Supported Titles

Writers in Translation has now supported a total of twenty titles:

 

Putin's Russia by Anna Politkovskaya

A devastating appraisal of the policies of Russia's head of state by that country's leading radical journalist. Putin's Russia was the first book supported by English PEN's Writers in Translation programme. Anna Politkovskaya visited Britain when the book was published and English PEN members were impressed by her zest for life and will to seek out the truth. English PEN was extremely shocked and saddened when the news of Anna's assassination reached us. We will always remember her dedication to free expression.

 

Into the Quick of Life by Jean Hatzfeld

Of all ages, and all walks of life - from orphan teenage farmers to the local social worker - fourteen survivors talk of the Rwandan genocide, and the deaths of their family and friends in the church and the marshes of Bugesera to which they fled. These horrific accounts of humanity on the brink contrast with Hatzfeld's sensitive and vivid descriptions of Rwanda's villages and countryside in peacetime.

 

The Ministry of Pain by Dubravka Ugresic

Amid the tense political climate of the war crime trials at the Hague, Dubravka Ugresic's novel describes a growing attraction between the ex-Yugoslav tutor Tanja and her student Igor, an attraction in part sexual and in part psychologically probing. Can future generations be spared the horror and suffering that these two have witnessed? In a sophisticated first-person narrative, Ugresic asks to what extent exiles can ever truly give voice to their feelings in any language.

 

Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury

A mosaic of personal stories that combine to form the story of Palestine from 1936 to the present day. Dr Khaleel Ayoub spatters out the plight of a group of Palestinians expelled from their homes in Galileein a long, jumpy monologue. His lament for the past is an attempt to revive his dying friend, Yunis, a hero of the Palestinian cause now plunged into a coma, who proves to be the central thread uniting these wide-ranging stories.

 

We are Iran by Nasrin Alavi

Nasrin Alavi uses blogs to paint this astonishing portrait of contemporary Iran in the multitudinous voice of its own people. This is not the Iran of bearded ayatollahs and thuggish militias, but a country that is highly educated, critical and politically sophisticated. The bloggers describe their conflicts with the law, the condition of women, their experiences of repression and subversion, encounters with the police and the media, and their love of fashion and romance.

 

The Silent Steppe by Mukhamet Shayakhmetov

The truth about the appalling suffering in Kazakhstan under the Soviet collectivization programme of the 1920s and 30s. In the years 1932-1934, well over one million Kazakhs died, largely of famine. This first-hand account, harrowing and disquieting in its unflinching attention to the day-to-day detail of this genocide, describes the unspeakable suffering of the peasants under the period of Soviet control. Mukhamet Shayakhmetov survived the most incredible deprivations in his childhood to bring an articulate voice to the Kazakh experience.

 

Heart of Fire by Senait Mehari

A personal memoir telling of one woman's life experiences. As a child in Eritrea, Senait Mehari saw the atrocities of war at first hand. After fleeing her homeland she wound up in Germany, where she was confronted by a completely new set of problems, that of a new language and cultural norms. Her book is not a work of history, but a personal account of the chain of events that took her from child soldier to soul singer.

 

Allah Is Not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma

Ahmadou Kouroma has built a reputation for himself as a writer who brings the problems and difficulties of life in Africa into sharp focus. His latest book deals with the issue of child soldiers in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Kouroma uses satire to lay bare the corruption of the regimes which allow and encourage the use of children in violent warfare, and is undaunted in his distinctively vehement convictions.

Being Arab by Samir Kassir

Clear and cogent, Samir Kassir's posthumously published book provides an important context for many of the issues facing the Arab world today. He set out to speak to both to an Arab and a Western audience. As one of the region's most prominent journalists, Kassir was acutely aware of the importance of a free press and humane discourse. He is widely mourned, and the fact of his murder demonstrates the power of his voice.

An Afghan Journey by Roger Willemsen

Roger Willemsen documents life in a tribal Afghanistan, away from the western media spotlight, shedding light on the divisions, unrest, poverty and humanity of a people who have been oppressed by a succession of foreign invaders and state theocracy. He talks of their hopes for freedom in a country racked by war, and the difficulties they are yet to encounter.

The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany

Time and again Alaa Al Aswany has been criticised for presuming to express opinions and create characters who call the country's political set-up into question, but he refuses to be silenced. The fact that The Yacoubian Building has been the bestselling book in the Arabic language for four years demonstrates how very essential Aswany's writing is.

Touba and the Meaning of Night by Sharnush Parsipur

From a distinctly Iranian viewpoint, Parsipur explores the ongoing tensions between rationalism and mysticism, tradition and modernity, male dominance and female will. Throughout the novel, the characters defy Western stereotypes of Iranian women and Western expectations of the Persian literary form, speaking in an idiom that reflects both the unique creative voice of its author and an important tradition in Persian women's writing.

 

The Loser by Fatos Kongoli

Fatos Kongoli is a classic example of a writer whose work was restricted by a totalitarian regime in eastern Europe. This novel is a moving portrayal of the suppression not just of art by a controlled press and other repressive state mechanisms, but of a whole people denied the freedom to express themselves individually, to circulate and discuss ideas about ways of living and thinking, and structures of society and government.

Set in 1991, when over 10,000 Albanian refugees escaped to southern Italy following the collapse of the Hoxa regime, Thesar Lumi, the 'loser', decides at the last minute to step off the boat and return to his family. Why?

 

State of Emergency by Soleïman Adel Guémar

The poems in this collection are lucid, moving and sometimes shocking. Rooted in the Algerian experience, they speak of urgent concerns everywhere: oppression, resistance, state violence and private dreams and traumas. This volume marks is a record from the inside of a history which is palpably of our times. Where before we had only newspaper headlines, stereotypical Algerians, or the dry, if conscientious, reports of NGOs, we now have a living voice, both political and lyrical - an intensely individual voice which speaks out freely and traces the lineaments of a tragic history.

 

One Soldier's War in Chechnya by Arkady Babchenko

Arkady Babchenko was still a naïve 18-year-old when he and his fellow teenage Russian Army conscripts arrived in a transit camp just north of Chechnya. Fresh off the truck, the new recruit learned the meaning of savagery and fear before he'd even been near the front line. By the time he started active service, he had been brutalised by the harsh treatments meted out by his seniors. With unblinking honesty, Babchenko traces his journey from innocence to experience, twisting the raw and mundane reality of war and into compelling, chilling - and eerily elegant - prose.

 

The Bridge over the Golden Horn by Emine Sevgi Özdamar

a coming of age novel, an account of an education, sentimental, political, theatrical, literary. A teenager, the (unnamed) heroine signs up as a Gastarbeiter in Germany. She leaves Istanbul and works on an assembly line in Berlin and lives in a factory hostel. But Özdamar's novel is no glum tract: it's a witty, picaresque account of a precocious teenager and young woman refusing to become wise, of hectic years lived between Berlin, Istanbul and Ankara. These are years of sometimes grim repression, particularly in Turkey, but also of a hope and optimism that seem almost unimaginable today. 

 

The Siege by Ismail Kadare

 

In a magical way that only great writers can achieve, Kadare's Turks are at one and the same time the image of what we are not, and a faithful representation of what we have become. This exotic tale, dealing with a far-off past, echoes with the clashes that burden us today, as we watch the mightiest army in the world hesitate between assault and retreat. Kadare's art is to imagine situations so precise and so awful as to recur again and again. Originating in an Albania where censorship was a fact of life, this book speaks to readers in multiple voices. It tells us of the absurdity of oppression, the elusiveness of freedom and the timelessness of man's desire to do battle.

 

My Father's Wives by José Eduardo Agualusa

 

Upon his death the famous Angolan composer Faustino Manso left seven widows and eighteen children.  His youngest daughter, Laurentina, a filmmaker, tries to reconstruct the late musician's turbulent life. In My Father's Wives, reality and fiction run side by side, the former feeding into the latter.  However, in the territories José Eduardo Agualusa crosses, fiction plays a part in reality too.

 

The Blind Sunflowers by Alberto Mendez

 

This collection fo four stories deals with the consequences of the Spanish Civil War and it gives a non-falsified account of the Spain historical legacy written without prejudices. To completely understand the Spanish culture, it is very crucial that international readers get the chance to view that period since it still holds a crucial place in Spanish minds and it arouses a real uneasiness.

 

Like Eating a Stone by Wojciech Tochman

 

Like Eating a Stone is an unsettling yet incredibly moving piece of literary non-fiction work that transcends the boundaries of traditional journalism and reportage. Tochman reports from Bosnia, a country tentatively trying to recover from the war that ravaged it in the 1990s. Shadowing the bereaved, most often the mothers and wives of victims of ethnic cleansing, as they search for the remains of their loved ones, he paints a portrait of a desperate country still haunted by its recent past and suffering in its wake.

 

How The Soldier Repairs The Gramophone by Sasa Stanisic

 

How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone does not take sides - it shows how atrocities were committed by all parties in the war and how the survivors live with silences in the post-conflict world as a means of overcoming the past. Charm and tragedy sit side by side, as well as beautiful descriptions of the Bosnian landscape.

 

Idle Years by Orhan Kemal

 

Kemal is considered one of the modernist pioneers of the Turkish novel. A laconic realist whose style is comparable to Hemingway's, and whose stature within Turkish culture has been likened to Gorky's in Russia and Steinbeck's in the United States.

 

Dreams from the Endz by Faïza Guèn

 

Dreams from the Endz will give readers a glimpse of another culture and provide valuable insight and understanding into lives we may know very little about.  It is a more mature, more overtly politicised novel than Just Like Tomorrow (Faïza Guène's first) and takes us to Algeria as well as Paris.  Its mix of underlying political commentary with a touching story and a loveable heroine makes it a perfect vehicle for reaching out and spreading awareness. 

 

The Armies by Evelio Rosero

 

If you ask Colombians how Evelio Rosero's novel fares in his own country they tell you that you will scarcely find a copy. This magisterial, beautiful, book is effectively suppressed. What is going on in that endlessly tortured country cannot go on being suppressed and ignored outside Colombia. Rosero does not directly describe the reality of an unpredictable, violent world, he imitates it in the mind of a man going mad. In this story, no-one is spared, no-one is protected.

 

Rivers of Babylon 2 and 3 by Peter Pišťanek

 

A dour version of life under unregulated capitalism, infiltrated by survivors from the communist secret police and underworld, as well as by new mafias from the east; it gives the lie to the official (and patriotic) view of Slovakia as a country that has easily found its ancestral moral and cultural roots. It is anti-nationalistic to the core and non-judgemental, leaving the reader to assess the humanity of its cast of whores, gangsters and their clients and victims.

 

Ruth Maier's Diary

 

This remarkable diary is a lucid, prescient and highly intelligent account of Ruth Maier's experience of oppression, and above all, it conveys her overwhelming urge to write. Ruth was killed before she could achieve her goals, but her deft handling of themes as diverse as isolation, identity, sexuality, friendship, morality, justice and sacrifice suggest that she could have been anything she wished to be. Her diary is a testament to the author she could have become.

 

Beaufort by Ron Leshem

 

Beaufort is a stunning account of survival in occupied Lebanon. Written from the perspective of Liraz, a young officer in the IDF, it tells of the last days of the Israeli occupation of the Beaufort castle, of the anger and terror of the soldiers stationed there, and of the futility of the conflict. It is a unique story, and an original voice from one of the world's most troubled regions.

 

Leaving Tangier by Tahar Ben Jelloun

 

Leaving Tangier deals with the problem surrounding illegal immigration - in this case from Morocco to the European mainland. It is Ben Jelloun's hope that the system will be radically overturned; by tackling the root cause of poverty and investing in Morocco in order to create work for its citizens so that they do not have to leave and risk their lives for futures that are not guaranteed.