Category Archives: Fiction in translation

‘Translation is an art’: why translators are battling for recognition

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Like any author, translators want to receive credit for their work instead of being treated as an afterthought

They have often been overlooked in the artistic and literary process, but translators have long claimed they have the power to change everything.

There are tales of myths being born, societies being forged and cities destroyed with just a slip of the pen, such as the supposed translation error that allegedly led to the US deciding to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or the speculation about life on Mars after the mistranslation of an Italian astronomer.

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New project seeks to bring south Asian literature to western readers

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Founded by two translators – one American, one British – the Salt initiative will provide mentorships, funding and a south Asia-focused literary translation school

A new project to help bring the “extraordinarily rich” literature of south Asia to English-speaking countries will launch this summer, it has been announced.

The cross-continental South Asian Literature in Translation (Salt) project has been set up by the University of Chicago, in partnership with the American Literary Translators Association, English PEN, Words Without Borders and the British Council. The multi-year project will try to “strengthen each part of the publishing chain across the English-speaking world”, the University of Chicago has said.

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Viet Thanh Nguyen: ‘I didn’t notice the racism of Tintin’

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The Pulitzer prize-winning novelist on the depiction of Vietnamese people, the fun in Voltaire’s Candide and memorable masturbation scenes

My earliest reading memory
The first books I remember reading were from the public library in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where my family came as refugees from Vietnam in 1975. I vividly recall Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, which I read at six years of age, but unlike most children, I didn’t like it. The story of a boy who flees home on a boat and finds himself among foreign creatures was too dark for me. Perhaps it was too close to reality.

My favourite book growing up
The Tintin series by Hergé. The books were so beautifully drawn and told, with memorable characters and adventures in exotic lands. The stories were captivating.I loved the exoticism but didn’t notice the racism and colonialism. I’ve given the books to my eight-year-old son and he loves them, too, but I make sure we discuss the problems.

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Legends of the fall: the 50 biggest books of autumn 2021

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From new novels by Sally Rooney and Colson Whitehead to Michel Barnier’s take on Brexit, Bernardine Evaristo’s manifesto and diaries from David Sedaris – all the releases to look out for

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Honkaku: a century of the Japanese whodunnits keeping readers guessing

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These fiendishly clever mystery novels have spawned pop culture icons, anime and a museum. And, best of all, honkaku plays fair – you have the clues to solve the crime

After a day of joyous wedding celebrations, a bloodcurdling scream echoes into the night. The newlywed bride and groom are found dead in their bed, stabbed with a katana sword, now thrust into the snow outside. Their bedroom was locked from the inside, and there is no way the murderer could have broken in to do the deed, let alone escaped without leaving a trace. How was this impossible crime committed?

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International Booker prize shortlist led by books ‘pushing the boundaries’ of fiction

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Writers including Maria Stepanova and Éric Vuillard are up for the £50,000 prize, with the judges swaying for essays and autofiction over ‘good, straightforward, old-fashioned novels’

From Maria Stepanova’s family memoir to a historical essay by Éric Vuillard, this year’s shortlist for the International Booker prize for translated fiction is highlighting works that “are really pushing the boundaries” of fiction and nonfiction.

The International Booker goes to “the finest fiction from around the world” that has been translated into English. Six books are now in the running for the £50,000 award, which is split equally between author and translator, all of them displaying “an extraordinary amount of ingenuity and originality”, said chair of judges Lucy Hughes-Hallett.

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‘Not suitable’: Catalan translator for Amanda Gorman poem removed

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Victor Obiols told he had wrong ‘profile’, the second case after Dutch writer resigned from same role

The Catalan translator for the poem that American writer Amanda Gorman read at US president Joe Biden’s inauguration has said he has been removed from the job because he had the wrong “profile”.

It was the second such case in Europe after Dutch writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld resigned from the job of translating Gorman’s work following criticism that a black writer was not chosen.

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‘Shocked by the uproar’: Amanda Gorman’s white translator quits

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International Booker winner Marieke Lucas Rijneveld will not translate inaugural poet’s work into Dutch after anger that a Black writer was not hired

The acclaimed author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld has pulled out of translating Amanda Gorman’s poetry into Dutch, after their publisher was criticised for picking a writer for the role who was not also Black.

Related: 'My family are too frightened to read my book': meet Europe's most exciting authors

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Elena Ferrante names her 40 favourite books by female authors

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List by pseudonymous author of beloved Neapolitan novels includes Zadie Smith, Sally Rooney and several Italian classics

Elena Ferrante, the bestselling pseudonymous Italian author behind My Brilliant Friend, has named her favourite 40 books by female authors around the world, with Toni Morrison, Sally Rooney and Zadie Smith all making the cut.

The author, whose quartet of Neapolitan novels has sold 13m copies worldwide, has published her list on Bookshop.org, the online store that recently launched in the UK and gives a proportion of sales to independent booksellers. Ferrante’s UK publisher, Europa Editions, is returning their 10% sales commission from Ferrante’s list to Bookshop.org so it can be shared among the 300 independent bookshops that have signed up to the site so far.

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Per Olov Enquist, celebrated Swedish author, dies aged 85

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Much garlanded novelist, playwright, poet and Oscar-winning screenwriter hailed as ‘a giant among European writers’

Swedish author Per Olov Enquist, described as “a giant among European writers” by his publisher, has died at the age of 85.

The author’s family told Swedish media that he died on Saturday night after a long illness. The much-celebrated novelist, playwright and poet, known by his initials PO, was winner of the Nordic Council’s literary prize and the Swedish Academy’s Nordic prize. His historical novel The Visit of the Royal Physician – set in the adulterous, backstabbing world of the 18th-century Danish courts, where the mad king Christian VII’s queen, the English princess Caroline Mathilde, falls in love with the court physician – won him the August prize, Sweden’s most prestigious literary award after the Nobel. It also made him the only Swedish author to take the Independent foreign fiction prize, the precursor to the International Booker, in 2001.

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Chilean author, campaigner and escapee Luis Sepúlveda dies aged 70 of Covid-19

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Dramatic career took in escapes from Pinochet’s regime in the 70s, sailing with Greenpeace and writing books including The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

The celebrated Chilean author Luis Sepúlveda, who was exiled by the dictator Augusto Pinochet in the 1980s, has died from Covid-19.

Best known for his 1992 novel The Old Man Who Read Love Stories and 1996’s The Story of a Seagull and The Cat Who Taught Her To Fly, Sepúlveda died in hospital on Thursday. He first began showing symptoms from coronavirus on 25 February, after returning to his home in Spain from a festival in Portugal. On 1 March, it was confirmed that Sepúlveda was the first case of Covid-19 in the Asturias region, where he had lived for 20 years.

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Milan Kundera’s Czech citizenship restored after 40 years

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The Unbearable Lightness of Being’s author has lived in France since fleeing communism in 1975, and has previously questioned ‘the notion of home’

After more than 40 years in exile, Milan Kundera, the Czech-born author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, has been given back the citizenship of his homeland.

Petr Drulák, the Czech Republic’s ambassador to France, told public television he visited the 90-year-old author in his Paris apartment last Thursday to hand deliver his citizenship certificate.

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‘It has saved countless lives’: readers’ picks of the best books this century

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After we published our list of the greatest books since 2000, you sent in your own suggestions – from Chinese sci-fi to a history of music

“London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd (2000) made me fall in love with London all over again. The blood of the city’s history soaked into the clay. Quiet hidden corners, conspiratorial whispers in coffee houses, the dirty Thames and the Great Stink. Invasions, bridges, fires and fog. It’s a very human tale told with the verve of a novelist, the detail of a diarist and the grace of a poet.” – dylan37

“The one novel I’ve read from the century to date that I am sure will stay with me for the rest of my life, for personal as well as for general reasons, is The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller (translated by Philip Boehm in 2012). It was published in German as Atemschaukel in 2009, just before she (deservedly) won the Nobel prize for literature. It’s an extraordinarily dense and poetic work and one that seems to transcend language – so perfectly written that text and idea are fused, yet still overflowing with humanity.” – nilpferd

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Binyavanga Wainaina, Kenyan author and gay rights activist, dies aged 48

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One of Africa’s best-known authors and gay rights activists died on Tuesday after an illness

One of Africa’s best-known authors and gay rights activists, Binyavanga Wainaina, has died at the age of 48.

The Kenyan author died on Tuesday night in Nairobi after a short illness, the BBC reported. His death was confirmed by Tom Maliti, the chairman of the Kwani Trust, which Wainaina founded.

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Man Booker International prize: Jokha Alharthi wins for Celestial Bodies

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First female Omani novelist to be translated into English shares £50,000 prize with translator Marilyn Booth – the first time an Arabic book has won

Jokha Alharthi, the first female Omani novelist to be translated into English, has won the Man Booker International prize for her novel Celestial Bodies.

Alharthi, the £50,000 award’s first winner to write in Arabic, shares the prize equally with her translator, American academic Marilyn Booth. Celestial Bodies is set in the Omani village of al-Awafi and follows the stories of three sisters: Mayya, who marries into a rich family after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries for duty; and Khawla, waiting for a man who has emigrated to Canada.

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Top 10 books about Sudan

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Despite 30 years of repression that have hit writers unusually hard, Sudanese literature remains vigorous. Here is some of the best available in English

I was lucky to grow up in Khartoum in a house filled with books, at a time when Sudan’s public libraries flourished. One of the most startling discoveries I made as a child of about 13 was finding a couple of Tayeb Salih’s books on a shelf at home. Until that moment, I thought literature was something that took place elsewhere – in Dickens’s England or the Latin America of Borges, say. But here were stories that described the world right outside our front door. It was a moment of revelation and stirred the idea that it was possible to write.

Related: A Line in the River by Jamal Mahjoub review – Khartoum, city of memory

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Lebanese author Hoda Barakat wins International prize for Arabic fiction

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The Night Mail takes $50,000 prize and secures funding for an English translation

Lebanese author Hoda Barakat has won the $50,000 (£39,000) International prize for Arabic fiction (Ipaf) for her novel The Night Mail, which tells the stories of people in exile through their letters.

Billed as the “Arabic Booker”, the Ipaf also provides funding to translate the book into English. The Night Mail has already been acquired by UK publisher Oneworld, which will publish the English version in 2020.

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