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With the Frankfurt Book Fair literally around the corner, it seemed appropriate to post something about the most recent trip (don’t worry, Iceland, Chad’s got your back for a recap) we took in the name of bringing great world literature to an international audience. Just over a week ago, Chad and I had the opportunity to hook over to Copenhagen, Denmark, for a brief (yet incredibly informative) editorial and research trip. Our goal: to learn more about the Danish publishing scene, its authors and other key players, and to learn about some modern classics of Danish literature that have not yet made it into the English speaking world.
This is going to be a somewhat disjointed recap, but when you’re packed full of all the information possible in three days’ time, things are bound to jump around a little. Expect parentheticals galore.
Over the course of three days we met with around 15 book folk—publishers, agents, authors, book sellers, arts council reps—and came away with a crapton of fantastic recommendations and insights. Before leaving for Denmark, the Danish Arts Council (to whom we are ever grateful for providing only our travel grant) set us up with a comprehensive list of people we should speak with or meet while abroad—a list that led us to some truly great contacts, and a better view of contemporary and classic Danish literature. The targets of our meetings ranged from two of the country’s largest houses, Rosinante & Co. and its parent company Gyldendal (both who have some of the coolest interior design elements I’ve seen in my life), to the pleasantly curious and not-unlike-Open-Letter indie press Basilisk (whose director, Martin Larsen, published an eight-volume collection of all the legal combinations of names—possibly around six million in total—as listed on the Danish government’s website that a person could register in Denmark—all interspersed at random with single lines of poetry); from agencies like Lindhart og Ringhof and Anneli Høier who represent some of the coolest authors in Denmark, to the authors and translators themselves, like Simon Fruelund (who was just in Rochester for a Reading the World Conversation Series event with his translator, K.E. Semmel, during which they discussed both Simon’s Civil Twilight and Milk, a book of short, short stories, which are perfect in their brevity, timing, and weight of what is left unsaid or unexplained), Iben Mondrup (whose prose challenges the setup and reception of linguistics, and whose parents regularly send her fish and whole legs of reindeer from Greenland), and Martin Aitken (who is a prolific and talented translator of Danish into English, a cool guy, and a big My Bloody Valentine fan).
My notebook is filled with Danish authors we were both already aware of and urged to check out, and some of the ones we’ve become particularly interested in (and in some cases obsessed with) are Claus Beck-Nielsen, Iben Mondrup, Josefine Klougart, Per Højølt, Asta Olivia Nordenhof, Pia Juul, and Naja Marie Aidt. These recommendations and more came from backlsits, frontlists, even people’s personal bookshelves (Andreas Poulsen of Arnold Busck runs the store’s book magazine—literally called “Bogmagasinet“—brought a stack of his all-time favorite Danish books from home, adding a nice nostalgic and personal touch to our growing list of names).
I’m probably missing a lot of things I know I wanted to write about the Copenhagen trip, but in addition to loading up on book knowledge, we also had the opportunity to wander around the city a bit (“wander” being the operative and relative term—I hadn’t been in Copenhagen in at least 10 years, and we had no city map), check out some great places in the old (yet still quasi-ongoing) meatpacking district, and make some new friends. And of course, find some awesome books. That said, once again a huge THANK YOU to Anne-Marie Rasmussen and everyone else at the Danish Arts Council for having us over for a visit, and the rest of you stay tuned to Open Letter’s list, as there will definitely be some Danish names cropping up in the near future.
Reviewed by Jason Newport
To be, or not to be?
Hamlet’s enduring question is one that Szilárd Borbély, acclaimed Hungarian poet, verse-playwright, librettist, essayist, literary critic, short-story writer, and, finally, novelist, answered sadly in the negative, through his suicide in 2014, at the. . .
Reviewed by Pierce Alquist
A Greater Music is the first in a line of steady and much-anticipated releases by Bae Suah from key indie presses (this one published by Open Letter). Building off of the interest of 2016 Best Translated Book Award longlist nominee. . .
Reviewed by Tim Lebeau
The dislocation of individuals from the countries of their birth has long been a common theme in contemporary literature. These two short novels recently translated into English appear firmly rooted in this tradition of ex-pat literature, but their authors eschew. . .
Reviewed by Jason Newport
In Melancholy, Hungarian author, critic, and art theorist László Földényi presents a panorama of more than two thousand years of Western historical and cultural perspectives on the human condition known as melancholia. In nine chapters, Földényi contrasts the hero worship. . .
Reviewed by Jeanne Bonner
Pascal Quignard’s __The Hatred of Music_ is the densest, most arcane, most complex book I’ve read in ages. It’s also a book that covers a topic so basic, so universal—almost primordial—that just about any reader will be perversely thrilled by. . .
Reviewed by Damian Kelleher
In Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Flaubert attempted to highlight the ordinary, tired, and often crass nature of common expressions by italicising them within the text. When Charles, Emma Bovary’s mediocre husband, expresses himself in a manner akin to that of. . .
Reviewed by Russell Guilbault
Eliot Weinberger takes big strides across literary history in his genuinely breathtaking short work, 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, tracking translations of a short ancient Chinese poem from the publication of Ezra Pound’s Cathay in 1915 to Gary. . .
Reviewed by Vincent Francone
Prose translators will likely disagree, but I believe translating poetry requires a significant level of talent, a commitment to the text, and near mania, all of which suggests that the undertaking is the greatest possible challenge. The task is to. . .
Reviewed by Vincent Francone
The biggest issues with books like The Subsidiary often have to do with their underpinnings—when we learn that Georges Perec wrote La Disparition without once using the letter E, we are impressed. Imagine such a task! It takes a high. . .
Reviewed by Kristel Thornell
Following The Infatuations, Javier Marías’s latest novel seems, like those that have preceded it, an experiment to test fiction’s capacity to mesmerize with sombre-sexy atmospheres and ruminative elongated sentences stretched across windowless walls of paragraphs. Thus Bad Begins offers his. . .
- 5 October 17: 40th ALTA conference | Minneapolis, MN
