Book Fair Post Mortem

Easing back into blogging, I thought I'd do a nice easy What Katy Did in Frankfurt post. Except of course nothing is easy these days, so it'll be a bit of a shit sandwich.

I skipped the book fair last year because I had had a tough time in my personal life and needed a rest. The contrast was all the more stark. Because exhibitor numbers are down, my international publishers were no longer miles away in Hall 8, necessitating long and hasty dashes to appointments, but relatively central in Hall 6. And because of global warming, the sun was shining. The effect, though, was a pleasant one: even though it's still a huge event, this time it felt more friendly and social. All six remaining halls are arranged around a central square dotted with pricey food trucks and odd constructions hosting extra events. So instead of walking between them along glassed-in walkways reminiscent of airport interiors, everyone headed outside and the "Agora" became a great place for coincidental meetings. Special thanks to Simone Buchholz here for the spontaneous ibuprofen/hug combination. But also to all the other people I ran into or met up with outside.

Number-one talk of the fair was the dearth of publishers' parties, followed as usual by the imminent death of the publishing industry. I still managed to go to two parties every night, though, so maybe things aren't drying up that fast... A friend who knows about the events industry tells me that sometimes, the money is actually there but the managers don't want to give the impression they're frittering it away. Sartorially, though, it was a disappointingly sombre affair, meaning I stood out like a sore thumb in my optimistic colours, especially at the parties. My advice: Dress for the publishing industry you want to be in, not for a Depeche Mode concert. Unless you want to be in aging goth publishing; in which case go ahead, you have my utmost respect.

On Friday night there were three levels of party insider status. Level one (and always my number-one Frankfurt party) was the German indies' party at the Literaturhaus, where anyone can attend for a small cover charge and drinks aren't free but cheap, with the dancing starting immediately after the awards ceremony (more on that below). Level two was the Dumont party, where you had to be on the invitation list and the drinks were free and everything was like it always is – crowded, dancefloor too packed for self-expression, much standing around and chatting to German publishing people – so much so that some people got confused about whose party it was, and possibly what year it was. It was there that I learned about insider level three, the Canongate party, for which you needed a paper invitation. There were, however, paper invitations to be had from relative strangers from KiWi Verlag, if you asked nicely. I got one and it proclaimed something like "This is the last party we will ever have. You must come or you will be sacrificed to the gods of netflix and amazon prime. It will go on until 5 in the morning so that you will make foolish decisions on Saturday." At around 3 AM, my brain so numbed by talking to publishing people for three days in a row that I barely remembered the existence of this blog, I decided it would be cooler to have had an invitation for the level-three publishing party but not actually attended. The logic being that getting more sleep would enable me to go and see a particular band in Berlin on Saturday, which would be eminently cooler than hanging out with yet more tipsy/tired publishing people. So I passed the slightly crumpled card along to a friend.

Here comes the shit part: Nazis. Last year there was a lot of stress around events organized by extreme right-wing publishers, featuring extremist writers and politicians and rightly eliciting protests. This year, the book fair placed all the dodgy publishers in one remote corner – except one of them pulled off a scam, pretending to wind up their press and then registering for a stand under a different name, claiming they'd be presenting books about freedom of speech. They ended up in the midst of left-leaning indies, rubbing their hands in delight. To be honest, that felt like the kind of elaborate and childish provocation my sister used to practice on me when we were eight and ten, so like most other people, I followed my mum's advice and ignored them.

But on Friday, the AfD's Björn Höcke was slated to promote his hate-filled book How I Will Whittle Down Germany's Population to Keep Only the Strong and the Blond (not actual title). This year the fair put him in a separate room and restricted access, blocking off escalators for much of an afternoon and calling in a significant police presence. Plain-clothes police officers threatened protesters and were generally more heavy-handed than one would expect at a publishing industry event – writer Sophie Sumburane was ejected from the premises for no explicable reason. Inside the promotion itself, a book fair representative ended up reassuring reporters that they were of course within their rights to record the proceedings, never mind what the organizers said, but television cameras were not allowed access. To be honest, the less airtime devoted to platforming Björn Höcke's hateful ideas the better, but the principle of excluding parts of the press is wrong.

If the book fair is serious about promoting human rights, it would do well to rethink hosting individuals known for propagating racism and belittling genocide. Things were better this year, I believe, with no reports of violence. But the book fair must be a safe place for all those who attend, and hosting Nazis makes it a dangerous place for many of us.

Back to the plus side: the blocked escalators meant I discovered the halal food outlet hidden away at the back of hall 4.0, which sold "Desi food like back home", including excellent samosas served up with cheeky quips. They'll be there next year too, so that and the supermarket outside hall 5 for affordable Coke Zero and emergency hosiery (if they don't demolish hall 5 as rumour has it) would be my top tips.

And now to my highlight, the olive on a cocktail stick pierced through the shit sandwich. The most delightful of all the delightful people to spend time with at the book fair were the people from Verbrecher Verlag. They never mince words – they'll let you know you if they think your idea is crap or if a book won't sell – so you can tell they really believe in what they do. They've begun championing bibliodiversity, changing their catalogue up from dude-heavy to a more balanced mix, with the women they publish selling more, it turns out, and garnering honours galore. Plus they're supportive and kind and funny. This year they were basically running around picking up prizes: Manja Präkels won the German YA Prize for Als ich mit Hitler Schnapskirschen aß, a novel about growing up with neo-Nazis in rural East Germany. I met her and she was lovely and very funny and got me a free copy. Bettina Wilpert accepted the aspekte debut novel prize for Nichts, was uns passiert, about a rape and the devastating ripples it causes. At the Hotlist indies awards on Friday – where ten publishers all got a prize each, a room full of love and support with slightly too little ventilation – that same title also won the Melusine Huss Prize, voted on by independent booksellers. Seeing their excitement made me very happy.

I was too tired to make it to the gig on Saturday.

Gedanken übers Außenseitersein und Sexismus

Sabine Scholl schrieb neulich so gut darüber, wie es sich anfühlt, im Literaturbetrieb Außenseiterin zu sein. Ich möchte darauf antworten, meine eigene Geschichte erzählen, auch mit den vielen guten Texten über Sexismus an Schreibschulen im Hinterkopf, besonders die von Martina Hefter und Stefan Mesch. Letzte Woche kam eine Anfrage von einer Zeitung, ein paar Zeilen zum Thema Sexismus im Literaturbetrieb zu schicken. Ich konnte nicht, weil ich mitten in einem Umzug steckte – aber auch weil ich dachte, ein paar Zeilen zu meinen Erfahrungen reichen nicht aus, die Sache ist komplizierter.

Für mein Gefühl bin ich mehrfache Außenseiterin im deutschen Literaturbetrieb. Ich bin nicht in Deutschland aufgewachsen, deutsch ist nicht meine Muttersprache. Ich bin Übersetzerin und keine Autorin oder Kritikerin. Ich bin atheistisch erzogen, in der dritten Generation. Ich bin Mutter, halbzeit-alleinerziehend, auch das in der dritten Generation. Ich habe Freunde, die keine Bücher lesen. Ich bin nicht verheiratet, war es nie, und habe gerade keinen Partner. Was ich auch nicht habe, um an Sabine Scholl anzuknüpfen, ist einen Bildungsbürgerhintergrund.

Ich komme aus London. Dort reden wir noch über Klasse, manchmal vereinfachend; dabei ist das Thema gar nicht so geradlinig. Meine Eltern sind typische Aufsteiger, haben die Klasse gewechselt als die Gesellschaft in den 60ern durchlässiger wurde. Die Mutter bekam mit elf ein Stipendium für begabte Arbeiterkinder, besuchte eine Internatsschule, fühlte sich sieben Jahre lang fehl am Platz. Zu Hause arbeitete ihr Vater als Lastwagenfahrer und die Mutter als Dienstmädchen und Putzfrau. Mit ihrer guten Schulbildung ausgestattet, fing meine Mutter ein Studium an – hörte aber schnell wieder auf, weil sie meinen Vater vermisste. Er hatte die Schule mit sechzehn abgebrochen, landete nach einer Weile dank Vollbeschäftigung auf den Füßen und lernte Tontechniker bei der BBC. Seine Mutter hatte ihre drei Söhne alleine aufgezogen, war Stenotypistin bei der Post, während ihr Exmann in Fabriken arbeitete und in der kommunistischen Partei aktiv war.

So waren meine Eltern nirgendwo ganz zugehörig. Seine Arbeit und ihre Bildung trennten sie von der Arbeiterklasse ab, schenkten ihnen aber nur oberflächliche, prekäre Bürgerlichkeit. Sie kauften sich ein Reihenhaus, lasen sich Wissen an, mein Vater brachte sich selbst Klavierspielen bei, meine Mutter machte Verwaltungsjobs und consciousness-building und studierte dann doch mit vierzig Sozialwissenschaften, nachdem die beiden sich getrennt hatten. Meine Schwester und ich wuchsen mit Büchern auf, aber auch mit Popmusik und Fernsehen. Wir machten Amateurtheater, Pantomimes in der Mehrzweckhalle, fuhren als Scheidungskinder nicht mehr ins Ausland in den Urlaub sondern immer in verregnete englische Kleinstädte. Wir hatten verschiedene Untermieterinnen, wie die Großeltern schon ihr Einkommen aufgebessert hatten. Alles war gut, das Geld reichte meist knapp.

Und dann waren wir dran: meine Schwester und ich studierten beide. Meine Mutter hatte gerade rechtzeitig verhindert, dass wir die ersten Familienmitglieder an der Uni waren. Meine Schwester wurde nicht fertig, ich schon. Sie arbeitet jetzt mit älteren Menschen als eine Art ungelernte Sozialarbeiterin, ist auch alleinerziehend, hat eine Behinderung und kommt damit klar. Alles ist gut, das Geld reicht meist knapp. Bei mir sieht’s ähnlich aus, nur dass ich meine Arbeit liebe und keinen Anspruch auf eine Sozialwohnung habe. Den Bachelorabschluss eingesackt, bin ich bloß schnell weg von der Uni, von England, ab nach Berlin. Ich zog mit einem Gartenbaulehrling zusammen, er hatte eine Einraumwohnung in Friedrichshain, mit Ofenheizung aber immerhin mit eigenem Badezimmer. Nachdem wir uns trennten fiel er durch die Gesellenprüfung durch.

Nach weiteren lebensbereichernden Brüchen begab ich mich nichtsahnend in deutsche Literaturkreisen. Ich finde es hier schwer, Klassenhintergründe einzuschätzen; ich kann die Zeichen immer noch schlecht lesen und die Deutschen reden auch nicht freiwillig darüber. Florian Kessler hatte aber vermutlich recht mit seiner Ärztesöhne-Theorie. Was ich gemerkt habe: man kennt sich mit klassischer Musik aus aber hört textbetonten Indie-Pop. Man trägt keine knalligen Farben. Männer machen Witze, Frauen lachen – aber nicht zu laut. Man reist viel und versteht was von Wein aber trinkt selten über den Durst. Man flirtet nicht, höchstens sehr subtil und am späteren Abend. Oder vielleicht steht man nur nicht auf mich, keine Ahnung. Jedenfalls mache ich einiges falsch und fühle mich oft fremd in der Szene, manchmal wie eine teilnehmende Beobachterin.

Und doch finde ich immer wieder Räume, in denen ich mich wohlfühle. Manchmal sind sie vorübergehend: Buchmessen, der ehemalige Salon von Adler und Söhne, bestimmte Lesungsreihen. Oft liegt es an den Gastgebern, die sich wie zum Beispiel im LCB darum bemühen, dass alle sich wohlfühlen. Das sind Orte, wo ich im pinken Kleid zu roten Schuhen tanzen und Witze reißen kann, wo ich betrunken die letzte Bahn verpassen kann und jemand nimmt mich im Taxi mit, wo ich zu viel von mir erzählen kann, immer schön in der verpönten ersten Person, wo es auch mal knallen darf. Manchmal erschaffe ich diese Räume selbst, in der Form eines Blogs oder einer Veranstaltung. Ich will weiterhin einiges falsch machen.

Und es gibt Leute, viele davon Frauen, die auch keine glatten Lebensläufe haben und die sich gegenseitig unterstützen. Ich erhalte von vielen Frauen im Literaturbetrieb Hilfe und Zuspruch: es sind andere Mütter, Alleinerziehende, Feministinnen, Ausländerinnen, Übersetzerinnen, andere lautlachende, spaßverstehende, talentierte Fettnäpfchentretende. Diese Frauen und Männer sind es, die mich in diesem komischen Betrieb bei der Stange halten. I hope you know who you are.

Denn ja, der deutsche Literaturbetrieb ist immer noch von bürgerlichen weißen Männern dominiert. Es reicht also schon, eine Frau zu sein, um sich hier als Außenseiterin zu empfinden. Der Betrieb ist immer noch ein Ort, wo Frauen nach ihrem Aussehen verurteilt werden und sich vielleicht deswegen selten trauen, Körperlichkeit in ihrem Schreiben zuzulassen. Wo sie sich auch selten trauen, Wut zu zeigen, radikal zu denken, reden und schreiben. Deswegen freue ich mich so sehr, dass ehemalige und jetzige Schreibschulstudierende über die Bedingungen dort klagen. Ich glaube, ich bin nicht die Richtige, um über Sexismus-Erfahrungen im Betrieb zu erzählen, denn ich stecke wie gesagt nicht richtig drin und möchte es auch nicht unbedingt. Ich bin nicht vom Wohlwollen der bürgerlichen weißen Männern abhängig, jedenfalls nicht der deutschen.

Aber ich beobachte vom Rande und wünsche mir, dass Frauen es leichter haben, erfolgreiche Schriftstellerinnen zu werden, damit ich ihre Bücher übersetzen kann. Bücher von Menschen ohne glatten Lebensläufe, wie einige der Autorinnen, die ich übersetzt habe und übersetzen werde: Inka Parei, Annett Gröschner, Christa Wolf, Helene Hegemann, Rusalka Reh, Olga Grjasnowa, Heike Geißler. Und denkt noch an diese anderen geilen Schreibbräute: Katja Lange-Müller, Herta Müller, Julia Franck, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Judith Hermann, Sharon Dodua Otoo, Antje Rávic Strubel... Ich wünsche mir mehr, noch mehr, ich möchte baden in Büchern von unangepassten Autorinnen.

Passt euch meinetwegen bloß nicht an. Schreibt nicht brav, schreibt mit Pathos oder Wut oder Witz oder Experimentierlust. Macht dasselbe im Leben. Helft euch gegenseitig, heißt andere Frauen willkommen. Seid eure eigene Seilschaft. Macht das Außenseitersein zur Tugend, erklärt euren Literaturbetrieb zur Außenseiterinnenrepublik. Seid geschmacklos und verhaltet euch falsch.

Bricks and Mortar by Clemens Meyer – A Translator's Note

February 2016 

I have just submitted my translation of Clemens Meyer’s Bricks and Mortar. It’s the best book I’ve translated so far, has stretched me the most and required the most drastic approaches. I feel tearful. For added bathos – and this is a book with a lot of bathos – my email got an out-of-office reply from the publisher.

I’ve been following the novel since 2008, when Clemens first published what became the final chapter as a short story in an anthology. It was even filthier than the present version. He read it at an event that was recorded for radio, checking nervously with his editor if it was really OK to put it on record. Last week I read from that final chapter myself, blushing, and was pleased that other people liked it too.

It took a long time to find a publisher willing to take a risk on this novel, which was originally published in German in 2013. It is long, which means my translation has been expensive. And it’s a playful, ambitious, neo-modernist, Marxism-tinged exploration of the development of the east German prostitution market, from next to nothing in 1989 to full decriminalization and diversification in the present day. Not everybody’s cup of tea.

Translating it was all-consuming. It required a great deal of research because I wasn’t directly familiar with the sex industry before working on it. But it was also emotionally draining because of the intensity of the writing. Translators are used to immersing ourselves in writers’ work but this book – and Clemens’s writing in general – is so unflinching that it affected me more than ever before.

***

Most translation requires us to explain the source culture to some extent. In this case, though, the legal situation with regard to prostitution in Germany is completely different to that in the UK and the US, even Nevada. Since 2001, German law has enabled prostitutes to work under regular employment contracts, explicitly stating that prostitution is no longer an unconscionable act. Sex work is legal and widely accepted – although the area is not free from moral judgement – and sexual services are advertised plainly. That means the language around it is different.

I started out by looking for British ads for sexual services. They do exist but they are so euphemistic as to be no use to me; the language in Bricks and Mortar is very much to the point. Meyer plays on the codes used in small ads, abbreviations and cute phrases, and I needed an equivalent that made sense. Thankfully, there are internet forums where punters rate ‘adult service providers’, and one of them provides a glossary containing exactly what I needed. I also read the Feminist Press’s very useful $pread: The Best of the Magazine that Illuminated the Sex Industry and Started a Media Revolution for a sense of how people in the US sex industry talk about their work, and many articles in the British press. TV dramas were also helpful for a sense of how readers might expect sex workers to talk, especially the excellent Band of Gold.

Another key difference between the cultures is that a lot of prostitution in Germany takes place in apartments in normal buildings; I once lived above one, in fact, which closed down after a shooting. Street prostitution exists but is unsafe, like anywhere else, and only comes up on the margins of the novel. Again, that makes the language different. Where British and American sex workers speak of “clients”, I preferred to stick to the German “guests” with its suggestion of hospitality, an issue several characters raise.

And once I started creating my own language for the novel’s unique situation, I felt I could take that approach even further. So readers will come across two neologisms – “in the Zone” and “after the Wall”. I hope this is the kind of novel in which readers can deal with new phrases. I’m very pleased with “in the Zone” because it sounds aptly science-fictional, referring simply to East Germany in communist days. And “after the Wall” is shorthand for “after the fall of the Iron Curtain”. Where German has the succinct “Wende” for the turning point in its late-20th-century history, a sailing metaphor, English struggles with all sorts of long-winded explanations. Meyer writes very rhythmically and it was important to me to cut anything that interrupted the flow – although that flow is sometimes jagged and abrupt, sometimes smooth and colloquial.

Emboldened, I then did something translators of “serious literature” are not supposed to do. I changed a character’s name. A hard-punning punter by the name of Ecki – a quiet homage to Hubert Fichte’s Jäcki in Die Palette – has an internet radio show called Eckis Edelkirsch, named after a cheap cherry liqueur. But that reference wasn’t strong enough for me, or not strong enough for a character who’s anything but subtle. I wanted the crass “cherry”, the overtly sexual title for an overtly sexual show, not something foreign and unpronounceable. And so Ecki became Jerry and his show became Jerry’s Cherry Pie, inspired by a sex shop in West Ealing. Meyer gave me permission for the change – and Jerry is still not far from Jäcki. Jerry’s two chapters were a joy to translate, punning and rhyming and getting almost psychedelic.

My favourite chapter, though, is now called ‘My Huckleberry Friend’. Meyer, knowing I was so keen on it, gave me the first page of the chapter from the first galley proof – in a frame – for my fortieth birthday. It’s typical of his writing, interweaving two women’s voices and never making it quite clear whether what’s happening is really happening. The German title – like many chapter titles in the book – is a song, a slow waltz in fact. The two sex workers may or may not end up dancing to the song, which isn’t mentioned by name other than in the melancholy title, a song about saying goodbye: ‘Sag beim Abschied leise Servus’. Although the direct reference to parting is lost, I hope my new title conjures up Audrey Hepburn’s yearning for glamour in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, a film I’m sure the two characters might watch together. And ‘Moon River’ is a slow waltz that many readers can probably hum, keeping that essential rhythmic element intact.

***

July 2016

As of the 4th of July, the Commons inquiry into prostitution has recommended legalizing brothels and soliciting as quickly as possible in the UK. Bricks and Mortar may give British readers an idea of what might happen once sex workers are allowed to work in greater safety. First and foremost, though, I hope readers will value it as much as I do, as a novel that makes no apologies as it pushes back the boundaries of what literature can do. ‘A journey into the night, brutal, dark, somnambulistic, surreal and often cruelly precise. A book about Germany, today’ wrote the critic Volker Weidermann in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. He was right. 

***

17 October 2016

Bricks and Mortar is published in the UK today by Fitcarraldo Editions. My copies should arrive on Wednesday.

Clemens Meyer Reference Works

I'm on the home straight for my translation of Clemen's Meyer's Im Stein – although we don't have an English title yet. So I thought I'd share my extracurricular reading and reference works for the novel. In order of decreasing naivety.

The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes

Let's Sing Together 

The Penguin Rhyming Dictionary

It's all part of the job. Deutsch für die Polizei

A Dictionary of Marxist Thought


Karl Marx: Capital

Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz


Bobby Cummines: I Am Not a Gangster - Fixer. Armed robber. Hitman. OBE

William T. Vollmann: Whores for Gloria

Rachel Aimee, Eliyanna Kaiser, Audacia Ray (eds.): $pread. The best of the magazine that illuminated the sex industry and started a media revolution

Wolfgang Hilbig, I (trans. Isabel Cole)

David Peace: Tokyo Year Zero

Skip the Games: Escort terms, sex definitions and abbreviations in escort ads

I might have forgotten some.

My Feelings about My Writers and Your Feelings about David Bowie

I had been puzzled by how strongly people feel about David Bowie's death – the street renamings, the pilgrimages and flowers, the deep sadness, the need to share the tiny encounters or the life-changing effects of particular songs or Top of the Pops appearances. I have a different feeling about death to many people anyway, as a fourth-generation atheist, and have struggled to understand people's reactions in the past. A lot of them felt to me as though people thought the dead person was looking down at them and checking they were behaving suitably. Maybe they did think that, I don't know. When you've never entertained the idea of an afterlife that's hard to relate to. But I have at least learned something about the comforting power of ritual and sharing of grief.

So I had been idly reading various people's responses and it began to dawn on me that I had in fact felt something similar to that one-way devotion to someone who is unaware of your existence. And that's the feeling I have about my writers. I spend months or years mentally immersed in their creative work in a similar way to that time spent listening to favourite songs, poring over lyrics, interpreting their meaning, internalizing the rhythm, singing along at the top of your voice, imagining the song is all about you. Such a joyful teenagerly activity, best performed on a single bed with headphones and spots. I know you don't have to be a teenager to do it; here's the last song that did that to me.

And that's very like what happens to me when I'm translating a novel. It's a work of art that's been created entirely independently of me and even if I know the writer personally, which I usually do but not always, I will always know far more about their work than they do about mine. I will always think I know them far better than they know me – and yes, I know that's wrong thinking. But it's still a joyful activity, wallowing in the writing to create my literary cover versions. Sometimes translators do get romantically involved with their writers. I don't know about that really; it's always a secret yearning, I think, but could it ever be a balanced relationship?

None of my writers has died since I started working on them. It will be devastating, I expect. So now I understand the David Bowie sadness better.

Not at the Book Fair

I am not at the book fair. No, I can't meet you for a drink. Well yes, I was invited to that party but obviously I'm not going. No, we can't sit down and talk German books. I haven't gone because I was away in New York for ten days recently and I need to get work done. And then having decided that, I said my dad was very welcome to come and visit, so I can't possibly go now. Which is, incidentally, the answer to that suggestion that I just "pop down for the day" (not that an eight-hour round trip to Frankfurt doesn't sound enticing).

And I thought I'd be rather sad about it. I thought I'd be upset by all the Facebook postings of booths being built and torrid tweets from the Frankfurter Hof. I expected envy, my constant companion, to blow itself up to the size of the marshmallow monster at the end of Ghostbusters. But so far, I'm feeling quite calm about the whole thing. Envy is normal marshmallow size.

I do love book fairs, you see. I do love the very first day of striding around and smiling at vague acquaintances, or frowning at leery guys who think they're God's gift to publishing. I love picking up display copies and stroking the covers, noting things down in my special book fair notebook. I love talking to three people at once and then getting tapped on the shoulder by a fourth person I haven't seen since last year and getting all tangled up in between languages. I even love the slightly naff parties – although I hate the horrible Hof, and have vowed never to go there again because it puts me in an instant evil mood.

I think I may be becoming a calmer person. I actually forgot about the German Book Prize all day on Monday. In previous years I'd have been glued to the livestream, no kidding. This year I was cooking for my family at 7 o'clock and then we listened to music and watched some old Muppets episodes and then I checked Twitter before I went to bed and, oh boy, they went and awarded the prize while I wasn't looking!

You might have noticed I've calmed down with the blogging. It's partly because Twitter is simply a better venue for posting short things, news items and what have you. Another reason is that I've written about many things before, so the eighth repeat of "why I am excited about xyz" doesn't even interest me that much, let alone anyone else, presumably. Plus there are now lots of book bloggers focusing on German books, so I feel they've probably got things covered and I can relax. But to be honest, the main reason is that I just don't feel such a sense of urgency any more. Probably, people aren't drumming their fingers on the table, waiting for me to post about the winner of the German Book Prize before they can possibly go to sleep.

I was just thinking of writing that I haven't got any new hobbies or anything. That's not strictly true, though, because I am doing more moderating, which means I have to read certain books that don't necessarily fit here. But if I were to write a dating profile for myself it would still say "books, books, books".

Anyway, bear with me during this calm period. I might get all excitable and start posting every day again, or I might not. I'm fine. Just not at the book fair.

Some Thank Yous

I have been quiet; I was in New York. Have I mentioned before how kind and supportive the literary translation community is?

Before I even got to New York, I got a phone call to say that my accommodation with a friend of a friend had fallen through; a burst pipe and no water for the foreseeable. Within minutes, another translator had offered me her flat for the weekend – she needed a cat-sitter anyway. So many people said I was welcome to stay on their respective couches that I decided to see a few different parts of town, spending two nights each in Greenpoint, Kensington and Upper West Side (I think). And everyone looked after me beautifully. I had (half of) the most ridiculous ice cream sundae of my life, went up on a roof, drank sake in a basement establishment I'm sure I'd never find again, had pink iced tea, went to a Polish diner, bought Statue of Liberty biros, admired various views, got lots of advice, talked to strangers, gave away and was given lots and lots of books and generally had a very interesting time.

So this is to say thanks to the Goethe Institut New York and the German Book Office New York – and to all the translation people who calmed me down and made my stay in their city so full of love. You know who you are. For everyone else, here's a home-swapping website for translators. OK, not quite everybody else.

Next We Take New York

I'm back! Did you miss me? I've been doing some much-needed r e l a x i n g – including the always delightful BCLT Summer School – and am pretty much back up to speed now. Note that I have recovered my natural cheer, despite it being hot as hell here right now.

And something quite exciting is coming up next month, for me at least. I'm going to the USA! My first time as an adult! I went to Philadelphia when I was seven but I don't remember it all that well apart from visiting my first ever shopping mall, where someone had kindly gobbed on the escalator handrail, thus putting me off malls for life. Worse things have happened.

Apart from just standing around with my mouth open in amazement, I shall be doing two official things in New York. Or am I supposed to call it New York City? The first is open to the public (you lucky, lucky public) and is a panel discussion at the Goethe Institut, Net Lit Unlimited. You can blame me for that title.

And the second thing is by invitation only, but if you tell them I sent you they might let you join in anyway. You probably have to have either a modicum of translation experience or a burning passion for literary translation, and you definitely have to speak German. It's a chance to bask in my infinite translatorly wisdom, an opportunity rarely available outside of Europe.

TransLab –

Workshop for up-and-coming literary translators from German to English led by Katy Derbyshire.

Date: Tuesday, September 22, 12:00 pm – 4:00 pm (subject to change)
Place: Goethe-Institut, New York
            30 Irving Place, 4th Floor
            New York, NY 10003

Agenda:
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm: Warm-up exercise:  What makes a good translation?
1pm – 1:30 pm: Translators will be assigned to small groups. They will translate up to three short passages.
1:30 pm – 3:00 pm: Group exercise: Editing the translations
This segment will focus on choices involving the narrative voice, and how to write a coherent text.

(Katy Derbyshire is originally from London and has lived in Berlin for many years. She translates contemporary German writers including Inka Parei, Clemens Meyer, Helene Hegemann, and Dorothee Elmiger. Katy blogs at love german books and co-hosts a monthly translation lab and the bimonthly Dead Ladies Show.)

By Invitation only. For more information, please email Riky Stock: stock at newyork.gbo.org

A collaboration between the German Book Office and the Goethe-Institut, New York.

See you there, lovely New Yorkers! And it better not be too hot by then.

Lost in Translation*

So here's what's up. First it's been really hot and I've been spending too much time on my own, two things I'm not all that good at.

But the big thing is – and notice I'm not calling it a problem – that I've started translating Clemens Meyer's novel Im Stein. And I genuinely think it's the best novel to come out of Germany for years, which makes every new book I read seem pale and unimpressive. I don't think it's fair to review those books here under the circumstances, so I haven't been. I've read a couple that will be coming out at the end of the summer, which I do think are good (although not as good as Im Stein) and I'll try and write about them later on. But at the moment I think many publishers are holding back the good stuff for the autumn. So that's one side to it.

The other is that this translation is incredibly intense. The book contains all sorts of snippets of knowledge and quotes, from Karl Marx to the Brothers Grimm to geology to forensic medicine and, especially, the sex industry. On my desk I have a dictionary of Marxist thought, a dictionary of nursery rhymes, a dictionary of police terminology, an East German book of English songs, an anthology of writing by sex workers, plus the usual thesaurus and a website I hate but have to call up several times a day, explaining abbreviations used in online forums for rating prostitutes' services. I'm reading background material and chasing after quotes and absolutely tied up in this project.

Meyer writes like a dervish, creating a cynical psychedelic rock opera, rarely coming up for air. And I'm right in there, in my translation tunnel, in the flow, typing in tongues to channel the characters' voices and Meyer's crazed tone. I'm doing it quickly, intensely, because that's the way I understand it best. So I'll spend eight hours at a time in this world of pimps and prostitutes, bikers, managers, punters, detectives, florists, heartbroken fathers and resigned daughters, and if someone speaks to me I can't always answer because my mind isn't really in the room. I'm loving it and it's making me a little bit disturbed. I think it will get worse before it gets better.

This is something I've worked towards for two years, or in fact more since I first heard Clemens Meyer reading extracts from the work in progress. It took a long time to find a publisher brave enough to take on the novel and the writer, neither of them easy to work with but both incredibly rewarding. Fitzcarraldo Editions are a new publishing house with some extremely exciting books out already, and I think the novel fits perfectly with their catalogue. And then it took a long time for the publisher to find the money to pay for my work, which is expensive because the book is long. I wanted to do this so badly and I knew it would affect me very intensely, and it is. There's one chapter that I know will make me sick to translate, and I'm hoping I can find a place to work on that chapter where I never have to go again, so that my everyday environment doesn't get poisoned. I'm not sure when that's coming up though.

My translation should be out in the autumn of 2016, and then you will tremble and maybe understand why I'm feeling so strange. I dread to think what the inside of Clemens Meyer's head must have looked like while he wrote it. I dread to think what the inside of my head will look like by the time I finish translating it. I am doing exactly what I want to be doing. But it's so gargantuan that it's making a lot of other things seem small and insignificant. At the risk of laying on the pathos (I don't care though because if Meyer's not scared of pathos then I can't be either), I need to take care of my daughter and myself during my precious hours of sanity, and if that means my blog suffers, so be it.



*Great title, huh? I felt it was my turn to use it.

Emerging German Writers at Words without Borders

They asked me to guest-edit an issue of Words without Borders showcasing emerging German writers. I nearly burst, I was so proud and excited. For years I'd been fantasizing about putting together an equivalent to Granta's Best of Young British Novelists, only with Germans. The power! The influence! The delights of including certain favourites and excluding writers who've blanked me at parties!

And then: Jesus, it was hard. Try choosing only ten writers, of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. As in, only ten writers you want the whole world to read. Also, try choosing ten pieces of writing that are varied and reflect different aspects of a "national literature" (let's not go there) and are also serious and fun to read and outstandingly good and grab you by the throat and shake you and work on their own and in combination. Thankfully, they let me choose only German writing rather than German-language writing from Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Luxemburg, and wherever. So only about half the total volume to sieve through.

I define the nebulous "emerging" as not yet world famous and with a maximum of two book-length publications. Some of the writers haven't put any books out yet. For poets I was looking for people who haven't yet been translated. I define "German writers" as people who write in German in Germany, possibly coming from elsewhere, or come from Germany and write in German elsewhere. There's a fair amount of moving around the world among the authors in the issue – I didn't check anyone's passports.

One thing very quickly went out the window: an age limit. Because an age limit is a ridiculous restriction that punishes writers who've been doing other things with their lives before getting published and rewards writers who take the straight path. Another thing was that I sought help and advice on poetry, because I know very little indeed about poetry.

Anyway, look upon their works ye mighty, and despair. Maybe no one will remember them in ten years' time or maybe they'll be famous the world over. These are my emerging German writers:

Finn-Ole Heinrich
Olga Grjasnowa
Stephanie Bart
Marianna Salzmann
Bettina Suleiman
Simone Kornappel
Isabelle Lehn
Francis Nenik
Noemi Schneider
Deniz Utlu

Thanks to my fellow translators Amanda DeMarco, Jake Schneider and Julie Winter, and to the lovely editors at Words without Borders. The issue also features a special on writers from Burundi, which you should also read. Also I wrote an introduction. Enjoy. I am available for interviews.

"Feminisms" at Fischer & Suhrkamp

It's amusing. I can see the point of being inclusive, and by no means do I want to say men cannot and should not be feminists. But when I look at how the shared discussion of "feminisms" is shaping up at Hundertvierzehn.de and Logbuch Suhrkamp, I can't help but crunching numbers. And so far there are more male voices in the conversation than female.

I can't say I'm surprised. If you scroll down past their fig leaf you'll notice that both publishers' blogs are stuffed full of men writing about men, or men writing about themselves, with occasional women writing about men and every now and then a woman (oddly, often American) writing about women. It's like they don't have any women in their catalogues – or are their female writers too busy?

I'm getting sick of feeling so cynical, which may explain why my blogging pace has slowed right down. Because I hate all this Eyoreish complaining I'm doing all the time. Right now I'm also translating the book I've wanted to work on for the past two years: Clemens Meyer's Im Stein, which will be published late next year by Fitcarraldo Editions. It's sucking me in and making everything else feel kind of insignificant. Yes, it's by a man.

Here's a piece by a man about publishing women, Alex Valente in The Norwich Radical on A Climate of Positive Thinking. I hope it helps me and others to think positive. Maybe all this talk of feminisms at Fischer and Suhrkamp will remind them to make their blogs a little more diverse as well.

On Literary Events

Literary readings are a big thing in Germany. Audiences are incredibly patient and will sit through two-hour events composed largely of monotonous recital with hardly any shuffling of bottoms on seats. Then they will go home without asking any questions, not even the question-that-is-a-statement kind. Compare and contrast with the UK events I've attended, where the reading aloud parts are kept to a minimum and it's all about asking the author's advice on getting published. So it's little wonder, perhaps, that Berlin's literary event culture is split cleanly into German and non-German. That means that when an Anglophone writer is translated into German, their events here will usually have a largely German audience, while English events with smaller names will be packed to the gills.

I blame the format, which is fairly standardized for some reason (inertia?). Writer and moderator and actor share a stage. Translator is not present, or if so then only in the audience. Writer reads one page from the original, actor reads interminably long section from the translation while writer stares into space, moderator fails to mention translator, brief conversation between writer and moderator, which is translated as it goes along, while the actor stares into space. Actor reads another incredibly long passage. Everyone goes home. If you understand the original language you don't get a great deal out of this format – which is why, I suspect, audiences at the Berlin International Literature Festival are not usually very international.

So we're trying something slightly different at the Salon Karl-Marx-Buchhandlung. Under the heading "Literatur im Original" we're going to do events with Anglophone writers but without the actors. Because what's the point in having writers come all the way here if all they do is stare into space half the time? While I'm pretty certain most Berliners now magically speak much better English than twenty years ago, of course we can't expect everyone to follow complex literary texts, so we're going to project the translations onto the wall to help them understand – and also to showcase the translator's work and encourage people to buy the translations, which is kind of the point of these events. So there's more time for me to talk to the writer on stage and also more time for the audience to ask her advice on getting published.

We start with the writer and sociologist of art Sarah Thornton, who'll be talking about her fascinating book 33 Artists in 3 Acts this coming Wednesday. And in case you can't read the German blurb about the event itself, here it is in English, because I really want you to come anyway and meet German-speaking art and book lovers:

Wednesday, 10 June at 7.30 pm.

Sarah Thornton
33 Artists in 3 Acts
Moderator: Katy Derbyshire
The event will take place mainly in English

What does it mean to be an artist in the 21st century? Are artists entrepreneurs or entertainers? How do they stay “authentic”? In her book 33 ARTISTS IN 3 ACTS, the art expert and sociologist SARAH THORNTON takes us to the superstars of the international art scene, presenting 33 artists including Ai Weiwei, Jeff Koons and Marina Abramovic. Focusing on three aspects – politics, kinship and craft – she looks not only at their studios, but also at their living rooms and their bank accounts. She’s there when ideas come about and great works take shape. With a scathing eye for detail, she analyzes their many different answers to the question: What is an artist?

Cooperation partner: S. Fischer Verlag
Tickets: 8,- € /  6,- €
Reservations via: 030 29 777 89-10.

See you there.

Social Anxiety at the President's Palace

There's nothing like an invitation to the presidential palace to trigger social anxiety. Come round, wrote Joachim Gauck in an embossed envelope, we'll have some drinks and stuff in honour of the art of literary translation. Bring a date. Bring a date: "und Begleitung". Two little words; weeks of horror. Having asked one person whose response prompted me to change their first name in my phone so as never to ask them out again and one person who wasn't in the country on the day of the event, followed by some painful soul-searching of the "Daddy didn't love me enough" variety, I finally found someone with enough pity in them to accompany me to the president's gaff.

Sadly, said sympathetic character was struck down by illness the day before. So I went on my own. Rubbing it in, the security people asked "Are you on your own?" when I arrived. "Yes," I mumbled, trying to embrace my independence. It didn't work. I turned down the offer of a chauffeur-driven ride from the security gate to the front door. Just because I can't get a date doesn't mean I can't walk a hundred yards. And then of course there were hardly any seats left, so I found myself in a block of people I didn't know, most of whom seemed to be breathing out a day's worth of coffee fumes. I assume they were from the languages department at the Foreign Office; literary translators would have been intimidated enough to brush their teeth beforehand.

So there I am, all on my ownsome, trying to eavesdrop on the couple arguing behind me (I heard "Kotzt mich an..." and "Komme nicht mehr" from the woman but couldn't quite get what it was about) to stop me from crying, which worked to all intents and purposes, when Gauck launched into his speech. It was a clever speech, a good speech, a speech that expressed admiration and gratitude. Unfortunately, it was a speech by a a former Lutheran pastor. I've always thought of myself as a tolerant atheist, but someone telling me that my profession is proof of divine miracles sent me into the kind of rage diffused only by snorting audibly in a chandeliered room full of five hundred invited guests. Audibly to myself anyway. Of course I would always dispute Gauck's cautiously worded suggestion that producing understanding out of the mutually incomprehensible is made possible by God, like the Pentecostal whatever it was. Yes, translation is an impossible feat, but so are many other things. Love, writing, bringing up kids. If we must find some metaphor for achieving them nonetheless, let that metaphor be superhero powers. Or just magic in general, for fuck's sake.

I sat there and wished very hard that the politicians the Germans had elected had chosen Beate Klarsfeld instead, until Gauck commented that it was actually his partner Daniela Schadt who suggested the evening. And then I didn't know what to think, except that I was glad he mentioned German literary translators' terrible pay.

There followed a two-hour programme moderated by the critic Dennis Scheck, who politely refrained from blacking up on this occasion. To give whoever put it together the benefit of the doubt, it must be difficult to compile a two-hour programme suitable for the president at one end of the knowledge scale and a bunch of literary translators at the other. So as to help Gauck along, they chose mostly the kind of translators he might have heard of – prizewinning writers who translate on the side – and talked entirely about translating books by men. There was some music, which ranged from the sublime to the silly (in a good way), and then we got to stand up again. Which reminds me, we all stood up at the beginning when the president walked in and I felt all rebellious like when our old headmaster came into the classroom and we collectively refused to stand up, but I didn't quite manage to stay seated this time.

Wine, bubbly, little nibbles brought round that required the very nice waiters to stand next to you while you popped them in your mouth so you could return the stick to the tray. Smalltalk. Checking out the guest list. Why such a small proportion of actual literary translators? Why did they invite that critic who once told me translators shouldn't complain about pay because nobody forced them to be translators? Why did they invite that publisher whose editor said they were sick of translators wanting so much money? What was the army officer doing at an event celebrating literary translation? Who the hell were all these people? Why were they dressed so conservatively? Why did that renowned literary translator mistake me for someone else?

At home (taxi after arriving on the late side by bus) I googled the woman he took me for. She was totally gorgeous. I felt better. 

Look Back at London

It was quite the fairytale of a book fair. In the spiffy Victorian palace of consumerism that is Kensington Olympia, the Literary Translation Centre hid round the back, its face streaked with cinders from keeping the fires of international literary transfer burning. With the fat cats away buying and selling rights et cetera, the mice played and played in what seemed like more space than usual, although chairs were at a premium. But we had our own little stage and nice toilets not nearly as frequented as at any other book fair I have ever attended. I didn't have to queue a single time, I kid you not. There was much socializing, some gossiping and some mourning of colleagues lost this past year, the occasional actual meeting – just the typical hard work to which the kitchen maids of the publishing world are accustomed.

And then came the big night. Our heroine had packed a party gown in a nutshell, so as to change out of her rags for the big ball. Heads turned as she made her entrance, conversations lulled and the like, but then Eugen Ruge distracted everyone at the ambassador's ball by talking about politics, literature and families pre- and post-89. There followed the usual spread of hazelnut-encrusted treats on trays, when lo and behold, three fairy godmothers in the guise of foreign rights ladies whisked our heroine away in a shiny black coach to an establishment in an Earl's Court basement.

There was a band playing, a raggle-taggle group of beasts who had escaped, at least temporarily, from the publishing industry and set out to play music and find something better than death. And that they did. There was some excellent guitar and a saxophone played so enthusiastically that its clip-on microphone fell off twice over. And the singing! The magic fairy dust apparently sprinkled in the ambassador's lemonade prompted our heroine to be a tiny bit over-critical when talking to one of the amazing singers in the break. What she meant to say was, please play more soul and blues and less Fleetwood Mac, because you really rock the soul and blues with your amazing vocals and I don't like Fleetwood Mac but I am having a bizarre but lovely time nonetheless. Tragically, though, our tongue-tied heroine heard the clock striking eleven. Eleven, you say? To which I reply: eleven, if you happen to be staying with your mum at the very end of the Central Line and then have to catch a bus from the station. The noble partygoers no doubt whispered amongst themselves, wondering who the mysterious unknown woman in the vintage-look Belgian dress was who had to leave so suddenly and smiled so beatifically when the barman tried to short-change her.

As she tripped outside, our heroine found her shiny black carriage had vanished and so she stumbled onto a Picadilly Line train. The night was so late that it even stopped at Turnham Green, followed by a trundling bus journey edging her further and further away from the dizzying lights of the international publishing industry cover band, past scores of fried chicken retailers puzzlingly restyled as "Peri Peri chicken" shops and the all-night supermarket that boasts Halal meat and Polish bread under one roof, surely something found in neither Warsaw nor Medina.

Oddly, our heroine didn't lose her shoe until two days later, at which point a friendly ice-cream man at Marble Arch magically produced a tube of superglue to stick the heel back on. But he wasn't much of a prince and she had a birthday party to go to.      

Lazy

It's the school holidays this week, which makes me instantly relaxed and slows me down. Rather a blissful state, to be honest. And next week I'm going to London to do three things:

First of all there's a one-day event called Translating Around the World at the Society of Authors, on Monday. It's sold out though, so I'll see you if I see you. I'm going to be on a panel about continuing education for established translators, with Ros Schwartz and Sarah Ardizzone.

Then on Monday evening I'm holding a (cough) "masterclass" at the London Review Bookshop, called Spot the Translation. That's sold out too, apparently. Which is nice.

And after that it's the London Book Fair, where I'll be having a lovely time all round, I hope, and also taking part in a panel called Where Are the Women Writers in Translation? on the Thursday, with Joanna Walsh, AM Bakalar and Carmen Boullosa.

So I'm probably not going to blog.

Tex Rubinowitz: Irma

Or: 10 reasons why Tex Rubinowitz would make a good temporary boyfriend and 10 reasons why Tex Rubinowitz would not make a good temporary boyfriend, based mainly on the version of Tex Rubinowitz presented in his book Irma.

1. Tex Rubinowitz is one of those boys who know all the songs. Tex Rubinowitz is one of those boys who can imagine "Hang the DJ" crossed with "Gold" and can make a list of the top three songs called "Angela" and go off on a tangent about Angela Davis and Angela Merkel and postcards and the image of Sweden in Japan. We could have days of entertaining conversations and music-listening sessions together. On the downside, my weakness for DJs is such a cliché.

2. Tex Rubinowitz is a very good storyteller. Tex Rubinowitz can tell stories about the whole class making holes in the classroom walls with the points of their compasses and pretending they were made my Ichneumonidae (which have a much better name in German) and having to fill them up while the teacher read a confiscated comic, but first inserting secret messages into the holes, and he remembers or maybe makes up excellent nicknames for his classmates. On the downside, once I had told him about the two girls we called Woofer and Tweeter at school because one was very tall and sort of rectangular and the other was tiny and round and they always hung out together, and about the slice of tomato stuck for months and months on end to the outside of the window of the portacabin where we had German classes, I would quickly run out of entertaining schooldays incidents and feel quite inferior because my life simply hasn't been as interesting as the life Tex Rubinowitz presents in Irma.

3. Tex Rubinowitz knows that girls like boys who dance, and he knows that girls like kissing. On the downside he claims, like Irma herself, who is probably made up, not to be all that interested in sex.

4. Tex Rubinowitz writes like an amalgam of Jörg Fauser, Clemens Setz, Verena Rossbacher and Jacinta Nandi. On the downside, wouldn't I want a boyfriend who had his own style?

5. Tex Rubinowitz's book Irma is full of drawings of women. I don't know who did them, maybe the artist Max Müller? That's what it says in the book anyway. So probably Tex Rubinowitz likes women quite a lot, and also breasts, which is something I have. On the downside, maybe it's Max Müller who likes women quite a lot and Tex Rubinowitz really did used to sleep in a coffin, like the guy my uncle met when he had a washing-up job in a café in Acton after he moved back from Philadelphia because America was too hot for him, allegedly, or that's what my uncle told his daughter, and anyway the co-washer-upper guy claimed to be a down-on-his-luck aristocrat who couldn't be bothered to go to the House of Lords, which didn't impress my anarchist uncle I assume, but then it turned out he was a confidence trickster with a thing about coffins.

6. Tex Rubinowitz once sent me a friendship request on Facebook. I turned him down because I'd never met him. So maybe Tex Rubinowitz knew somehow that I'm really into Facebook and became aware of my existence, maybe from that time when I went drinking with Thomas Meinecke and wrote about how much we both love Facebook, but didn't know about my rule that I'm only friends with people I've met. Tex Rubinowitz seems to be really fond of Facebook as well, judging by his book Irma and also judging by a tiny weeny bit of internet stalking I did last night, but if he will set his profile to public he ought to expect people to click on that photo of his naked bum. On the downside, I met him for five seconds at the Leipzig book fair and I shook his hand and said my name, but he didn't seem to be pining after me or indeed even recognize me.

7. Tex Rubinowitz doesn't like coffee or tea and neither do I. He particularly objects to those disgusting sock-on-a-wire things that people use to make large amounts of tea in German-speaking countries. This might mean we are soul mates. On the downside, I think all he does like drinking is beer, while I prefer Coke Zero. This one I could be flexible on, I suppose, because I do drink beer too on occasion.

8. Tex Rubinowitz won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize with a text that is now part of his book Irma, and also apparently won an American literary award many years ago, and it would be really impressive to have a boyfriend with two literary awards to his name, he'd be a total trophy boyfriend among book people in two different languages. I could say, Oh, have you met my boyfriend Tex Rubinowitz, he won that prize, you know the one? And I wouldn't care that people think he can't write just because he's a cartoonist because as he points out, Harrison Ford trained as a carpenter and nobody thinks he can't act because of that. On the downside, I've never won any awards apart from one where you had to translate one page of Wolf Wondratschek and the prize was a month in Berlin, where I live anyway, so I might feel a bit inferior.

9. Tex Rubinowitz is one of those people who hangs out at the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in Klagenfurt every year and knows all the cool kids there and plays music to make them dance to. I don't know how this is related to his winning the prize last year; I liked the text and I like the book, as you can tell, but I don't know what the other texts the other writers read for the prize were like because I was quite busy at the time, or maybe I did read some of them and his was the only one that stuck in my mind, which would be a good sign, I suppose. On the downside, I have taken a semi-solemn vow never to go to the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in Klagenfurt because of the horrible mayor and because I would feel pressurized by all the cool kids there hanging out together and going swimming and cycling and stuff and I'm actually really bad at both swimming and cycling, and even if I got over myself and attempted to join in I'd feel like a total fake, although maybe they do too, who knows.

10. Tex Rubinowitz made a film with Ethan Hawkes and I went on tour with the Beastie Boys. On the downside, I met this woman last night who really did go on tour with the Beastie Boys, so I was very glad not to have told my going on tour with the Beastie Boys in 1992 story.

11. Tex Rubinowitz lives in Vienna, which is a very nice place and I have a very nice friend there and keep meeting other nice people from there. On the downside, one of my main motivations for wanting a temporary boyfriend is so he could look after me after I get my wisdom teeth removed, and I don't think my health insurance covers non-emergency dentistry in Austria, although I suppose I could check.

Leipzig Report

I've been going to the Leipzig book fair longer than I've been blogging, and I just looked back at my entries on it from 2008. Oh boy, was I enthusiastic. Three blogs in a row, one looking forward to it, one more general, and one on the now sadly defunct German-US literary festival Krautgarden. I don't bother with the ritual "looking forward to Leipzig" piece any more, partly because I don't want to write the same thing over and over again and partly because I'm a bit older and more jaded and don't get quite as excited about it any more. But I do still enjoy my first day at any book fair enormously.

This year I didn't go until the Friday. The fair opens on a Thursday, when the prizes are awarded. Unfortunately, these prizes seem to have little impact abroad. The translation section is kind of irrelevant to sales of German books (going this year to Miriam Pressler for Amos Oz's Judas) and the non-fiction prize tends to honour titles that are a too challenging or too specialized for your average British/US reader (in this case a history of neoliberal Europe by Philipp Ther). Even the "belles lettres" prize doesn't pack the punch of its autumn counterpart, the German Book Prize, with only five of the ten past winning titles either already in English or underway. To some extent, that's a good thing in my view, because it reflects the award's broader scope and less commercial orientation – the judges are all critics, with no one from the "real world" of bookselling involved, for example, and have given the prize to a number of short story collections (by Ingo Schulze, Clemens Meyer, Clemens Setz), to books that aren't straightforward fiction (David Wagner) and this year to a poetry collection. Only to two women ever, but hey. That's not their job. In Der Spiegel Georg Diez gets all het up that the winner isn't relevant to the world today, but hey. That's his job. Although I share his exasperation with the "eternally present" Hubert Winkels, I'm glad there is a prize that doesn't give a shit about societal relevance or commercial viability – even though that means I can't leverage it to get translation work.

This year, the fair also opened wide its metaphorical arms to embrace (German) book bloggers. They had a special lounge, which I didn't spot but then I didn't look for it either, and ran a campaign with bloggers reviewing the titles nominated for the prize. 54books assesses the highs and lows of the new focus – worth a read. So what was I doing? I was pretty much mooching around, noting down books I want to read and chatting to people I ran into, not a single appointment, not a single party or reading. And also I was being a mum, because my teenage daughter and a friend came along bright and early on the Saturday (hence the non-partying), mostly to see the second Manga Comic Convention. To be perfectly honest I wish I hadn't been there on the weekend, because the fair was incredibly crowded with visitors in groups of at least two, making navigation difficult at best and my mood, let's say, dampened. But we did have the added excitement of extreme numbers of cosplayers, who seem not to walk around quite as much as everyone else, which is kind of them. My daughter arrived all excited and announced eyes aglow that she'd seen a lady axe-murderer on the train. By the end of the day the two girls had counted 36 Pikachus. We sneered slightly because you can buy ready-made Pikachu onesies, and where's the inventiveness in that – but in fact, it must take guts to spend all day dressed as a yellow velventeen rodent in public.

In tribute to them, I intend to spend all of today in my pyjamas. The book fair is dead – long live the book fair.

Advertorial: Inka Parei's The Cold Centre

Typograhical Era is apparently looking forward to Inka Parei's latest book in my translation, The Cold Centre, which comes out in February. They say:

Parei’s novel is set to deliver a timely reminder about how we tend to react in the face of disaster. It seems a bit White Noise-y in premise, but with a real accident and the desolate setting of East Berlin before the wall was torn down serving as its focus, this one appears to be primed to deliver much more realistic shocks.

As in her previous two novels, Inka explores German history and gets us all worked up in the process, this time returning to Berlin for a furious race against time, if you like. I adore it, as you can imagine.

If you'd like to find out more about Inka's work – and see some startling photos of the novel's key setting, now lost to the world – you can read a conversation she and I had at Music & Literature.

CrossKultur in Şöneberg

It'll be neither angry, angry, angry nor particularly crunchy, as the name might suggest – in fact, CrossKultur is an arts festival across cultures in Berlin's borough of Schöneberg (where I got German grammar drummed into me at the Hartnackschule). There's film, music, theatre, exhibitions, discussions, and all the stuff. Plus of course literature! That means readings by Emrah Serbes, Alina Bronsky – who you'll know from her English translations, no doubt, by Tim Mohr – and Urmila Goel.

And also me and Deniz Utlu, reading from his novel Die Ungehaltenen in German and English at Rathaus Schöneberg on Thursday. Exciting!

A Lovely, Lovely Poetry Translation Film

I would have thought it might be impossible to make a film about something as intangible as poetry, and it might be boring to watch a film about something as desk-bound as translation. Luckily, Juliane Heinrich has proved me wrong and made a film of a poetry translation. It features the poets Odile Kennel and Anna Crowe, and me as supporting translator. And I've watched it about three times and it still makes me laugh. Such a pleasure!