What can the novels Wild Woman by Marina Šur Puhlovski and Under Pressure by Faruk Šehić tell us about the breakup of Yugoslavia which caused such a tectonic shift in Balkan identity?
Each to their war and its troubled aftermath: one in the domestic sphere, the other out on the field and in the trenches. Both are informed by terror, brutality, power struggles and stubborn memories which refuse to go away. The gender split seems clear: survivors of domestic violence are primarily women and war veterans are mainly men – each to their trauma.
Author, BEN PASTOR, lived for thirty years in the United States, working as a university professor, before returning to Italy to write historical thrillers. Bitter Lemon Press have published six of her novels to date.
Where were you born, and where did you grow up? I was born in Rome, and grew up in the hill country southeast of the city. Ten elements typified our small town: Roman ruins; rainy springs; olive groves; sparkling red wine; farm women dressing in beautiful traditional garb on holidays; the Thursday fair; more steps than streets (a problem and a good exercise for my family doctor father); a tall church steeple from where you could glimpse the sea in the far distance; cats, dogs, and farm animals of all kinds; the feeling that the world was orderly, cyclical, and safe.
What sorts of books were in your family home? All sorts (except pornography) and too many to count. As children, my sister Simona and I used to read avidly, and then have a picnic on top of the tall bookshelves of the family library. Years later, we found mummified little pieces of sandwiches behind the furniture when we moved out. Mother had a passion for nineteenth-and-twentieth-century literature: the great French, English, Spanish, Russian, Italian, American authors . . . Father loved geography, history and mysteries; all of us had a fondness for poetry and art. From The Epic of Gilgamesh to Nicholas Nickleby, from Blood and Sand to Dead Souls, the steps to culture and to our picnic place were all there!Continue reading Interview | Ben Pastor, novelist | Author of the Week
Celebrating this year’s Chinese New Year of the Pig, I discuss translating China with Nicky Harman on the launch of Paper Republic’s roundup of the most recent publications in English translation. Their 2018 roll call features thirty-three novels, six poetry collections and three YA and children’s books.
Paper Republic is a unique resource you won’t find anywhere else on the web. Its co-founder, Nicky Harman, is a leading light of the translation community in the UK and a passionate promoter of Chinese literature and culture. She is co-Chair of the Translators Association (Society of Authors). Nicky is often away, but I managed to catch up with her for brunch on Valentine’s day to discuss the literature of a non-English speaking continent that is 4,834 miles away from this small offshore island.
Luke Leafgren, the translator of Muhsin al-Ramli’s The President’s Gardens (MacLehose Press) will receive the 2018 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation on Wednesday 13 February. The awards and the ceremony are administered, organised and hosted by the Society of Authors.
As small-island mentality tightens its hold on the UK, and the dark forces of obsessive fear-mongering and prejudice fuel discontent and discord, historical precedents are vivid reminders of what the future could hold. To be slavishly obedient to authority sets the stage for horrific acts to happen. Continue reading Spotlight | Read the World with MacLehose Press | 5 Notable Writers
“Judging the Banipal Translation Prize was a most enriching experience. It reminded me that literature can be a force for good – no bad thing! We need to be shocked out of a comfortable complacency that suggests that books should not attempt to bring about social and political change. The entries provided no shortage of shocks.” Pete Ayrton, Chair of Judges, the Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.
The Man Booker International, the IMPAC Award, English PEN’s Writers in Translation Programme* and the Society of Authors’ series of prizes for outstanding literary translations from works in Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish are the leaders of the prize-giving pack.
The exuberant 10th anniversary of a small European literary festival, Literaturhaus Europa, held in the Wachau region of Austria, throws into sharp relief the cultural poverty we potentially face post-Brexit.
Much excitement, relief and exhaustion here at BookBlast as the 10×10 tour of superb #indiepubs around the regions of England is drawing to a close, as we approach Liverpool and finally Manchester. You can buy tickets HERE
Our monthly round up features five eclectic reads coming to you from France, Italy, New York and the Indian Ocean @BelgraviaB @maclehosepress @pushkinpress
Little by Edward Carey (Gallic/Aardvark Bureau) buy here
“In the same year that the five-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his Minuet for Harpsichord, in the precise year when the British captured Pondicherry in India from the French, in the exact same year in which the melody for ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ was first published, in that very year, which is to say 1761, whilst in the city of Paris people at their salons told tales of beasts in castles and men with blue beards and beauties that would not wake and cats in boots and slippers made of glass and youngest children with tufts in their hair and daughters wrapped in donkey skin, and whilst in London people at their clubs discussed the coronation of King George III and Queen Charlotte, many miles away from all this activity, in a small village in Alsace, in the presence of a ruddy midwife, two village maids, and a terrified mother, was born a certain undersized baby.”Continue reading BookBlasts® | Top 5 Reads for Independent Minds | October 2018
The tenth and last talk of this year’s inaugural BookBlast® 10×10 tour, a nationwide celebration of independent publishing is @WaterstonesMCR featuring Carcanet Press which was conceived at Pin Farm, South Hinksey, Oxford, in 1969 by Peter Jones, Gareth Reeves and Michael Schmidt. Carcanet Press primarily publishes poetry. In 2000 it was named the Sunday Times millennium Small Publisher of the Year.
On Thurs. 8 November at 6.30 p.m., Michael Schmidt, a founder-director @Carcanet will chair the discussion @WaterstonesMCR with poets Jane Draycott and Jenny Lewis; talk theme: Claiming the Great Tradition: Women Recalibrate the Classics.
The ninth talk of the BookBlast® 10×10 tour, a nationwide celebration of independent publishing, @waterstonesl1 College Lane, Liverpool, L1 3DL features Balestier Press, founded in 2014: “Much diversity from Asian translated literature remains to be explored.” Roh-Suan Tung publishes award-winning literature in translation, young-adult fiction, and picture books.
On Thurs. 1 November at 6.30 p.m., Roh-Suan Tung @BalestierPress will chair the discussion with author @YanGeMay and her translator @NickyHarman_cn @waterstonesl1 The talk has as its theme, #MeToo Moments: men misbehaving in China. Book Tickets
“Writing is a reflection of real human life and what we care about,” Roh-Suan Tung.
“Chilli bean paste was big business, had been for Gran’s family for four or five generations. Sichuan peppers, on the other hand, were the sort of thing any small trader could sell. All they needed was a place to set up their stall. But, humble though the trade was, the Sichuan pepper was as essential as chilli bean paste at all Pingle Town dinner tables [. . .] Dad had kicked around the chilli bean paste factory for over twenty years, learning the ins and outs of his trade under the tutelage of his shifu, Chen, and if it had taught him one thing, it was that people were born to sweat. You ate chilli bean paste, and Sichuan peppers, and ma-la spicy hotpot, to work up a good sweat, and screwing a girl made you sweat even more. The more you sweated, the happier you felt, Dad reckoned. He remembered the fiery heat that the sweat-soaked bed-sheets in Baby Girl’s house gave off.”
Read a review of Yan Ge’s novel, The Chilli Bean Paste ClanHERE
Author interview HERE Meet Yan Ge in person on Thurs 1 Nov.
Q: What are you working on now? A: “A novel I’ve been working on for four years. It is set in a fictional town, Pingle, in the southwest of China. It’s the third book of my trilogy of Pingle Town. The Chilli Bean Paste Clan is the second one. The first one is a coming of age novel called May Queen,”
Translator interview HERE Meet Nicky in person on Thurs 1 Nov.
Q: Why do you translate? A: “I love the language, and writing. When things go well, I feel I’m opening a window on another world for readers and that’s a great privilege,” Nicky Harman.
Meet in person the indie publisher, Elizabeth Briggs, from Saqi Books, at the BookBlast 10×10 Tour event, Waterstones, Birmingham, 24-26 High Street, B4 7SL @Bhamwaterstones 6.30 p.m. Thursday 25 October. Theme: The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write with reference to the anthology edited by Sabrina Mahfouz. With poets Nafeesa Hamid and Aliyah Holder. Book Tickets
Where were you born, and where did you grow up? Worcester, where I lived until I left for university in the North East of England at seventeen. Determined as ‘Britain’s most average constituency’ by the BBC last year, it’s not bad coming from a city whose place on the international stage is thanks to a great sauce and Edward Elgar.
What sorts of books were in your family home? All sorts. I was very lucky. We had these incredible encyclopedias of animals from around the world, which I used to spend hours pouring over and copying the pictures. They were shelved alongside an illustrated bible, which I didn’t think at all odd at the time. It never occurred to me as a child that people took stories from the old testament as gospel: I thought they were wild and strange fantasy at the time – violent and bloody, the kind of things I wasn’t allowed to watch on TV. My dad also has an astonishing collection of moldy orange Penguin original paperbacks, bought back when they cost 85p each. I used to read a lot of Agatha Christie. I also have two older sisters so could borrow their books too. I read The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst when it first came out (I was twelve at the time), which was eye-opening.Continue reading Interview | Elizabeth Briggs, editor & marketing manager, Saqi Books | Indie Publisher of the Week
