I missed this one a week or so ago, but there's a shortlist out for the Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize, with a fat purse of €30,000 awaiting the winner:
Iris Hanika: Das Eigentliche (Literaturverlag Droschl)
Thomas Hettche: Die Liebe der Väter (Kiepenheuer & Witsch)
Paulus Hochgatterer: Das Matratzenhaus (Deuticke)
Georg Klein: Roman unserer Kindheit (Rowohlt)
Rolf Lappert: Auf den Inseln des letzten Lichts (Carl Hanser Verlag)
Thomas Lehr: September. Fata Morgana (Carl Hanser Verlag)
Andreas Maier: Das Zimmer (Suhrkamp)
Alain Claude Sulzer: Zur falschen Zeit (Galiani Berlin)
The prize is awarded by the city of Braunschweig and Deutschlandradio and goes out in November.
Then there's the Swiss Book Prize, with a shorter shortlist announced today:
Dorothee Elmiger: Einladung an die Waghalsigen (DuMont)
Urs Faes: Paarbildung (Suhrkamp)
Pedro Lenz: Der Goalie bin ig (Der gesunde Menschenversand)
Kurt Marti: Notizen und Details 1964 - 2007 (Theologischer Verlag Zürich)
Melinda Nadj Abonji: Tauben fliegen auf (Jung und Jung)
This time the winner will be announced on 14 November and get 5o,000 franks. The award is only open to Swiss authors writing in German.
I'm tempted to rant about how the same names crop up on all these shortlists. But actually I'm so enamoured of the seemingly random Swiss selection - from Elmiger's debut (see my translated extract for the Bachmann Prize, where she came sort of second) to Urs Faes' doctor's story for the highly literate to Pedro Lenz's "spoken word novel" in Swiss German to Kurt Marti, who's a theologian for God's sake, to the German Book Prize shortlisted Abonji - that it's cheered me up rather. And apparently you can vote on your favourite, but they're not telling us where yet.
Tuesday, 21 September 2010
Monday, 20 September 2010
Advertising Books
I come from London, so I'm used to seeing ads for books plastered all over the tube and the odd bus stop. Usually not books I particularly want to read, but still.
And Dennis Loy Johnson wrote a ten-part series documenting how Melville House Press publicised their runaway bestseller by a dead German, Every Man Dies Alone. The game plan included T-shirts, TV, tube (or whatever it's called in NY) and word of mouth.
I'm just trying to summon up the usual ways the Germans promote books, apart from well-publicised stunts like kissing angels. And there's not all that much of it going on, or not much I personally notice in everyday life (bear in mind I'm a tad visually impaired, though). Basically there's your print ads in newspapers and magazines, your reviews in newspapers and magazines, your reviews on the TV and radio, and your reviews on blogs. Although German publishers, I'm told, are often a bit cagey about sending review copies to bloggers. Which might perhaps explain why there aren't really any longstanding literature blogs that write reviews - they all go bust.
But this morning I heard my first radio ad for a book - Lucy Fricke's Ich habe Freunde mitgebracht. I wasn't actually fully conscious at the time, but it made me sit up in bed and think: I must buy this book! How exciting...
And Dennis Loy Johnson wrote a ten-part series documenting how Melville House Press publicised their runaway bestseller by a dead German, Every Man Dies Alone. The game plan included T-shirts, TV, tube (or whatever it's called in NY) and word of mouth.
I'm just trying to summon up the usual ways the Germans promote books, apart from well-publicised stunts like kissing angels. And there's not all that much of it going on, or not much I personally notice in everyday life (bear in mind I'm a tad visually impaired, though). Basically there's your print ads in newspapers and magazines, your reviews in newspapers and magazines, your reviews on the TV and radio, and your reviews on blogs. Although German publishers, I'm told, are often a bit cagey about sending review copies to bloggers. Which might perhaps explain why there aren't really any longstanding literature blogs that write reviews - they all go bust.
But this morning I heard my first radio ad for a book - Lucy Fricke's Ich habe Freunde mitgebracht. I wasn't actually fully conscious at the time, but it made me sit up in bed and think: I must buy this book! How exciting...
Saturday, 18 September 2010
Sascha Lobo: Strohfeuer
In general, there's one sure-fire way of ensuring I don't review your book, and that's saying you'll send me a copy and not doing so. Not only am I offended, I also still have a spark of hope that it might arrive in the post any day now - so I'm certainly not going to go to any effort to get hold of it myself. On the other hand, asking me to translate your book before it's even published is an extremely flattering trick, provided the book does actually get published at some stage. Any type of cheap flattery between these two poles will probably get me to read your book, if not necessarily review it.
In this case it was a vague smile in my direction at a party that prompted me to get hold of Sascha Lobo's Strohfeuer. Of course it wouldn't have worked had the smiler not been in possession of a highly characteristic red mohican and a rampant media habit. This is a guy with 46,000-odd followers on Twitter, who kindly provides a Google maps thing showing his current location on his website, just in case anyone wants to stalk him. So you know, it's kind of flattering to get a vague smile in your direction from someone like that - it makes you wonder if you're just looking particularly gorgeous or the smiler is particularly well-informed about people who blog about German books in English.
Last night was the launch of his debut novel in Berlin, where it's set. It's the story of a wannabe advertiser who jumps onto the dotcom bandwagon just before it goes off the rails in 2001. The event was top-banana: high audience attractiveness quotient, high laughter to confused frown ratio, high blogger factor. My friend Annina liked it too. I also experienced another incident to add to my collection of scintillating exchanges with literary celebrities, which I will now relate in full length, in the original German:
Mutual friend: Sascha, das ist Katy
Sascha Lobo: Hallo Katy, ich bin Sascha.
Katy: Hallo... Ja.
I was a tad star-struck. What I ought to have said was: Hi, I translated an excerpt (pdf) from your last book, I didn't like it all that much though because it was about how to get things done with minimal effort and you seemed to have put minimal effort into writing it. But of course why would anyone put maximum effort into something like that, that would be stupid. Although it was quite funny actually. Anyway, the translation was fairly labour-intensive I'm afraid so I'd appreciate you getting me a drink, I bet you have a tab at the bar, don't you?
But you know, you're not always on your best form. So anyway, Sascha Lobo entertained us all by reading from the novel and fielding questions. I'd actually read it all in one go yesterday, in a mammoth lazing-in-bed session that seemed a suitable way to enjoy the book. And enjoy it I did - unlike a number of other people, critics and literary laymen alike. I'm not entirely sure whether that's because Lobo's one of those people people love to hate, or because he doesn't impart any actual new information about the dotcom bubble, or because German critics can be a bit snooty about humour.
Strohfeuer is a funny book. A chuckle-raising, laugh-a-minute good fun read. Our horrible hero Stefan bluffs his way into the advertising industry - not known for its great morals and humanity in the first place - and makes large amounts of money with smoke and mirrors. Then it all goes wrong when other people's bluffs fall through. The internet streaming device that doesn't actually work, the 3D-glasses that don't actually exist, the small print added to the contract at the last moment. It's all fairly predictable, but then we know from the beginning that the bubble's going to burst, and part of the fun is in the schadenfreude of waiting for the house of cards to collapse.
The book's first strength is in its characters, from the out-and-out nasty Thorsten who turns out to have a reason for his misbehaviour to the scaredy-cat funny guy Phillip who surprises us at the end to the self-obsessed narrator Stefan who constantly manages to override his conscience and often common sense too. Plus lots of cameos by women who fancy him: the drunken divorcée who lands the agency its first major contract, the pregnant (?) designer who's just been fired, and so on. Mister Lobo claimed (after the above scintillating exchange) that you have to have sex scenes in a book about characters like his. Absolutely, but I agree with one critic that the sex scenes are lame. If you're going to give us a gratuitous drunken threesome in the first chapter, would it be asking too much for you to share a couple of details?
The second strength is the novel's language. It probably wouldn't come across quite as well in translation, but it's full of toe-curling anglicisms like the verb delivern, ad agency in-jokes like irony-free zone, buzzwords like Hitler (as an expletive) and the like. And all related in a deadpan tone with an eye for detail - like a project manager's liking for maritime metaphors.
And the third is the sense of timing. Because what might have been just a string of funny ad agency incidents is broken up by little extra scenes from the narrator's childhood, escapades in various cars and bars, and a couple of last-ditch slapstick attempts to save the company. All of which make the book much more - well, likeable.
It's not going to change the world, but if you fancy a quick and enjoyable read with characters you'll love to hate - and you weren't part of the New Economy at the time - I'd say go for it. Because you're not going to be able to ignore it this season.
In this case it was a vague smile in my direction at a party that prompted me to get hold of Sascha Lobo's Strohfeuer. Of course it wouldn't have worked had the smiler not been in possession of a highly characteristic red mohican and a rampant media habit. This is a guy with 46,000-odd followers on Twitter, who kindly provides a Google maps thing showing his current location on his website, just in case anyone wants to stalk him. So you know, it's kind of flattering to get a vague smile in your direction from someone like that - it makes you wonder if you're just looking particularly gorgeous or the smiler is particularly well-informed about people who blog about German books in English.
Last night was the launch of his debut novel in Berlin, where it's set. It's the story of a wannabe advertiser who jumps onto the dotcom bandwagon just before it goes off the rails in 2001. The event was top-banana: high audience attractiveness quotient, high laughter to confused frown ratio, high blogger factor. My friend Annina liked it too. I also experienced another incident to add to my collection of scintillating exchanges with literary celebrities, which I will now relate in full length, in the original German:
Mutual friend: Sascha, das ist Katy
Sascha Lobo: Hallo Katy, ich bin Sascha.
Katy: Hallo... Ja.
I was a tad star-struck. What I ought to have said was: Hi, I translated an excerpt (pdf) from your last book, I didn't like it all that much though because it was about how to get things done with minimal effort and you seemed to have put minimal effort into writing it. But of course why would anyone put maximum effort into something like that, that would be stupid. Although it was quite funny actually. Anyway, the translation was fairly labour-intensive I'm afraid so I'd appreciate you getting me a drink, I bet you have a tab at the bar, don't you?
But you know, you're not always on your best form. So anyway, Sascha Lobo entertained us all by reading from the novel and fielding questions. I'd actually read it all in one go yesterday, in a mammoth lazing-in-bed session that seemed a suitable way to enjoy the book. And enjoy it I did - unlike a number of other people, critics and literary laymen alike. I'm not entirely sure whether that's because Lobo's one of those people people love to hate, or because he doesn't impart any actual new information about the dotcom bubble, or because German critics can be a bit snooty about humour.
Strohfeuer is a funny book. A chuckle-raising, laugh-a-minute good fun read. Our horrible hero Stefan bluffs his way into the advertising industry - not known for its great morals and humanity in the first place - and makes large amounts of money with smoke and mirrors. Then it all goes wrong when other people's bluffs fall through. The internet streaming device that doesn't actually work, the 3D-glasses that don't actually exist, the small print added to the contract at the last moment. It's all fairly predictable, but then we know from the beginning that the bubble's going to burst, and part of the fun is in the schadenfreude of waiting for the house of cards to collapse.
The book's first strength is in its characters, from the out-and-out nasty Thorsten who turns out to have a reason for his misbehaviour to the scaredy-cat funny guy Phillip who surprises us at the end to the self-obsessed narrator Stefan who constantly manages to override his conscience and often common sense too. Plus lots of cameos by women who fancy him: the drunken divorcée who lands the agency its first major contract, the pregnant (?) designer who's just been fired, and so on. Mister Lobo claimed (after the above scintillating exchange) that you have to have sex scenes in a book about characters like his. Absolutely, but I agree with one critic that the sex scenes are lame. If you're going to give us a gratuitous drunken threesome in the first chapter, would it be asking too much for you to share a couple of details?
The second strength is the novel's language. It probably wouldn't come across quite as well in translation, but it's full of toe-curling anglicisms like the verb delivern, ad agency in-jokes like irony-free zone, buzzwords like Hitler (as an expletive) and the like. And all related in a deadpan tone with an eye for detail - like a project manager's liking for maritime metaphors.
And the third is the sense of timing. Because what might have been just a string of funny ad agency incidents is broken up by little extra scenes from the narrator's childhood, escapades in various cars and bars, and a couple of last-ditch slapstick attempts to save the company. All of which make the book much more - well, likeable.
It's not going to change the world, but if you fancy a quick and enjoyable read with characters you'll love to hate - and you weren't part of the New Economy at the time - I'd say go for it. Because you're not going to be able to ignore it this season.
Thursday, 16 September 2010
Franzen's Freiheit: Critical Reactions
A little while ago I wrote about about the fact that Franzen's Freedom was translated by two people - Bettina Abarbanell and Eike Schönfeld - to make sure it hit the German market running before too many paying customers bought the original.
Now the reviews are out and everyone else is up in arms as well. Iris Radisch of Die Zeit gave a revealing interview to Deutschlandfunk, in which she pointed out that the critics have had to rush out their reviews as well, staying up all night to read the 800-page book:
So this book, which Jonathan Franzen spent nine years working on, is being read and reviewed within two or three days, by German reviewers at least - and it wasn't much better in the States.
Radisch hadn't actually read the book at this point - which makes you wonder why they actually interviewed her - and didn't comment on the quality of the translation beyond questioning the wisdom of using two translators. And nor did the reviewer in Die Zeit, Ursula März. In fact, the poor exhausted critics had been quietly working around the subject, possibly because the rush to get their reviews in meant there was no time to look at translation quality.
But then came Evelyn Roll in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The piece isn't online I'm afraid, but it's a humdinger. She points out that Franzen speaks German himself and once translated Wedekind's Frühlings Erwachen (Michael Orthofer damns it as a "reasonable new translation"). And then:
Yet reading Freiheit in German is enough to put you in a very bad mood. Because two different translators worked on it, which is absurd enough in the first place. Because the two of them obviously didn't coordinate their translations sufficiently so the tone varies, even when the narrative perspective stays the same. Because the publishers Rowohlt felt so obliged to dock onto the American Franzen hype that they put the publication date forward again and made the two actually actually acclaimed translators work at high speed (...).
I'm feeling slightly guilty for pointing the whole thing out now. Because I can see both sides - I'm guessing it wasn't cheap for Rowohlt to buy the rights to the book, and they don't want to lose revenue to the original. Publishing is a business like any other, but there's no chance to launch a beta-version of a major translation because once it's out there the reviews come flooding in (or not, if it's in the English-speaking world). And I know those two translators worked their arses off to get it done on time. Oh, and the German editor Ulrike Schieder too. (Note to self: forgetting to credit the editor may result in anonymous comments.)
But then what else can we expect? In most cases translators can work faster than writers - after all, for most of us this is our day job and we don't have to worry about plot and characterisation and all the rest. But translating under too much time pressure is never going to produce a masterpiece, no matter how talented the practitioner.
What's interesting though, as an aside, is that German critics are gradually reacting to the Munich conference on reviewing translations that I wrote about here. And by that I mean making the effort to comment on translation quality in their reviews. I know this because I compile an overview of press reviews for the German translators' association VDÜ, which you can find under "Presse" on their website. In German, obviously.
Of course that has its good and bad sides - because I've noticed that, as in this case, critics are now slightly quicker to put the translation down, albeit while often assuming it's not all the translator's fault. Katharina Granzin, whose contentious article I picked up on in my original post about the conference, is a case in point. In a review of Petra Hulová's Endstation Taiga in the Frankfurter Rundschau, she devotes two paragraphs to the translation - very well argued, very tactful, almost friendly, but still pretty devastating for the translator Michael Stavaric.
Still, I for one prefer that to the standard single-adjective faint praise usually reserved for translators in reviews. I'll be keeping an eye on developments.
Now the reviews are out and everyone else is up in arms as well. Iris Radisch of Die Zeit gave a revealing interview to Deutschlandfunk, in which she pointed out that the critics have had to rush out their reviews as well, staying up all night to read the 800-page book:
So this book, which Jonathan Franzen spent nine years working on, is being read and reviewed within two or three days, by German reviewers at least - and it wasn't much better in the States.
Radisch hadn't actually read the book at this point - which makes you wonder why they actually interviewed her - and didn't comment on the quality of the translation beyond questioning the wisdom of using two translators. And nor did the reviewer in Die Zeit, Ursula März. In fact, the poor exhausted critics had been quietly working around the subject, possibly because the rush to get their reviews in meant there was no time to look at translation quality.
But then came Evelyn Roll in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The piece isn't online I'm afraid, but it's a humdinger. She points out that Franzen speaks German himself and once translated Wedekind's Frühlings Erwachen (Michael Orthofer damns it as a "reasonable new translation"). And then:
Yet reading Freiheit in German is enough to put you in a very bad mood. Because two different translators worked on it, which is absurd enough in the first place. Because the two of them obviously didn't coordinate their translations sufficiently so the tone varies, even when the narrative perspective stays the same. Because the publishers Rowohlt felt so obliged to dock onto the American Franzen hype that they put the publication date forward again and made the two actually actually acclaimed translators work at high speed (...).
I'm feeling slightly guilty for pointing the whole thing out now. Because I can see both sides - I'm guessing it wasn't cheap for Rowohlt to buy the rights to the book, and they don't want to lose revenue to the original. Publishing is a business like any other, but there's no chance to launch a beta-version of a major translation because once it's out there the reviews come flooding in (or not, if it's in the English-speaking world). And I know those two translators worked their arses off to get it done on time. Oh, and the German editor Ulrike Schieder too. (Note to self: forgetting to credit the editor may result in anonymous comments.)
But then what else can we expect? In most cases translators can work faster than writers - after all, for most of us this is our day job and we don't have to worry about plot and characterisation and all the rest. But translating under too much time pressure is never going to produce a masterpiece, no matter how talented the practitioner.
What's interesting though, as an aside, is that German critics are gradually reacting to the Munich conference on reviewing translations that I wrote about here. And by that I mean making the effort to comment on translation quality in their reviews. I know this because I compile an overview of press reviews for the German translators' association VDÜ, which you can find under "Presse" on their website. In German, obviously.
Of course that has its good and bad sides - because I've noticed that, as in this case, critics are now slightly quicker to put the translation down, albeit while often assuming it's not all the translator's fault. Katharina Granzin, whose contentious article I picked up on in my original post about the conference, is a case in point. In a review of Petra Hulová's Endstation Taiga in the Frankfurter Rundschau, she devotes two paragraphs to the translation - very well argued, very tactful, almost friendly, but still pretty devastating for the translator Michael Stavaric.
Still, I for one prefer that to the standard single-adjective faint praise usually reserved for translators in reviews. I'll be keeping an eye on developments.
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
Juli Zeh Meets Her Translators
I've written before about the regular get-togethers between German writers and their international translators at the Straelen translation house. This time around it was Juli Zeh, who met up with eight translators of her sort-of science-fiction sort-of novel Corpus Delicti. English-speakers will be pleased to hear that unlike last time, when the book in question was Uwe Tellkamp's Der Turm, there was an English translator among them: Sally-Ann Spencer - hooray!
You can see them all looking gorgeous here. And the regional press also took an interest, with an informative article in the Rheinische Post and a fun one in Der Westen. What I find particularly interesting is Zeh's relaxed attitude to her translators changing things - particularly titles and characters' names - "to take the novel all the way to their own countries."
And although these events are obviously really fantastic for the translators involved - imagine the chance to spend a week working on a book with the writer herself at arm's reach - I like to think the authors get something out of them too. Not just the reassurance that the translators really will have understood the book, but also a lot of new knowledge about all the countries it'll be appearing in.
I'm certainly looking forward to reading Sally-Ann's translation - not least because I once met Juli Zeh and mistook her for someone else. She was very gracious about it all.
You can see them all looking gorgeous here. And the regional press also took an interest, with an informative article in the Rheinische Post and a fun one in Der Westen. What I find particularly interesting is Zeh's relaxed attitude to her translators changing things - particularly titles and characters' names - "to take the novel all the way to their own countries."
And although these events are obviously really fantastic for the translators involved - imagine the chance to spend a week working on a book with the writer herself at arm's reach - I like to think the authors get something out of them too. Not just the reassurance that the translators really will have understood the book, but also a lot of new knowledge about all the countries it'll be appearing in.
I'm certainly looking forward to reading Sally-Ann's translation - not least because I once met Juli Zeh and mistook her for someone else. She was very gracious about it all.
Congratulations!
Well done to Mechthild Holzer, who won the Oliver Bottini audiobooks. Thanks to everyone else who participated - better luck next time...
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