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(Today is a day in which I list things . . . ) Hopefully most of you are aware of Reading the World, a unique collaborations between publishers and independent booksellers to promote literature in translations throughout the month of June.
This program came out of a series of discussions at BookExpo America five (?!) years ago, and has grown every year since thanks to its simplicity and elegance. Throughout the month of June, approx. 250 bookstores across the country display RTW titles complete with posters and brochures featuring the artwork of Czech artist Peter Sis. In the past, various bloggers, reviewers, radio hosts, and the like wrote and talked about many of these books, and the program in general, helping to create a certain buzz around RTW, which helped get these titles into the hands of readers.
I’ll be posting periodic updates over the next few months, especially once the artwork for 2008 is finalized, the new website is online, the Bookforum/RTW BEA party details are set, etc., but since we just finalized this list, I wanted to share it with everyone. This year the RTW list consists of 25 titles—20 from the 10 “core” publishers who have been part of the program from the start and 5 selected by a panel of independent booksellers.
So here they are in alpha order of publisher:
ARCHIPELAGO BOOKS
Yalo, Elias Khoury, translated from the Arabic by Peter Theroux (Lebanon)
A Mind at Peace, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, translated from the Turkish by Erdag Goknar (Turkey)
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai, Wang Anyi, translated from the Chinese by Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan (China)
COPPER CANYON PRESS
So What: New and Selected Poems, 1971-2005, Taha Muhammad Ali, translated from the Arabic by Gabriel Levin and Peter Cole (Lebanon)
DALKEY ARCHIVE PRESS
I’d Like, Amanda Michalopoulou, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich (Greece)
Knowledge of Hell, Antonio Lobo Antunes, translated from the Portuguese by Clifford Landers (Portugal)
ECCO
Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes, translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman (Spain)
Celestial Harmonies, Peter Esterhazy, translated from the Hungarian by Judith Sollosv (Hungary)
EUROPA EDITIONS
The Days of Abandonment, Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (Italy)
FARRAR, STRAUS, AND GIROUX
The Girl on the Fridge, Etgar Keret, translated from the Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger and Sondra Silverston (Israel)
Beijing Coma, Ma Jian, translated from the Chinese by Flora Drew (China)
GRAYWOLF
New European Poets, edited by Wayne Miller and Kevin Prufer, translated from various by various (Europe)
GROVE
Serve the People!, Yan Yan, translated from the Chinese by Julia Lovell (China)
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT
Peeling the Onion, Gunter Grass, translated from the German by Michael Henry Heim (Germany)
Woods and Chalices, Tomas Salamun, translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry (Slovenia)
KNOPF
Mind’s Eye, Hakan Nesser, translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson (Sweden)
Fire in the Blood, Irene Nemirovsky, translated from the French by Sandra Smith (France)
NEW DIRECTIONS
Nazi Literature in the Americas, Roberto Bolano, translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews (Chile)
The Assistant, Robert Walser, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (Switzerland)
NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS
The Unforgiving Years, Victor Serge, translated from the French by Richard Greeman (France)
The Post-Office Girl, Stefan Zweig, translated from the German by Joel Rotenberg (Austria)
OTHER PRESS
The King of Corsica, Michael Kleeberg, translated from the German by David Dollenmayer (Germany)
Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak, Jean Hatzfeld, translated from the French by Linda Coverdale (France)
PICADOR
Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born (Norway)
The Diving Pool, Yoko Ogowa, translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder (Japan)
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
This slender, uncanny volume—the second, best-selling collection of stories by Russian author Ludmilla Petrushevskaya to appear in the U.S.—has already received considerable, well-deserved praise from many critics and high profile publications. Its seventeen short tales, averaging ten pages each, are. . .
Reviewed by Rachael Daum
The Urdu word basti refers to any space, intimate to worldly, and is often translated as “common place” or “a gathering place.” This book by Intizar Husain, who is widely regarded as one of the most important living Pakistani writers,. . .
Reviewed by Vincent Francone
The Whispering Muse, one of three books by Icelandic writer Sjón just published in North America, is nothing if not inventive. Stories within stories, shifting narration, leaps in time, and characters who transform from men to birds and back again—you’ve. . .
Reviewed by Camila Santos
Luis Negrón’s debut collection Mundo Cruel is a journey through Puerto Rico’s gay world. Published in 2010, the book is already in its fifth Spanish edition. Here in the U.S., the collection has been published by Seven Stories Press and. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
“South”
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bank of shadow to have watched
the scattered lights
my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the ring of. . .
Reviewed by Larissa Kyzer
When Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason first published LoveStar, his darkly comic parable of corporate power and media influence run amok, the world was in a very different place. (This was back before both Facebook and Twitter, if you can. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
When starting Hi, This Is Conchita and Other Stories, Santiago Roncagliolo’s second work to be translated into English, I was expecting Roncagliolo to explore the line between evil and religion that was front and center in Red April. Admittedly, I. . .
Reviewed by Josh Billings
Christa Wolf’s newly-translated City of Angels is a novel of atonement, and in this way the work of art that it resembles most to me is not another book, but the 2003 Sophia Coppola film Lost in Translation. Like that. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
French author—philosopher, poet, novelist—de Roblès writes something approaching the Great (Latin) American Novel, about Brazilian characters, one of whom is steeped in the life of the seventeenth century polymath (but almost always erroneous) Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. Eleazard von Wogau, a. . .
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
A rich, beautifully written, consistently surprising satire, Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses boasts an elaborate, engrossing plot with disarming twists and compelling characters both challenged and challenging. It leads the reader on a strange pilgrimage—often melancholy but certainly rewarding—through a China. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
