Grüezi miteinand

I have escaped for a moment to reassure you of my existence. Our workshop leaders are pushing us hard and Switzerland has many charms to distract a person from her computer. But rest assured, there are twelve translatorly egos around our workshop table, and we won't stop until we've pulled apart every person's text. All we know is that we know nothing.

More later.

Swiss Treats

In honour of my first trip to Switzerland as an adult, the Swiss arts council Pro Helvetia have issued a stunning thing called 12 Swiss Books. It's a list of twelve Swiss books chosen by three clever people, plus an interview with Boyd Tonkin of the Independent, columns by Urs Widmer and the wonderful Tess Lewis, translator and knower of literature extraordinaire, and some other wee treats. A magazine, no less.

I shall be in Switzerland for the coming week, bizarrely enough meeting Tess Lewis and indeed also Urs Widmer at a workshop. I don't know whether I'll be blogging or not. Perhaps you can just read 12 Swiss Books instead. I shall report back from the Toblerone plantation in due course.*

*Actually you may think I'm being facetious, but last year I was at the Pro Helvetia booth at the book fair and they were very generous with the old Toblerone.

Translators: Promote!

At Translationista, Susan Bernofsky writes about a panel at the American literary translators' recent convention on "The Translator's Toolkit", something that the PEN Translation Committee there is currently working on. In the past, they have issued guidelines for reviewers on how to approach translations, but they're adjusting that position now. I'll be interested to find out exactly what comes out of the process. Bernofsky writes:

The "Translators Toolkit" will wind up containing suggestions for supplementary information about a book that can be distributed to potential reviewers along with the usual publicity materials a publisher tucks inside review copies before sending them out. The exact recommendations are still a work in progress, but I expect to see a list of suggestions including items like this: a description of the book's stylistic peculiarities in the original and how the translator sought to address them, status of the author in her original-language context, any particular anecdotes of interest surrounding the translation, etc. These are things likely to interest both reviewers and readers of reviews.

At the panel, a few publishing people also talked about getting translators actively involved in promoting their books. Which is something we talked about in Germany a couple of years ago, as I wrote here. There was some scepticism from some quarters, and in fact some of the experts' suggestions at the Rochester conference go a little further than even I would venture. Jeffrey Lependorf, for example, "encourages translators to record brief (3 mins or under) videos about the book to be added to a book's page on the publisher's website." OK, I would do that, in fact I have done it in the past, but the whole thing was organised by the wonderful German Book Office so I didn't have to find someone with a camera and/or someone to do the editing, put it online, etc. I'd hope that publishers would give translators a great deal of support for these kinds of activities, which are almost certainly going to be unpaid.

Anyway, do read about it at first hand.

Frankfurted

I'm all Frankfurted out. It was lovely. Except when it was horrible and I'd had enough of seething masses of bodies and glossy displays and superficial conversation. But even then I ran into the perfect grumpy person with whom to indulge in a great moaning session.

I do love book fairs, and yes, I know I've told you that before. I love strolling around and meeting people and saying hello and getting chatting and exchanging compliments and swapping tips. Because it's the social aspect that counts most for me. I'm tempted to just write a long list of all the lovely people I met and all the lovely people I missed, but that might not be very interesting for anyone else. So here's what I did instead.

I hung out a little with Naveen Kishore and Sunandini Banerjee from Seagull Books, who publish many of my translations. Which is always a delight but suddenly got much more popular once they announced Mo Yan's Nobel win on Thursday lunchtime - because they have two of his books on their list. Lots of people kept popping by to congratulate them, total strangers included, who I suspect were pleased that a small (but perfectly formed) press based in Calcutta will benefit from the Nobel-imbued glory. Also I looked after their booth very briefly while they had an appointment elsewhere, which was the most fun ever. Did you ever go to furniture stores as a kid and play house? This was like that, only with real coffee. Would you like a catalogue, sir? They'll be right back in ten minutes, ma'am, do take a seat. Like being a housewife, I wouldn't want to do it all the time but short bursts are fine.

There were some other prizewinners too: Finn-Ole Heinrich won the German Children's Book Prize and Anna Kim won the European Union Prize for Literature. I'm terribly pleased for both of them. You can read one of Finn's short stories in my translation at Words Without Borders and you'll soon(ish) be able to read Anna's The Anatomy of a Night from Frisch & Co. The German Book Prize winner Ursula Krechel was very present in general at the fair but I don't feel quite ready to comment on her book yet.

I also moderated an expert panel about the German book trade and translation funding. It was called a "morning briefing" because it started at 8.15 a.m. Actually it went fine, there were actually a number of people in the audience and none of them actually fell asleep. Amazingly, they also asked lots of questions. We'll probably do it again next year but I suggested a later time-slot - although it was a surreal experience to walk through the halls of an empty book fair.

What it meant, however, was that I had to go to bed early on Thursday night, in order to be sufficiently gorgeous on Friday morning to calm my nerves. Which was a good thing, as somebody took my photo afterwards ("That looks great. I'll just take another one though."). But it was not helped by someone inviting me to a surprise reading on Thursday ("It'll be great. And then we'll go to the XY party, and then we'll go to the YX party, and then..."). I didn't go. A friend of mine has a wonderful motto for times like these: Willst du gelten, mach dich selten. It doesn't work when the fomo gets this acute though. And it doesn't help when the trade press publishes full-colour spreads of publishing people partying. Every day of the fair. But hey, I never get invited to those parties anyway and I'm not terribly good at gatecrashing.

So I had to make up for it on Friday night. My divine hosts treated me to home-cooked dinner and made me break the golden rule: First eye make-up, then schnapps. Doh! Nobody commented though. And then it was off to the Hotlist indie book award ceremony and party. After various rather out-there events in previous years (difficult locations, wacky moderators), this time was lower key and just plain better. The lovely Axel von Ernst and Thomas Böhm did the honours in a totally un-hysterical manner and the prize went to the excellent Droschl Literaturverlag of Vienna for Tor Ulven's Dunkelheit am Ende des Tunnels. It's a translation from the Norwegian, and I'd have forgiven the excited publisher for not thanking the translator in person if it hadn't just proved very difficult to find his name on their website. It's Bernhard Strobel, and I found it on Amazon in the end. The prize money goes straight to the publishers for their hard work, and I do understand the logic of that, but still. Congratulations, Bernhard Strobel. They couldn't have done it without you.

There followed a party. There were drinks (some of them cold), there was dancing, there was much standing around chatting and drinking, there was an apology to someone for un-friending them on Facebook but they hadn't even noticed - bizarrely, because I post way too much on Facebook - there was a whispered poem about fat, there was a numismatic exchange and an explanation of fomo to the main culprit, there were compliments from the kind of people who count (i.e. women with impeccable taste), there was a failed attempt to recruit a new DJ partner, there were sleepless Cubans, there were more drinks, there were embarrassing spillages from my purse, there was a fantastic staircase at the Literaturhaus that was unfortunately too crowded with bodies to recreate any Hollywood movies, there was totally tactless discussion of facial hair fashions, there was an apology to someone for having written he looked like a bum - he doesn't, he looks like an angel - there were some more drinks and not enough dancing, there were uncalled-for confessional moments.

Then it seemed like a good idea to go to the Hoff. Everybody talks about it at the fair, all the Americans are like, "You gotta go to the Hoff!" and I'm like, "Well..." Really it's the Frankfurter Hof incredibly posh hotel, where I was overwhelmed by the prices and the carpets but underwhelmed by the bathrooms and the people-watching. Nobody was lying across Alice Schwarzer's lap, in fact Alice Schwarzer wasn't even there, and nor was Arnold Schwarzenegger. There was a man with a bad wig coming on to a very young blonde woman and another man who was rude about Acton. I left before finding out what unspeakable thing my companion did there last year.

Life will seem so dull now.

Away

I shall be at the book fair. Have a nice week.

Celebrate Good Times

Actually this piece really ought to be entitled "German Book Prize to Ursula Krechel for Landgericht." But I've been out celebrating the birth of Frisch & Co. with top new publisher EJ Van Lanen! And will you look at that - Ursula Krechel's won the German Book Prize and EJ Van Lanen's gone and set up a publishing company - all on the same day! Some gin was involved.*

So while Ursula Krechel's part-documentary novel about a former judge returning to Germany after 1945 has bagged small Austrian publisher Jung und Jung their second German Book Prize in three years, Frisch & Co. Electronic Books have bagged two (other) top German novels, which they'll be publishing in English translation in (late) spring 2013. And hold your breath now, because they're former German Book Prize winner Uwe Tellkamp's Der Turm and Anna Kim's The Anatomy of a Night.

So everybody's very happy indeed. Congratulations all round. Let's celebrate - may there be ladies with tattooed faces and gin and cucumber all round.



*Slightly too much gin was involved for coherent blogging, but too little for all-out depravity. Hooray! If you feel like making EJ happy, do send him an email congratulating him on his new venture.

Youth Springs Eternal

How wonderful that these young whippersnappers keep on popping up and writing books, eh? I'm turning forty next year and am preparing myself mentally by pretending I'm already forty. It's fine, I'm totally relaxed about it.

Only they will keep putting large-format pictures of young people in the newspaper book sections. Smooth-skinned, wide-eyed, already achieved so much with their youthful, fast-flowing imaginations. Die Zeit has a cover shot of eight German-language writers around thirty in a hothouse. Because they're still growing, geddit? These ones are mainly photogenic young women - all talented, too, I'm sure: Stephanie Gleißner, Nora Bossong (see below), Marjana Gaponenko, Sabrina Janesch, Vea Kaiser, Kevin Kuhn (see below), Rebecca Martin, Teresa Präauer, Marie Pohl and Andreas Stichmann (see below). That's ten, so presumably some were too embarrassed to take part in the photo shoot. I'm in two minds - I'm glad to see young writers getting attention, but of the six pages they share, at least half the space is taken up by photos, while the rest of the literary supplement is devoted to old(er) people.

More excitement over at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, where they have Zwanzig unter vierzig on the literature special title page. Unapologetically lifted from the New Yorker, which they acknowledge with a huge double proofreading error as "Fourty under twenty". Actually, that's the main reason why I had to blog about this, because it made me spit out my false teeth. Much upset discussion on Facebook today, as more mature writers get upset about being ruled out and under-forties get upset about being left out. They do actually write, "These are the best young German-language writers of today. The contemporary canon". But critics do like to think of themselves as canon-builders, don't they?

So, whether ridiculous or not, what's interesting is that eight of the FAS's twenty are or will soon be available in English: Daniel Kehlmann, Alina Bronsky, Helene Hegemann, Thomas Pletzinger, Thomas Glavinic, Uljana Wolf, Judith Schalansky and Clemens Meyer. Two of them in, ahem, my translation. The others are: Antje Wagner, Clemens J. Setz (and it's only a matter of time before he ends up in English, what with translator Ross Benjamin gunning for him), Benjamin Maack, Lisa-Marie Dickreiter, Andreas Stichmann, Nora Bossong (who's having a good week!), Thomas Melle, Annika Scheffel (my best-dressed lady writer of 2011), Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre (who I was surprised isn't much, much older than me), Reinhard Kaiser-Mühlecker (best hair), Maxim Drüner (who's actually a rapper but once told Antonia Baum at a party that he writes stories, another great source of LOLz) and Kevin Kuhn. Note that seven out of these links are to New Books in German or Litrix, in case you happen to be a publishing person trawling the net in search of the next hot German star under forty.

Do I have to say it? It's silly, isn't it? Next issue they should portray twenty writers born under Sagittarius. Actually I'm a teeny bit upset myself, because the Open Mike competition is recruiting bloggers for its blog. And they have to be under thirty-five. I shall get my revenge by one day - one day! - putting together an anthology of my own, of seventeen German-language writers I like, regardless of any other factors whatsoever. There will be no photos. It will be called Love German Books - The Anthology. Publishers - you have my address.