ‘we’re not in Sweden, the police here are corrupt’, she unravels the mystery not of how a crime is solved but how it is committed and the ways a human mind must contort itself in order to do and try to get away with despicable things.

The premise is outlandish: out fishing one day in rural Corumbá, near the Bolivian border, the cash-strapped narrator witnesses a fatal light-aircraft crash. Discovering that the pilot is the son of one of the region’s wealthiest families and that his backpack contains a large packet of cocaine, he hits on the idea of selling the drugs and ultimately extorting money from the dead man’s parents as they grow desperate to recover their son’s body. What follows is a deft, fast-moving story full of twists and surprises.

Melo and Landers’ writing carries the day. While some of the set up and events, particularly in the early part of the story, would probably feel a little heavy-handed or convenient in another author’s hands (the protagonist wangling a job as the wealthy family’s chauffeur, for example, or his girlfriend having recently started working at the mortuary), this novel sweeps us over bumps in the road with an engaging, witty and beguiling narrative voice that can’t help but fascinate. Reading it is like watching a high-wire act – part of the enjoyment comes from the knowledge that the performer could tumble and seeing the flare and skill with which Melo dodges one pitfall after another.

Spare rather than bald, the writing bristles with beautifully succinct descriptions and observations. Consider this depiction of the pilot’s mother ‘being eaten alive by the worms of [her] son’s death’:

‘Every day there was a new health problem, a neck pain, another in the temples, in the neck and temples at the same time, her arms numb, tingling in the legs, tachycardia, vomiting, always some new symptom. And new doctors. If Junior were to appear, even dead, I knew the illness would go away. The same thing happened with my mother. At first the sickness is just a fiction, a kind of blackmail the body uses against the mind, and then, over time, it becomes a true cancer.’

These insights into human psychology are one of the keys to the novel’s success. With an uncanny sense of how the mind moves, Melo is careful to sweep us along in the currents of her narrator’s obsession. Starting with the revelation of a few shabby but relatable traits in her narrator – drawing comfort from disaster headlines because of the satisfaction of being outside the events, for example – she brings us along on his journey towards the unforgiveable, taking us through the loops of rationalisation and justification by which almost any act can be made acceptable to the doer.

Except that in the world Melo presents, the acts are not quite as unforgiveable as they might appear in some other places. With corruption revealed at every turn – indeed, with double-dealing repeatedly offered as the only way to afford a decent standard of living – the moral compass swings increasingly wildly as we journey through the book. By the end, the question is not so much whether the protagonist will be found out but whether we would want him to be. What makes this novel great is that rather than leave us on the outside, looking at the conundrum through the prism of our own society’s conventions about law enforcement and justice, it draws us into its centre, filling us with the same doubts and contradictions that besiege its characters.

A novel about a plane crash leading to an extortion attempt set in the British countryside might take very different twists and turns. And that’s precisely the point. This is a story that is the product both of its characters and of the world in which it takes place. In great writing, the two are inextricable.

The Body Snatcher (Ladrão de cadáveres) by Patrícia Melo, translated from the Portuguese by Clifford E. Landers (Bitter Lemon Press, 2015)

Picture: ‘Pantanal, Corumbá/MS’ by Coordenação-Geral de Observação da Terra/INPE on flickr.com

The genrefication of national literatures

February 15, 2021 By in Post-world Tags: , , , , , , , 11 Comments

A few weeks ago, the tweet above caught my eye. It made me laugh, but it also captured something that has been playing on my mind in recent months: the tendency of English-language publishers to make national literatures genres in their own right.

The pattern tends to go like this: a writer from a particular nation, such as Japan’s Haruki Murakami, becomes a hit in English; other publishers, keen to capitalise on this success, seek out comparable writers and publish them with strong signposting that their work is like the bestseller (or simply get designers to work in the national flag on the cover, as above!); over time, that style of writing becomes synonymous with literature from its home nation. Books in that particular mould cease to represent one of many varieties of work from the country in question and instead come to exemplify its stories in the minds of anglophone readers. We think we know what characterises Japanese literature, when in fact we know only books similar to those that have proved pleasing to English speakers in the past.

In many ways, this model is unsurprising. Long before Amazon’s ‘Books you may like’ bar, booksellers and publishers favoured a ‘like with like’ approach when it came to convincing readers to try new things. Novels by debut English-language authors have long been published with stickers comparing them to and blurbs from authors of similar works. Haunting the aisles of Brent Cross Shopping Centre’s WHSmith in the 1990s, my pocket money clutched in my sweaty palm, my child self would frequently succumb to the logic that I was likely to like a novel because I had liked something like it before.

When this sales technique is applied too aggressively to translated literature, however, it becomes problematic. Just as labels such as ‘women’s fiction’ can be reductive, so using national affiliations in this way can be harmful. Not only does it run the risk of conflating the popular style of writing with the nation’s literature in the minds of many readers (making Argentinian literature synonymous with the fabulous fevered fantasies of Samantha Schweblin, for example), but it also risks reducing the chances of books that do not conform to the anglophone world’s idea of a nation’s literature finding an audience in the world’s most-published language. This is perhaps particularly the case for countries with relatively few books in translation, whose national reputation may rest on a handful of titles.

Taken to extremes, using nationality as a marketing tool narrows, rather than broadens, readers’ access to the world’s stories. Perhaps most worryingly, it does so almost imperceptibly – flattering readers that they are making adventurous choices, while peddling (often excellent) novels that are in fact broadly similar to what has worked in English before.

Meanwhile, the books that do not reflect these trends remain largely untranslated and invisible to readers who they might, given the chance, really transport.

Rethinking translation: The Multilingual London Festival

December 14, 2020 By in Events, Post-world Tags: , , , , , 6 Comments

From the moment I set myself the goal of reading a book from every country in a year back in late 2011, this project has challenged what I thought I knew. From the question of how many countries there are in the world, to the issue of what makes a book ‘from’ a particular nation, I have repeatedly found myself obliged to question and rethink my assumptions.

Apparently clear distinctions break down when you view them through a global lens. Factual writing blurs with fiction; genre boundaries warp and snap. Even the notions of what storytelling is for and what counts as a book prove flimsy and unreliable in the face of traditions and publishing processes that operate differently to those we are used to in the anglophone world.

A few weeks ago, another distinction that I had imagined was clear-cut crumbled before my eyes. I have long held great admiration for translators. In my book, Reading the World, after considering the many images often used to try to encapsulate what practitioners do when they move a story from one language to another, I reached the conclusion that reading a translation was akin to borrowing another person’s eyes. That person, I felt, should be credited as co-creator of the work – something that the #namethetranslator campaign has done a lot to encourage. Still, it had never occurred to me to question whether the boundary between translated and non-translated might itself be permeable.

That changed when I attended the Multilingual London Festival, a collaboration between SOAS University of London and the Museum of London and part of the ‘Multilingual locals, significant geographies: a new approach to world literature’ project. Celebrating the fact that the UK capital is home to more than 300 languages, the online event featured conversations between multilingual, London-based writers such as Aida Eidemariam, Selma Dabbagh and Aamer Hussein, as well as readings in a range of tongues from poets including Caasha Luul Mohamud, Nada Menzalji and Jennifer Wong.

Speaking to a shifting gallery of Zoom audience members (who numbered around 80 at any given time during the two hours I was logged on), the speakers in the first session shared insights into their process and the way their multilingualism had informed, challenged and enriched their writing. ‘Language is always a political issue,’ said Shazaf Fatima Haider, describing how her novel, How it Happened, became a place to lay to rest the tension she’d experienced between Urdu and English growing up in Pakistan.

Using the textures of spoken Urdu, she had embarked on a process of ‘Urduisation’ of English that helped her to reconcile the languages and the power imbalance they represented. Nevertheless, this fusion was not without its critics – ‘you’ve destroyed English,’ one relative told her when he read the book.

In response, Ethiopian-Canadian Eidemariam talked us through the labyrinth she had to negotiate in order to plait together Amharic and English in her award-winning memoir about her Ethiopian grandmother, The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History. It was, she explained, a process of challenging her own assumptions and looking for resonances between the two traditions – a process in which the linguistic cultures’ shared biblical roots proved invaluable. Often, things turned out to have rather different meanings than their surface translations might suggest. The Amharic term that translates literally as ‘breast mother’, for example, signifies a patron rather than a maternal figure – something that caused a degree of confusion in the research process.

Both writers had to decide the level of Amharic and Urdu that a non-speaker could cope with in the nominally English text. With some publishers being rather conservative about the level of foreignness they believe readers will tolerate, this was not easy. In the end, however, they arrived at similar conclusions. Although she accepted having a glossary, Eidemariam decided to ‘push back against the need to explain’ and trust the context of the story to supply the understanding readers needed. Shafaz, meanwhile, took the decision to ‘write for the people in the know’ because ‘they are the ones who will notice’.

I found these insights particularly illuminating, as they chimed with certain decisions I’d been making about technical language in what I hope will be my next novel. While the terms I was working with were not from a foreign language, they were nevertheless from a linguistic sphere that may be unfamiliar to many general readers. Like Eidemariam and Shafaz, I had opted to write for those in the know, trusting the context to supply the sense.

On that basis, although I was moving between registers and they were moving between languages, we three writers were doing similar kinds of work – using language to bridge gaps and translate experience between different groups of people. Perhaps instead of being a binary concept, translation (much like memoir and fiction) was more of a sliding scale, moving from books in their original languages, through books infused with the rhythms and terms of other worlds and tongues, then works in fusion languages such as Spanglish and Hinglish, to volumes in which the words were written by someone other than the original author in order to make them intelligible to a fresh audience.

Once again, the concepts I thought I understood were shifting and remaking themselves before my eyes. After nearly nine years of international literary exploration, I still had so much to learn.

Picture: ‘London 11-08-2012‘ by Karen Roe on flickr.com

World kid lit month

September 7, 2020 By in Events, Post-world Tags: , , , , , 6 Comments

I often get messages from parents and teachers asking for suggestions of translated books for younger readers. As my original reading the world quest and subsequent eight years of international literary exploration have focused almost entirely on adult books (with Dominica, Samoa and one of my Chinese books of the month being rare exceptions), I can rarely do more than point people in the direction of a few useful websites and resources.

However, there are plenty of adventurous readers with lots to say on this subject, as I discovered earlier this summer when I tweeted asking for details of translated books I could buy my daughter for her third birthday. A lot of excellent recommendations flooded in, chief among them, a thread of suggestions from translator Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp. Ruth is co-editor of the World Kid Lit blog. Check it out for lots of great recommendations and ways you can get involved, including #WorldKidLitMonth, which takes place every September (and was founded by Marcia Lynx Qualey, Alexandra Büchler and Lawrence Schimel).*

My daughter and I have had great fun trying out many of the suggestions and so, in celebration of this year’s #WorldKidLitMonth, I wanted to share three titles that have become firm favourites in our house.

Valdemar’s Peas

This was a hit from the moment it dropped onto the doormat. ‘Again!’ came the call after the first reading. ‘Again!’ was the command after the second. And so on. It’s easy to see why: centring on a battle over eating vegetables and sibling rivalry, this wittily illustrated story is instantly relatable for toddlers. Unlike many comparable English-language titles, however, this one resists the temptation to take a preachy tone and drive towards an ending in which Valdemar learns why it is important to eat peas. Instead, there is a lovely irreverence to the way the story plays out that allows both reader and listener to revel in naughtiness. Somewhat counter-intuitively, it seems to have increased my daughter’s interest in peas. ‘I’m having peas like Valdemar!’ she told me a few days after the book arrived, cheerfully scooping handfuls into her mouth.

Valdemar’s Peas by Maria Jönsson, translated from the Swedish by Julia Marshall (Gecko Press, 2018)

Oscar Seeks a Friend

This book puts a fresh spin on a common theme in books for little people: the quest for someone to play with. This time, the character in need of companionship is a skeleton thrown into a panic when one of his teeth falls out, disfiguring him for good. When he tries to bargain with a little girl who has just lost one of her milk teeth, a surprising and rather touching adventure ensues. Author-illustrator Paweł Pawlak’s collage-like illustrations absolutely make this book, with comedy, curiosity and talking points on every page (ever wondered what a skeleton would look like riding a penny-farthing?).

Oscar Seeks a Friend by Paweł Pawlak, translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Lantana Publishing, 2019)

My Pictures After the Storm

It’s often said that humour is one of the hardest things to translate. Yet this doesn’t seem to have been a problem for translator Daniel Hahn with this wonderful picture-story book. A lot of the comedy is in the illustrations (which include witty before-and-after depictions of lunch, the arrival of a baby sister and a swimming trip), but there is some sparkling word-play too, which means this book offers something for readers of a wide range of linguistic capability to enjoy. As with Valdemar’s Peas, there is a lovely irreverence to a lot of the sections (witness the boiled spinach – the only item left untouched after lunch). It’s also a great one for aspiring readers to spend time looking through on their own.

My Pictures After the Storm by Éric Veillé, translated from the French by Daniel Hahn (Gecko Press, 2017)

* Changed to give the correct names of the founders of #Worldkidlitmonth.

A literary explorer’s guide to blogging

March 26, 2020 By in Post-world Tags: , , , , 125 Comments

In October 2011, I registered the domain name ayearofreadingtheworld.com and started this blog. I didn’t know it then, but the website would change my life.

The original quest to read a book from every country in the world in a year turned out to be mind-blowing in ways I’d never anticipated: it reconfigured my imagination, reading and writing, and brought me into contact with authors, translators and readers around the globe. What’s more, the international following this blog received initiated a stream of thrilling invitations and opportunities that continues to this day.

Highlights from the past eight years include speaking at TED Global and the launch of my career as a published author, now with three books to my name.

With much of the world on lockdown for the foreseeable future as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, it strikes me that many people might use the time at home to start a blog. As such, I thought I’d share some tips gleaned from my experience. Feel free to add yours at the end!

  • Choose an obvious name It can be tempting to be funny or clever with website titles. That’s fine if you’re setting up something just for yourself, but if you want to create a site that will appeal to a broad range of people, you need to make sure that no-one feels excluded by in-jokes that don’t translate. A simple, clear name that gives some idea of what your blog’s about is good. It also means that if someone searches for your subject area, your site will have a chance of featuring in the results.
  • Be specific There are hundreds of millions of blogs out there and an awful lot of them are brain dumps. Again, that’s fine if you’re just looking to make a site for your amusement (and of course there are some blogs like this that draw huge numbers of readers), but if you’re keen to develop something with greater reach, this approach will make it harder for your website to find an audience, at least at first. A better strategy is to pick a specific interest, goal, or issue and focus on that. You can always broaden out further down the line.
  • Keep it simple It’s possible to spend hours and a lot of money on designing your blog (and most platforms offer technical guides and support with using their tools – also, often, for a fee). However, my advice would be to avoid unnecessary embellishments – at least until you have more of an idea of whether blogging is going to become a habit. Select a basic template and start drafting your first post. Use (properly credited) pictures to illustrate your posts if you have them, but don’t worry about sticking to text if no obvious illustrations suggest themselves. If you want, you can add more images and upgrade the site once you’ve got a better idea of what works and how people use it.
  • Start small When you launch a blog, it can be tempting to contact everyone you know and tell them to check it out immediately. Indeed, this is what I did when I published my first AYORTW post in October 2011. If you’re not launching a project that needs participation, however, try to resist this urge, at least for a few days. Even if your subject matter and approach is clear in your mind, it’s likely that it will take a little time for the tone and format to settle. Be prepared for a few lonely days when you hardly get any clicks and make getting some good, consistent posts in place your first focus, so that, when the readers do flood in, they’ll have plenty of great content to enjoy.
  • Be boundaried Think carefully about how much of your information you want to give away on your blog. If you’re writing about sensitive or personal subjects, you might want to consider anonymising references to the people in your life or even giving yourself a pseudonym. One of the earliest ever blooks (blogs-turned-into-books), the now-defunct Diary of a London Call Girl, took this approach with great success.
  • Keep it accessible The language of the internet is informal and conversational. If your blog takes off, it will get readers from around the world, many of whom may not speak fluent English. As a result, it’s best to avoid unnecessarily complicated expressions and to explain references that may not be obvious to everyone.
  • Edit obsessively Conversational does not mean sloppy. The best writing often reads simply but communicates complex ideas. It has precision and power. In most cases, this comes from painstaking reworking. I’m a big fan of reading aloud. Once I have a complete draft of a post, I always read the whole thing out. It’s amazing what your ear catches.
  • Credit borrowed content properly Lots of people don’t do it, but I think it’s important to credit any images or other elements you use that are still in copyright and weren’t created by you. (You should also make sure that the picture in question has an appropriate Creative Commons licence, which you can filter for on photo sites such as flickr.com.)
  • Be kind to yourself Even with meticulous editing, reading aloud and double-checking, you are going to make mistakes. In my time, I have published posts about the non-existent countries of Dijibouti and Cormoros. I have misspelled writers’ names and made countless other slips. It feels awful when you realise you’ve messed up like this (and, if you’re unlucky, someone out there will leap on it as an opportunity to give you a good kicking). But try not to worry about it. As my time sub-editing for newspapers and magazines has taught me, not even the best writers are immune to bloopers. And at least with a blog, you have the opportunity to correct your mistakes after you’ve hit ‘Publish’.
  • Have a policy on changing published posts One of the lovely things about blogging is that it is an extremely forgiving medium. If you spot a typo or a missing word once a post goes live, it is easy to fix the mistake. I don’t think there’s any issue with correcting technical slips like this. The journalist in me, however, does have a bit of a problem with changing the argument or factual written content of posts after publication without being clear about what you’ve done. I think we bloggers have a duty to be transparent about what we publish and so, if I have to alter the content of something I’ve written after I have pushed it live, I will add a note explaining what I have changed. An example is the entry I wrote describing how I decided which countries my year of reading the world would involve: midway through 2012, I altered the list to include Palestine, so I changed the post accordingly and added a sentence in bold at the end to explain this.
  • Accept that not everyone will like your stuff I’ve been incredibly lucky that almost every interaction I’ve  had as a result of this project has been positive. All the same, it’s inevitable that when you put yourself out there in the way blogging requires, some people won’t like it. When you get unpleasant feedback, bear in mind that some of it will be valid (and will give you an opportunity to improve what you do). Some of it, however, will say more about the person who wrote the comment than about your blog. It might take a while to work out which category applies, so resist the urge to fire off a barbed response until you’ve had a bit of time to process what you’d like to say. If nothing else, a nasty comment is evidence that what you’ve written has made an impact.
  • Feel free to ignore me It’s your project, after all. The joy of a blog is that it’s your own free space to do with as you wish. Who am I to tell you how to arrange yours?
  • Have fun If this blogging thing takes off, you could be doing it for a long time, so you might as well enjoy it!

I’m trying to take my own advice at the moment because, nearly nine years since I launched this site, I have just started a new blog project. It’s still at a very early stage and I’ve no idea how it will develop, but if you’d like to take a look, I’d be delighted to know what you think.

A library visit

January 15, 2020 By in Events, Post-world Tags: , , , , , 4 Comments

Libraries have been going through a tough time in the UK in recent years. In the last decade, more than 700 have closed, with scores of others under threat because of funding cuts. As I write, a high-profile, author-led campaign is under way to fight plans to shut 14 libraries in Hampshire, the county in which Jane Austen was born and lived for most of her life.

Many people have written much more eloquently than I could about why places where people can gather to access books for free are vital. Their role in stretching the human imagination and changing lives is a recurring theme in stories around the planet. From Roald Dahl’s Matilda to Tayeb Salih’s Mustafa Sa’eed, literature abounds with characters shaped by hours spent in public spaces lined with books.

However, this week, I got a powerful, practical reminder of why these places matter when I took up an invitation to speak to Sandgate library book club.

The only library in Kent to be managed by a parish council on behalf of the county council, Sandgate library sits a street away from the English Channel on the UK’s south coast. It is run by a mixture of paid staff and volunteers who make it possible to offer longer opening hours and a regular programme of events.

Chief among the volunteers is retired teacher Liz, who I know from the regular Read and Rhyme sessions my daughter and I have attended. Liz also runs the book club and, when she discovered I was a writer, she very kindly put my novel Beside Myself on the schedule and invited me along some months later to talk to the group.

I arrived a little early to find the members – all women and most retired – engaged in a lively discussion of their latest read, which the librarian had ordered in from libraries across the county to ensure that everyone had a copy.

Each took it in turns to share her assessment, finishing with a mark out of ten that averaged out to around 5. (I resisted the temptation to ask what Beside Myself had scored when it was up for discussion some months before.)

The comments were refreshingly frank. Although the novel under examination was by a celebrated household name, the members – quite rightly – had no compunction in calling out passages that had bored, irritated or baffled them, alongside sharing the aspects they had enjoyed.

After this, it was my turn. Following an introduction from Liz, I launched into an informal talk about my year of reading the world and novel writing, answering questions as they arose. The discussion was warm and friendly. We covered some familiar ground, including several of the topics listed in the FAQs on this site, as well as some more unusual queries to do with the writing process – I don’t think I’ve ever been asked how to turn a school essay into a novel before!

The hour was up in no time. Before I knew it, a get-well-soon card for an absent member was circulating for people to sign, and we were shrugging on our coats and saying our goodbyes.

What lasted much longer – and will no doubt outlive the beautiful bunch of flowers the book club gave me as a thank you for my visit – was the sense of welcome that surrounded the library. A thriving centre for friendship, shared interests and fun in this little village on the edge of the land. A precious community built around books.

Meeting Siphiwo Mahala

January 8, 2020 By in Post-world Tags: , , , , , 4 Comments

The first full week of the new decade brought a treat for me: a chance to meet Siphiwo Mahala, author of the short-story collection African Delights, which was my South African pick during my 2012 year of reading the world.

Mahala was in London to interview one of a handful of surviving friends and associates of the dissident writer Can Themba, who died in the late 1960s. Having written his doctorate on Themba’s work, Mahala is now preparing a biography of the great man – the first of its kind.

We walked to Waterstones bookshop in Gower Street. On the way, I pointed out the University of London’s Senate House Library, where I did a lot of research for my book Reading the World (called The World Between Two Covers in the US), and Mahala told me about his research into Themba, which had thrown up some fascinating stories about mixed-race relationships that flouted South Africa’s former morality laws.

This put me in mind of Born a Crime, Trevor Noah’s brilliant account of growing up with mixed parentage under Apartheid. When I mentioned it, I was thrilled to find that Noah is an old friend of Mahala’s – yet another reminder of the web of connections that books spin between readers and writers around the world.

Over frothy coffee in the bookshop’s café, Mahala filled me in on his writing over the past eight years. He’s been busy. Despite working full-time for the government and completing his doctoral thesis, he has found time to write a play, The House of Truth. Also based on Themba’s life, it was a run-away success when it opened in South Africa in 2016 and is now being developed into a film.

Meanwhile, he has continued to work on short-form fiction. Last year, he published Red Apple Dreams & Other Stories, a collection combining some of his favourite pieces from African Delights with new work. He’d generously brought a copy for me, in which he wrote a beautiful dedication, and he is keen to find a European outlet for his work. Publishers, take note!

However, Mahala’s enthusiasm really caught fire when I asked him for recommendations of other contemporary South African writers whose work I should explore. Seizing my notebook, he quickly filled a page with a list of the following names: Zakes Mda, Masande Ntshanga, Nthikeng Mohlele, Thando Mgqolozana, Cynthia Jele, Angela Makholwa, Zukiswa Wanner, Mohale Mashigo, Niq Mhlongo and Fred Khumalo.

Always intrigued to test bookshops’ international mettle, I proposed that we see if we could find them on the shelves. The results were disappointing, although, to her credit, the bookseller who helped us did suggest a novel by another young South African writer in the absence of any of Mahala’s picks. This was Evening Primrose by Kopano Matlwa.

The suggestion flummoxed Mahala at first. Although he knew of the author, he had not heard of this book. In the end, however, he solved the mystery – in South Africa, the novel had been published with a much more direct title: Period Pain.

Although none of Mahala’s suggestions were readily available, I did spot a familiar name during our search. Tucked amid the Ms was a copy of my debut novel, Beside Myself. I bought this as a gift for Mahala and we persuaded another member of staff to snap the picture at the start of this post: two authors brought together across thousands of miles, holding each other’s stories.

Sourcing translated audiobooks

December 11, 2019 By in Post-world Tags: , , , , , 7 Comments

Last week, Julia left a comment on the List. She is an audiobook listener who is struggling to find recordings of stories from beyond the anglophone mainstream. She wondered if I had any suggestions.

The message got me thinking. I’m a fan of audiobooks. What’s more, having narrated the audio version of The World Between Two Covers myself and published my latest novel as an Audible Exclusive (narrated by the wonderful Adjoa Andoh), I know what great ways they can be of reaching audiences. In some cases, such as Trevor Noah’s brilliant narration of his memoir Born a Crime or the Naxos recording of Ulysses that was my Irish choice during my 2012 Year of Reading the World, audio versions can even bring added layers to a text, allowing listeners to experience accents, rhythms, nuances and occasionally additional material that they wouldn’t get from a printed version.

However, enthusiastic world-reader though I am, my knowledge of the translated audio market is fairly limited. I tend to listen to books when I drive, walk or run – activities that often require me to divert my attention away from the narrative for practical reasons. As such, I favour non-fiction and plot-driven books for listening and tend to tackle more demanding literary works that require unbroken attention with my eyes.

Realising this blindspot – or deaf spot – in my knowledge, I did what this blog has taught me to do when confronted with my own ignorance. I asked fellow readers and booklovers for help.

The recommendations came in thick and fast. I have listed some of the most useful below but I get the feeling this is the tip of the iceberg, so do feel free to share more ideas in the comments.

  • Several people told me about some of their favourite translated titles available through big commercial audio producers such as Audible and Downpour. These included the work of bestselling Turkish novelist Elif Shafak, and Nobel laureates Svetlana Alexievich and Olga Tokarczuk.
  • Others named publishers who offer audioversions of their translated titles, including Orenda Books, which published my most recent Book of the month selection, Bitter Lemon Press and Harper Voyager.
  • For those worried about the impact of audio sales on print book sellers, @Glenwood607 and @getrochelle put me onto the trail of Libro.fm, a fabulous-sounding initiative that allows you to buy audiobooks through your local independent bookshop.
  • Meanwhile, those keen to listen to Chinese literature might want to keep an eye on recently established Silk Gaze Audio. There are only a handful of titles available on the site as yet, but it sounds as though producer Nicola Clayton will be working to bring out more editions in the coming months. Thanks to @TranslatedWorld for tipping me off about this.

I’m sure there are plenty of other great options out there, but I hope the above will give Julia and anyone else who’s interested in listening more widely some places to start.

As for me, I’ve been given plenty of food thought. Hmmn, perhaps some of 2020’s Books of the month should be listens…

Picture: ‘Listen’ by Ky on Flickr.com

Book of the month: Juan Marsé

September 30, 2019 By in Book of the month, Europe, Post-world Tags: , , , , , , 3 Comments

I love meeting translators. Having built their careers around enabling people to access the work of other writers – lending readers their eyes, as I describe it in my book Reading the World – they are often very generous, knowledgeable and fascinating.

Nick Caistor is a case in point. With a string of famous works to his name, including novels by Paulo Coehlo, José Saramago and Dominique Sylvain, this three-time Premio-Valle-Inclán-winner and former BBC World Service Latin America editor is a mine of insights and stories. When I met him to record a (yet-to-be-released) podcast for the Royal Literary Fund this month, we had a wonderful discussion about the frustrations and joys of helping literature to travel, topped off by a delicious lunch from a Brazilian stall on the street market near his London flat.

Caistor’s kindness didn’t end there. A few days later, a package dropped onto my doormat: his recent translation of Spanish Cervantes prize-winner Juan Marsé’s Esa puta tan distinguida (or The Snares of Memory, as Caistor has rendered it in English).

The premise is intriguing. In 1980s Barcelona, a writer is hired to create a film script based around the murder of a prostitute in a cinema projection booth more than thirty years before. In his efforts to achieve authenticity, the writer seeks out the convicted murderer, one Fermín Sicart, and, over the course of a series of taped discussions, attempts to get to the bottom of the crime. There is a problem, however. Though Sicart accepts his guilt, he cannot recall why he killed his victim. As the writer tries to grope his way towards an understanding of his subject, he is forced to interrogate his own motives and methods for translating this gruesome episode to the silver screen.

The book is surprisingly funny. Helped along by abrupt shifts in register that reliably undercut the writer’s loftier reflections, a strong current of bathos and formidable housekeeper Felisa, who has no compunction about interrupting the narrator’s work to harangue him about his unhealthy habits, offer her opinions or subject him to another of her ‘riddles’ taken from classic films, the narrative is extremely entertaining.

This is nowhere more true than during the passages in which the writer reflects on the difficulties and compromises of the creative process. For a fellow novelist, the section describing five hours spent crossing out sentences in a handful of barely legible pages is particularly enjoyable (not to say reassuring!). There is also a lot of fun in the passages that skewer the Spanish film industry. Beholden to politics and funding issues, the project lurches from one director and producer to another, morphing dramatically with each shift so that the writer is constantly obliged to reframe his vision in light of considerations that have nothing to do with the quality of the work.

The humour in no way detracts from the rigour and beauty of the prose, however. Indeed, Marsé and Caistor’s descriptions of writing and the mechanisms of self-censorship are among the most memorable I’ve read. In showing how ‘the story came to me from an undeniable personal tragedy, but was also rooted in the fraught memory of the dark days of the dictatorship, the resentment, humiliation, pain and desire for revenge that still persisted in many different guises in the collective subconscious’, the narrative makes the particular universal – one of the hallmarks of great literature.

Rather than getting in the way, the human elements of the story – the writer’s fretting about money, Sicart’s flashes of forgetfulness, and Felisa’s complaints about clearing up cigarette butts – elevate the work. They imbue the novel with life, allowing us to experience the emotional reality of the ideas it explores rather than simply presenting them on the page, while the intrigue of the plot draws us on.

‘Haven’t I told you a thousand times that the black or noir novel as they call it in French is the best way to investigate social conflicts, explore the human condition, to denounce implacably the injustices and corruption of our society?’ remarks an incidental character in a doctor’s waiting room midway through the book. In Marsé’s hands, this is certainly true.

The Snares of Memory (Esa puta tan distinguida) by Juan Marsé, translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor (MacLehose Press, 2019)