EU Prize Success Story

So having mouthed off about the unsexiness of those European Union book awards, I got a message from a Macedonian translator, my friend Elizabeta Lindner. She pointed out that there has been one massive success story to come out of the 2010 awards. The Macedonian writer Goce Smilevski got one of the twelve sub-prizes for emerging writers, and his winning novel has now sold into at least twenty languages. Twenty! It does indeed look like fascinating stuff: Sigmund Freud's Sister imagines the titular heroine making friends with Franz Kafka's sister in a concentration camp, and will be published in English by Penguin US/UK.

Also, I have to admit that the author interviews on the award website from last year are a nice personal touch. So, yes, they're still obscure and have a whiff of bureaucracy about them, but for what we call "smaller" languages these awards may have more significance, as Elizabeta pointed out. Then again, an extract from the novel was also featured in Dalkey Archive's Best European Fiction 2010 anthology and his previous book, Conversation with Spinoza, made it into English too. So who knows what weighed the scales in his favour.

Heinrich Böll: Irish Journal

Some time ago, I wrote that I’d rather eat my hat than read this book, or some such nonsense. As a British person, I have always been slightly envious of the Irish for occupying the number-one spot in all Germans’ mental charts of their favourite foreigners. And this particular book seemed to be the reason for – or at the least the main symptom of – that affection. Add to that a pointless truculence towards reading any author on my university syllabus, and it seemed unlikely that I would ever dip into Böll’s Irish Journal.

But Melville House has been re-releasing much of Böll’s work in English translation, and it seemed to make sense for me to review something I hadn’t previously read. So why not dive in at the deep end and go for a book I felt had been niggling at me for about twenty years?

In fact it was a revealing experience. Firstly because it reminded me that Böll was simply an excellent craftsman. He could be an angry polemicist making a point through fiction, something he did very well – and that is what we read as undergraduates. But what was obscured at the time, very possibly by my undergraduate-level German skills, was that he also wrote beautifully. Leila Vennewitz’s translation is genuinely pretty, bringing out all the sublime sentimentality of Böll’s language. One of many stand-out examples:

…this clear, cold light does not penetrate the sea: it merely clings to its surface, as water clings to glass, gives the beach a soft rust color, lies on the bog like mildew…

 And the other reason I found it revealing was that it does seem to have had a formative influence on several generations of Germans. I even found things in the book that people have been telling me for years:

…here on this island, then, live the only people in Europe that never set out to conquer, although they were conquered several times, by Danes, Normans, Englishmen – all they sent out was priests, monks, missionaries who, by way of this strange detour via Ireland, brought the spirit of Thebaic asceticism to Europe…

- something that the Germans find particularly fun to rub in English faces while still savouring their own sense of national guilt.

The journal consists of a variety of short pieces on Ireland that Böll wrote for the Frankfurter Allgemeine. His first visit to Ireland was in 1954, staying on Achill Island off County Mayo, and this is the time and place he describes – a country of extreme poverty, strict Catholicism and much rain. We see the place through the eyes of a 40-year-old paterfamilias, so there is a good deal of celebration of whiskey and cigarettes by the fireside. But he also appreciates the Irish sense of humour and the pretty women, and being a German he marvels at the way things run without the slightest bit of efficiency but still get done.

One aspect I found particularly interesting was the way Böll dwells on Ireland’s mass emigration. By the mid-1950s, the West German economy was in the midst of its miracle. Böll seems fascinated by the poverty he sees in Dublin and the rest of the country, focusing on details such as safety pins and then string used to hold clothes together. But that poverty seems to be an honourable one to him, resulting from overcrowding and a lack of resources. He sees the direct link to the widespread emigration, which he describes in very emotional terms, evoking many tearful farewells and abandoned houses. I was tempted to contrast it to emigration from Germany under the Nazis, although Böll never does so directly.

I would have found the book a fascinating and eminently readable outsider’s portrait, were it not for the epilogue that Heinrich Böll added in 1967. As Hugo Hamilton points out in his beautifully written introduction – in which he neatly balances interesting stuff about himself with interesting stuff about the book itself – he “records the grip of the Catholic Church on Irish society” in the journal itself. Yet he does so entirely uncritically. And it was his epilogue that really opened my eyes to that complacent view, because here Böll comments with horror on the arrival of the birth-control pill in Ireland. While even admitting that it might free the women from having quite so many babies and the country from over-population, he writes, “…this something absolutely paralyzes me: the prospect that fewer children might be born in Ireland fills me with dismay.” How sad that a writer capable of such critical faculty when it came to his own country failed to apply that to Ireland.

So, read the Irish Journal to find out what clichés the Germans still hold dear about Ireland, and to some extent what Ireland was like in the mid-1950s. But do bear in mind that it’s all rather reminiscent of a BBC costume drama featuring craggy character actors as The Priest, The Doctor’s Wife, The Drinker, The Post-Office Girl and The Bus Driver. Delightfully nostalgic stuff, very well done, but perhaps not exactly educational.

Maxim Who? On EU Literary Awards

The European Union has two book awards. And nobody has ever heard of either of them. One - the European Union Prize for Literature is for emerging talents and goes to twelve authors from different countries every year. This year one of them writes in German, Iren Nigg. I have to admit I don't know her work, although she is mentioned in this interview with her fellow Liechtenstein writer Stefan Sprenger. I am slightly embarrassed at knowing absolutely nothing about the principality's literature, despite having once met a nice (but Berlin-based) Liechtenstein writer at a party. My excuse is that nobody else does either. Nigg received €5000 at a ceremony held on 28 November in Brussels.

Then there is the European Book Prize, which I have only just heard of. And only because Julian Barnes was chair of the judges and wrote about it in The Guardian. Apparently there was an awards ceremony in Brussels, just over a week after the first one. This prize goes to two writers, one writing what I'm just going to call non-fiction, in this case the Polish author Anna Bikont. And the other goes to a fiction writer, in this case Maxim Leo. Who is a German writer and journalist who wrote Haltet euer Herz bereit, published in Germany in 2009 and in France last autumn. It seems to have gone down like a lead balloon over here, getting a whole one press review as far as I can tell (although it was a favourable one).

According to Euronews (the only other English-language source I could find):

Maxim Leo said: “I tried to write a book about how I remembered the former German Democratic Republic. Most books and movies about this subject deal with people in the Stasi or in the opposition movement for civil rights. There is nothing between these two subjects. Apparently one has to be a fighter for civil rights or a traitor. I tried to write about the fact that there was also normal life, family life, I wrote about people who were sad, happy, in love or not in love, about the fact that everything was possible. Because I do know myself very well and I know my family, I told a story about my family.” 

So on the one hand, I'm glad this award has raised the profile of what sounds like an interesting book, and that the judges have not opted for the easy, popular choice. On the other hand, despite the boon of €10,000 in prize money and the undoubted boost to the writer's ego, the European Book Prize is hardly going to raise Maxim Leo's profile significantly. It, and indeed its sister prize too, are the Liechtenstein of literary awards - well funded, obscure and strangely unsexy, involving lavish banquets with swing quintets. 

I very much doubt that anything run by the European Union is going to get much love from the UK right now. So kudos to Julian Barnes for raising the subject in the face of a tide of anti-European sabre-rattling. In the same Guardian issue, incidentally, Jonathan Jones touches very briefly on the short shrift given to "foreign writers" in a rising tide of British patriotism, citing - and this made me laugh out loud - Philip Roth. Because those writing in actual foreign languages seem to get such short shrift that Jonathan Jones has never heard of them.

I shall go to bed now and hope I wake up in a better literary world. Perhaps one in which award-winners get translated into English.

German Book Office Buzz Videos

In a terribly, terribly exciting development, the lovely people at the German Book Office NY have made a series of videos celebrating the other lovely people at New Books in German and presenting a selection of, umm, recommended new books in German. They had a glamorous launch party with a screening on Monday, where the world's literati rubbed shoulders over canapés and champagne. And truffles. And Salman Rushdie brought some brownies he'd made, which were very good apparently but brought out Philip Roth's nut allergy because he forgot to mention the secret ingredient (pistachios!). Anyway, by the time the videos were screened I hear all was well again because Jeannette Winterson had her epi-pen with her and administered a quick emergency injection.

So the world was almost as wowed as I was by the amazing videos you can now watch on the GBO's Youtube channel. I'm in one of them too, talking about Simon Urban's Plan D. Please contact my agent if you want to offer me a film contract. Contact the GBO or NBG if you're a publisher and feel inspired to buy the translation rights to any of the books. And many, many thanks to Brittany Hazelwood for doing such an excellent job.

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Ten shopping days to Christmas and you can't be bothered to leave the comfort of your home ever again? Lower back pain from lugging heavy shopping bags? Panic rising as you remember you've forgotten to get your dad anything? I know that feeling. Instead of stuffing cash in an envelope, why not go for classy gifts that don't require you getting rained on?

A book subscription! Translated fiction sent to your loved ones' door at regular intervals - reminding them all through the year of what a wonderful person you are and what sophisticated taste you have. At least three fantastic options are open to you:

An And Other Stories subscription offers four books a year for 35 pounds in Europe or 45 in the rest of the world (including one crazy Swiss title, Zbinden's Progress by Christoph Simon, trans. Donal McLaughlin). Top choice.

A Peirene Press subscription offers six books a year for 45 pounds or three for 24. This one includes another Swiss title, Richard Weihe's illustrated novella Sea of Ink, trans. Jamie Bulloch, which I don't know at all yet.

Or if you're stuck in the States go for an Open Letter Books subscription, which is terribly confusing but I think buys you twelve books for 100 dollars or six for 60. I believe that would include Benjamin Stein's excellent The Canvas, trans. Brian Zumhagen.

As well as making an excellent present for any sentient being - or indeed yourself - a subscription helps support small publishers who are championing translated fiction. And you know you want to do that.

Reading Group? Ask the Translator.

The Germans don't tend to be early adopters (see also: e-readers, tasty sandwiches). Whereas a whole slew of books in the UK and the US have made it big via reading-group word-of-mouth and major publishers often include a list of discussion points at the back of likely novels, Germany hasn't quite caught on yet. On the other hand, of course, the Germans are already a nation of readers and may not need as much encouragement.

But still, there is a book-group book out there - Das Lesekreisbuch - authored by Thomas Böhm, a man who wears elbow patches in public. Apparently he even provides tips for the right kind of nibbles to serve. He bigged up the idea in the NZZ earlier this year, mostly with reference to UK/US examples. Most of the reading groups I'm aware of in Berlin do in fact focus on English literature - I used to attend one initiated by the British Council a few years ago and the bookshop Dialogue Berlin runs another excellent one. BUT some of the cleverest German literary types I know also happen to have a reading group on a less formal basis. In fact, I believe I lent one of them a book and never got it back - I assume that's a good sign. In New York, Boston, London and Glasgow, however, you can read books in German and discuss them in English. Or you could even set up your own German reading group if you're that way inclined.

All of which brings me back to the title of this post. I recently came up with a list of questions and discussion points for one of the books I translated (more later, as and when anything comes out of it). And I found it really easy, not just because I'm a chatty kind of person but because having translated the book, I knew it inside out. But at the same time, I had the distance necessary to step back and look for overarching themes, weaknesses, and issues in the book. Which I think can be difficult for some writers to do themselves.

Anyway, my idea is this: if you already have a reading group in Germany or elsewhere and you happen to read the odd translation, why not choose a book done by a local translator and get a bit of added value by inviting the translator along? How cool would that be? I bet they'd be thrilled to bits and have loads of great anecdotes to tell you, as well as understanding the book really well. Plus they're more likely to attend than, let's say, W.G. Sebald or John Steinbeck. Just don't say you prefer to read the original.

Fair Play for Literary Translators

CEATL is the European Council of Literary Translators' Associations, and has just published a "hexalogue" of six simple demands. Here they are:

Hexalogue or Code of Good Practice

The Six Commandments of ‘fair-play’ in literary translation, adopted by CEATL’s General Assembly on 14 May, 2011. 
1. Licensing of rights
The licensing of rights for the use of the translation shall be limited in time to a maximum of five years. It shall be subject to the restrictions and duration of the licensed rights of the original work. Each licensed right shall be mentioned in the contract.
2. Fees
The fee for the commissioned work shall be equitable, enabling the translator to make a decent living and to produce a translation of good literary quality.
3. Payment terms
On signature of the contract, the translator shall receive an advance payment of at least one third of the fee. The remainder shall be paid on delivery of the translation at the latest.
4. Obligation to publish
The publisher shall publish the translation within the period stipulated in the contract, and no later than two years after the delivery of the manuscript.
5. Share in profit
The translator shall receive a fair share of the profits from the exploitation of his/her work, in whatsoever form it may take, starting from the first copy.
6. Translator’s name
As author of the translation, the translator shall be named wherever the original author is named.

In my modest experience, we are still some way from achieving point 5 in the UK, point 2 in Germany and point 6 pretty much anywhere in the world.