Such Small Hands<\/em> by Andr\u00e9s Barba (Kids in an orphanage who end up ripping apart the main character.)<\/p>\n History of a Disappearance<\/em> by Filip Springer (Fairly depressing history of a German\/Polish town that totally falls apart and ends up sinking into the ground.)<\/p>\n Beyond the Rice Fields<\/em> by Naivo (About the modernization of Madagascar and includes some disgusting torture scenes, a bunch of Christians being tossed of a cliff, and a rather unhappy ending.)<\/p>\n Impossible Fairy Tale<\/em> by Han Yujoo (One young student murders another.)<\/p>\n Book of the Dead<\/em> by Orikuchi Shinobu (A murdered prince comes back to life and thinks he sees his lover at a temple.)<\/p>\n Wolf Hunt<\/em> by Ivailo Petrov (After fairly tough lives, a bunch of Bulgarians go out hunting and several of them die and\/or are murdered.)<\/p>\n Notes of a Crocodile<\/em> by Qui Miaojin (Young girl growing up, embracing her lesbian identity. Author killed herself.)<\/p>\n A Spare Life<\/em> by Lidija Dimkovska (Siamese twins growing up in Yugoslavia during the war. One of the two dies during an operation to separate them.)<\/p>\n I Am the Brother of XX<\/em> by Fleur Jaeggy (Stories that, according to the jacket copy, are \u201cseething with quiet violence.\u201d Includes one story about tormented siblings in a Swiss boarding school.)<\/p>\n Compass<\/em> by Mathias \u00c9nard (Narrator lies in bed with his memories, suffering from a fatal illness.)<\/p>\n Oraefi: The Wastelands<\/em> by \u00d3feigur Sigurdsson (A man goes on a grueling expedition to an Icelandic glacier, returns broken and barely alive.<\/p>\n The Bottom of the Sky<\/em> by Rodrigo Fres\u00e1n (About two boys who grow up as part of the burgeoning science-fiction community in the 1940s.)<\/p>\n Those are some bleak sounding books! With the exception of the Fres\u00e1n these all sound like downers (or at least intellectually heavy), and almost all of them involve bad things happening to children. One of my students asked the other day when we were going to read a book that didn\u2019t<\/em> make her cry . . . Like, I guess, never? WORLD<\/span> LITERATURE<\/span> IS NOT<\/span> ABOUT<\/span> JOY<\/span>! IT\u2019S ABOUT<\/span> WORLD<\/span> WARS<\/span> AND<\/span> SUFFERING<\/span>!<\/p>\n Lindy Falk van Rooyen<\/b> for her translation of contemporary Danish writer Mich Vraa\u2019s Hope<\/em>:<\/p>\n Set in the period from 1787 to 1825, Hope tells the intertwined tales of a Danish humanist commissioned to report on the slave trade in the former Danish West Indies, and a fifteen-year-old girl conceived during a mutiny on the slave ship \u201cThe Hope.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bruce Fulton<\/b> and Ju-Chan Fulton<\/b> for their fine translation from the Korean of One Left<\/em>, a novel by Sum Kim, published in 2016:<\/p>\n Sum Kim\u2019s important novel is the first Korean novel devoted exclusively to the subject of comfort women. During World War II 200,000 Korean girls, ages 12-16 were forced into sexual servitude to the Japanese forces.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Michael Gluck<\/b>, for his agile and energetic translation from the Russian of Matisse<\/em> by Alexander Ilichevsky:<\/p>\n Matisse<\/em> hearkens back to the great 19th century Russian philosophical novels, with great yarns spun by unsavory characters that sparkle with the language of the heavens and the language of the streets (literally\u2014the protagonist is a theoretical physicist who abandons his former life to be a bum)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mariam Rahmani<\/b> for her translation from the Farsi of Mahsa Mohebali\u2019s Don\u2019t Worry<\/em>:<\/p>\n This novel, published in 2008, follows a wealthy, disillusioned junkie as she makes her away through Tehran on a day punctuated by earthquakes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Aaron Robertson<\/b> for his spirited translation from the Italian of a provocative and expansive contemporary novel by Igiaba Scego, an Italian-Somali writer from Rome:<\/p>\n This novel, Beyond Babylon<\/em>, spans three centuries as it explores the lingering aftershocks of Italy\u2019s colonial interventionism in Somalia and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Julia Sanches<\/b> for her translation from the Spanish of Slash and Burn<\/em> by Claudia Hern\u00e1ndez:<\/p>\n Although Hern\u00e1ndez hails from El Salvador, this direct and unsensationalized novel about a nameless woman\u2019s post-war struggles to secure a better life for herself and her daughters is set in a nameless country.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jamie Lee Searle<\/b> for her translation from the German of Valerie Fritsch\u2019s novel Winter\u2019s Garden<\/em>:<\/p>\n This masterful translation of the young Austrian poet and prose writer\u2019s prize-winning novel brilliantly captures its complexity, originality, and stylistic tour-de-force. Winter\u2019s Garden<\/em> brings together a fascinating juxtaposition of utopia and dystopia, mixing the idyllic with the apocalyptic.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ri J. Turner<\/b> for her moving translation from the Hebrew of Fischel Schneerson\u2019s seminal Yiddish novel, Chaim Gravitzer<\/em>:<\/p>\n Chaim Gravitzer<\/em> is an epic of Eastern European Chasidic life, written over nearly twenty years by Schneerson, himself an initiate in the world of Chasidism and a secular psychologist.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A lot of these sound really interesting, but with a couple of exceptions, they don\u2019t necessarily sound fun.<\/em> These are the sort of books that Sessalee Hensley from Barnes & Noble envisions when you tell her a book is translated\u2014dry, European, challenging, medicinal. It\u2019s quite possible that these books are incredibly joyous to read, but the way that they\u2019re described . . . Most of them sound like books you feel you should<\/em> read, not necessarily the book you\u2019d zone out with on the beach.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t to say that these books aren\u2019t valuable, stylistically amazing, really gripping, emotional, etc. It\u2019s just that I think there\u2019s a sort of weird bias at work in the translation world, where we favor the serious over the entertaining, and this might be hampering the \u201cbrand,\u201d so to speak. If you\u2019re a casual reader\u2014not someone who is anxiously anticipating the next volume of My Struggle<\/em> or who is deep into mid-century Russian literature\u2014you\u2019re much more likely to buy a book that sounds fun, enjoyable, a diversion, humorous. Where are these translations?<\/p>\n I\u2019ve never heard of Revol, but a \u201cMenippean satire of the cosmopolitan west in the sixties, detailing hilariously but humanely the lives of intellectual and artistic \u00e9migr\u00e9\u2019s\u201d sounded so refreshing after all the bleak books that I\u2019ve been reading. (Including The Stone Building and Other Places<\/em> by Asli Erdogan, the subject of next week\u2019s post.) Besides, I generally have faith in Dalkey Archive\u2019s editorial vision. Like with any press, there are some titles that sound deadly to me, but John O\u2019Brien has always been great at finding obscure classics that are unique in style, voice, subject matter. These books are frequently operating way outside of the current literary trends, which is why they\u2019re rarely buzzed about in the normal Twitter-circles, but are also incredibly refreshing to read.<\/p>\n And Abrupt Mutations<\/em> is the most Dalkey book that I\u2019ve read in a long time. It\u2019s so very 1970s in terms of its approach\u2014the narrative is wild, a bit slapdash, incomplete in almost every way\u2014and its general sense of humor. This is a book that no other press would ever publish, and a good justification for why different presses should have different editorial visions. The literary world is a richer place when we\u2019re not all in a bidding war for the same book.<\/p>\n I\u2019m at a loss of how exactly to talk about this book. One idea is to compare the differences between Revol\u2019s fragmented narrative and that of Empty Set<\/em>. The second I started Empty Set<\/em>, I knew that it would play really well with all the translation-friendly booksellers. Bicecci\u2019s novel is broken up into little components, but they all are written with the same sort of voice and emotional self-importance. It\u2019s the sort of book that makes you feel like it\u2019s more important than it really is, and gives you a sort of reading adrenaline-boost as you piece everything together. I found it a bit precious and tiresome, but it\u2019s exactly<\/em> the sort of book that a lot of readers gravitate toward. Unusual, but not too<\/em> unusual.<\/p>\n By contrast, you can piece together the narrative of Abrupt Mutations<\/em>, more or less, but it keeps, well, mutating, and doesn\u2019t really come together into the sort of satisfying whole that most readers are looking for. The first part (which makes up more than half of the book) introduces the reader to a ton of academics, artists, heiresses, self-involved poets, and the like, each one as easy to ridicule as the last. Their lives and loves are interwoven, and they\u2019re all heading toward a going away potlatch for O Jango, a multimillionaire who\u2019s going to burn all his expensive works of art before heading back to Brazil.<\/p>\n The main event in terms of the novel\u2019s plot, I guess, is that at this crazy party, Kiki (a short story writer and puffed up crap academic of kitsch) sees his ex-wife Celia making love to another woman, which weirdly freaks him out. An accident involving the bed\u2019s curtains takes place and the two women go up in flames as part of the ritual bonfire of O Jango\u2019s possessions.<\/p>\n At this same party, Kiki gets together with an old professor and they decide to get married. (Because why not?) In Part Three, he goes with her to Brazil to search for a heretofore unknown jungle tribe of descendents from eighteenth-century French adventurers. The image of a bunch of pasty white people living in the middle of Brazil with powdered wigs smoking crazy ass drugs is a pretty fun one, even if it doesn\u2019t really seem to connect to any sort of overarching plot.<\/p>\n The second part\u2014probably my favorite\u2014is about Chief Nobodaddy (a sly reference to another Dalkey title) trying to solve the mystery of O Jango\u2019s party. This part mostly consists of reproducing O Jango\u2019s notebook of who to invite to the party, which is both cutting and fairly entertaining, calling to mind some of the more savage bits of Gilbert Sorrentino\u2019s writings.<\/p>\n Roslyn Lupescu.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Twenty-five.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n When you look at her, the first thing you say is: commonplace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n She\u2019s the woman whose high heel always breaks in the subway as she\u2019s about to board the train.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The woman who is out to be modern, but really only wants to do housework, surrounded by stinking, squealing kiddies while she tortures a dutifully bovine husband for years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The woman who reads books she doesn\u2019t understand. And respectfully stops to look at pictures she doesn\u2019t like.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The woman who smiles but doesn\u2019t really want to, ever. Who is envious and doesn\u2019t realize that she envies anyone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n I also really like this one:<\/p>\n Troika Soares.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Fifty-eight years old.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n She believes there exists an obligation for everyone to always be happy. To that point, her friend Trinidad, in a witty remark I would never have believed her capably of uttering if I hadn\u2019t heard it with my own ears, gave the best description of Troika ever. Trinidad was complaining about her and said: \u201cOh, no! Just think, as soon as Troika gets here, we will all have to keep laughing<\/em>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n This book is basically a hodge-podge of character sketches that end up parodying a number of different artistic and academic ideologies that were probably more prominent in the 1970s than they are today. (If I didn\u2019t mention this already, the book was originally published in Spanish in 1971.) That sort of 70s vibe definitely shows up in the treatment of women throughout the book. There are any number of cringe-worthy representations of women to cite here, with Barbara Dowd\u2019s entire story arc being the pinnacle.<\/p>\n Barbara comes to Megalopolis (a stand-in for NYC<\/span>) to find Nick\u2014the man who visited her provincial town and took her virginity. Expecting the Village to be more or less like her own village, she randonly asks someone to direct her to \u201cNick,\u201d and ends up finding a<\/em> Nick, who quickly figures out what\u2019s going on and takes advantage of her naivete and confusion to get her into bed. She then goes to O Jango\u2019s party to find Nick (one or the other) and ends up being straight-up molested by Professor Orvieto, to whom O Jango, in his invitation book, refers as a hero \u201cbut mostly a lecher.\u201d<\/p>\n (At this point come a new pause by the orator and the complete success of doctor Orvieto\u2019s most recent efforts: the Scottish plaid skirt suddenly lies at the feet of our tender heroine, who contemplates with horror what she, however, still considers merely another mishap of no consequence to the outcome of her quest. But when she attempts to bend over to pick up her evasive article of clothing, she unexpectedly bumps up against some sector of Dr. Orvieto, which for its part, most naturally, is waiting for her.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Of course, in a throwaway line it\u2019s revealed that Barbara and Orvieto get married after the party. (So much spontaneous marriage in this book! It\u2019s sort of a fun joke, partially through the sheer repetition of people meeting on a train, then immediately deciding to get married.)<\/p>\n I\u2019m all for non-PC books (and find articles like this new Lionel Shriver piece<\/a> interesting and valuable), but I can\u2019t imagine this is going to go over that well with most readers.<\/p>\n I doubt this book is going to win any prizes or win over a new crowd of readers, but it was an enjoyable diversion from all the serious books I\u2019ve been inundated with this year. It isn\u2019t exactly laugh out loud funny\u2014except maybe when Nick falls out the window by accident and most of his friends are unaware that he \u201ccommitted suicide\u201d for quite some time\u2014but it\u2019s weird and unique, and in today\u2019s world, that\u2019s good enough for me. As I mentioned above, next week I\u2019m back into the sincere and serious\u2014a book about Turkish women trapped by various power structures.<\/p>\n I\u2019m too lazy to go find examples, but Google basically anything and you\u2019ll see what I mean. Ozy (which isn\u2019t a Superman villain?) recently ran a few \u201cBest Chilean Fiction You NEED<\/span> to Read\u201d pieces that are as ignorant as the day is long. Being poorly read is a badge of honor in 2018 though, so who can blame them? It\u2019s so much easier to just find two or five recent books that \u201ceveryone\u201d has heard of and that you can slot in there to make your list feel like it\u2019s cutting edge. I mean, fuck, Riverhead loves to retweet these kind of back pats, so you\u2019ve at least got a fighting chance at getting a decent number of clicks and keeping your underpaid freelance position.<\/p>\n Anyway, Spanish-language books are such good list generators. And since I\u2019m trying to be more popular in 2018, I figure that I should make my own list. So below is a list of the ten presses who have published the most impressive array of Spanish-language books since 2008. Is my list dumb? Do flies like shit? Is there a methodology? Duh and or obviously. My scheme: Using the PW<\/em> Translation Database,1<\/a><\/sup> I ran a list of all Spanish-language books in the system. Then I ranked the top 50 in inverse point order. (Top ten books get 50 points each, second group of 10 get 40, fifth get 10 a piece, etc.) Was this subjective? Is online media and book coverage a joke? On the upside, I\u2019ve read more than 1\/4 of these books, so I\u2019m 150% more informed than the average list-maker?<\/p>\n Then I took the total number of presses and the total number of Spanish titles they\u2019ve published and crafted a similar sort of numerical score. (The press with the highest number of publications got 50, then I applied a semi-standard curve so that a press who published half as many books got a 25, one-fifth as many books a 10, etc., etc.) I added together all of the press\u2019s individual book scores, then added on the publisher score, and then ranked them. As flawed as it obviously is, at least I\u2019m transparent about the system I\u2019m using, and it isn\u2019t \u201chey, look, here are four Spanish books in my office!\u201d<\/p>\n First off, here are the ten books that received scores of 50, in alphabetical order by author last name:<\/p>\n 2666<\/em> by Roberto Bolano, translated by Natasha Wimmer (FSG<\/span>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Zama<\/em> by Antonio Di Benedetto, translated by Esther Allen (New York Review Books)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sudden Death<\/em> by Alvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Riverhead)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Invented Part<\/em> by Rodrigo Fresan, translated by Will Vanderhyden (Open Letter)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Signs Preceding the End of the World<\/em> by Yuri Herrera, translated by Lisa Dillman (And Other Stories)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Faces in the Crowd<\/em> by Valeria Luiselli, translated by Christina MacSweeney (Coffee House)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Your Face Tomorrow: Volume Three<\/em> by Javier Marias, translated by Margaret Jull Costa (New Directions)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Talking to Ourselves<\/em> by Andres Neuman, translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia (FSG<\/span>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Iliac Crest<\/em> by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated by Sarah Booker (Feminist Press)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Bonsai<\/em> by Alejandro Zambra, translated by Carolina De Robertis (Melville House)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There are quibbles to be had, but I\u2019ll bet 7 of the 10 quibbles are in the 40 point range and were tough choices. Again, I know this is flawed, but I\u2019m doing my best to set forth a system and follow it to its bitter end, so cut me as much slack as you cut those other horrible listicles.<\/p>\n Here are the ten presses, in descending order, who have published the most number of works translated from the Spanish since 2008: AmazonCrossing, New Directions, Dalkey Archive, Hispabooks Publishing, Open Letter, Atria, FSG<\/span>, And Other Stories, Deep Vellum, HarperColins.<\/p>\n And here, using my janky points system, are the top ten presses for Spanish-language literature in terms of quality AND<\/span> quantity:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Honorable Mention: New York Review Books (1 title, 51.16 total score)<\/p>\n Notable Books: Zama<\/em> by Antonio Di Benedetto, translated by Esther Allen.<\/p>\n Commentary: If all of the NYRB<\/span> retranslations of Spanish books were included here, they would definitely be ranked higher.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 10. Feminist Press (4 titles, 54.65 score)<\/b><\/p>\n Notable Books: The Iliac Crest<\/em> by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated by Sarah Booker (Feminist Press)<\/p>\n Commentary: If I liked August<\/em> by Romina Paula a bit more, they would be ranked 7 or 8. But I didn\u2019t. It\u2019s a fine book, but there\u2019s something about that voice\u2014so contemporary!\u2014that doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 9. Melville House (6 titles, 56.98 score)<\/b><\/p>\n Notable Books: Bonsai<\/em> by Alejandro Zambra, translated by Carolina De Robertis<\/p>\n Commentary: I gave The Private Lives of Trees<\/em> some points, but none of the rest of Zambra\u2019s books merited a score. I don\u2019t care what James Wood <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 8. Riverhead (11 titles, 72.79 score)<\/b><\/p>\n Notable Books: Sudden Death<\/em> by Alvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer; The Informers<\/em> by Juan Gabriel Vasquez, translated by Anne McLean<\/p>\n Commentary: If you\u2019re creating a metric, one of the tests for its validity is whether or not it passes the eye-test. Riverhead at 8? Seems right. Also, I included a Vasquez book in the top 50 and I think The Sound of Things Falling<\/em> sucks.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 7. Deep Vellum (13 titles, 75.12 score)<\/b><\/p>\n Notable Books: The Art of Flight<\/em> by Sergio Pitol, translated by George Henson; Target in the Night<\/em> by Ricardo Piglia, translated by Sergio Waisman<\/p>\n Commentary: If I had included Texas: The Great Theft<\/em>, Deep Vellum would be higher. But I\u2019m not big on that book. (Tedious. Self-indulgent.) Also, if you want to manipulate these rankings, either get a book in the top twenty, or publish a ton of titles. There is a pattern.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 6. Coffee House (6 titles, 86.98 points)<\/b><\/p>\n Notable Books: Faces in the Crowd<\/em> by Valeria Luiselli, translated by Christina MacSweeney; Empty Set<\/em> by Veronica Gerber Bicecci, translated by Christina MacSweeney<\/p>\n Commentary: Building on the last commentary, Coffee House hasn\u2019t done very many Spanish books at all (you wouldn\u2019t know that if you only read LitHub, but I\u2019ll cull the snark right here because I love internet democracy and don\u2019t feel at all like those lists are based in willful ignorance in which twenty-year-olds log-roll their idols and that\u2019s literary criticism, folks!), but they did hit a grand slam with Luiselli. That was a big help in these rankings.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 5. And Other Stories (13 titles, 115.12 score)<\/b><\/p>\n Notable Books: Signs Preceding the End of the World<\/em> by Yuri Herrera, translated by Lisa Dillman; Transmigration of Bodies<\/em> by Yuri Herrera, translated by Lisa Dillman; Open Door<\/em> by Iosi Havilio, translated by Beth Fowler; Islands<\/em> by Carlos Gamerro, translated by Ian Barnett<\/p>\n Commentary: Those early books of And Other Stories\u2014Islands<\/i> and Open Door<\/i>\u2014got them to this spot. It\u2019s too bad more people didn\u2019t read them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 4. Dalkey Archive (31 titles, 146.05 score)<\/b><\/p>\n Notable Books: News from the Empire<\/em> by Fernando del Paso, translated by Alfonso Gonzales; Hypothermia<\/em> by Alvaro Enrigue, translated by Brendan Riley; Recounting: Antagony, Book I<\/em> by Luis Goytisolo, translated by Brendan Riley; Op Oloop<\/em> by Juan Filloy, translated by Lisa Dillman; House of Ulysses<\/em> by Julian Rios, translated by Nick Caistor<\/p>\n Commentary: If I had read more Dalkey titles, they might rank higher. Then again, the last books from Fuentes are tossers, and some of their titles are grant-based, not quality-based. Fourth seems about right, although props to Dalkey for publishing so many unconventional Spanish-writing authors.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 3. FSG<\/span> (14 titles, 146.28 score)<\/b><\/p>\n Notable Books: 2666<\/em> by Roberto Bola\u00f1o, translated by Natasha Wimmer; Talking to Ourselves<\/em> by Andr\u00e9s Neuman, translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia; Traveler of the Century<\/em> by Andr\u00e9s Neuman, translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia<\/p>\n Commentary: I might be overrating Talking to Ourselves<\/em> (fuck you, this book is great), but Savage Detectives<\/em> predates the database, so . . . fair? Also, who isn\u2019t excited for a new, non-Restlless Neuman book to come out?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2. Open Letter (19 titles, 302.09 score)<\/b><\/p>\n Notable Books: The Invented Part<\/em> by Rodrigo Fres\u00e1n, translated by Will Vanderhyden; My Two Worlds<\/em> by Sergio Chejfec, translated by Margaret Carson; Navidad & Matanza<\/em> by Carlos Labb\u00e9, translated by Will Vanderhyden; Gesell Dome<\/em> by Guillermo Saccomanno, translated by Andrea Labinger; La Grande<\/em> by Juan Jos\u00e9 Saer, translated by Steve Dolph; The Private Lives of Trees<\/em> by Alejandro Zambra, translated by Megan McDowell; Things We Don\u2019t Do<\/em> by Andr\u00e9s Neuman, translated by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia; A Thousand Forests in One Acorn<\/em> edited by Valerie Miles; The Dark<\/em> by Sergio Chejfec, translated by Heather Cleary<\/p>\n Commentary: 1) Awareness Bias\u2014I\u2019ve read far more of your books, than you\u2019ve read of ours. So as biased as this might seem, objections are invalid until you\u2019ve finished<\/em> these titles. 2) Neuman! He burst onto the scene and dude, FINISH<\/span> YOUR<\/span> NEW<\/span> BOOK<\/span>. Also, don\u2019t sign with . . . oh, hell. Well, that\u2019s gonna be a mess. 3) Chejfec is a writer\u2019s writer who\u2019s likely too obtuse for the buzz-set. That\u2019s unfortunate. He fucking rules. 4) I knew we did a ton<\/em> of Spanish-language books, but 20% of all our titles? <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1. New Directions (42 titles, 328.83 score)<\/b><\/p>\n Notable Books: Your Face Tomorrow: Volume Three<\/em> by Javier Mar\u00edas, translated by Margaret Jull Costa; Nazi Literature in the Americas<\/em> by Roberto Bola\u00f1o, translated by Chris Andrews; Ghosts<\/em> by Cesar Aira, translated by Chris Andrews; Senslessness<\/em> by Horacio Castellanos Moya, translated by Katherine Silver; On the Edge<\/em> by Rafael Chirbes, translated by Margaret Jull Costa; The Literary Conference<\/em> by Cesar Aira, translated by Katherine Silver; Never Any End to Paris<\/em> by Enrique Vila-Matas, translated by Anne McLean; Armie<\/em> by Evelio Rosero, translated by Anne McLean; The Halfway House<\/em> by Guillermo Rosales, translated by Anna Kushner<\/p>\n Commentary: Again, eye-test. After forty-two titles, New Directions deserves the top spot. Granted, they\u2019re riding a bit on Bola\u00f1o and Aira, but people love the Chirbes (if you like him, check out Antonio Lobo Antunes) and it\u2019s not like they\u2019ve turned away from Spanish-language literature. This is a legit list that includes superstars and new voices.<\/p>\n 1<\/sup> If you\u2019re not using the database to generate your lists, then I\u2019m 100% going to keep making fun of you. There\u2019s a legit resource right there<\/em>, free to use, informed!, and yet you decide to roll out all the recent press releases? And I\u2019m the asshole for pointing out your ignorance? Cool, cool.<\/p>\n 2<\/sup> Here\u2019s the narrative that I\u2019ve heard, which may be inaccurate, yet rings true to me: For years, Andrew Wylie (of a certain poetry fame<\/a> which, really, this<\/a> was a post deleted in the Gawker takeover?) didn\u2019t represent many Spanish-language authors. But wanting to be global AF, he decided to hire Crist\u00f3bal Pera of Penguin Random House Mexico to sign on as many Latin American writers as possible\u2014with the goal of creating a context that would win over Gabriel Garc\u00eda Marquez. (Side Note: Garc\u00eda Marquez is represented by the venerable Carmen Balcells, whose agency Wylie failed to buy, and who sadly passed away a few years ago, which resulted in several of her best authors moving to Casanovas & Lynch.) Guess what? Garc\u00eda Marquez didn\u2019t sign with Wylie, and Pera left the agency shortly thereafter. Draw your own conclusions. About this separation and the future of authors who got on the Wylie gravy train. (Spoiler: Rumor has it a significant number of recent Wylie Agency clients are less than happy with the agency\u2019s turnover and inability to do shit for them. Is Wylie just the Scott Boras of literature? Holy shit does that idea make me smile. And yes, I know that like, one of every one hundred people reading get that.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every spring, I teach a class on \u201cWorld Literature & Translation\u201d in which we read ~10 new translations, talk to as many of the translators as possible, and then the students have to choose one of the books to win their imaginary \u201cBest Translated Book Award.\u201d It\u2019s a great exercise\u2014trying to explain why they want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":365026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[66836,67216,67226,67236,1646],"class_list":["post-307866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-2018-translations","tag-abrupt-mutations","tag-enrique-luis-revol","tag-priscilla-hunter","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307866"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331966,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307866\/revisions\/331966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}or Scott Esposito think<\/del> (correction, Scott liked Bonsai<\/em> better as well, apologies to him for misremembering while writing this)\u2014those recent Zambra books aren\u2019t nearly as interesting. Especially not Ways of Being<\/em> or My Documents.<\/em> But being trendy has no connection to aesthetic value. (Whatever. I know we\u2019ll lose the rights to our book\u2014our best-selling title<\/i>\u2014in a year or two because he signed with the Wylie Agency, who likely believes our title can make them more money elsewhere. Such is baseball, such is life. I refuse to suck up to agents\/agencies. Especially this one.2<\/a><\/sup>)<\/p>\n Dang. 5) That Valerie Miles anthology includes excerpts from like 50% of the authors listed in this post alone\u2014many of them (like Chirbes) being their first appearance in English. (Just buy the books now. If you\u2019ve read this far, you know I\u2019m not fucking around in terms of recommending good books.)<\/p>\n