Reading the World in Public Libraries
World literature beyond the popular Scandinavian thrillers has often been seen as difficult or at least not terribly vivifying. Yet while many such titles won’t achieve the best-selling status of Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy,” perceptions are changing, as technology shrinks the world, younger readers shrug off the language divide, American readers become comfortable with translation owing to big-name authors, and Anglophone publishers (particularly smaller ones) work hard to locate urgent and accessible new works (see “Reading the World,” LJ 9/15/15).
Still, world literature has a long way to go in the American market. Notes Tom Cooper, the director of Webster Groves Public Library, MO, “If you look at the best sellers lists in Paris Match or Der Spiegel, you will usually find one or two American novels in translation: not so with the New York Times best seller lists. So when the Nobel committee announces the current winner for the award in literature, American readers react with surprise, never having heard of the writer. Of course not! They’re never read anything written in another language!”
How can librarians find worthy titles in translation and promote them so that readers will keep coming back for more? First, it helps to consider what the community is already reading. Says Chrissie Harris, Columbus Metropolitan Library, “We look at titles in translation on a case-by-case basis, just as we would a book that is English first.” Comparing translated and English-first titles, she found that similar types of books circulate in about the same way and buys translated titles in line with the general collection.
That tends toward the popular, Harris acknowledges, but adds, “I do try to look at all areas of the world and have a representative collection.” She confirms that readers are indeed getting more comfortable with world literature, pointing out that “a book like Nina George’s The Little Paris Bookshop is in German originally, and people don’t even realize it.” Books such as George’s or Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Uve may not be circulating off the charts at Columbus’s branches, but they are circulating in the quantities that the library purchased.
Wayne Roylance, Adult Materials Coordinator, BookOps, New York Public Library/Brooklyn Public Library, explains that he serves a “small but fervid readership for books in translation,” with authors such as Elena Ferrante, Haruki Murakami, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Jenny Erpenbeck, and Clarice Lispector doing very well indeed. When Roylance purchases, he must balance the literary and the commercial, but he aims “to buy as widely and diversely as possible, ordering a representative number of books in translation and just putting them out there.” Sometimes, as with Ferrante and Knausgaard, they really take off, showing that a little bit of risk taking can go a long way.
Getting the best
Of course, these authors are prize winners and/or best sellers in their own countries, and now they are high-profile authors here, with strong reviews and word of mouth guaranteeing an audience. Anglophone editors looking at world literature obviously skim off the best—material that’s only good doesn’t often make it into translation—so what arrives in English is well worth considering. “The inventory for selection is rather limited but probably of high quality, as publishers want to stick to works that generate a positive return on their investment,” confirms longtime LJ reviewer Lawrence Olszewski.
As Cooper clarifies further, “Let’s face it, a book doesn’t get translated unless it has made something of a stir overseas already (and has a large print run and good reviews). Titles like Herman Koch’s The Dinner, Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses, Yiyun Li’s The Vagrants, or Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog come to us because people are already crazy about them. It’s a pretty safe bet they’ll find a receptive audience in American readers.”
One may thus consider with some assurance titles that are translated, though it’s wise to follow houses with track records. Roylance, for instance, looks especially to Archipelago, Knausgaard’s publisher; Europa, which has given us Barbery and Ferrante; and Pushkin Press, Open Letter, and Interlink. He also checks out the websites Three Percent, Words Without Borders, PEN Center USA, Publishing Perspectives, and World Literature Today.
Combing through every site is hard, so Roylance recommends signing up for email notifications and attending to news on rights sales and country-focused features to learn about titles and trends. In addition, he finds that best translation awards hint at titles that could move well for the right audience.
Promoting the world
Getting the books is one thing, but bringing readers to them is quite another. Seven Stories publicist Ian Dreiblatt, who is also a translator, offers, “You do it through stewardship and in person, creating discussion in a public space.” Dreiblatt adds that events such as New York’s New Literature from Europe Festival “can resonate far beyond the book and are an effective way of driving new interest.” (See “Jaipur Literature Festival Comes to Boulder Public Library,” ow.ly/VZQrK, for another example.)
Katie Dublinski, associate publisher at Graywolf, has another thought on promoting world literature. “Don’t put these titles in a corner but treat them like any other book,” she insists. “It’s what we do, and it’s why we have success.” Pushing Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses as translated fiction might have dampened its chances, but highlighting its poignant coming-of-age story and examination of memory and community gave Graywolf a winner—and suggested how the book fit in with other broadly appealing works.
Book clubs are a great way to introduce translated titles to readers, and Webster Groves Public Library’s Cooper always includes them in his book club offerings. Yet while he might rely on reviews for English-first titles, he’s careful to read translated titles to make sure that they will work. “If we are reading American, British, or other works in English, I think we can experience the occasional clunker without its making people say, ‘I just don’t like American books,’ ” he explains. “But if we read a title in, say, German, and people don’t like it, they are prone to conclude something about German literature as a whole.”
Despite these efforts, it seems that something more—something not addressing simply converts or the curious—is needed. “Our biggest challenge is how to get these books into people’s hands, and the piece that’s missing is marketing,” says LJ reviewer Terry Hong, the Smithsonian BookDragon blogger and a member of the 2015 U.S. Board on Books for Young People Outstanding International Books Committee. “We Need Diverse Books is an amazingly successful campaign that librarians find really helpful. Why don’t we have this for adults?”
Andersson, Lena. Willful Disregard: A Novel About Love. Other. Feb. 2016. 208p. tr. from Swedish by Sarah Death. ISBN 9781590517611. pap. $15.95; ebk. ISBN 9781590517628. F
Few novels about misconstrued emotion are as clear-eyed as Swedish journalist/novelist Andersson’s 2013 August Prize winner. Her protagonist, precise, rational Ester Nilsson, is dedicated to bridging “the dreadful gulf between thoughts and words” in her poems and essays and keeps her life uncluttered by maintaining a soothing relationship with a man who pretty much leaves her alone. Then, when she gives a lecture on celebrated artist Hugo Rask, the great man himself rises from the audience to praise her obvious understanding of his work. Invited to visit him in the studio, Ester puffs up their pleasant affinity, imagining a soulmate-like passion between them. The result is a telling portrait of how we can misunderstand others—and ourselves. VERDICT In quietly modulated prose, Andersson keeps both herself and Ester in check, refreshingly avoiding scenes or sentimentality to give us down-to-the-bone bad thinking about love.
Barbery, Muriel. The Life of Elves. Europa. Feb. 2016. 256p. tr. from French by Alison Anderson. ISBN 9781609453152. pap. $17; ebk. ISBN 9781609453206. F
Barbery follows up The Elegance of the Hedgehog, an international phenomenon, with a gauzy, glimmering fantasy that has also drawn worldwide acclaim. Cutting across a meadow, a little girl named Maria senses a presence and, as snow begins falling, is led into the forest by a creature that blends attributes of horse, man, and wild boar and ends up with four old women in an isolated village in Burgundy. High in the mountains in Abruzzo, young Clara, who lives with a country priest and his illiterate housekeeper, demonstrates such a profound, almost mystical capacity for music that she is sent to Rome to study. In fact, these two gifted girls will soon be communing with a world beyond ours as they help fight a battle against the darkness. VERDICT The magical frame and lush loveliness of the writing might be oversweet for some readers, but many fans of both Barbery and fantasy from writers like Alice Hoffman and Sarah Addison Allen will be enchanted.
Ben Jelloun, Tahar. The Happy Marriage. Melville House. Jan. 2016. 320p. tr. from French by André Naffis-Sahely. ISBN 9781612194653. $25.95; ebk. ISBN 9781612194660. F
A ny novel titled The Happy Marriage is likely about one that isn’t, and any novel by Ben Jelloun—the noted Moroccan author of Leaving Tangier who won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award—won’t deal just in sentiment. Referencing Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage and other films in chapter epigraphs, this stately novel is cinematic in scope as it captures the explosive relationship between a painter in Casablanca left paralyzed by a stroke and the wife he refuses to see, though they live in the same house. As the painter unfolds the story of their marriage, we learn that his wife is from a much less distinguished family (in a society where tribal custom still matters), and they have very different versions of their lives together. The wife’s reaction to a manuscript her husband has written about their relationship reveals a woman of blazing anger and independence. VERDICT Richly embroidered, perhaps slow-going at times, this novel allows readers to sink in; readers might recall the marital relationship in Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies.Ikonomou, Christos. Something Will Happen, You’ll See. Archipelago. Mar. 2016. 250p. tr. from Greek by Karen Emmerich. ISBN 9780914671350. pap. $18; ebk. ISBN 9780914671367 SHORT STORIES
A woman finds peace in the simple task of washing lettuce as she considers the latest man to abandon her. A man angrily swears that this will be the last time he fetches his younger brother, once again badly beaten for his political protests. A young man whose sister was gang-raped moodily stands guard in the neighborhood, at first winning the admiration but finally the scorn of the neighbors. These are some of the stories in award-winning Greek author Ikonomou’s latest collection, and if they’re sometimes wrenchgingly brutal, they’re always exactingly and beautifully told, delivering a sense of the hardscrabble lives in currently beleagured Greece—or anywhere, for that matter. VERDICT This strong and affecting work is accessible to all readers and will draw fans of Donald Ray Pollack, Claire Vaye Watkins, Bonnie Jo Campbell, and Wells Tower.
Kashin, Oleg. Fardwor, Russia! Restless. Jan. 2016. 224p. tr. from Russian by Will Evans. ISBN 9781632060396. pap. $14.99. F
Kashin, a Russian activist journalist who nearly lost his life in a 2010 beating by unknown (and presumably politically motivated) assailants and who now lives in Switzerland, turns in a fierce political satire skewering his homeland. A man named Karpov forces his grumbling wife to leave Moscow for the humble town where he was raised so that he can build a lab and experiment with a growth serum. The serum works wonders on a circus midget and a rather short man named Mefody, who with his brother has just inherited a giant oil and gas corporation from their New Russian (read: nouveau riche) father. Nothing goes as planned for any of the protagonists, as greed, business machinations, political oppression, and media shabbiness are all exposed. VERDICT Both acidulous and wildly entertaining; Gary Shteyngart fans will embrace.
Modiano, Patrick. In the Café of Lost Youth. 128p. tr. from French by Chris Clarke. ISBN 9781590179536. pap. $14.
Modiano, Patrick. Young Once. 176p. tr. from French by Damian Searls. ISBN 9781590179550. pap. $15.95; ebk. ISBN 9781590179567.
ea. vol: New York Review Bks. Mar. 2016. F
Appearing in English for the first time, these two volumes capture Nobel Prize winner Modiano in self-defining mode. Published in 1981, Young Once reveals the author shaking off maximalist language and exposition as he shows Louis and Odile looking back at their early, shadier years in Paris. Uneasy nostalgia may be common, but Modiano’s take—and wonderfully scraped-down language—is not. In the Café of Lost Youth, which followed in 2007, is even more distilled, representing Modiano at his height. In 1950s Paris, a young woman nicknamed Louki haunts a café called the Condé, casting a decided allure yet remaining mysterious and unknowable. A young hanger-on, the husband she abandoned, the detective searching for her—all try to grasp her and fail. Not unexpectedly, Modiano withholds her secret life to the end. VERDICT Two more great examples of Modiano’s writing, with Young Once somewhat more accessible and In the Café of Lost Youth perhaps the better book.
Suter, Martin. The Last Weynfeldt. New Vessel. Feb. 2016. 280p. tr. from German by Steph Morris. ISBN 9781939931276. pap. $14.95. F
An art expert at an international auction house in Zurich, fiftyish and fastidious Adrian Weynfeldt lives in a beautifully appointed apartment and socializes only with friends of his deceased parents or younger people who take advantage of his good nature and wealth. One night, he uncharacteristically lets a ravishing and unstable young woman named Lorena pick him up, and soon he’s involved in both a dangerously spiraling affair and an art-forgery scheme that could cost him his reputation and more. Swiss author Suter, a screenwriter as well as a novelist and columnist, moves the story along in swift, edgy fashion. What distinguishes this work is the air of slightly faded existential elegance, which sets off the modern setting splendidly. VERDICT Great for sophisticated suspense fans.
Barbara Hoffert is Editor, Prepub Alert, LJ