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This is a great idea:
Amazon.co.uk has launched a new Literature in Translation store, highlighting hundreds of titles from 27 countries across the world. The site went live last week and is linked via the books homepage and the crime, fiction and poetry category pages The Bookseller
Can’t say it’s the easiest store to find, but that might be my faulty searches and the fact that I need some coffee . . . Nevertheless, here’s a link to the front page of the translation store.
Independent bookstores such as McNally Jackson, Quail Ridge Books, Talking Leaves, and others, have implemented similar ideas, creating a foreign fiction section and organizing the books by country/region. Similar to a special display in a store, Amazon is also highlighting books from particular authors and presses, which is a nice touch. (Personally, I think it would be great if there was a bit more editorial info included in these spotlights. An interview, a more complete description, etc., would go a long way.)
From my experience at Quail Ridge Books, creating a section like this worked really well in terms of increasing sales of translations, which is something Kes Nielsen, head of book buying, seems to believe in:
Sales of the genre had been growing in recent years. “By creating a dedicated Literature in Translation section on site, we are making it easy for our customers to discover a wide selection of great books by new authors from different countries that we hope they will enjoy,” he said.
“Customers will always respond to well written books, regardless of whether they were originally written in English. However there is also the appeal of reading fiction set in cities or countries that are either familiar based on travel or that are simply different to the traditional setting of most books, specifically the US and UK. It can make them all the more exciting to read.”
The one disappointing thing is that this is only on Amazon UK—not on the U.S. sister site. Sort of embarrassing that the original Amazon is a step behind . . .
Reviewed by Peter Biello
“I preferred the war to the plague,” writes Curzio Malaparte in his 1949 novel, The Skin. He speaks of World War II and the destruction it has wrought on Italy, the city of Naples in particular. But the plague he. . .
Reviewed by Brandy Harrison
With the steady rise of feminist scholarship and criticism in recent decades, it is little wonder that the work of Louise Labé should be attracting, as Richard Sieburth tells us in the Afterword to his translation, a “wide and thriving”. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
In Conversations, we find ourselves again in the protagonist’s conscious and subconscious, which is mostly likely that of Mr. César Aira and consistent with prototypical Aira style. This style never fails because each time Aira is able to develop a. . .
Reviewed by Juan Carlos Postigo
You are not ashamed of what you do, but of what they see you do. Without realizing it, life can be an accumulation of secrets that permeates every last minute of our routine . . .
The narrative history of. . .
Reviewed by P. T. Smith
Literature in translation often comes with a certain pedigree. In this little corner of the world, with so few books making it into this comforting nook, it is often those of the highest quality that cross through, and attention is. . .
Reviewed by Paul Doyle
Alessandro Baricco’s Mr. Gwyn is a set of two loosely interlinked novellas that play with narrative and the construction of character. Ably translated by Ann Goldstein, Mr. Gwyn plays some subtle metafictional games as Baricco delves into what it means. . .
Reviewed by Will Eells
I must admit upfront that I went into reading Saadat Hasan Manto’s Bombay Stories almost entirely blind. I have not read Salman Rushdie. I have read, perhaps, two short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri. I might shamefully add that I really. . .
Reviewed by Christopher Iacono
Throughout his work The Gray Notebook, Josep Pla mentions many different authors, some of whom have inspired him to pick up a pen. One of them is Marcel Proust. Even though Pla normally prefers nonfiction, he lauds the French novelist. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
On that September 11th I had a conversation with a professor friend who was teaching a creative writing class that evening. He questioned, “What can I possibly teach when all of this has happened?” While the dismay and grief were. . .
Reviewed by Robyn Kaufman
In a story of two emotionally distant people, Japanese author Takashi Hiraide expertly evokes powerful feelings of love, loss, and friendship in his novel The Guest Cat. The life of the unnamed narrator and his wife, both writers, is calm. . .
- 12 November 14: 2014 ALTA Conference
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
