But after the initial impulse – what is the reality for publishers of translated fiction? There is a general feeling in the UK and US that more people are publishing literature in translation and that there is a growing acceptance of it. Is everything sorted now, then? Well, not quite. Our third birthday seems a good moment to talk about the publishing of literature in translation, focusing particularly on our case as it is what I’m qualified to talk about.

A number of publishers have been doing great translated books for decades, but it is also a good sign that new presses are springing up, including Peirene Press, Stork Press, Clerkenwell Press, MacLehose Press and ourselves, all in the last six years.Each press that publishes in translation is different, publishing different proportions of translated literature and different kinds of books. Some publish translations occasionally, such as Old Street Publishing’s recent Operation Massacre by Rodolfo Walsh; Harvill Secker does roughly 50% of its list in translation; our list is currently roughly 70% translated, while Peirene Press and Stork Press publish only translated works. Some focus more on crime and popular fiction and some more on literary authors whose writing might take many readers out of their comfort zones. Some find room for both.

My sense at the start was that there was no lack of publishing houses bringing out crime in translation (and publishers who could tell their Stieg Larsson copycats from the genuinely interesting French, German, Cuban and Japanese crime writers). What I felt we lacked in the English-speaking world were enough publishers of extraordinary, surprising writing.

I knew that to publish the kind of fresh, often foreign, mind-blowing fiction that I and many other people often thought was missing in the English-speaking world, the only sensible option, financially, might be not to have a normal commercial set-up. If the publishing house was not going to tailor its offering to Richard & Judy’s taste, we should plan to do without extra overheads (such as an office) and appeal to like-minded readers for their support.

And Other Stories registered as a Community Interest Company or CIC in 2010. It was limited by guarantee, but with not-for-private-profit characteristics.  A social enterprise, in other words. This makes clear at a fundamental level that our aims are different to investor- or shareholder-driven publishing companies where all decisions are ultimately about increasing profits and keeping the investors happy. Of course, in order to be able to continue our work in the long-term, we can’t lose money. The ‘community interest’ mission in our case means publishing works of literary value, re-investing profits in the company in order to pay translators well, and developing and mentoring new talent in the publishing industry, including debut writers and emerging editors and translators. (For at least half of our foreign-language authors we have commissioned great translators’ first book-length translations, giving them a foot in the door.)

The not-for-private-profit nature of the company has meant it has been (somewhat!) easier to apply for and receive funding support. In our current credit-crunched decade of austerity in the UK, the Arts Council’s funds have been cut repeatedly by the government. Established organisations find they are no longer regularly funded and must apply to the same National Lottery-funded Grants for the Arts pot that we are applying to. The competition is intense. We received two Grants for the Arts in 2010-2011 and 2012. This year we were recommended for funding by the Arts Council’s application assessor who applauded our work, but in the end the funding did not stretch to cover our project. Of course, we have sent another application in to the Arts Council already. And we are looking to follow the American arts model and appeal for philanthropy and private donors, as well as continuing to apply to other institutes to fund at least some of the translation costs. Thanks to English PEN’s Writers in Translation programme, the translation of Villalobos’ second book Quesadillas was funded and we were able to bring the author to England for a brilliant week of events in Norwich, Bath and London that culminated in a performance to an audience of over 200 people at Rich Mix, East London, that almost had a cow on stage. (Almost!)Not only is funding uncertain these days; sales are too. In 2012, during the crisis that almost led to Waterstones’ demise, orders dried up for publishers. Something similar could happen again. Moreover, fiction at the literary, surprising end of the spectrum does not tend to sell well unless the author has been shortlisted for major prizes or is a public figure. Maybe because it takes a few years for people to work out what the surprising author is doing. We were over the moon that our English author Deborah Levy was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Swimming Home. However, translated works are not eligible for the Man Booker, which does not help sales prospects for most of our brilliant literary authors. (When Down the Rabbit Hole became the first translation to be on the Guardian First Book Award shortlist it helped immensely. It has sold 8,000 copies so far.)

With funding and sales uncertain, an area of support that has been invaluable to us from the start is subscriptions. We now have around 700 people subscribing in advance to each of our books. I had seen some American publishers like Open Letter Books and Ugly Duckling Presse offer subscriptions of their books and remembered subscribers’ names at the back of some very, very old library books and it seemed like something we could do and link to a community of readers, writers and translators. To show our genuine gratitude for their up-front support, we thank subscribers by name in the back of the books; send them their books in advance of the retail publication date; invite them to special social and literary events for subscribers; give them free tickets to public events (such as Villalobos’ Rich Mix event) and extra goodies now and then (for example, postcards designed by our authors). It is a club of like-minded people whose broad support allows us to take creative risks and not be reliant on investors’ agendas.

Necessity breeds invention and we feel we are part of a wave of innovative publishers of literary translations, including Peirene Press and Berlin-based Frisch & Co who choose to publish fiction that is neither easily definable nor an easy sell: Peirene’s first book in 2010 was Véronique Olmi’s Beside the Sea – about a struggling mother killing her two children. It was not an immediate bestseller, but it is becoming a real favourite with discerning readers. Frisch & Co’s first books are just out this year and contain real gems: including Carlos Busqued’s debut novel Under This Terrible Sun which I am keen to read, having already heard great things about it from our Argentine author Iosi Havilio and some knowledgeable Buenos Aires booksellers. Peirene Press pioneered direct-to-reader approaches such as pop-up shops and literary salons; we started translators’ reading groups to find great books and set up a subscription model in addition to retail sales; Frisch & Co have looked to make books economically possible by partnering with translators and foreign publishers and only publishing them as ebooks.

It is no exaggeration to say that for us, with our kind of new literary fiction, mainly in translation, our subscribers keep us going. They trust us to find new writers for them. The next deadline for new subscribers is our third birthday: 5th October 2013, for anyone who wants to help us publish the Albanian writer Elvira Dones’ novel Sworn Virgin. And that is something we will be celebrating.

About the author
Stefan Tobler is the publisher at And Other Stories, a young publishing house whose acclaimed books include Swimming Home and Black Vodka by Deborah Levy and Down the Rabbit Hole and Quesadillas by Juan Pablo Villalobos. Stefan Tobler is also a literary translator from Portuguese and German.

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Peter Florence, Hay Festival Director

‘I loved the quiet desperation of Valeria Luiselli’s Mexican/NY novel Faces in The Crowd (Granta, £12.99) and it’s exploration of translations and disappearances. It’s wonderfully translated by Christina MacSweeney. Andres Neuman’s Traveller of the Century – translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia (Pushkin Press, £12.99) – sends a stranger into post-Napoleonic Mitteleuropa in a fabulous whirl of sex and philosophy and history. The other book that just astounded me is the Norwegian phenomenon A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard and translated by Don Bartlett (Harvill Secker, £17.99).  It’s an incomparably naked and familiar portrait of a family that’s been, not unreasonably, likened to Proust. Elif Shafak’s masterpiece Honour (Viking, £12.99) travels back generations from a Kurdish family in 70s London to the banks of the Euphrates. This novel is written in English though her other novels are often written in Turkish. A perfect partner for the Knausgaard and the Shafak is Angharad Price’s The Life of Rebecca Jones (MacLehose Press, £10) which she has worked with Lloyd Jones to translate from the Welsh original.  It’s a quiet masterpiece about 20th century technology impacting on Welsh rural life.’

Damian Barr, Shoreditch and Soho House, Literary Host, writer

‘I recommend Valeria Luiselli’s Faces in the Crowd, translated by Christina MacSweeney, (Granta, £12.99), definitely not magical realist yet definitely magical, this is the story of a contemporary novelist haunted by a 1920s poet. Haunting, vibrant, and often funny.’

Jonathan Ruppin, Web Editor, Foyles

‘The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura, translated by Satoko Izumo and Stephen Coates, (Corsair, £9.99) – winner of the 2009 Oe Kenzaburo Prize. As well as being a sharp alternative thriller with some sinister political overtones, this story of a pickpocket drawn into a plot that spirals out of control offers a fascinating outsider’s perspective on Tokyo life and some deliciously uncomfortable moral ambiguity. This is perfect for anyone who likes their crime on the noir side and their criminals brooding and enigmatic.’

Geoff Mulligan, Publisher Clerkenwell Press

‘I would recommend HHhH by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor (Harvill Secker, £16.99). It deals with weighty matters – the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and the plan to kill Heydrich – with a light touch, and it asks interesting questions about the interpretation of history. It’s a novel for anyone interested in literature or history.’

Bill Swainson, Senior Commissioning Editor, Bloomsbury

‘Three completely different but outstanding books I (re)discovered this year were: the controversial Louis Ferdinand Céline’s brilliant, dark modernist classic Journey to the End of the Night, first translated by Ralph Mannheim in the 1970s for John Calder, published in 1991 and now reissued with introduction and notes on the excellent Alma Classics list (£9.99); Michael Politycki’s unnerving Next World Novella about man slowly facing up to the reality of who he is, translated by Anthea Bell for Peirene Press (£8.99); and Carlos Gemmero’s  fascinating investigative novel about the legacy of the Falklands war in the Argentina of the 1990s, The Islands (£10), translated by Ian Barnett, published by And Other Stories, who, like Alma and Peirene, have brought a fresh burst of energy into UK publishing.’

Philip Gwyn Jones, Publisher, Granta

‘Karl Ove Knausgaard is not Norway’s Proust, as some claim, but like all the great writers entirely and only himself in all his troubling originality. He is a great storyteller who dislikes happy endings, a great biographer who dislikes simplifications, and a great analyst who dislikes theories. His first volume of My Struggle, A Death in the Family translated by Don Bartlett (Harvill Secker, £17.99) is for whichever member of your family has been to purgatory and survived.’

Stefan Tobler, Publisher, And Other Stories, translator

‘I’ve got a soft spot for novels set in villages with odd characters and odd goings-on. Mr Weston’s Good Wine by T. F. Powys, for example. This novel hit that spot for me. Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s Sátántangó (Tuskar Rock, £12) with its luxurious sentences and his translator George Szirtes’ brilliance are pleasures to be savoured. Give it to someone who wants to read a future Nobel Prize winner before everyone else – as long as they don’t mind a leisurely pace.’

Koukla MacLehose, Literary Scout

‘For 2012 I’d like to recommend Where I Left my Soul by Jerôme Ferrari, translated by Geoffrey Strachan (MacLehose Press, £12). It is really an astonishing piece of writing. Very disturbing; it goes deep deep inside the human soul. A lieutenant writes to his captain long after they have gone separate ways. They had met in Indochina, the disaster of Dien Bien Phu. The former with immense admiration for the latter. They find each other again in the horrors of the Algerian war. Everything one reads about any war sounds like it. Think of Abu Graib, Al Qaida, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia… any situation which involves tracking down informers and using whatever  means to get the ones in charge thinking it will then stop all the others. When Babchenko was writing his book about the Russians in Chechnya, he was not saying different things. ‘You got me but that is nothing, for we will go on and on until you will have to leave’  says the Algerian prisoner. Have we not seen this over and over again?  It concerns all of us because it tries to get to the core of what it is to be human, to try – and fail most of the time – to keep one’s dignity in extraordinary circumstances, to live with the shame, the fear, the violence it engenders… I think it’s a great book.’

Philip Cowell, Head of Programmes, English PEN

‘I wholeheartedly recommend The World Record: International Voices from Southbank Centre’s Poetry Parnassus (Bloodaxe Books, £10) a magical book of poems representing poets from every country that took part in the Olympic and Paralympic Games, supported by English PEN’s Writers in Translation programme. Put together by editors Neil Astley and Anna Selby, this is a book full of the sounds and shapes of things the world can make. I loved it so much I forgot to go to sleep one night.

Here’s Bryan Thao Worra of Laos: “Night arrives, then day. The moon, the sun, the rain and waves./ A few other things, maybe something someone will write down./ Maybe not”. And here’s Kārlis Vērdiņš of Latvia: “I was bringing you a little cheese sandwich.”  This book is full of that kind of leap, that kind of surprise. It’s in many ways a book of surprises, a book of the philosophy of the possibility of surprise, and being surprised, of still being able to be surprised. Poetry reminds us we’re alive. The World Record, most importantly, knows what it’s doing – knows that the best poetry celebrates both the whole world and our tiny corner of it. This book knows the poet is our local world hero. The poems draw lines in every sense: “we’re waiting for the wind/ like two flags on a border” (Nikola Madzirov Shadows Pass Us By). The whole enterprise questions where we draw the line when it comes to the imagination. How far can you go with a poem that has come so far?’

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