There are three names that few will have encountered before. Andrés Neuman‘s Traveller of the Century offers the profundity of Will Self’s Umbrella or Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones. Chris Barnard‘s Bundu will appeal to fans of J M Coetzee or Damon Galgut. Trieste by Daša Drndic pieces together a tragic history from tattered fragments in unforgettable fashion.

The other three writers are more familiar. Ismail Kadare has developed a devoted following since winning the inaugural Man Booker International Prize eight years ago and in 2010 Gerbrand Bakker‘s The Twin proved to be a popular winner of the IMPAC Award. Not only Spanish-language readers are well acquainted with Enrique Vila-Matas: you can feel confident you’re in a good bookshop if you find Bartleby & Co on the shelves.

But Independent Foreign Fiction Prize does not operate in isolation. I’m certainly expecting, for instance, the English edition of Michel Rostain‘s The Son, winner of France’s Prix Goncourt in 2011, to attract a significant readership when it’s released by Tinder Press next month.

It is received wisdom that British readers have no appetite for fiction in translation. In any discussion, someone will cite the 3% of books sold that originate in other languages and everyone else will slowly shake their heads in sorrowful recognition, even though no one knows where the statistic came from. It was at least given credence last year when research by Literature Across Frontiers, a research organisation supported by the Cultural Programme of the European Union, revealed that the figures in Britain are 2.5% for the whole of the market and 4.5% for fiction, poetry, and drama. But while the figures in most other markets are supposedly much higher, such comparisons ignore some very significant points of context.

Beyond the Anglopshere, English is a national language in over a quarter of the world’s nations. It’s also the only language in common in vast swathes of Africa and Asia: the English-language heritage alone of India is considerable. English is the planet’s lingua franca.

It should also be borne in mind that translated fiction tends towards the literary. The more commercial end of the market – such as thrillers, romance and historical fiction – already sees many more titles produced than the market can possibly sustain, so publishers are unsurprisingly wary of adding translated books to the range. Not only is there the additional cost of translation, but such genres are read principally for entertainment and escapism, and are anchored by familiar cultural references.

This fear of scaring off readers is apparent in the way that those writers who do make it to the English-language market are presented. There’s no mention on the covers of the British or American editions of Steig Larsson’s Millennium trilogy that the books were originally written in Swedish and Denmark’s Jo Nesbø has even lost his suspiciously Scandinavian minuscule on this side of the Atlantic.

The success of these two authors, however, hints at a potential readership for translated fiction that remains largely untapped. Crime fiction from many European nations can now be found on the shelves of all but the most meagrely stocked bookshop. The success of writers such as Sergei Lukyanenko and Sergei Lukyanenko confirms that fantasy and SF readers are as willing to entertain new sources for their reading as well as exploring new worlds.

The accusations of homogeneity and parochialism often levelled at British publishers can be quickly refuted by leafing through a handful of their catalogues. But there is a discrepancy between what they offer bookshops and what actually ends up on the shelves of too many of our book retailers.

Breaking new authors of any kind is now viewed as one of the principal obstacles to sustaining the diversity of the book trade. It’s all about bulk sales for supermarkets, who now account for over a fifth of sales by volume, and the algorithms used by online retailers bring up the same familiar titles repeatedly. Even our remaining high-street book chains focus somewhat less than they once did on expanding the horizons of their customers.

But this conservatism leaves the independent sector with a terrific opportunity assert its credentials. Few publishers offer them anywhere near the attractive discounts that the big players can demand, so they are not hemmed in by commitments to place books backed by the biggest marketing campaigns front and centre. Their need to distinguish themselves, their superior ability to handsell and, often, their place at the heart of the local community allows them to guide readers towards unexpected pleasures.

It also allows them to work with the many smaller, independent presses who, unfettered by shareholder expectations, are less compromised by the irresolvable dichotomy of business and art. The flourishing of publishers such as Peirene Press, And Other Stories, Hesperus Press and Alma Books demonstrates the natural curiosity of the reader, a phenomenon not so fanciful when one considers the role of the imagination in the process of reading.

At Foyles, we realised some time ago that there is an unsatisfied demand for translated fiction and you’ll rarely see one of our shops without some sort of display. We’ve found that a table full of the obscure writers from countries whose literary heritage is a closed book to most will attract great interest, just so long as there are a handful of recognisable titles amongst the range for reassurance.

This isn’t revolutionary or daring. It’s a reflection of the multicultural world in which we now live, a world in which events anywhere may have their consequences for us. And what better way to explore that world than through the stories that sit at the heart of these many cultures? Storytelling is a fundamental human instinct – we’ve done it since we first sat around the fire picking bits of mammoth from between our teeth – and tales of the wondrous and strange resonate as much as those set on familiar ground.

About the Author

Jonathan Ruppin has worked at Foyles Bookshop for ten years, where he is now Web Editor. He is also a member of the Editorial Comittee for New Books in German and a freelance journalist. He tweets as @tintiddle.

Additional Information

English PEN, together with the Reading Agency and the British Centre for Literary Translation, are partnering with Booktrust to give 300 Readers the chance to shadow this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. The IFFP Readers’ Prize project is funded by the Free Word Strategic Commissioning Fund and the NALD Futures Fund.

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Yes, I know Wales very well. Only once was I in the south of Wales, where I did – all alone – the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. Which is far too long: I walked for two weeks with the Atlantic on my left hand side. That was quite boring after a while. North Wales I like best, it is often almost like a Mediterranean country. I’ve been going there for years and years, and I have this strange habit of wanting to climb Mount Snowdon at least once a year. The country is old, feels old, almost ancient. Timeless in a way, and that is – I realise now – exactly the reason why I had to set the story of The Detour right there.

Emily Dickinson is one of the ghosts haunting the novel. Is she a poet you have read a lot? Could you tell us a bit more about why you chose her?

Ever since I formed a ‘poets’ society’ with two friends – this was somewhere in the early Nineties – I have loved this one particular poem, the motto-poem of the novel. We translated English poems, and this one was most elusive. We just did not understand it, we could make no satisfactory translation. After a while we also started to write our own poems. Later I read more Dickinson, and especially when I re-read her for this novel, I found that quite a few poems are, well, not so good. But I think that maybe I wrote the entire novel to be able – through the main character – finally to make a translation that comes close to what it should be, or wants to be. I’ve always found it very hard to accept a story in commission: I did not dare to accept it, for I thought: suppose I get no ideas? Suppose I cannot finish it in time? But since a year or so I’ve dared to accept such commissions, because I’ve found out that I am able to write a short story on the basis of a poem that I once wrote. And, in this case, possibly a complete novel…

Emilie is full of grief. Your previous novel, The Twin, explored a similar subject. Do you feel that we can get close to the essence of suffering by describing it?

Yes. Describing, that’s the right word. Not explain, not psychologize. Show through action, not so much through thoughts or little philosophies. Readers can – if they want to, of course – have thoughts or little philosophies. I love atmosphere in a novel, and I think that to create an atmosphere, you do this best by describing things, and then preferably as sober and restrained as possible. It’s a wonder that most of my novels exceed 200 pages…

Apart from Emily Dickinson, there are other ghosts in the novel: the uncle, who nearly committed suicide; Mrs Evans, who used to live in the Welsh house; the gradually disappearing geese. Emilie looks at herself through the past, for example by thinking that she can smell Mrs Evan’s smell on herself.  Why did you decide to make these past figures so prominent in the novel?

They just came. With Mrs Evans for instance, I did not think in advance: let’s have her invade the body of Emilie, as a symbol or foreshadowing of what would happen to her. She just came, and as she was there, her presence got stronger and stronger. And this uncle, well, that was actually the chapter that originally started the book, until my publisher suggested that that chapter be moved to chapter 4. This is something by the way that more or less really happened to one of my uncles. And I don’t do this a lot: use real people or real life in my novels.

The novel is partly about loneliness, and our inability to really connect with the others.  Yet Emilie meets a boy, who stays in the house with her, and there is a sense of closeness. Is language essential to being close?

No, not at all, I think. Remember the song ‘Enjoy the silence’ by Depeche Mode: “All I ever wanted/ All I ever needed /Is here in my arms/ Words are very unnecessary /They can only do harm

Vows are spoken/ To be broken/ Feelings are intense/ Words are trivial/ Pleasures remain/ So does the pain/ Words are meaningless/ And forgettable.”

I quite like this song, especially the acoustic harmonium version of it. Maybe I am not normal, but for me non-verbal language is much more important than spoken language. But: people want to talk to each other or have to talk to each other. And that’s also what Bradwen and Emilie do, but I think that both of them would rather do everything in silence, Emilie more than Bradwen, but still.

Your novel is translated from the Dutch. How closely do you work with your translator, David Colmer?

For this novel very close, because I woke up one night, almost two years ago now, almost in a panic. I thought: one cannot translate this novel, there is far too much language-stuff in it, and it is about the translation of an English poem into Dutch! So I contacted David and he stayed very calm and said: “That’s my problem, relax.” He is wonderful. But for the first time I read a translation of one of my novels before it was sent to Harvill Secker. And we worked on it, I had some comments, and then David had counter-arguments, and so on. It was nice to do it like this.

The Twin brought you much international recognition. Was it difficult to write a new novel after winning the IMPAC? Or was it in some way liberating to know that you have that official stamp of approval?

The Detour was already finished when The Twin was awarded with the IMPAC. It came out in October of 2010 here in Holland. So: no. But: since The Detour (or Ten White Geese in the USA) I haven’t written anything, apart from my weblog and the occasional story or column. I simply did not feel like it. What I did do in the end with the prize money was to buy a house with land in The Eifel, Germany. Since the first of December last year I own it, and I go there a lot. One part of the house will be renovated later this spring, and there I will have a – I hope – wonderful, big writing room with only a wood burning stove in it, accessible via a staircase, outside the house. I’ve been having some problems with depression and stuff, and now I feel just fine, writing is not a part of my daily life, but I do feel like I have to have the feeling of wanting to write, if you know what I mean. Usually I’m very happy when I write. I work like a horse then: I don’t think or analyse much, I just move forward until the book is finished.

What are your literary influences if any?  Who do you enjoy reading now?

Carson McCullers is, come to think of it, one of my influences. I love the way she writes, very subdued, very brooding, very ‘Southern’. And she uses beautiful language. Lord of Dark Places by Hal Bennett is a book that has in a way ‘unleashed’ me; that was a book (also Southern USA) that made me realise that one is permitted to write everything one wants to write. And here in Holland, J.J. Voskuil, who wrote, among other things, Het Bureau (The Office): a novel consisting of seven volumes, in total 5000 pages, about, well, nothing much. But at the same time about everything. And that is what I love about it.

PEN Atlas promotes international literature in the UK, a lot of it in translation. Who else from your country would you recommend to British readers and British publishers?

J.J. Voskuil. The first part of this 7-volume novel has come out in Germany last year, and I believe they want to move on…

Interview conducted by Tasja Dorkofikis, Editor, PEN Atlas

Additional Information

Gerbrand Bakker is a Dutch writer. In 2010, he won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for the English translation of his novel, The Twin (Boven is het stil).

The post PEN Atlas Q&A – Gerbrand Bakker, author of The Detour appeared first on English PEN.

A name most frequently brought up in relation to the theory is Kazuo Ishiguro, who has admitted he aims to write a plainer kind of prose that translates easily; I fear he may have instigated this whole shebang. Other prime examples are Orhan Pamuk who has been accused of neatly condensing and packaging Turkishness for a foreign audience (in cahoots with his translator, apparently) and Salman Rushdie who might have capitalised on a version of Indianness aimed to exoticise and to sell books. Both these writers are seen as writing for a global audience, moving away from the local and specific, sometimes provoking political controversy by being ‘unfaithful to’ or ‘betraying’ their roots.

Tim Parks who teaches at IULM, has also proposed lesser-known writers for this trend, such as the excellent Swiss and Dutch writers, Peter Stamm and Gerbrand Bakker, because of their pared-down writing style and lack of culture-specific politics. I guess he would add Flemish writer Peter Terrin, recently published in English by MacLehose Press, if he read him. His claustrophobic, existential novel The Guard is set in a non-specific European urban apartment building in the near future and written in a wilfully clinical style. It subtly references Camus, Beckett and the Belgian surrealists, but always remains compelling and direct.

The obvious counter-argument is that the market might select precisely those books that do speak to an international readership and translate un-problematically (i.e. do not require explanatory footnotes). It is certainly the view I hold and matches my experience of pitching Dutch books to foreign editors. Editors like books which give a sense of the place they are set in without the reader getting bogged down in specifics. They also look for accessibility and universal themes. Commerce dictates a particular formula. Look at the kinds of novels that have proved hugely successful in translation, in particular the crime wave from Scandinavia: Stieg Larsson, Hening Mankell, Karin Fossum, Jo Nesbo, plot-driven thrillers with a cool, slightly spooky setting.

Peter Stamm was at the conference and was given the chance to air his views on the subject. He began by explaining that being Swiss means having a complex, diffuse identity. The Swiss do not need a national literature to define who they are. ‘Books don’t take place in nations, but in the mind.’ On his style, he said that he deliberately avoids Helveticisms, he likes neutral language with no colouring so that images can easily form in the readers’ minds. He travels a lot and so his novels are set in other Western locations – Paris, Munich, Chicago and Norway, yet ‘Swiss life’ is contained in most of his books in some way.

Some of Stamm’s thoughts were echoed by Mexican writer, Jorge Volpi, who claimed similarly that, ‘all novels take place in imaginary space’. His own novels are set in Germany, France and the US. It was only when he was published in Spain that he realised, to his great surprise, that he was considered ‘an exotic Mexican writer’. He repeatedly had to defend himself against the question – why had a Mexican written about Germany. The only possible answer was: why not? This points to a second requirement, potentially at odds with the globalisation trend – authenticity. Apparently one can only write authentically about what one knows. Commercially successful literature might then walk a tightrope between the local and the global, packaging the local as universal. What this means for Volpi and others daring to write about things not connected to their ‘roots’ remains to be seen.

About the Author

Michele Hutchison (Solihull, 1972) worked in publishing in the UK before moving to the Netherlands in 2004. She now works as an editor at a Dutch literary publishing house and as a freelance translator. Writers she has translated include Joris Luyendijk, Rob Riemen, Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer and Simone van der Vlugt.

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