Sometimes, I’ll come across a book or author who hasn’t found an English-language publisher. This is my plea to the interwebs.
Botanique Circus was published just a few weeks ago in France and it looks like Frédéric Clément, the author and illustrator, is making the rounds at literary festivals, including the 27e salon du livre et de la presse jeunesse en Seine-Saint-Denis, à Montreuil, and Festival des illustrateurs à Moulins. It was by chance that I found out about this book. I subscribe to a few international newspapers with book coverage and, more often than not, skim the headlines for anything of interest. What caught my eye was this, from L’Express: “Le festival de Montreuil fête le cirque.” Interest, piqued, especially with the popularity of The Night Circus† by Erin Morgenstern in mind.
This is a forty page book about, you guessed it, a botanical circus. The cast of characters is odd and marvelous: there’s a giant with cabbage leaves for ears who can hear a mouse’s sigh; a wild strawberry tamer; a singer whose voice pierces crystal, and many more. From the publisher’s description, it sounds like the story is printed on a small booklet that’s housed just inside the cover, while the forty pages are dedicated to Mr. Clément’s illustrations of this botanical circus.
Look at the cover: the color palette is sophisticated with its golden yellows, pale pinks, and fine details. And oh, there are somersaulting fairies, a clown, and there’s the ringmaster, so to speak. Delicious. This looks like the type of illustrated book that compels you to pore over its contents, to hold far away and to bring up close in the hopes of finding another hidden object. And with a promised “peep show” by way of a pop-up panel in the back, well, just hurry up and bring this book to the US of A.
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Doesn’t Clément’s style call to mind ads and packaging from the 1800s, like the calendar below?
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†No, I haven’t read it but I do have the audiobook which I intend to listen to over Christmas break.
Sometimes, I’ll come across a book or author who hasn’t found an English-language publisher. This is my plea to the interwebs.
There isn’t a particular title that is begging to be translated, per se. But in this Q&A at Europa Editions’ tumblr, Alison Anderson, translator of Laurence Cossé’s A Novel Bookstore and Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog, among others, covers the difficulty of finding an English equivalent of “l’adéquation,” sailing, and this, which caught my attention:
Do you have a dream translation project, ie a work of literature that has not been translated yet?
As an existing project, I would love to find a publisher who is passionate about Christian Bobin¹ so I could do more of his books (I’ve had two short translations of his work published so far, and a short excerpt). And I dream of finding an untranslated, obscure female author² from an earlier time period, someone like Irène Nemirovsky (whose works are all being translated by Sandra Smith), so I could do her entire oeuvre…
¹ It appears that Christian Bobin won Le Prix des Deux Magots in 1993 and has published ~50 novels according to his Wikipedia page. Going by my success, or lack thereof, of trawling the internet for more information, it looks like he’s still “un auteur assez discret, « amoureux du silence et des roses ».“
Publishers and foreign institutions, if you want to know how to put your books in front of readers, take a cue from the German Book Office, which has proved itself savvy with social media. By using the “old” standbys–monthly giveaways, a Facebook page, and now its newly-launched promo videos for its Fall 2010 Rights list–in a manner that is informative and adds to the conversation, the GBO has made this reader take note of German literature. Case in point: MADALYN by Michael Köhlmeier.
Below, Jürgen Fauth discusses MADALYN, which made the 2010 German Book Price longlist.
Here’s a summary of MADALYN from the Hanser Verlage website:
What happens when we are in love? Very little, and yet you remember your first love for the rest of your life. Michael Köhlmeier’s novel about Madalyn and Moritz is a heartrending tale about big emotions.
Madalyn lives on the floor below. Sebastian Lukasser, a writer, has known her since she was five years old, when he taught her how to ride a bike and later witnessed her being knocked down by a car. He becomes her rescuer and guardian angel, to whom she confides things her parents wouldn’t understand. Now Madalyn is fourteen and in the middle of her first love story, which is heart-wrenching, complicated and utterly hopeless. Because Moritz is anything but a simple case – at least as far as Lukasser can make out from what Madalyn tells him. It seems that Moritz comes from a desperately poor background and has been arrested for stealing. But he’s also a notorious liar, so it’s hard to know what to believe. But what if it’s really the truth?
Sebastian Lukasser, who was actually planning to write a novel about a young murderer, now finds himself having to listen to an entirely different story – a story about first love that hits him harder and affects him more deeply than he likes to admit.
I’m more interested in Madalyn’s relationship with Sebastian than with Moritz. What is the nature of their relationship? How does her story affect him and why? Publishers, translate this book!
Jürgen Fauth is a translator, writer, critic and editor, and founded Fictionaut with Carson Baker. Read more about Fauth at www.jurgenfauth.com.
Michael Köhlmeier is the author of Abendland (2007), Nachts um eins am Telefon (2005), Idylle mit ertrinkendem Hund (2008) and Mitten auf der Straße (2009).
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