Eric Lane – Dedalus

We have begun 2014 with Diego Marani’s first detective novel, God’s Dog, translated by Judith Landry, set in the near future with Italy a theocratic state ruled by the Vatican. Described as ‘energetic and trenchant’ in The Independent.February sees Before and During by Vladimir Sharov, translated by Oliver Ready. This is one of, if not the most, extraordinary novel we have ever published. My view of Stalin will never be the same again.In March there is the first English translation by Alan Yates of  Raimon Casellas’  fin-de-siècle masterpiece Dark Vales. A Catalan classic full of darkness and foreboding.

Jane Lawson, Editorial Director – Doubleday 

The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver by Chan Koonchung (May 2014, translated from the Chinese by Nicky Harman).  Humorous and erotic Chinese road novel about the love life of a hapless drifter whose life is upturned when he falls in love with the statue of a young girl from Beijing- the second novel from the author of The Fat Years.

Susan Curtis-Kojakovic, Director – Istros Books

Hamam Balkania by Vladislav Bajac (Serbia) translated by Randall A Major – An ambitious look into the power structures of the Ottoman Empire, juxtaposed with musings on contemporary concepts of identity and faith. (January 2014)

Mission London by Alek Popov (Bulgaria) translated by Daniela and Charles Edward Gill de Mayol de Lupe  – Combining the themes of corruption, confusion and outright incompetence, Popov masterly brings together multiple plot lines in a sumptuous carnival of frenzy and futile vanity, allowing the illusions and delusions of post-communist society to be reflected in their glorious absurdity! (April 2014)

Death in the Museum of Modern Art by Alma Lazarevska (Bosnia) translated by Celia Hawkesworth – Avoiding the easy traps of politics and blame, Lazarevska reveals a world full of incidents and worries so similar to our own, and yet always under the shadow of the snipers and the grenades of the Bosnian war. (June 2014)

False Apocalypse by Fatos Lubonja (Albania) translated by John Hodgson – 1997, a tragic year in the history of post-communist Albania.  This is one man’s story of how the world’s most isolated country emerged from Stalinist dictatorship and fell victim to a plague of corruption and flawed ‘pyramid’ financial schemes which brought the people to the edge of ruin. (October 2014)

The Great War by Aleksandar Gatalica (Serbia) translated by Will Firth – In the centenary year of the start of WWI, we finally have a Serbian author taking on the themes of a war that was started by a Serb assassin’s bullet. Following the destinies of over seventy characters, on all warring sides, Gatalica depicts the destinies of winners and losers, generals and opera singers, soldiers and spies, in the conflict that marked the beginning of the Twentieth Century. (October 2014)

Rowan Cope, Senior Editor – Little Brown, Abacus and Virago

Here are our four highlights for fiction in translation in 2014 from across our lists – we’ve got some fantastic titles coming up.I’m hugely excited about Patrick Deville’s novel Plague and Cholera (Little, Brown hardback, Feb 2014, translated by J.A. Underwood), which is a rich, fascinating and gripping fictional portrait both of the real historical figure of Dr Alexandre Yersin, a game-changing microbiologist and explorer, and of the turbulent early years of the twentieth century. It was a notable bestseller and shortlisted for every major literary award in France.Spanish debut novelist Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera’s The Awakening of Miss Prim (Abacus, June 2014, translated by Sonia Soto) is a charming, quirky tale of love, literature, philosophy and the pleasure to be found in the little things in life – I hope it will appeal to readers who loved novels such as The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

Malice by Keigo Higashino (Little, Brown, October 2014, translated by Alexander O. Smith): Malice is the most acclaimed novel in Keigo Higashino’s bestselling series featuring police detective Kyochiro Kaga. Kaga is one of the most popular creations of Japan’s bestselling novelist and appears in a dozen novels, several TV series and a handful of major motion picture adaptations.

The Stone Boy by Sophie Loubière (February 2014, translated by Nora Mahoney): The Stone Boy is an award-winning and darkly atmospheric French psychological thriller with an unforgettable elderly heroine – Madame Préau.

Juliet Mabey, Publisher – Oneworld

We have a growing list of fiction in translation, which has been actively expanded over the last year with acquisitions from Korea, China, Israel, and Russia, and have a particularly strong list of translated novels for 2014.

The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly is one of the highlights of this year’s list. Written by the multi-award winning author Sun-Mi Hwang and translated by Chi-Young Kim, it has been on the Korea bestseller list continuously for more than a decade, selling in excess of two million copies. A modern fable-esque classic with strong philosophical themes, it features a spirited hen’s quest for freedom and self-determination, and has been compared to E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web and Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Illustrated by London-based Japanese artist Nomoco, it will launch in April at the London Book Fair where Hwang is Author of the Day as part of this year’s Korean Focus.

The Space Between Us by Iranian bestselling author Zoya Pirzad and translated from the Persian by Amy Motlagh is publishing in February, a follow up to Things We Left Unsaid, which we published in 2012. Dubbed the Anne Tyler of Iran, [Pirzad has written] a poignant, wistful story about belonging and otherness, pride and prejudice, and brilliantly paints the Iranian landscape of complex social conventions and private emotional conflict.

Revolution Street by Amir Cheheltan is translated from the Persian by Paul Sprachman and publishes in March. In this critically acclaimed and searing novel – Cheheltan’s first to be translated into English – power and corruption in post-revolutionary Iran are exposed through the actions of two men who scheme to exploit the chaos and confusion for their own benefit. Both torturers in one of Tehran’s most notorious prisons and in love with the same woman, their machinations take them deep into Tehran’s underworld of criminals and provocateurs, in an unusual tragi-comic tale of rivalry and revenge.

The Hilltop by Assaf Gavron and translated from the Hebrew by Steven Cohen won the prestigious Bernstein Award in Israel, where it hit the bestseller lists on publication. Publishing here in November, and described by one reviewer as “probably the best political novel to be written in Israel”, it documents a warped and psychotic society in Israel’s Wild West – the establishment of a new settlement in the West Bank. A specialist at showing both sides of the equation, Gavron explores his subject with subtle complexity, humor and great insight into the human condition, portraying a multi-layered reality that encourages readers to make their own judgments.

Meike Ziervogel, Publisher – Peirene Press

In 2014 Peirene will publish its Coming-of-Age series, three stories about our individual struggles to reach maturity in an ever-changing world.

The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov, translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfiled: A haunting tale about the environmental legacy of the Cold War. ‘Hamid Ismailov has the capacity of Salman Rushdie at his best to show the grotesque realization of history on the ground.’ Literary Review (February 2014)

The Blue Room by Hanne Ortavik, translated from the Norwegian by Deborah Dawkin: A mother-daughter relationship that will send a chill down your spine. ‘A book for all daughters… A book that will get under your skin.’ Elle (June 2014)

Under the Tripoli Sky by Kamal Ben Hameda, translated from the French by Adriana Hunter.  A fascinating portrait of a pre-Gaddafi Libyan society on the verge of change. ‘Neo-realistic characters that could have stepped straight out of a Vittorio de Sica film.’ Cultures Sud (September 2014)

Laura Barber, Editorial Director – Granta Books & Portobello Books

This year kicks off in sinister style with reissue of six books by the great Sicilian author, Leonardo Sciascia, whose powerful exploration of Sicily’s gritty criminal underworld shows him to be a master storyteller across a variety of literary genres, from novels and short stories to detective fiction and true crime.On a lighter note, the satirist Dimitri Verhulst imagines the consequences of the second coming in Christ’s Entry into Brussels (translated by David Colmer).In April, we have a new dispatch from the inimitable Jacek Hugo-Bader, whose Kolyma Diaries (translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) record his vodka-fuelled experience of travelling 2000 kilometres through the former Soviet Gulag to meet the inhabitants of this grim land as they eke out an existence or transform themselves into oligarchs.And in May, we have Nightwork, a darkly comic coming-of-age story set during the Russian occupation from the celebrated Czech writer, Jáchym Topol, translated by Marek Tomin.Later in the year, we have A Short Stop on the Road From Auschwitz, a shattering literary memoir by Göran Rosenburg, the son of Holocaust survivors (translated from Swedish by Sarah Death), and Walter Kempowski’s Swansong ’45 (translated from German by Shaun Whiteside), a monumental collection of first-hand accounts that brings to life the last days of World War II.Finally, in December, Jenny Erpenbeck’s The End of Days (translated from German by Susan Bernofsky) which is a story of the 20th century traced through the various possible lives of one woman and was last year’s winner of the Hans Fallada Prize.

Adam Freudenheim, Publisher and Managing Director – Pushkin Press

As a publisher specializing in fiction from around the world it’s always difficult to choose highlights for the year, so focussing on just two writers whose work appears with us in English for the first time this spring and with apologies to other Pushkin writers I’ve not been able to include, here goes.

Song for an Approaching Storm by Peter Fröberg Idling is an atmospheric thriller set in one tense month in 1950s Cambodia.  The story is told in three sections, each giving the perspective of one character in a love triangle.  The rub comes in that one of the three is Saloth Sar, who twenty years later would become known to the world as Pol Pot. First published in Swedish in 2012, Song for an Approaching Storm is an original and moving debut novel beautifully translated by Peter Graves. (March 2014)

Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda was a sensation on publication in Holland in 2010.  It went to number one on the bestseller list, was nominated for every Dutch literary prize going – and won five of them – and is being translated into eight languages.  Buwalda’s book is a family saga in which things go rather terribly wrong for one Dutch family in the 1990s and 2000s.  Set in Holland, Beligium and California, Bonita Avenue is a terrific, page-turning book that – as one critic put it – feels like a cross between the work of Jonathan Franzen and Stieg Larsson!  Jonathan Reeder has translated this larger-than-life debut novel. (April 2014) 

The post Publishers’ highlights in 2014: part 1 appeared first on English PEN.

Translated from the Czech by Alex Zucker

Winter breathes its last gasp, leaving mounds of black ice and frozen chunks on the sidewalks. The sun occasionally climbs above the city now, edging across the glassy sky.

The curtains here are always shut, except for a narrow crack. The sun’s rays pour into the room in a single spot. She says they’re easier to catch that way.

She keeps a mirror in bed, the little kind girls use to look at the tip of their nose.

She uses it often these days. Sometimes it slips beneath her pillow or gets lost in the blankets. That’s all right. She always manages to dig it out somehow.

She doesn’t use it to look at herself. My mom never was very fashionable, she didn’t get dolled up unless there was a reason. Instead of studying the wrinkles on her face, she uses the mirror to fish for rays of sunlight, assuming they’re the last ones she’ll see.

Though who knows? We didn’t talk much about that.

Over the last two years she’s gotten accustomed to staying in bed. Before, we used to go out for walks . . . down to the river, say . . . gulls chasing across the sky, colors, noise, people . . . the slow click-clack of her crutches.

Nowadays the most adventurous trip she takes is to the bathroom. She recounts these expeditions to me by text message. She keeps her senior cell phone on a string looped over her shoulder, like an Indian quiver full of arrows. If she stops to rest on her way through the jungle, or trips and falls, she shoots out a signal — “dresser,” for instance. As soon as I can, I drop everything and head over to her place, scoop her up, and carry her back to bed or to the bathroom, depending what she wants. We’ve got a few other signals besides “dresser.”

So what’s it like, anyway, Mom?

Remember how when you’re little and you have to run through the hallway in the middle of the night? When your parents aren’t around, or they’re asleep, and you’re nervous and afraid, but you do it?

She smiles, or tries to. It’s just a series of minor victories, she says.

Stop it, you’re blinding me . . .

She’s catching a ray of sunshine and flashing it in my eyes.

She sets the mirror aside. She doesn’t mean to torture me. We’ve always liked each other. Well, up until I was sixteen and I finally got out, she was totally smashed every night, or just about. If she wasn’t smashed she had a hangover, which was even worse. When she was around fifty, though — thank God! — she gave up drinking and started visiting churches, beginning and ending every day with prayer. She had, after all, grown up in a religious orphanage. Her dad, my grandfather, had died during the war. She said her mom had “cast her off.” The Order of English Virgins played a big part in her upbringing. Till the Communists squelched them. When she was young, fueled by the bottle, she often made fun of the sisterhood’s name. She didn’t spare me any of her stories from the girls’ home. As a boy, unfortunately, I couldn’t appreciate them. There was nothing forced about her conversion. Her life calmed down. It really is better to get up and say a prayer in the morning instead of tossing back shots. And she didn’t force anything on me, no waving the Bible at me and carrying on about booze. She just carried the news from the stone churches . . . the Templars, the Hospitallers . . . Prague is full of that stuff . . . I enjoyed it.

Here’s some honey for you, Mom. From the Galilee.

I was casual about it . . . announcing my gift in an offhand way, like it was nothing special. But yes, I was proud. I mean, how many sons bring their dying mother honey from the Holy Land?

I did the shopping, too . . . groceries, personal hygiene, entertainment . . . I brought her stuff all the time, who else was going to do it? Not long after she agreed to visits from social services, I caught her dumping the food from them down the toilet, or feeding it to the birds. She wouldn’t let anybody else wash her or make her bed, a monstrous nest of books, magazines, crumbs, and pills that was such a mess sometimes it was hard to tell what was what. Hospitals? She hated them. We’d already tried that.

The other people bother me, she said.

I was only gone a week. She didn’t look dirty, but she still had the same sheets on her bed . . . well, we’d deal with that later.

Today I’d left the bag of groceries out in the entryway. The only thing I brought to her bedside was the little jar of Israeli honey. It was a fancy terracotta jar, sealed with wax.

Here’s that Israeli honey, Mom, just like you asked for! I set it down on the table next to her bed. It made a little cracking sound.

Is it really from the Galilee? Does it say it there? Let me see! Why does it have that silly tourist packaging?

It’s written right there, see? . . . Galilee! . . . but in Hebrew, that’s what they speak there.

Well, of course . . . but I’m not at all surprised that your books are published in Hebrew. They have everything over there! My father’s books only came out in German, Polish, Hungarian . . . places around here. I suppose translation is easier now, isn’t it? With all those machines.

Oh yeah, it’s easy now. No big deal.

Is there any country where you aren’t published?

Russia.

Oh, mm-hm. That’s only natural, though. Don’t even bother. Did you bring anything back for Bolek and Lolek?

That’s what my mom calls my sons. After the Polish cartoon.

Model fighter planes, Kalashnikov water pistols, some T-shirts, fresh dates and stuff. The boys were thrilled.

T-shirts with Hebrew? Have you lost your mind? They’ll beat the living daylights out of them . . .

My mom still thought of children’s homes as brutal institutions, like they were after the war. As she got older, I think, her Mom, please, this isn’t the ’50s anymore. You want to taste the honey? How’ve you been, anyway?

Good. I wasn’t alone for a minute. He’s been with me the whole time. We talk.

Who is “he”?

Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer.

Oh, come on, Mom. It’s all in your head.

So what? Even if it is, I like what he says.

Are you going to taste it or not? And what does he say?

The usual stuff. Like I don’t have to worry. And I should prepare myself for the journey . . . well, I realize it sounds like a movie . . . but he also explains why everything is the way it is.

What do you mean, everything?

You know, life and death. I never knew he knew all that.

I suddenly have the idea that when she dies, I’ll burn the apartment down. I mean I won’t, but I’d like to. In the days of the Bible, nobody would’ve been surprised. That I want all of this . . . the bed, the books and pictures, blankets, pillows, the pots and pans she hasn’t used in ages . . . the dried-out flowerpots, all her old-lady stuff, everything here in this flat drenched in that sour smell, coated in it . . . I wish it could all just disappear. Once she’s gone, the flat will be mine, weighing me down like a terrible burden. Why would I want that? I’ll lock the door and walk away. All I’ll keep is that tiny little mirror of hers. It’ll easily fit in my pocket.

So why is everything the way it is, then?

He says that’s the right question. And we’ll all find out. In time. That is, at the end of time. We’ll find out, but gradually.

Uh-huh.

I open the jar and bring in two teaspoons from the kitchen. They’re sticky, but that’s all right. I’ll wash the dishes later.

She lifts her head. I insert the tip of the spoon between her teeth. She takes it in, her head drops back against the pillow. She savors the honey in peace.

It seems like she sank into a hole during the the week I was gone. Even deeper than before. Fading away. Seriously, her face looks like a skeleton. And when was the last time I washed her hair? Does she really look that pitiful? Or is it just that I haven’t seen her in a week? When a person is dying, I think it’s better to be with them all the time. That way the changes don’t startle you as much.

Hm. I don’t think this honey’s anything special, she says.

You’re right, I say. The last time I had honey was probably ten, fifteen years ago.

I offer to open the curtains. It’s almost spring! I say.

Just leave it!

I step towards the window and suddenly I hear it. The crash as the mirror slips out of her hand and shatters on the floor. Into slivers, tiny little pieces of broken glass.

Well, now I’ve gone and done it!

That’s all right, I’ll clean it up. I sweep the pieces under the bed with my shoe, I’ll deal with it later.

Give me another taste, she says.

I have some too. But not too much. I never was much for sweets.

What did you eat all this time?

Oh, this and that. Those biscuits and things you brought. It was good.

I still can’t get over what she said. About Jesus talking to her. So I ask again. Firmly.

So tell me, Mom. What else did he say?

And then . . . I can’t believe it! My mother’s face lights up and she grins in this indescribable way, a flirty smile spreading across her ravaged old face. Then she even blushes. Her face turns red like a little girl’s!

Well, I can’t tell you . . . everything, she says coyly. But he also says nice things!

Like what?

Well, things about the two of us. Delightful things!

What? About me?

No, no! She squirms in her bed. He talks about him and me. As for the rest, well . . . I’m keeping that to myself.

Fine! You want to hear about my trip? The boys’re doing really well. They say hi and they’ll send some pictures. You need anything?

No. Maybe later.

I sit on the chair, my mom in bed. We look at each other. There’s nobody else here, I don’t think, and nobody talking, except maybe in her head. We just sit. In peace and quiet. But we’re waiting. That’s right, waiting for an answer. Soon it’ll be spring. Maybe my mom will still recover, maybe she’ll get better? Oh, definitely. I’m sure of it.

About the Author
Jáchym Topol is the leading Czech author of his generation. Famous in his youth as an underground poet and songwriter, since the Velvet Revolution he has written the books that have most successfully and imaginatively captured the dislocation brought about by the fall of communism. His novels include Gargling with Tar, which was published by Portobello in 2011, The Devil’s Workshop (Portobello 2013) and Nightworks (Portobello 2014).

About the translator
The Devil’s Workshop, Alex Zucker’s translation of Jáchym Topol’s latest novel, is out next month from Portobello Books. Zucker currently works out of his third-floor apartment in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, NY.

Additional Information
Jáchym Topol’s The Devil’s Workshop, translated by Alex Zucker won an English PEN Writers in Translation Award for 2013. It is published by Portobello Books in June.

European Literature Night London takes place on 15 May 2013 at the British Library, for more information and to buy tickets please visit the British Library website.

Jáchym Topol will also be in conversation with Tan Twan Eng and Jo Glanville at the Hay Festival on Saturday 25 May 2013 at 2.30pm

The post A Little Honey appeared first on English PEN.

The looking back and summing up season is upon us, and I’d like briefly to look at the PEN Atlas as it nears the end of its first year of life. Our main aim has been to look at new voices and literature all over the world and to introduce them to an audience in the UK by commissioning new and original blogs written by writers, critics and translators.

English PEN itself has a translation programme helping both the promotion and translation of international literature via two Writers in Translation Awards – PEN Translates! and PEN Promotes! – and some of the books featured in the Atlas come to us through these grant schemes.

In many of our 2012 blogs we looked at how writers dealt with political problems and conflicts in their countries, in this way supporting the core PEN activity of defending and promoting the freedom to write and the freedom to read. We will be returning to many of these countries again next year, as unfortunately most of the conflicts covered by the Atlas are still underway. These continue to make it difficult for writers to express themselves freely as well as endangering their lives. Samar Yazbek wrote to us from Syria about the perils of reporting from a war zone and in January we will have another Syrian, Nihad Sirees, one of the winners of a 2013 English PEN Writers in Translation Award, writing about Aleppo and its incomprehensible destruction. And later in the year we will be covering another of the PEN Award Winners: Writing Revolution: The Voices from Tunis to Damascus, which compiles some of the most exciting new writing borne out of the Arab Spring.

Hassan Blasim discussed the aftermath of the war in Iraq and the role literature plays in how society deals with tragic events. The Devil’s Workshop by Jachym Topol, again one of the winners of a Writers in Translation Award, deals with the more distant past of concentration camps in Belarus. We will be talking to Jachym Topol later this year.

Selma Dabbagh wrote very movingly from the Palestinian Literary Festival about the fragile situation in Gaza. Alas, the crisis there has deepened and we will return to the festival next year to look at the response of writers to the events there. Lydia Cacho’s reporting from Mexico has won awards and accolades. For us, she wrote about taking risks and being afraid. She is still reporting and still in danger.

We hope that as the reviewing space in print media shrinks, PEN Atlas, like some other literary websites, is filling that gap and providing more outlets for literary criticism and debate.

We also have been following trends and reported on developments in international publishing by featuring specialists’ opinions. We have looked out for new writers who might be interesting for a British audience and for publishers here. In this way, we have introduced Alisa Ganieva from Dagestan, Yuri Herrera from Mexico and Park Wan-Suh from South Korea among others.

PEN Atlas dispatches in 2012 took us all over the world, from Mexico and China to Greece, the Netherlands, Croatia and Russia. And as we continue to explore the world’s literature in the New Year, we hope to bring you closer to interesting places and introduce you to new writers.

And if you still have any presents to buy, you might find inspiration here in our list of books recommended by publishers, writers and festival organisers. And for literary inspiration look at one of our most moving stories this year – Santiago Gamboa’s ‘Of Poets and Aviators’.

In the meantime, happy festive reading and all the very best in the New Year!

Tasja Dorkofikis,

Editor, PEN Atlas

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