Antonia Lloyd-Jones reads from Maryla Szymiczkowas KAROLINA, OR THE TORN CURTAIN (2021) Translators Aloud 2026-09-23 | Antonia Lloyd-Jones reads from Maryla Szymiczkowas KAROLINA, OR THE TORN CURTAIN (2021)
Samantha Pious reads from CACTUS FLOWERS: SELECTED POEMS, Judith Teixeira (Headmistress Press, 2025) Translators Aloud 2025-10-16 | Description:Queer love poems from the Roaring Twenties (Loucos Anos Vinte). “A minha Amante” (pp. 112–13), “My Lover” (pp. 43–44).“Duma carta” (122–23), “From a Letter” (pp. 53–54). Author:Judith Teixeira (1880–1959) was perhaps the only bisexual woman poet to participate openly in Lisbon’s modernist literary scene. Her civil status—born to a single mother in the provincial city of Viseu, divorced at age thirty-three by her first husband, re-married the following year to the grandson of a viscount—had already made her the subject of scandal. But still more scandalous was the sexually transgressive writing she published under her own name only a few years before the rise of the Salazar dictatorship.Translator:Samantha Pious is a translator, poet, editor, and researcher. In addition to Judith Teixeira, she has translated selections from the poetry of Renée Vivien, which are available as A Crown of Violets (Headmistress Press, 2015, revised 2017), and from Natalie Clifford Barney, which are forthcoming. Order a copy of Judith Teixeira, Cactus Flowers: Selected Poems, trans. Samantha Pious (Headmistress Press, 2025):https://a.co/d/7kBr8dShttps://headmistress-press.square.site/product/cactus-flowers-selected-poems-judith-teixeira-translated-by-samantha-pious/104?cs=true&cst=customPraise for Cactus Flowers:“Samantha Pious’s translations from the Portuguese of Judith Teixeira’s poetry in Cactus Flowers resounds with sensual energy and burning tenderness. Reading these poems, one is struck not only with the passion of Teixeira’s queer love poems but by the way in which turbulent politics and social tensions are subtly traceable within the lines. […] The lone reader is thrown into the bodily world, reminding us that words first and foremost are of the body and its unique experiences.” —Allison Grimaldi Donahue“Judith Teixeira’s poetry has almost always, over the decades, discomfited specialists […] This English edition—with a selection and preface by Samantha Pious, wherein I would underline the sensitivity and care of her fine translations, as well as her personal commitment—allows Anglophone readers to connect with the first Portuguese woman writer to sing of lesbian love, transforming women’s bodies into objects of worship and of carnal consummation.” —Fabio Mario da SilvaFind translator Samantha Pious online:samanthapious.com@samantha.piousJudith Teixeira died in 1959, widowed and without issue; the rights holder(s) is/are unknown. If you have information regarding her estate, please contact the publisher at headmistresspress@gmail.com.
D V Subhashri reads Mohammed Khadeer Babus THATS A FIRE ANT RIGHT THERE (Speaking Tiger Books) Translators Aloud 2025-10-10 | Captured in the innocent voice of a young boy, Mohammed Khadeer Babu’s Chaplinesque-style of portraying misery through humour shines a sweeping light on Muslim lives in coastal Andhra. Populated with strong women, cheeky scamps, virtuous dawdlers and scrupulous teachers, his witty storytelling in the Nellore dialect is a riveting portrayal of the daily struggles of adapting to a majoritarian world in small-town India. Belying the nostalgic memories of childhood are scathing observations of the education system, child labour, social barriers, and casteist attitudes. Yet, the stories also resound with a clear message of friendship, especially among Hindus and Muslims, making this book essential reading in today’s fraught times, to remind ourselves of our inherited legacy of communal harmony—which makes it possible for the young narrator to say, ‘I’ve never regretted even once that I didn’t learn Urdu or that I don’t know Arabic, or that I have never even touched the Quran in these languages, only in Telugu.’D.V. Subhashri’s unique translation, which retains all the richness of the original, quaint expressions and sounds et al, brings a smile to our faces, while showing us why the book made Khadeer Babu a household name in the Telugu community. This first English translation of his work opens up a new world for us.‘Here is a writer with the courage to look into the well of truth and to proclaim fearlessly what he finds there: inherited ideas, prejudices and superstitions and eye-wateringly realistic characters [that] stride across the page. The translator, powered by three language pools, splashes her way confidently to invent a language for the reader.’—Mini Krishnan, editorial board member of the Murty Classical Library of India 'To discover a new voice and a new translator and to be introduced to a new literary village is an embarrassment of riches. This is a book to savour and keep.' - Jerry Pinto, Indian poet and novelist and winner of Windham-Campbell PrizeBUY THE BOOK: https://www.amazon.in/dp/9363364658Translator bioD V Subhashri is a multilingual writer and translator based in Bangalore. Her stories and translations have appeared in various online magazines and her children’s books have won awards in Telugu and English. She is currently translating two books from Telugu and Kannada. Reach out at shri2777atgmail.Author bioMohammed Khadeer Babu is a senior journalist and award-winning writer in Telugu with short stories, anthologies, non-fiction books and movies to his credit. A two-time Katha awardee, his stories have won various prizes at the state and national level and earned him the Govt of AP Achievement Award in 2023.
Ian Giles reads from Andrev Walden’s BLOODY AWFUL IN DIFFERENT WAYS (Fig Tree, 2025) Translators Aloud 2025-10-09 | Christmas, 1983. In the aftermath of yet another furious argument, seven-year-old Andrev’s mother lets him in on a secret: his father is, in fact, not his father. And so begins a new kind of childhood, in which fathers come and go, arriving in red Volvos and sweeping his mother off her feet. Fathers can be magicians or murderers, artists or thieves, and, like growing pains, or the weather, they appear uninvited and leave without warning. Fathers are drawn to his mother like moths to a flame – but even she can’t control how they behave.Vivid and joyful, raw and tender, Bloody Awful in Different Ways is a novel about growing up in the chaos of social change; about how love begins and ends; and above all, about men. Because after all, you learn an awful lot about this strange species when you have seven fathers in seven years.Translator bioIan Giles is an Edinburgh-based translator working from Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish into English. He has more than 35 published translations to his name, ranging from bestselling fiction to complex academic and cultural texts. Recent publications include high-profile translations of authors such as Camilla Läckberg and David Lagercrantz, as well as the international bestseller Bloody Awful in Different Ways by Andrev Walden. Ian is the current Chair of the Translators Association and a former Chair of the Swedish-English Literary Translators’ Association.Notes on translating the work: gilestranslation.com/category/baidwAuthor bioAndrev Walden is an acclaimed Swedish journalist and columnist. In 2017, he was nominated for the Swedish Grand Prize for Journalism, praised for his ability to ‘find the every-day drama in the big questions’, and to make us ‘laugh and see the world, the family and ourselves in a new and slightly wiser light’. He lives in Stockholm. Bloody Awful in Different Ways is his first novel.Video greeting from the author: youtu.be/E_UzIDJhcCg?si=NlHmqMozT3J2-BAdPress quotes: But the coup of the book is its take on coming of age… It tells you things about growing up that you didn’t realise were true, not until Walden put them into words. […] Bloody awful? Bloody brilliant, more like.George Cochrane, Daily Telegraph, 26/07/25 (archived version here: https://archive.md/x4Vt4)The writing remains so sharp, so beguiling, so acutely observed that by this point I was willing to follow Andrev/Andrev pretty much anywhere.Rebecca Wait, The Guardian, 04/08/25 (online here: theguardian.com/books/2025/aug/04/bloody-awful-in-different-ways-by-andrev-walden-review-darkly-funny-swedish-autofiction)Links to buy:Print: uk.bookshop.org/a/2434/9780241720288 or order from any bookshop with ISBN 9780241720288Audio: linkto.xigxag.co.uk/links/5V22
Rose Facchini reads from Maico Morellinis INN OF THE SURVIVORS (Snuggly Books, 2025) Translators Aloud 2025-10-02 | A visionary tale of climate dystopia, mystery, and longing for a lost world. Amid the mists of the Po Valley forests and a desolate Adriatic, this is both an existential story of homesickness and a highly relevant warning for the world of today.Author BiographyMaico Morellini, born in 1977, lives in Reggio Emilia, Italy. His first science fiction novel, Il Re Nero (The Black King), won the 2010 Urania Award and was published the following year by Mondadori, which also published his novel La terza memoria (The Third Memory). In both 2019 and 2021, he won the Premio Italia for Il diario dell’estinzione (Extinction Diary) and Il ragno del tempo (The Spider of Time). He has contributed to several anthologies and published numerous short stories.Translator BiographyRose Facchini is a Lecturer in Italian at Tufts University, the Editor and Italian Translator Editor for the International Poetry Review, and a Contributing Editor for the Journal of the History of Ideas. Her translations have been published or are forthcoming in a wide range of journals and by various publishing houses, such as Asymptote, Snuggly Books, and West Branch.To order:snugglybooks.co.uk/inn-of-the-survivorsRead a glowing review in Asymptote Journal: asymptotejournal.com/blog/2025/09/11/grief-and-knowledge-in-a-dying-world-a-review-of-inn-of-the-survivors-by-maico-morellini/#more-37706"Facchini’s nimble and elegant translation is an additional boon." - Oonagh Stransky, Asymptote JournalRightsThe translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder (Maico Morellini) to translate.Social Media HandlesInstagram: @rose_facchiniBluesky: @rosefacchini.bsky.social
ON MEMOIR: A TRANSLATORS CRAFT featuring translator Dani James Translators Aloud 2025-09-30 | Inside the Translation Process with Dani JamesThis short documentary explores the translation journey behind Return to the Place I Never Left, a Holocaust survival memoir by Tobias Schiff. Writer and translator Dani James breaks down creative and stylistic choices, how a text’s form can amplify its content, the importance of memoir, and her connection to the book’s topic.Featuring: Dani James danijames.co youtube.com/@ByDaniJamesDirected by: Kofa Boyah kofaboyah.com youtube.com/@kofaboyahProduced by: Paradiise paradiise.comAbout the Translator: Dani James is a writer and literary translator. Return to the Place I Never Left was published by Wayne State University Press in 2025. danijames.co/return-to-the-place-i-never-leftSee Dani reading from RETURN TO THE PLACE I NEVER LEFT:youtu.be/o4e2uw-GIrQ#translation #translator #translators #literaryanalysis #translate #process
Giaime Alonge and translator Clarissa Botsford read from THE FEELING OF IRON (Europa Editions, 2025) Translators Aloud 2025-09-25 | From the horrors of WWII to the spy games of the Cold War: a haunting tale of survival, vengeance, and the enduring shadows of history A New York Times Editors’ ChoiceShlomo Libowitz and Anton Epstein, two Jewish prisoners subjected to horrific experiments in a Nazi concentration camp, survive the unimaginable. Decades later, their lives converge again as they hunt Hans Lichtblau, the SS officer who tormented them, now operating in the shadowy world of Cold War geopolitics. Their pursuit takes them from the ashes of Europe to the jungles of Central America, where justice and revenge blur against the backdrop of CIA conspiracies and a haunting past. But one life may be too short to settle all accounts, and Anton and Shlomo’s belated revenge is also a race against time... With vivid characters and a masterful blend of fact and fiction, perfectly balanced between two continents and two eras, The Feeling of Iron confronts the moral ambiguities of vengeance and the inescapable echoes of history. Alonge’s detailed efforts to trace the gradual development of the Nazis’ “final solution” are chilling. And as Libowitz and Epstein close in on their target, the novel gains speed and page-turning intensity, with a crushing irony that casts new light on the revenge motive." - Kirk's Review"Clarissa Botsford's translation is precise and eloquent, never splashy. Every line is a jewel." -New York Review of BooksTranslator bioClarissa Botsford is a translator, musician and Humanist celebrant. her recent translations include Viola Ardone's The Children's Train and The Unbreakable Heart of Oliva Denaro, as well as Sasha Naspini's Oxygen, Nives and The Bishop's Villa.Author bioGiaime Alonge is an author, screenwriter, and associate professor of Film History at the University of Turin. The Feeling of Iron is his English-language debut. BUY THE BOOK: europaeditions.com/book/9798889661283/the-feeling-of-iron
Charlotte Coombe & Laura McGloughlin read from Anna Pazos KILLING THE NERVE (Foundry Editions 2025) Translators Aloud 2025-09-19 | In this tour de force of auto-journalism, Anna Pazos explores the end of youth and the beginning of adulthood for the global nomad generation. We are taken on a journey from the ‘Mediterranean mediocrity’ of bourgeois Barcelona life, through Anna’s unstructured Erasmus days in Thessaloniki, her first steps in journalism in Jerusalem, her sail across the Atlantic with an unsuitable lover, and to post-MeToo, pre-pandemic New York. In 2021, back in Barcelona, she turns her analytical attention on her family, on post-2017 Catalan society, and on her place within it.This reading is taken from Chapter 3, The Trade Winds, in which Anna falls for the charismatic photographer Guillermo and impulsively drops everything to sail around the world with him. More of Anna’s adventures aboard can be seen in the BBC documentary she made about the journey: bbc.co.uk/reel/video/p08b0pp4/a-story-of-love-waves-and-the-arms-tradePraise for Killing the Nerve:"Lyrical, incisive, and profoundly resonant, Killing the Nerve is not just memoir; it's a mirror of a generation. For fans of Deborah Levy or Rachel Cusk, this novel will hit like a revelation; restless, questioning, and indelible.""Pazos’s prose is precise, unsentimental, and sharply observant. She examines youth, ambition, and dislocation with the cool detachment of a reporter and the intimacy of a memoirist.""With her sharp mind and unflinching candour, this first book walks the tightrope between the intimate and the political to present a picture not just of one woman's life, but of an entire generation seeking purpose across changing landscapes.""Anna captures the atmosphere of each city and its people, religions, politics and daily life in a way that feels alive. There’s such a spirit of adventure that makes this book brim with life and honesty, as it conveys the experience of an adrenaline-filled life." ⭐Longlisted for the Premi Finestres 2023 ⭐Voted best Catalan Book of the Year by El Pais.BUY THE BOOK: foundryeditions.co.uk/killingthenerveAuthor bioAnna Pazos is a writer and documentary filmmaker. She has produced several short documentaries and non-fiction podcasts and has written columns and reports for El País, La Vanguardia, Jacobin and Le Monde Diplomatique. Between 2014 and 2015 she lived in Jerusalem, where she wrote for media outlets such as Ha’aretz and The Jerusalem Post. In 2017 she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study a postgraduate degree at NYU, where she also worked as a fact-checker at the New York Times Syndicate and as an editor and producer at the BBC. Translator biosLaura McGloughlin has been a freelance translator from Catalan and Spanish since completing a Masters in literary translation at the University of East Anglia, and was awarded the British Centre for Literary Translation Mentorship in 2011, mentored by Peter Bush. Among others, she has translated work by Carlos Saura, Maria Barbal, Flavia Company, Joan Brossa, Andrea Mayo and Empar Moliner, and her work has appeared in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Asymptote and Metamorphoses. She was Translator in Residence at the BCLT during spring 2022. Her most recent translation is Wanna Fuck? by Bel Olid. This is her first co-translation.Charlotte Coombe is a British translator working from Spanish, French and Catalan into English. Shortlisted for the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize 2023, winner of the Oran Robert Perry Burke Award 2022 and shortlisted for the Valle Inclán Translation Prize 2019, she has translated over a dozen books by authors including Rosa Ribas, Frédéric Laffont, Vincent Doumeizel, Marvel Moreno, Margarita García Robayo, Ricardo Romero, Eduardo Berti and Abnousse Shalmani. Her translations of short stories and poetry have appeared in literary journals such as The White Review, The Southern Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, World Literature Today and Words Without Borders. She is also the co-founder of the Translators Aloud project, shining a light on translators reading from their work. cmctranslations.com#catalan #books #annapazos #foundryeditions #cotranslation #translation #barcelona #catalanauthors #catalanbooks #newbooksfromcatalan #premifinestres #bookstagram #spain #bookaholic #booklover #booksbooksbooks #xl8 #catalunya #catalonia #charlottecoombe #lauramcgloughlin #newbooks #publicationday #killingthenerve #matarelnervi
Zack Rogow reads from Henry Murgers THE WATER DRINKERS (Black Widow Press, 2025) Translators Aloud 2025-09-18 | Henry Murger is best known for writing the book and play that Giacomo Puccini used as the basis of his delicious opera La Bohème, later the source of Jonathan Larson’s musical Rent. Murger actually wrote twenty books, many of them also engaging fiction about bohemian characters in mid-nineteenth century Paris. Until now, almost none of Murger’s other work has been translated into English. “Long known to opera buffs as the author who inspired Puccini’s La Bohème, Henry Murger was actually a more complex, acerbic, and entertaining writer than we might realize. Now, with Zack Rogow’s carefully chosen selection of Murger’s sketches of bohemian life, translated here for the first time, English readers can enjoy the qualities that made Murger both one of the most renowned writers of his day and a master chronicler of the heartbreaks and follies of nineteenth-century Paris.”Mark Polizzotti, translator of Flaubert, Modiano, and Duras, and author of Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto“A lively and engaging rendering and adaptation of Murger’s beguiling text. It deserves a broad readership.”Jerrold Seigel, NYU Professor Emeritus and author of Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830–1930.In this collection, the full tile of which is THE WATER DRINKERS AND OTHER SKETCHES OF PARIS IN THE ROMANTIC ERA, Zack Rogow has translated and adapted Murger’s best fiction in one volume. The title piece is The Water Drinkers, Murger’s satirical look at a real-life group of artists and writers who strongly rejected commercialism. They were “Water Drinkers” because they shunned the luxury of wine. Set in the colorful, unheated garrets so familiar to fans of La Bohème; in the galleries of the Louvre where young artists copied from the old masters; and in Paris’ fashionable quartiers, The Water Drinkers introduces us to a fascinating array of characters whose dilemmas resonate deeply with contemporary issues. Written with Murger’s sharp irony, The Water Drinkers is a little-known classic that has remained in print in France since its publication in 1854. This collection also includes another great example of Murger’s sharp wit, The Funeral Supper, a send-up of the Romantic movement’s obsession with melancholy, suicide, and spleen. That nineteenth-century mania for the dark side foreshadowed the punk and goth movements, and Murger’s take on it still feels current today. The third piece in this book is Murger’s account of an extreme cold spell in Paris that jarred the lives both of married couples and extramarital lovers, another terrific example of Murger’s wry humor. Henry Murger (1822–1861) was one of the leading writers of the Romantic movement. His most famous book is Scenes of Bohemian Life, the source of Puccini’s La Bohème and Jonathan Larson’s musical Rent. A man-about-town in Paris, Murger died a tragic death at age thirty-eight, hastened by a disease called purpura, which turns the skin a purplish hue. A statue of Murger stands to this day in the Jardin du Luxembourg. His reputation in English has been delayed by the lack of translations, and this volume aims to fill that gap. Zack Rogow (translation and adaptation) was the co-winner of the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Award for Earthlight by André Breton (Black Widow Press), and he also translated Breton’s Arcanum 17 (Green Integer). Rogow won the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award for his translation of George Sand’s novel, Horace (Mercury House). His English version of Colette’s novel Green Wheat (Sarabande Books) was shortlisted for the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Award and for the Northern California Book Award in Translation. Rogow’s cotranslation of Shipwrecked on a Traffic Island and Other Previously Untranslated Gems by Colette was published by State University of New York Press. He edited two volumes of Two Lines: World Writing in Translation. www.zackrogow.com
Alice Banks reads from Lucía Alba Martínez’s ANIMALITOS (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2025-09-11 | Inés is twenty-five years old, she has lost her job, she lives alone, most of her friends have gone to live in other cities, and she cannot get over her breakup with Javi. She has put her degree on hold, she no longer goes to therapy, and the abandonment of herself and her home are clear signs of depression. She sleeps during the day and at night she drinks, aching to fall asleep to escape reality, whilst at the same time dreading sleeping alone and being with the nightmares and strange dreams that are sure to haunt her each night. Martínez’s style could be considered akin to that of Ocean Vuong’s, and the themes within the book and the way they are approached make it reminiscent of My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, yet Lucía Alba Martínez forges a new, unique space for herself with her run-on sentences and long, sweeping tangents that allow readers to get swept up and lost in her character’s thoughts with her. Martínez’s pen is seductive, agile, masterful, and just as in the narration of the novel, her writing style is full of contrast, intermingling poetic prose, metaphor, and allegory with abrupt, sharp, and sometimes vulgar phrases. This book is an ode to childhood and a brutal reflection on the harshness of adult life and the human capacity to overcome even the most difficult situations. Martínez has created a novel that delicately balances itself between rawness and tenderness and light and darkness, with touches of irony and humour that, despite the somewhat sordid themes found within the novel, offers readers endearing moments of hope. With her first novel, Lucía Alba Martínez presents herself as one of the most different and interesting voices on the Spanish scene.PRAISE• Perhaps one of the greatest joys of the veteran writer is to discover talented young people to whom he can hand over the torch of literature before it falls out of his hands. Lucía Alba Martínez is one of these young authors […] who between bewilderment and unwavering commitment, has written Little Animals.’ – Juan Manuel de Prada, La voz de Galicia• ‘Lucía Alba Martínez offers a novel full of tenderness and humour in Little Animals.’ – Briseida Zenobia, Todo Literatura; Républica Ibérica de las Letras• Book of the week in El Periódico de España: ‘In Little Animals, Lucía Alba Martínez’s debut novel, the author takes us into dreams and memory, to the fine line between the past and present, to talk about rootedness and rootlessness, love and lovelessness, protection and helplessness. She does so through the voice of Inés who shows her world without qualms.’ – El Periódico de EspañaAUTHOR BIOLucía Alba Martínez (Madrid, 1992) is a writer and translator. She spent most of her childhood and adolescence living in Tunisia. She studied Literature and Comparative Literature at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and translates literature from English, French and Italian into Spanish. She has published articles on literature in Quimera and CTXT. Animalitos (AdN, 2024) is her first novel. TRANSLATOR BIOAlice Banks is a literary translator from Spanish and French into English. She has translated authors such as Elizabeth Duval, Ali Zamir, Almudena Grandes, Lara Moreno, Raquel Delgado, Cristina Araújo Gámir, and Lucía Alba Martínez. Her latest full length translation of Anne Sénès’ Double Room came out in June 2025 with Orenda Books, and her co-translation of Lara Moreno’s The City, will be published with Open Letter Books in early 2026. Her work has been published in journals including Latin American Literature Today, Asymptote, minor literature[s], and The Los Angeles Review. FOR RIGHTS INFO, CONTACT: mcardona@aevitascreative.com The translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Peter Thompson reads from Tahar Bekris THE DESERT AT DUSK (Contra Mundum Press, 2025) Translators Aloud 2025-09-02 | A book of poetry, recent, evoking the Tunisian desert—both as a reminiscence of oasis childhood, and as a condemnation of the new desert “warriors,” the Islamic radical fundamentalists. Some of the poems suggest ancient, pre-Islamic forms, as does the entire theme of the ode to the desert. There are two prefaces, and notes. Tahar BekriThe poet was born in 1951 in Gabès, Tunisia. He has lived in Paris since 1976. Bekri writes in both French and Arabic. His thirty published works comprise poetry, essays, and art books. The poetry, awarded various literary distinctions, has been translated into numerous languages and is studied and commented on in both academic and artistic works. Awards include the French Language and Literature Prize from the Académie Française, 2019. Bekri has been Honorary Lecturer at the University of Nanterre. Most recent publication: Mon pays, la braise et la brûlure, Ed. Edern, 2025.Peter Thompson is professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at Roger Williams University. He has edited two widely used anthologies of francophone literature, and edits Ezra: An Online Journal of Translation (www.ezratranslation.com). Poetry books include Late Liveries, Shades and The Angle of Incidence. Song lyrics include Daybreak and New Words. His novels are Winter Light and Harrison’s Word. He is the translator of Khatibi’s Tattooed Memory, Nassira Azzouz’s The Gates of The Sun, Véronique Tadjo’s Red Earth, Léon-Paul Fargue’s Poëmes, Abdelkader Djemaï’s Father/Son, Abdellatif Laâbi’s Perishable Poems, Mohamed Loakira’s …and spring is veiled over, Ghita El Khayat’s The Affair, Mohamed Hmoudane’s Emergency!, Wafa Ghorbel’s Black Jasmine, four by Nabile Farès: Hearing Your Story, A Passenger from the West, Exile and Helplessness, Exile: Women’s Turn, Abdelkébir Khatibi’s Tattooed Memory and others.linkedin.com/in/peter-thompson-95914333peterthompsonbooks.comAvailable September 2, 2025 from Contra Mundum Press. Purchase at: contramundumpress.com/the-desert-at-dusk
R J Dent reads from the Marquis de Sade’s STORIES, TALES AND FABLES (Contra Mundum Press, 2024) Translators Aloud 2025-07-03 | Written in his Bastille cell in the years between 120 Days of Sodom and Justine, this is the first English translation of Marquis de Sade’s collection of short works, Stories, Tales, and Fables.Essential reading for all Sade devotees, Stories, Tales, and Fables is an introduction for those who are not yet familiar with the work of this controversial French literary innovator. The short works in this collection range from the dramatic novella, Dorci, to comic tales such as The Duped Judge. Whether he is writing bawdy, exuberant comedies, supernatural tales, or human tragedies, Sade is essentially a moralist, and his exploration of the darker side of human nature remains as relevant to our society as it was to his own.Psychologically perceptive and defiantly unconventional, Stories, Tales, and Fables reveals the compelling force of Sade’s narrative powers. An accomplished and artful fiction writer, Sade, like all great writers, asks penetrating questions about society, life, and humanity. This collection also includes a selection of Sade’s non-fiction, ranging from his insightful survey of the novelist’s art, Some Thoughts on the Novel, to his Last Will and Testament, as well as several essays about Sade’s work by renowned authors including Apollinaire, Heine, Masson, Anatole France and Paul Ėluard."-Review by Biblioklept (biblioklept.org/2025/03/26/marquis-de-sades-stories-tales-fables-book-acquired-mid-march-2025)The extract is from Some Thoughts on the Novel, Sade’s overview of fiction, and his advice to writers on how to write well.BUY THE BOOK: contramundumpress.com/stories-tales-and-fablesAuthor bioThe Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) was a French nobleman, revolutionary politician, philosopher and writer, famous for his libertine sexuality. His works include novels, short stories, plays, dialogues, and political tracts. In his lifetime some of these were published under his own name while others, which de Sade denied having written, appeared anonymously. Sade is best known for his four erotic, libertine works, 120 Days of Sodom, Justine, Juliette, and Philosophy in the Boudoir, which combined philosophical discourse with pornography, depicting sexual fantasies with an emphasis on violence, suffering, crime, and blasphemy. He was a proponent of absolute freedom, unrestrained by morality, religion, or law.Translator bioR J Dent is a poet, novelist, translator and short story writer. As a renowned translator of European literature, he has published modern English translations of The Songs of Maldoror (Le Comte de Lautréamont); Speculations (Alfred Jarry); Capital of Pain (Paul Ėluard); Her Three Daughters (Pierre Louӱs); The Surrealist Manifesto and Soluble Fish (André Breton); The Dead Man (Georges Bataille); Stories, Tales, and Fables (Marquis de Sade); Poems & Fragments (Alcaeus); The Flowers of Evil (Charles Baudelaire); The Seed and The Bridges (Tarjei Vesaas) and major works by Louis Aragon, Maurice Rollinat and Antonin Artaud.As a poet and novelist, R J Dent is the author of a poetry collection, Moonstone Silhouettes; two novels, Revelation and Myth; a short story collection, Gothiques and Fantastiques; and two non-fiction books: Emily Dickinson’s Sexual Personae and Screaming at the Window, a true crime biography of Blanche Monnier: the Prisoner of Poitiers.R J Dent’s social media links:Website: http://www.rjdent.comBlog: rjdent.wordpress.comNews and Events: rjdentnewsandevents.wordpress.comInstagram: instagram.com/rj.denttwitter: http://twitter.com/RJDentfacebook page: facebook.com/rjdentwriterfacebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/R-J-Denttumblr: tumblr.com/blog/rjdentBlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/rjdent.bsky.socialYouTube: youtube.com/@rjdentdotcomTikTok: tiktok.com/@rj.dent.comAmazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/R.-J.-DentAmazon.com: amazon.com/author/rjdentGoodReads: goodreads.com/author/show/5831064.R_J_DentBooksie: booksie.com/users/r-j-dent-143044ViewBug: viewbug.com/member/R-J-DentSoundCloud: soundcloud.com/user-rjdentPinterest: pinterest.co.uk/rjdent/r-j-dents-books
Ailsa Wood reads from Chiara Valerios THE LITTLE I KNEW (Foundry Editions, 2025) Translators Aloud 2025-06-26 | In Scauri, an end of the line seaside town forty miles or so from Rome, Vittoria dies unexpectedly in her bath. Whilst the townsfolk meet the event with sad but respectful southern Italian silence, Lea, the town lawyer, wants to investigate. Who was Vittoria, what were her secrets, why had she mysteriously arrived in Scauri thirty years earlier? And was her relationship with Lea all that it seemed?In this unforgettable portrait of a small town and the women who live there, reverberations from the past catch up with present. Through the silences, Vittoria’s story is revealed and everything - passions, emotions, and relationships - changes forever. Novelist, editor, critic, cultural commentator and mathematician Chiara Valerio is a sensation in Italy and The Little I Knew is a huge bestseller. It was shortlisted for the 2024 Premio Strega.“Enigmatic and beguiling, precise and unsettling, this seductive novel opens with a mysterious death, asking compelling questions about desire, knowability and the still limited possibilities of freedom for women. Chiara Valerio is a major talent.” OLIVIA LAING“With wit, subtlety and charm, Valerio captures the complex currents of secrecy and desire that is just under the surface of small-town and family life. A beguiling, atmospheric story of female fascinations.” SARAH WATERS“The writing is nimble and on point. The structure is tight. With a death at the beginning, it reminds me of Ginzburg or Sciascia.” JHUMPA LAHIRI“The narrative is an enchantment of phantasmagorical goings-on and the small realities of provincial life.” DACIA MARAINI“In the story Chiara Valerio tells, there is something of the relationship between Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, something of that elegance and of those gardens, of gentle slowness and ancient bonds.” VALERIA PARRELLA, GRAZIA“Chiara Valerio plays with the noir genre and transforms it; rather she reveals what is at its heart. Yes of course we need to find out how Vittoria died. But maybe it’s more crucial to find out how Vittoria lived.” PAOLO DI PAOLO, LA REPUBBLICAAuthor bioCHIARA VALERIO was born in Scauri in 1978 and lives in Rome. She has published essays, novels, short stories, including: La gioia piccola d’esser quasi salvi (2009), Spiaggia libera tutti (2010), Il cuore non si vede (2019), La matematica è politica (2020), Nessuna scuola mi consola (2021), Così per sempre (2022), La tecnologia è religione (2023)Translator bioAILSA WOOD is a translator from Italian and French. Her work on Stefano Benni’s monologues from Le Beatrici was the winner of the prestigious John Dryden Translation Prize in 2022. Besides her work as a literary translator, she works across various related sectors including wine and tourism. Ailsa has an M.A. in Literary Translation (with Distinction) from the University of East Anglia and lives in Italy.BUY THE BOOK: foundryeditions.co.uk/thelittleiknew
Dani James reads from Tobias Schiffs RETURN TO THE PLACE I NEVER LEFT (Wayne State U. Press, 2025) Translators Aloud 2025-06-24 | In this firsthand account of the Holocaust, survivor Tobias Schiff displays the depths of human suffering, the capacity for hope and renewal, and the impact of starvation on the human mind. Schiff was a teenager when Nazis deported his family to Auschwitz from Antwerp, Belgium, and he spent the next thirty-three agonizing months in numerous concentration camps. This deeply personal memoir-in-verse explores personal faith, identity, memory, and the lasting impact of trauma.Schiff’s memoir transcends traditional narrative forms, offering a memorable reading experience that resonates with readers long after they turn the last page. Press quotes:“Schiff’s book, a Holocaust memoir in verse, excellently translated by Dani James, is a literary discovery. Because of the immediacy of the verse, close to the oral tradition, the reader is forced to think about the relationship between text and reality, between the writer as artist and the writer as witness.”Arnon GrunbergAuthor of Blue Mondays“This book adds an important chapter to the oral history of a shameful episode in the twentieth century. Under the pressure of such immense emotions, the act of translation is a herculean task and especially so when the text is in poetic form. But Dani James does an admirable job rendering an English version of the original Flemish, whose heavy consonants and different rhythmic accents carry a kind of aural weight that is very difficult to capture in English.”Dr. Keming LiuTranslator and Professor of Linguistics and Literature, Medgar Evers College, The City University of New YorkTranslator bio:Dani James is a writer and translator. She was born in New York City and grew up in Belgium. She holds a BA in English from Baruch College and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Writer’s Foundry at St. Joseph’s University. Her English translation of Return to the Place I Never Left by Tobias Schiff was published January 2025 from Wayne State University Press. It’s available to order via all bookstores and major retailers.● Website: danijames.co● YouTube: www.youtube.com/@ByDaniJames● Instagram: instagram.com/dani______jAuthor bio:Tobias (Toshek) Schiff (Poland, 1925–Belgium, 1999) was a Belgian Holocaust survivor. Postwar, he channeled his resilience into a career as a diamond broker in Antwerp before venturing into photography with a store in Brussels. In 1989, his journey through the Nazi camps was featured in the documentary Monsieur S. et Madame V. Committed to educating future generations and memorializing those who were lost, Schiff dedicated his later years to speaking in schools and published Return to the Place I Never Left in Flemish in 1997. Links to buy:danijames.co/return-to-the-place-i-never-leftFor rights info, contact:danijames.co/contactThe translator has permission to translate this sample and share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Richard Coombes reads four poems by Marina Ponomarenko Translators Aloud 2025-06-19 | Author bioMarina Ponomarenko lives and works in Kyiv. She has a degree in Dramatic Writing for Film and Television, and she is a contemporary poetess who gives regular live performances of her work. Her second poetry collection has just been published by Ukraine’s Old Lion Publishing House.Marina's second poetry anthology (just out): https://starylev.com.ua/knyga-putivnyk-po-urvyshhu-y-okolycyaxFacebook: facebook.com/marina.ponomarenkoTranslator bioRichard translates from Russian and Ukrainian into English. Recent publications include poetry in the bilingual anthologies ‘Disbelief’ and ‘Dislocation’, Elena Dolgopyat’s short story collection ‘Someone Else’s Life’, and Alexei Ivanov’s novel ‘The Food Block’. Website: richardcoombeslanguageservices.comBlue Sky @richtranslator.bsky.socialCurrently, Richard is collaborating with the Ukrainian novelist Anna Bugayeva, and translating the Ukrainian poetess Marina Ponomarenko and other contemporary Ukrainian poets. The ‘Disbelief’ and ‘Dislocation’ team is also preparing a third anthology. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Richard has been teaching English to Ukrainian refugees and running conversation clubs and other language coaching sessions for Ukrainians in the UK, Ukraine, and other European countries.
Julia Sherwood reads from Leopold Laholas THE LAST THING (Karolinum Press, 2025) Translators Aloud 2025-06-11 | Translated from the Slovak by Julia and Peter SherwoodThe nine stories comprising the collection The Last Thing depict the rise of fascism and its dangers for the Jewish community in Slovakia through the concentration camps and the partisan fight against the Germans, concluding with a devastating summation of all that had been lost and destroyed in the war. Drawing on his own experience, Leopold Lahola explores moral ambivalences, instead a simple opposition of good versus evil. He punctures the standard historical image of the partisan fighters by depicting their heroism alongside their cruelty and pettiness while also showing how often bravery and madness, kindness and stupidity can coexist. His sequence of compelling World War II stories offers starkly new perspectives on the tragedy and grandeur of that momentous time in history. Virtually unknown abroad and almost forgotten in Slovakia, these stories are finally available in an English translation.The translation and publication of this work was supported using public funding by the Slovak Arts Council and by Slovak Literature Abroad (SLOLA).BUY THE BOOK: https://karolinum.cz/en/books/lahola-the-last-thing-31322Author bioLeopold Lahola (1918-1968) managed to escape deportation to a concentration camp as a young man and fought in the anti-Nazi resistance. After the war, following the 1949 Communist takeover, his promising career as a playwright was cut short by a vicious campaign accusing him of promoting "existentialist values". In 1949 Lahola emigrated to Israel, where he worked in film before moving to West Germany, where he also worked in film and TV. He emerged from obscurity during the brief thaw of the 1968 Prague Spring, when he was able to return to his homeland and thrive as a playwright and film director. His short story collection The Last Thing finally appeared in Slovakia in early 1968, but sadly, only a few months later, he died of a heart attack just before his 50th birthday. The book was not viewed favourably by the hardline regime that followed the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia and this work of Lahola’s fell into obscurity again until it was republished in 1994. Translator bioJulia Sherwood is a translator (with Peter Sherwood) from Slovak, Czech, Polish, Russian and German into English as well as into Slovak. She was born and grew up in Bratislava, Slovakia, and studied English and Slavonic languages and literature in Cologne, London and Munich. She was editor-at-large for Slovakia for Asymptote (2013–2023). She co-curates SlovakLiterature.com and is the editor of Seagull Books’ Slovak list. Julia and Peter have translated into English some thirty books by mostly contemporary Slovak and Czech writers. Their most recent translations are The Bonnet by Katarína Kucbelová, Seven Days to the Funeral by Ján Rozner and This Room Is Impossible To Eat by Nicol Hochholczerová.Peter Sherwood is a translator and scholar. He taught at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, from 1972 to 2007. From 2008 until his retirement in 2014, he was László Birinyi, Sr, Distinguished Professor of Hungarian Language and Culture in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Peter’s translations from the Hungarian include several short collections, as well novels, most recently Krisztina Tóth’s prize-winning Barcode and Krisztián Grecsó’s Vera.
Rob Myatt reads from Dmitrij Kapitelman’s RUSSIAN SPECIALTIES (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2025-06-06 | ‘Russian Specialities’ is a witty and thought-provoking read about the power of Russian propaganda. Dimitrij Kapitelman’s novel is a timely literary reflection on the contemporary geopolitical landscape that will appeal to fans of Marina Lewycka and Andrey Kurkov.The novel’s narrator, Dmitrij, was born in Kyiv, but has spent most of his life in Germany. His family left Ukraine as Jewish refugees in the mid-1990s, when he was eight. His elderly parents are from the Soviet generation. They run a Russian delicatessen and wholesale business in Leipzig, making regular trips to Poland and Ukraine to stock up on produce. After scraping through lockdowns, the delicatessen is wound down as Dmitrij’s father slowly succumbs to dementia. MORE INFO: new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/russian-specialitiesAuthor bioDmitrij Kapitelman was born in Kyiv in 1986, and came to Germany with his family at the age of eight, as a ‘quota refugee’. He studied Political Science and Sociology at Leipzig University and graduated from the German School of Journalism (DJS) in Munich. He now works as a freelance journalist. His first book, Das Lächeln meines unsichtbaren Vaters (‘The Smile of my Invisible Father’) was published in 2016 to huge acclaim, earning him the Klaus-Michael Kühne Prize. Eine Formalie in Kiew (‘A Formality in Kyiv’) followed in 2021, for which he was awarded the Ravensburger Verlag Family Novel Book Prize.Translator bioRob Myatt is an award-winning translator from German, Polish, Danish, Swedish, Russian and Luxembourgish into English. He was the recipient of the Goethe-Institut Award for New Translation 2023 for his translation of an extract from Behzad Karim Khani’s debut novel Dog Wolf Jackal. His literary translations have appeared in journals such as Turkoslavia, Subnivean, MayDay and The Dodge and he has worked with publishers including Granta, Rowohlt, Hanser, Cyranka, Politikens Forlag and V&Q. You can find him on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/robtranslates.bsky.social or his website: polyglotliterature.co.ukFor rights info contact: friederike.barakat@hanser.deThe translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and to share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Priscilla Layne reads from Yandé Secks WHITE CLOUDS (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2025-06-05 | ‘White Clouds’ is an intimate study of a diverse and extended Black German family that addresses complex social issues. It follows three family members as they grapple with their unique stages in life and their distinct identities. Zazie is a young Black German woman, a member of Gen-Z. She is the daughter of Ulrike, a white 68er who is as dynamic as she is unreliable, and Papis, a Senegalese academic who has settled in Germany and made a living translating Nietzsche but now often feels his daughters are foreign to him. Zazie is political, embracing her Black Diasporic identity. She feels at times that James Baldwin and Roxanne Gay understand her better than her own sister does. She has just completed her MA thesis and aspires to an academic career, but is not quite sure academia is the right place for her. She is also suffering under the weight of family problems and a white boyfriend who is woke when it comes to pop culture, but doesn’t always understand her struggles as a Black woman in a white-majority society. Zazie’s older sister, Dieo, is less politically engaged: a child therapist, she has just started a new phase of training to allow her to become self-employed. She is struggling to balance her career with mothering her three biracial sons. She could use more support from her white husband Simon, but he is too wrapped up in his tech bro aspirations to acknowledge her needs. Simon is the son of an absent father – a documentarian who was more concerned with art and politics than fatherhood, and a vibrant mother interested in intersectional feminism. He may not have any insight into the problems of his marriage, or why Dieo only rarely wants to sleep with him, but he is steadfast and intelligent, and Zazie feels able to confide in him about her worries about their family – especially how generational trauma has them all stuck in pre-determined roles and behaviours that are making them unhappy. When Papis dies unexpectedly, the laboriously calibrated family structures lose their equilibrium. The sisters travel to their father’s homeland for the funeral, and saying goodbye becomes a new beginning for them. Wise, accessible and subtly humorous, Yandé Seck’s debut novel shows how intergenerational trauma and racist and sexist structures can make people act in ways they may not always be conscious of.MORE INFO: new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/white-clouds"Yandé Seck’s début is a loving dissection of a black family in a city … The novel is narrated like a Netflix series about everyday city life; it is pithy and contemporary, full of beautiful dialogue and wise observations." Stern"For all the weight of her themes – the racism experienced by her protagonist and the oppressive demands of motherhood – Yandé Seck manages to make her writing entertaining, humourous and forgiving. And for all the conflict and struggle, it is a hopeful novel." hr2-kulturAuthor bioYandé Seck was born in 1986 and lives in Frankfurt am Main with her husband and two children. She works as a psychotherapist for children and teens, teaches at the University of Frankfurt and is studying for a doctorate on motherhood, migration and psychoanalysis. ‘White Clouds’ is her first novel.Translator bioPriscilla Layne is Professor of German and Adjunct Associate Professor of African Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her book, White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture, was published in 2018 by the University of Michigan Press. She has also published essays on Turkish German culture, translation, punk and film. She translated Olivia Wenzel’s debut novel, 1000 Coils of Fear, and Rude Girl by Birgit Weyhe from German into English. And she is currently finishing a manuscript on Afro German Afrofuturism and a critical guide to Rainer Maria Fassbinder’s film The Marriage of Maria Braun.The translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Joel Scott reads from Yannic Han Biao Federers I SEE YOU EVERYWHERE, FOREVER (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2025-06-04 | This hard-hitting autobiographical novel reflects on the stillbirth of the author’s son, Gustav, and the impact this has on his parents, and on their wider family and friends. The sparing language and concise treatment of this tragic scenario makes ‘I see you everywhere, forever’ an even more poignant read.Charlotte and Yannic are excitedly awaiting the arrival of their first child. As they prepare for the birth, there is an unexpected medical emergency which results in the stillbirth of their son. Charlotte’s life is also at risk, but she is saved. During the days that follow the couple undergoes a series of procedures and rituals at the hospital. The healthcare team recognizes the immense grief of both parents and helps them through a structured process of saying farewell. Charlotte and Yannic are given the opportunity to hold their deceased child, touch him, speak to him, and take photographs. During this time, Charlotte begins to recover physically from her ordeal.The next challenge for the couple is informing their extended family and friends. After Charlotte is released from the hospital, they are encouraged to arrange Gustav’s funeral. They are supported by caring individuals, but are confronted with a confusing range of decisions regarding paperwork, the type of service, and the choice of grave. The situation becomes overwhelming, but Yannic and Charlotte manage to navigate these choices and focus on organizing a service that will offer them a sense of closure.The narrative is linear, capturing the real-time sequence of events. We witness Yannic and Charlotte’s initial shock and their evolving responses – beginning with confusion, followed by resistance and rejection of the prescribed mourning process, and eventually reaching a place of acceptance and gratitude for the stages of grieving that the hospital staff, their friends and family, and the funeral director have guided them through. ‘I see you everywhere, forever’ is written in a clear, descriptive, non-emotional style, as if the stillbirth is being observed from a distant point of view. This enhances the novel’s impact and gives readers a unique insight into this universally distressing experience.“The most beautiful, tragic and life-affirming text I’ve read in a long time. How wonderful of Gustav’s parents to tell us his story.” Daniela DröscherFind out more: https://suhrkamp-preview.pim.red/rights/book/yannic-han-biao-federer-i-see-you-everywhere-forever-fr-9783518474822MORE INFO: new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/i-see-you-everywhere-foreverAuthor bioYannic Han Biao Federer lives and works in Cologne. He writes novels, stories, essays, and reviews, which have been published by outlets such as Deutschlandfunk, WDR, und SWR. He is a member of PEN Berlin and the Junges Kolleg at the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. He has received numerous prizes and grants for this work, including the Bayern 2-Wortspiele-Literaturpreis and the North Rhine-Westphalia scholarship award in 2022.Previous works: Und alles wie aus Pappmaché, Suhrkamp (2019); Tao, Suhrkamp (2022).Translator bioJoel Scott translates from German and Spanish into English. He has a PhD in Comparative Literature and Translation Studies and has extensive experience in copywriting and editing in a range of fields.The translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Eleanor Updegraff reads from Sophia Klinks KURILE LAKE (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2025-06-03 | Wrestling with her feelings about wanting to have children despite the grim outlook for the planet’s environment, a biologist spends a summer with her partner and other team members in a vast, unspoiled landscape, studying the spawning grounds of salmon on the shores of Kurile Lake.Sophia Klink’s blend of nature writing, based on her own research in a similar field, and Anna’s moral dilemma features lyrical descriptions of the unique environment in this little-known area of the world. Inspired passages describing the scenery and Anna’s thoughts about her relationship alternate with her analytical, scientific view of the ecosystem of the lake and the workings of the human body and mind. A compelling, evocative debut novel by a winner of the W G Sebald prize."Sophia Klink writes about majestic bears and volcanoes, but she also writes about a nature that is invisible to the naked eye, about plankton, proteins, hormones, and she finds a visually powerful language for it."Marion Poschmannnew-books-in-german.com/recommendations/kurile-lakeAuthor bioSophia Klink (b. 1993 in Munich) studied Biology and is currently doing a PhD on the symbiosis between bacteria and plants. Her nature writing has earned her a Literary Fellowship from the city of Munich and the Wolfgang Weyrauch Advancement Award at Darmstadt’s Literary March festival; she has also been awarded fellowships from the British Council and the Foundation for Art and Nature. Klink has been a finalist of ‘open mike’, and a visiting fellow at the Roger Willemsen Foundation, the Adalbert Stifter Association and Villa Sarkia in Finland. An extract from her novel Kurilensee (‘Kurile Lake’), which was inspired by a research residency in Russia, was shortlisted for the W. G. Sebald Prize. Kurile Lake will be published in autumn 2025 by the Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt.Translator bioEleanor is a committed bookworm with a particular penchant for literature in translation. She makes her living from words in all forms: as a ghostwriter, translator of German, copy-editor and book reviewer, and author of short stories and creative non-fiction. After nine years in Austria, she now lives in Hampshire, where she can usually be found walking the Downs or browsing a local bookshop.The translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and to share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Jamie Lee Searle reads from Joachim B. Schmidt’s ÓSMANN (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2025-06-02 | Joachim B. Schmidt is a Swiss writer who has lived in Iceland for many years, a land that provides the evocative setting for many of his books. This, his latest novel, is inspired by the life of Jón Ósmann, a ferryman who lived in the far north of Iceland around the turn of the nineteenth century. While transporting people, animals and wares across the waters of the Skagafjord, Ósmann witnesses the increasing changes brought by modernity. He’s also a fisherman, a God-fearing drinker, a poet, and a friend to all mankind, especially those in need. Who is the book's mysterious unnamed narrator, and will Ósmann survive the trials and torments dealt to him by fate? Ósmann is composed in lyrical prose, and the non-linear narrative structure weaves a mythical thread throughout, keeping the reader gripped.“Joachim B. Schmidt brings this archaic world to life in all its ambivalence – in wild, mystical beauty and harsh reality.” – Babina Cathomen/ Kulturtipp, Zurich“Schmidt interweaves all these little, delicate stories into a big cosmos, with the man from the Ós at its centre.” – Petra Pluwatsch / Kölnische Rundschau, CologneMORE INFO: new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/osmannAuthor bioJoachim B. Schmidt was born in 1981, and grew up in the Swiss canton of Grisons before emigrating to Iceland in 2007. His novels are bestsellers and have won numerous awards, including the Crime Cologne Award and, most recently, the Glauser Prize. Schmidt has dual citizenship, and lives in Reykjavík with his wife and their two children.Translator bioJamie Lee Searle is a literary translator and mentor. She translates German-language and Portuguese-language works into English for publishing houses in the UK and beyond. Her upcoming publications include a translation of Kim de l'Horizon's German- and Swiss Book Prize winning 2022 debut, Blutbuch. A co-founder of the Emerging Translators' Network and a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, Jamie previously lectured at Queen Mary University of London, and has held residencies in Geneva, New York, and Vienna.Website: www.jamieleesearle.comFor rights info contact: Susanne Bauknechtbau@diogenes.chThe translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and to share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Alexandra Berlina reads from Katharina Köllers SPRAWLING WILDLY (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2025-06-02 | ‘Sprawling Wildly’ is the tale of a city girl in an abusive relationship who reunites with her hermit cousin off-grid in the Alps for a back-to-nature lesson in life.Marie arrives at her cousin Johanna’s hut in the mountains with a head wound, saying she has escaped from her husband Peter. The cousins grew up together, and Marie has always tried to conform with familial and social expectations; Johanna, on the other hand, struggled to fit in, and now chooses to live alone in the Alps.The cousins have an argument which results in Johanna asking Marie to leave. But instead of returning to the valley, Marie hides out nearby in the goat pen. After days of rain, Marie is cold and hungry. A helicopter flies over and she wonders if it is searching for her. When the goat knocks over the ladder to the hayloft where she is hiding, Marie hurts herself getting down and ends up back at Johanna’s hut. Johanna reluctantly accepts her back, mentioning that the police were searching for Marie but that she has denied seeing her. The two women finally start talking properly while sheltering in the hut during a storm. Johanna describes her difficult childhood: her parents had first had another child, Johannes, who died, and Johanna had always felt herself to be a disappointment, wilder and darker than their perfect son. She turned to nature, escaping into the woods at nighttime with the family dogs, until the police found her. After that she was locked in her room overnight and the dogs were put in a kennel, but she jumped out of her first-floor window to see them, breaking her arm. To Johanna’s lasting distress, her father had the dogs shot. Marie finally divulges that the reason she came to Johanna’s hut is that she has left Peter for dead after hitting him over the head with a crystal vase. She resolves to go to the police, but Johanna persuades her to stay in the mountains with her. ‘Sprawling Wildly’ is a diverting and highly readable novel which explores widely relevant themes of domestic abuse and the tension between our materialistic, capitalist society and the longing for a simpler, rural existence. The novel should be well-received by English-speaking readers, and would appeal to fans of Liane Moriarty and Marian Keyes."Big Little Lies meets Heidi in this entertaining, enigmatic reunion of two very different Austrian cousins." Jo HeinrichDie Presse: “Köller's colloquial tone provides an insight into Marie's world of thought and creates a narrative pull from the very first page. A gripping and surprisingly humorous variation on a not entirely new theme [...]”Tagesspiegel: “A furious Alpine drama that immediately draws you in with its suspenseful opening - Marie's escape. ’Wild wuchern' is about conforming and stubbornness, powerlessness and self-empowerment. It is a feminist book that relentlessly exposes domestic violence without resorting to bold role categorisations.”Süddeutsche Zeitung: “In the case of this powerful novel, sprawling wildly also means finally being allowed to stretch out in all directions.”BR: “It's about suppressed feelings, the role of women in the family and also in society. It's about learned behaviour to the point of self-abandonment. It's about anger and the liberating effect of becoming aware of it and allowing it. A book like a thunderstorm, not just for women!”MORE INFO: new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/sprawling-wildlyAuthor bioKatharina Köller was born in Austria in 1984. After studying philosophy and acting, she’s worked as a freelance author, actor, and theatre maker since 2011. Her debut novel "Was ich im Wasser sah" ('What I Saw in the Water') was published in 2020 and won the City of Wetzlar’s Fantasy Prize. Katharina Köller lives with her family in Vienna and Innsbruck.Translator bioAlexandra Berlina was born in Moscow in 1984. She studied in London and wrote her PhD thesis Brodsky Translating Brodsky in Germany, where she currently lives. Weirdly enough, she translates between all three languages: for instance, Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita into German, Kehmann’s Tyll into Russian, and Viktor Shklovsky: A Reader into English. She also works as an interpreter: https://dolmetscher.team For rights info contact: Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe, Gesche Wendebourg, gesche.wendebourg@penguinrandomhouse.deThe translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and to share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Rob Myatt reads from Knud Petersens ONCE, WHEN I WAS A GIRL (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2025-05-28 | In the 1960s, Knud Petersen sits down to write a personal memoir of his time as a young, gay, working-class man in 1910s Copenhagen. His memories are passed down through the family for a further half a century, until they are finally published in 2022. Where most queer history in Scandinavia is heavily reliant on ‘outside sources’, such as legal, medical, criminological and journalistic documents, Once, When I Was A Girl represents a unique, first-hand account of queer life in the early 20th century. It introduces concepts and aspects of queer life that are entirely new to researchers and interrogates the idea of what is ‘normal’ when it comes to sexuality. Written more like a novel than an autobiography, it is a captivating read and an invaluable historical account of marginalised communities that urgently demands a wider readership.Knud Petersen (1892-1971) lived and worked in the Greater Copenhagen area. Orphaned as a teenager, he moved to the downtown area where he held a number of different odd jobs and discovered a vibrant, lively queer scene.Rob Myatt is an award-winning translator from German, Polish, Danish, Swedish, Russian and Luxembourgish into English. He was the recipient of the Goethe-Institut Award for New Translation 2023 for his translation of an extract from Behzad Karim Khani’s debut novel Dog Wolf Jackal. His literary translations have appeared in journals such as Turkoslavia, Subnivean, MayDay and The Dodge and he has worked with publishers including Granta, Rowohlt, Hanser, Cyranka, Politikens Forlag and V&Q. You can find him on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/robtranslates.bsky.social or his website: polyglotliterature.co.ukFor rights info, contact:Jens Pedersen: forlagettivildeheste@gmail.comThe translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Sophia Nayakshin reads from Markus Heitzs THE DEVILS PLAYBOOK (Quercus, 2025) Translators Aloud 2025-05-21 | Retired gambler Tadeus Boch has come into possession of a mysterious playing card, apparently from a very rare eighteenth-century deck. He immediately becomes obsessed with tracking down the entire set of cards, rumoured to be the one pack in the world created for the legendary game Supérieur… and said to be the handiwork of the Devil himself. But Boch is not the only person searching for the missing cards, and the more he learns about the game, the more dangerous the chase becomes.It’s not long before Boch realises he’s playing for the highest stakes he’s ever wagered: nothing less than his own life. Listen to a snippet of the audiobook here: go.screenpal.com/watch/cThI6JnQszgAuthor bioMarkus Heitz trained to be a teacher after studying history and German literature, then going on to an MA in History. He spent several years as a journalist, writing in his free time, before the runaway success of The Dwarves allowed him to give up the day job. His debut epic fantasy novel, Schatten über Ulldart (Shadows over Ulldart) was the first of many of his books to win the Deutscher Phantastik Preis (Germany’s premier literary award for fantasy) in 2003. Since then he has frequently topped the bestseller charts, and his Number One bestselling Dwarves and Aelfar series have earned him a place among Germany’s most successful fantasy authors. The DOORS series, where each book follows the adventurers as they choose a different door, have earned him a whole new audience as he plays with fantasy, thriller and mystery tropes to keep the reader always interested. He currently lives in Saarland, in Germany.Translator bioSophia Nayakshin is a literary translator based in London. After completing her BA in German and Russian at the University of Sheffield, she completed an MA in Translation and Interpreting at the University of Bath, where she discovered that her love for interpreting was equally matched by her love for translating literature. She was awarded the ITI German Network bursary in 2024 and enjoys translating a range of creative non-fiction and fiction. The Devil’s Playbook is her first full-length literary translation.'A perfect mix of scares, evil and subtle horror' Thrilling Stories‘A finely balanced mixture of sophisticated horror elements, historical references and fast-paced action scenes. Markus Heitz whips his readers through a stirring adventure until the spectacular showdown' Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger‘A complex thriller about the bloody history of the card game’ Playboy‘A fast-paced thriller, entangled with all the rules of the art, with immense tension, action and chases all over the world’ World Traveller‘Gripping, eerie, mysterious and fantastic. The plot is consistently exciting, there are thriller elements as well as well-placed horror elements - it is impossible to put the book down’ Nicole’s Book WorldLinks:amazon.co.uk/Devils-Playbook-Markus-Heitz/dp/1529424968 waterstones.com/book/the-devils-playbook/markus-heitz/sophia-nayakshin/9781529424966 foyles.co.uk/book/the-devils-playbook/markus-heitz/9781529424966 Audiobook: audible.co.uk/pd/The-Devils-Playbook-Audiobook/B0DRDJM65K Translator website: sophianayakshin.comTranslator LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sophia-nayakshin-717a66197
David McKay reads from Anjet Daanjes THE REMEMBERED SOLDIER (New Vessel/Scribe, 2025) Translators Aloud 2025-05-14 | The Remembered Soldier is an extraordinary love story and a captivating novel about the power of memory and imagination. Flanders 1922. After serving as a soldier in the Great War, Noon Merckem has lost his memory and lives in a psychiatric asylum. Countless women, responding to a newspaper ad, visit him there in the hope of finding their spouse who vanished in battle. One day a woman, Julienne, appears and recognizes Noon as her husband, the photographer Amand Coppens, and takes him home against medical advice. But their miraculous reunion doesn’t turn out the way that Julienne wants her envious friends to believe. Only gradually do the two grow close, and Amand’s biography is pieced together on the basis of Julienne’s stories about him. But how can he be certain that she’s telling the truth? In The Remembered Soldier, Anjet Daanje immerses us in the psyche of a war-traumatized man who has lost his identity. When Amand comes to doubt Julienne’s word, the reader is caught up in a riveting spiral of confusion that only the greatest of literature can achieve."Superb ... The novel reaches an extraordinary pitch of anguish and pity ... In David McKay’s assiduous translation from the Dutch, the sentences tumble forward hypnotically ... If The Remembered Soldier demands an unusual commitment in time and focus, it amply rewards the effort."— Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal“The phenomenal English-language debut from Daanje weaves an affecting love story through a tangle of memories and dreams . . . The complex and layered narrative is as moving as it is unsettling, and it will keep readers wondering about the truth long after the final page. It’s a remarkable achievement.” — Publishers Weekly (Starred review)“This is a beautifully written book… The style is very effective as it brings the reader into the flying thoughts of an injured, tormented, and confused mind. ... Highly recommended.”— Bonnie DeMoss, Historical Novel Society“This is a story about healing a soldier’s mind after surviving years of carnage, and it is about restoring mutual trust and love after so much has happened . . . an absorbing tale.” — Kirkus Reviews“Particularly impressive . . . a solid, engaging novel, The Remembered Soldier also uses the historical period and place well, making for a rich read.” — The Complete Review“Grapples with fragile versions of the truth . . . The Remembered Soldier, a luminous historical novel, mines the seams between a veteran’s traumas and restored hope.” — Foreword Reviews (Starred review)US edition available from New Vessel (US) on May 13, 2025:newvesselpress.com/books/the-remembered-soldierUK edition available from Scribe on June 19, 2025: scribepublications.co.uk/books-authors/books/the-remembered-soldier-9781915590053Author bioAnjet Daanje, the pseudonym of Anjet den Boer, who was born in 1965, writes novels, short stories, and screenplays. Her novels have received the top literary prizes in her native Netherlands. The Remembered Soldier won the prestigious 2020 F. Bordewijk Prize, the Best Book of Groningen Prize, and was longlisted for the 2020 Libris Literature Prize.Translator bioDavid McKay is an award-winning translator of Dutch fiction, drama, and nonfiction. Born and educated in the United States, he has lived in and around The Hague since 1997. In recent years, translators he mentored have been shortlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature and the International Booker Prize and won the Vondel Prize.
Nicol Hochholczerová & translator Julia Sherwood read from THIS BOOK IS IMPOSSIBLE TO EAT (2024) Translators Aloud 2025-05-06 | Nicol Hochholczerová’s poetic novella is a brutal and psychologically penetrating account of abuse and its consequences, spanning six years of Tereza’s adolescence and young adulthood. Through an unforgettable meeting of minimalist language and visceral metaphors, Hochholczerová weaves a twisted fairytale of explosive themes—of eating disorder, coercive control, and family dysfunction—to chart Tereza’s painful journey to freedom. Comparable in its power to Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, and My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell, Hochholczerová’s debut is an unmissable addition to an international canon of women’s literature turning under the light some of the most controversial and painful issues of our era.Shortlisted for Slovakia’s most prestigious literary prize, the Anasoft Litera Award, the book engendered an impassioned debate about the portrayal of abuse in literature and the appropriate readership for books dealing with such challenging themes. Author bioNicol Hochholczerová was born in 1999 and grew up in Rimavská Sobota, Slovakia. In 2024, she completed a master’s in graphic design at the Academy of Art in Banská Bystrica. Her short stories have garnered prizes in a number of literary competitions. This Room is Impossible to Eat has been translated into Bulgarian, Czech, Hungarian, Serbian, Polish Ukrainian, German, Macedonian and now English. It has received, and been nominated for, further literary awards including the Angelus Literary Prize; had two theatrical adaptations and is being made into a feature film. She is currently working on her second book.Translator biosJulia Sherwood is a translator (with Peter Sherwood) from Slovak, Czech, Polish, Russian and German into English as well as into Slovak. She was born and grew up in Bratislava, Slovakia, and studied English and Slavonic languages and literature in Cologne, London and Munich. She was editor-at-large for Slovakia for Asymptote (2013–2023). She co-curates SlovakLiterature.com and is the editor of Seagull Books’ Slovak list. Julia and Peter have translated into English some thirty books by mostly contemporary Slovak and Czech writers. Their most recent translations are The Bonnet by Katarína Kucbelová and Seven Days to the Funeral by Ján Rozner. Peter Sherwood is a translator and scholar. He taught at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, from 1972 to 2007. From 2008 until his retirement in 2014, he was László Birinyi, Sr, Distinguished Professor of Hungarian Language and Culture in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Peter’s translations from the Hungarian include several short collections, as well novels, most recently Krisztina Tóth’s prize-winning Barcode and Krisztián Grecsó’s Vera.BUY THE BOOK: parthianbooks.com/products/this-room-is-impossible-to-eat-hardbackNicol Hochholczerová’s UK Tour: Tuesday 6 May London 6:00 Book Talk at UCL Wednesday 7 May Oxford 5:00 Presentation and discussion at Queen’s College, Schulman AuditoriumThursday 8 May Oxford 12:30 – 2:00 Translation workshop at the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation Centre St Anne’s College Friday 9 May Crickhowell: 7:30 – 9:00 Lost in Translation, at Book-ish Saturday 10 May Hay-on-Wye5:00 North Books, Hay-on-WyeSunday 11 May, Cardiff 3:30 Book Space, CardiffTuesday 13 May Bristol 7:00 Translated By, Bristol Gloucester Road BookshopWednesday 14 May Bath 11:00-12:00 Book signing at Mr B’s bookshop Thursday 15 May London6:30 Hatchards Bookshop, Piccadilly
Alexis Moran reads from Pieter Koolwijk’s Gozert (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2025-04-30 | From the translator:Gozert, which I have translated into English as Buddy, is a book written in Dutch by Pieter Koolwijk, who is clearly inspired by Roald Dahl. Gozert (256 pages) was published in 2020 and is about a boy named Trey who has a problem. At least, that’s what other people think. Trey disagrees. He’s just happy to have a friend: Buddy. The funnest, coolest, bravest, and most adventurous friend you could imagine. But Trey is the only one who can see and hear Buddy. And Buddy’s amazing plans end up getting Trey into a lot of trouble. Trey’s parents want Buddy to disappear, but Trey doesn’t want that at all... Buddy has been highly regarded in the Netherlands and won the Gouden Griffel (Golden Stylus), a prestigious Dutch children’s literature award, in 2021. It has been translated into 6 languages and (together with its two sequels) has sold more than 75,000 copies. It has inspired a popular board game, its audiobook is well-received, and it is currently being made into a children’s TV show. Buddy is a modern classic that surprises and enchants its readers. Author bioPieter Koolwijk’s stories always balance on the edge of reality. He came to fame in the world of children’s literature with his books about Flea & Spikey. This was followed by Ben’s Boat, for which he received a Flag & Pennant Award, Boss of the World, and the critically acclaimed Goo. After Buddy (and the follow-up books Luna and Halt the Mission), Leif’s Trolls was published in 2022. pieter.koolwijk@gmail.comhttp://www.pieterkoolwijk.nl/ Translator bioI was born and raised in Florida (USA) and have been living in the Netherlands ever since meeting my Dutch partner during a study-abroad semester 22 years ago. As soon as my Dutch was good enough, I started translating. Simple things at first: websites and resumes, then policy plans and other non-literary texts until I discovered my passion for translating children’s books. I’ve been teaching English to Dutch kindergarteners for many years and love reading aloud. I helped to start an English children’s book store in Utrecht where I provide free story time sessions. Reading was my favorite part of parenting young children, and now that my own kids are teenagers, I really miss that part of the evening ritual. Translating children’s books brings me a joy that I never experienced in non-literary translation. I feel like I finally know what I want to do when I grow up! So I’ve been focusing on this for the past few years and have done many volunteer translations and sample translations for publishers and literary agents. I had a mentorship with the Dutch Expertise Center for Literary Translation and it helped me to improve my skills enormously, as did the numerous online workshops I’ve followed. I’m looking forward to my first full-length book translation contract!https://smallworldenglish.nl/ info@smallworldenglish.nllinkedin.com/in/alexis-moran-218a1921Rights:I have obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and share a recording of it on Translators Aloud. For rights info, contact: Robin van der Gaag: rechten@lemniscaat.nlTo buy:bol.com/nl/nl/p/gozert/9200000124091906/?Referrer=ADVNLGOO002008J-S---PMAX-C-22294751959&gad_source=5&gclid=EAIaIQobChMImu_B95vhjAMV0hGLCh0mLg5ZEAAYASAAEgJj1fD_BwEReviews of Gozert:“Pieter Koolwijk is a unique children's book writer. (...) He takes fantasy seriously. We all grow up far too fast. Being “different” can be difficult: a dreamy child is quickly labelled with ADHD, and if he hears voices or has a friend no one else can see, he must be cured. Pieter Koolwijk writes books where fantasy plays a central role, encouraging readers to lose themselves within the story. There is so much entertainment in the form of games and screens. But no matter how creative these can be, they are no match for a book like this that draws you in and lets you create your own images. (...) Especially for teachers, the message to "see the child" is hugely important. And the call to read more is also quite urgent. We need more teachers promoting reading and reading books where identity and inclusion are major themes.”Maaike de Vries, Wijsmettaal.nl “Gozert is an impressive and important book in which sensitive themes are touched on in a disarming way.”Jaap Friso “Gozert, and its sequel Luna, is a tender book that is especially moving because it is from the point of view of children who are cast aside. There are few children's books that deal with mental health, and certainly few adventurous children's books. Gozert (and Luna) is just that, and offers some beautiful fairytale scenes as well. With this book, Pieter Koolwijk once again shows that he is a writer to keep a close eye on.”Edward van de Vendel In 2020, Gozert was number 6 of the 25 best Dutch children’s books on the well-regarded list “Jaap Reads”: https://www.jaapleest.nl/de-25-beste-kinderboeken-van-2020-volgens-jaapleest/
Tina Kover reads from Anne Berest & Claire Berests GABRIËLE (Europa Editions, 2025) Translators Aloud 2025-04-23 | The story of a passionate love affair that triggered a revolution.An atmospheric, exuberant novel from the best-selling author of The Postcard, Anne Berest, and her sister, Claire Berest, about love and sex, art and revolution, experimentation and creativity, and three young people who changed the world.The year is 1908, the height of the Belle Époque, and a brilliant, young French woman named Gabriële, newly graduated from the most elite music school in Europe, meets a volcanic Spanish artist named Francis. Following a whirlwind romance, they marry and fall headlong into a Paris that is experimenting with new forms of living, thinking, and creating. Soon after marrying Francis, Gabriële meets Marcel, another young artist, five years her junior. Soon, Francis, Marcel, and Gabriële are all involved in a fervent affair that will change the course of art history and redefine the avant-garde.As the Belle Epoque gives way to rebellion and revolution, and the world descends into the devastation of World War I, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and Gabriële Buffet revolutionize art and open up new ways of seeing and thinking, along the way posing a vital question for their age and ours: what is the connection between new ways loving and new ways of creating?Moving between Paris, New York, Berlin, Zurich, Barcelona, London, and Saint-Tropez, Gabriële is as audacious, uninhibited, intimate, and unforgettable as its central character, the mercurial, pioneering Gabriële Buffet.To buy: bookshop.org/p/books/gabriele-anne-berest/21806633?ean=9798889660903&digital=t&affiliate=345About the authors:Anne BerestAnne Berest’s first novel to appear in English, The Postcard (Europa Editions, 2023), was a national bestseller, a Library Journal, NPR, and TIME Best Book of the Year, a Vogue Most Anticipated Book of the Year, winner of the Choix Goncourt Prize, and runner-up for the 2024 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. It was described as “stunning” by Leslie Camhi in The New Yorker, as a “powerful literary work” by Julie Orringer in The New York Times Book Review, and as “intimate, profound, essential” in the pages of ELLE magazine. Her new novel, Gabriële (Europa Editions, 2025) is based on the life of Gabriële Buffet, whose extraordinary impact on 20th century avant-garde art and whose remarkable life have largely been obscured. Berest lives in Paris.Claire BerestClaire Berest is the author of the novels Mikado (2009), The Empty Orchestra, Bellevue (2016), Rien n’est noir, winner of the ELLE Readers Grand Prize, and two works of nonfiction, Class Struggle: Why I Resigned from National Education, and Lost Children: An Investigation in the Minors Brigade. Her most recent novel is Artifices. About the translator:Tina Kover is the translator of some forty books from French, including Anne Berest’s The Postcard, Négar Djavadi’s Disoriental, and Emmelie Prophète’s Blue. Her work has won the Albertine Prize, the French Voices Award, and the Lambda Literary Award, and has been shortlisted for the (U.S.) National Book Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, the PEN Translation Prize, the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, the Scott Moncrieff Prize, and the Dayton Literary Prize. Tina leads workshops for the American Literary Translators Association and has spoken at book clubs and festivals worldwide about her work. She is also the co-founder, with Charlotte Coombe, of Translators Aloud, a YouTube channel that features literary translators reading from their own work.PressMar 1 2025“A revealing, heartrending biographical novel.”— Foreword ReviewsFeb 1 2025“An atmospheric excavation of an unusual woman.”— Kirkus ReviewsJan 29 2025“Astounding, fascinating and enlightening.”— Reading the WestJan 24 2025“Colorful... lyrical.”— Publishers Weekly
Victor Meadowcroft reads from Ricardo Silva Romeros RIO MUERTO (World Editions, 2025) Translators Aloud 2025-04-09 | On the outskirts of Belen del Chami, a town that has yet to appear on any map of Colombia, the mute Salomón Palacios is murdered a few steps away from his home. His widow, the courageous and foul-mouthed Hipolita Arenas, completely loses her sanity and confronts the paramilitaries and local politicians, challenging them to also kill her and her two fatherless sons. Yet as Hipolita faces her husband's murderers on her desperate journey, she finds an unexpected calling to stay alive. This poetic and hypnotizing novel, told from the perspective of Salomon's ghost, denounces the brutal killings of innocent citizens and at the same time celebrates the invisible: imagination, memories, hope, and the connection to afterlife.Author bioRicardo Silva Romero is one of Colombia’s most beloved writers. He is a prolific novelist, columnist, journalist, screenwriter, and film critic. In 2007 he was selected as one of the Bogotá39, a list of the best young writers in Latin America. Río Muerto is a fearless novel exploring the role of violence in Colombian society from an entirely new perspective. It is Silva Romero’s first book to be published in English.Translator bioVictor Meadowcroft is a translator from Spanish and Portuguese and a graduate of the University of East Anglia’s master’s program in literary translation. His published translations include Toño the Infallible by Evelio Rosero (co-translation with Anne McLean, New Directions, 2022), which was shortlisted for the PEN Translation Prize and longlisted for the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute of Translation Prize, and This World Does Not Belong to Us by Natalia García Freire (World Editions, 2022), which was short listed for the TA First Translation Prize and the Premio Valle Inclán.Praise for Río MuertoLithubs The Best International Fiction of February 2025CrimeReads The Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2025"Among this novel's merits is its powerful celebration of the will to live, dovetailed with an evocation of the love members of a family have for one another, even under the most brutal and apparently hopeless circumstances." --The Arts Fuse"Río Muerto is a superb short novel that bridges the gap between horror and crime in very unique ways. Río Muerto is a window into a violent world as well as a tale about a family suffering at the hands of paramilitarism and bad neighbors. Silva Romero is a star in Colombia and hopefully this, his first novel to be translated to English, will put him on the map and ensure we get more of his work soon."--Gabino Iglesias, CrimeReads"Colombian writer Silva Romero makes his English-language debut with a wrenching tale of murder and survival. Near the remote Colombian town of Belen del Chami, a mute man named Salomon Palacios is gunned down by hooded assassins in 1992. His distraught widow, Hipolita, sets off on a rambling odyssey of retribution, accompanied by their sons Max, 12, and Segundo, eight. Salomon, meanwhile, has become a ghost, and he meets with the ghosts of other victims of political violence. Romero captures the intensity of the family's grief, as they're poorly consoled by a gravedigger and are ignored by the police, all while Salomon shadows them, unable to intervene. Silva Romero seamlessly weaves lyrical depictions of Salomon's afterlife, a "dense, black, clammy, stinking jungle that looked to him like hell," with pointed observations of the country's decades-long guerrilla war, which "continues to break the extraordinary open hearts of thousands of Colombians." Meadowcroft's crystalline translation introduces readers to an important Latin American voice. (Feb.)"--Publishers Weekly"In this novel, Silva Romero explores with clarity and precision the way violence weighs on a society like Colombia, which seems to have naturalized it in a disturbing way."--ADN Bogotá"Written in visceral prose." --El Tiempo"A book that will persist as a key representative of literature dealing with the violence that devastated this country during the armed conflict." --El Espectador"Río Muerto is a portrait of Colombia turned into a book, a work we should have in our homes and read with our families instead of watching the news bulletins. (...) This short novel by Ricardo Silva Romero encapsulates a hope beyond the kind revealed in the story itself: the kind of hope that reflects the power of contemporary Colombian fiction to convert the horror of war into literary art." --Diario de Paz Colombia"In Río Muerto, Ricardo Silva Romero recreates in poetic and intense prose another side of the horror of our era." --Abisinia ReviewBUY THE BOOK:worldeditions.org/product/rio-muertouk.bookshop.org/p/books/rio-muerto-ricardo-silva-romero/7758401?ean=9781642861457
Stephanie Ortega reads from Else Jerusalems RED HOUSE ALLEY (Boiler House Press / Asterism Books) Translators Aloud 2025-04-02 | When Red House Alley first appeared (as Der heilige Skarabäus [The sacred scarab],1909), it sent shockwaves through Viennese society. For the first time, the women and girls caught up in and destroyed by the sex trade were portrayed as real human beings rather than predators or mindless victims. The book became a bestseller and was considered one of the most important German novels of the early 20th century. Banned as decadent by the Nazis, it was forgotten for over 75 years.Red House Alley is the first complete and uncensored English translation of this landmark work.It reveals how the brothel system operated, how women were procured and ruined, and how society fostered a trade that public morals condemned. Else Jerusalem refused to accept degradation as the only fate for the women and girls of Red House. With the protagonist Milada, she presents a thoughtful, compassionate woman who finds an escape for herself and others like her.This is the first complete English translation of Der heilige Skarabäus (1909)Translated and with an afterword by Stephanie G. OrtegaIntroduction by Sophie Haydock“A cultural phenomenon.... The double standard Jerusalem exposed in her novel persists: it is still more acceptable to hire a sex worker than it is to be one.” Daniel Elkind, Lapham' Quarterly“Milada’s budding class consciousness stands out…. The rungs of the social ladder, ever slippery, are conveyed by the recurring images of closed doors and untraversable bridges: ‘pick your way across a narrow bridge … you lose your balance and come tumbling down.’Thankfully recovered, Red House Alley is an impressive novel that remains optimistic despite its violence.” Colm McKenna, Times Literary SupplementAuthor biographyAuthor bioElse Jerusalem was born into a Jewish Hungarian family in Vienna in 1876. She studied at the University of Vienna, but as a woman she was not an official student. Her first book, Venus am Kreuz [Venus crucified], a collection of novellas, was published in 1899. She married in 1901, had two children, and remained active in intellectual, literary, and social affairs. In 1909, she published her novel Der heilige Skarabäus, based on her independent research on prostitution in Vienna. It became a bestseller throughout the German-speaking world. In 1910 she divorced her first husband, married the embryologist Viktor Widakowich, and emigrated with him to Argentina. There, she had a daughter and wrote for German-language journals. She died in Buenos Aires in 1943.Translator bioStephanie Gorrell Ortega grew up in the United States and graduated from high school in West Germany. She attended Mount Holyoke College and the University of Texas, Austin, where she earned a doctorate in German literature. She has taught at the Free University of Berlin; S.U.N.Y., Buffalo; the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; the University of Texas, Austin; and Texas State University. She has edited and translated with Poesie, Slavic Review, and Dimension: Contemporary German Arts and Letters. She lives in Austin, Texas.Red House Alley by Else JerusalemPublished by Boiler House Press (UK)Publication date: 30 November 2024https://www.boilerhouse.press/product-page/red-house-alleyPaperback editionRetail price: £22.99/$32.99ISBN 978-1-915812-36-0EPUB/Kindle editionISBN: 978-1-915812-37-7Retail price: £8.99/$9.99Boiler House Press distribution by BookSource:Orders: orders@booksource.netTel: +44 (0)141 642 9192Also available through Gardners:Orders: sales@gardners.comTel: +44 (0)1323 521555And in the USA from Asterism Books:asterismbooks.com/product/red-house-alley-else-jerusalemInquiries: info@asterimbooks.com
Mohammad Jahadi reads from 14th-century Persian poet Hafezs Ghazal No. 117 (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2025-03-12 | From the translator:Written in Persian, the Divan of Hafez is a 14th century collection of the poems of the Iranian poet Hafez (1325-1390). The extract in question is a translation of the Ghazal number 117 from the "Ghani and Ghazvini" edition.The first part of the first line in Persian:"دل ما بدور رویت ز چمن فراغ دارد".Mohammad Jahadi was born in Shabestar, East Azarbaijan, Iran in 1992 and studied English language and literature at Urmia University in Iran.Contact info: jahadimohammad3@gmail.com
Jozefina Komporaly reads from Andrea Tompas HOME (Istros Books, 2025) Translators Aloud 2025-03-05 | Prompted by a class reunion, HOME deals with the experience of homecoming after extended absence and engages with the archaeology of the self in the context of estrangement and belonging. Having taken the decision to emigrate decades earlier, Tompa’s unnamed protagonist is caught between two worlds, navigating a journey from one homeland to another, and suddenly facing an upsurge of revelations that have a strong emotional impact. HOME takes in landmark events from the past, starting with the youthful ease with which the protagonist had set off on an adventure of a lifetime, and continuing with the personal stories of former classmates – some also scattered around the world, and others who decided to stay put. HOME negotiates diverse orders of experience and presumed difference without being judgmental, and attention is being drawn to ongoing change over time – be it in the lives of those who opted to stay or to leave. “At a time when nationalism is dangerously on the rise in Hungary (and elsewhere), a title such as ‘Home’ could easily be classed as provocative. Tompa’s notion of ‘home’ harks back to a pre-nationalist era, privileging the personal memory of the narrator, intertwined with the memories of those whose lives are connected to that of the protagonist’s. In an almost thriller-like episode, we get to follow the daily itinerary of the narrator’s father, based on denunciating undercover informer reports. Home in this case is constructed in response to a mental map attached to the father, from the perspective of a government snitch. In parallel with this, we get a sense of alienation by witnessing the narrator check into a hotel while visiting their hometown, readers thus being confronted with the notion of home in speech marks so to speak: ‘home’ incorporating broader and broader connotations, informer reports and distorted perceptions of identities included.”--Robert Milbacher, Élet és Irodalom“….Home is simply trying to pose some questions about identity, its loss or transformation through time. One’s home in the twenty-first century is not fixed but a moveable feast, no longer found in one’s homeland nor in the land of one’s “adoption,” it is dependent on the individual with his or her official citizenship."--World Literature Today Jozefina Komporaly is a London-based academic and translator from Hungarian and Romanian into English. She studied English and European literature before gaining a PhD in Drama and Comparative Literature from the University of Warwick. She is currently based at the University of the Arts in London, having previously taught drama and translation at Warwick, Hull, DMU and Cardiff. She is editor and co-translator of several drama collections, and author of numerous publications on translation, adaptation and theatre. Her translations appeared in prestigious literary magazines and were produced by Foreign Affairs, Trap Door, Theatre Y and Trafika Europe Radio. Recent publications include ‘Mr K Released’ by Matéi Visniec (finalist for the 2021 EBRD Literature Prize) and ‘Story of a Stammer’ by Gábor Vida (Seagull Books, 2022). Her forthcoming translation ‘Home’ by Andrea Tompa (Istros Books, 2024) was the recipient of a PEN Translates Grant.Andrea Tompa is an award-winning Hungarian novelist, academic and theatre critic based in Budapest. She is former editor of the leading theatre journal Szinhaz (Theatre) and is a member of the prestigious Szechenyi Literary and Arts Academy. To date, Tompa published four acclaimed novels: The Hangman's House/A hoher haza (Kalligram, 2010; translated into English by Bernard Adams, Seagull Books, 2020 - longlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize 2022), Top to Tail/Fejtol es labtol (Kalligram, 2013), Omerta (Jelenkor, 2017 - translated into German by Terezia Mora, Suhrkamp, 2022) and Haza/Home (Jelenkor, 2020) - all dealing in different ways with the history of the Hungarian community in Transylvania (Romania), and for which she received numerous prestigious awards.Find author Andrea Tompa on Facebook:facebook.com/tompa.andrea.writer?locale=en_GBFind translator Jozefina Komporaly on social media:facebook.com/jozefina.komporaly?locale=en_GBjozefinakomporaly.comwww2.societyofauthors.org/soa-member/jozefina-komporalyhttps://www.muforditok.hu/author/komporaly-jozefina/www.linkedin.com/in/jozefina-komporaly
Rob Myatt reads from Agnieszka Jelonek’s HUSH NOW (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2025-02-06 | Hush Now tells the story of Luna and Theo who attempt to paper over the cracks in their marriage by doing up an old house in the countryside with Luna’s unconventional friend, Miśka. Jelonek’s writing has been compared to that of Sally Rooney and Hush Now has been praised in the Polish press for its portrayal of the ‘new’ man who rejects heteronormative ideals and ‘mansplaining’, and who marched side by side with his partner, sister and mother during the recent ‘Women’s Strike’ movement in Poland. It is an unflinching, unpretentious reflection on love, both romantic and platonic, and an exploration of how to find one’s own voice in life and build a reality that is not centred around the wants and needs of others. It was shortlisted for the prestigious Gdynia Literature Prize 2023. Ideal for fans of Normal People by Sally Rooney, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.Agnieszka Jelonek is an author, screenwriter and journalist who regularly publishes articles and interviews on the subject of women in the creative arts. She was awarded first prize in the Henryk Bereza Literary Prize 2015 for her collection of short stories Babidło and has been twice shortlisted for the prestigious Gdynia Literature Prize, once for her debut novel Koniec świata, umyj okna (World Ending, Clean the Windows) and once for Trzeba być cicho (Hush Now).Rob Myatt is an award-winning translator from Polish, German, Danish, Swedish, Russian, Norwegian and Luxembourgish into English. He was the recipient of the Goethe-Institut Award for New Translation 2023 for his translation of an extract from Behzad Karim Khani’s debut novel Dog Wolf Jackal. His literary translations have appeared in journals such as Turkoslavia, Subnivean, MayDay and The Dodge and he has worked with publishers including Granta, Rowohlt, Hanser, Cyranka and Politikens Forlag.BlueSky: @robtranslates.bsky.socialLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rob-myatt-157b61131Website: polyglotliterature.co.ukFull sample: polyglotliterature.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Hush-Now_Sample-EN.pdf For rights information, please contact Konrad Nowacki, konrad@wydawnictwocyranka.pl, or Aleksandra Turewicz, aleksandra@wydawnictwocyranka.pl The translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Sherry Roush reads from Lodovico Corfinos PHILETOS STORY (CRRS, University of Toronto, 2024) Translators Aloud 2025-01-29 | Phileto's Story by Lodovico Corfino (written c. 1520 in Italian) presents his account of longing for the beautiful singer named Euphrosyne and his failed attempts to contract marriage with her, given his limited means. However, Phileto adopts an approach to this type of contract that Corfino's contemporary, Niccolò Machiavelli, might apply to relations at the state level. Phileto takes Euphrosyne by force. The excerpt that I’m reading here is from Chapter 5. Phileto is attempting to re-negotiate that marriage with Euphrosyne's mother after the fact, but this is just the beginning of what Fortune has in store for him. Translator BioSherry Roush (slr21@psu.edu) is Liberal Arts Professor of Italian at Penn State University. She specializes in medieval and renaissance Italian literature and culture. In addition to Phileto's Story (Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2024) and Jacopo Caviceo’s Peregrino (University of Toronto Press, 2023), for which she received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, she is the author of Speaking Spirits: Ventriloquizing the Dead in Renaissance Italy (University of Toronto Press, 2015) and Hermes’ Lyre: Italian Poetic Self-Commentary from Dante to Tommaso Campanella (University of Toronto Press, 2002). She has also translated and edited the Selected Philosophical Poems of Tommaso Campanella in two volumes (The University of Chicago Press and Fabrizio Serra Editore, both 2011) and co-edited The Medieval Marriage Scene: Prudence, Passion, Policy (Arizona State University Press, 2005).Author BioLodovico Corfino was born in 1497 or 1498 in Verona and served in a variety of civic governmental roles. He is better known for his lyric poetry in the Petrarchan style, some examples of which were published during his lifetime. The Istoria di Phileto veronese was his only known work of prose fiction. It was dedicated to an unnamed lady, probably Isabella d'Este Gonzaga. This is the first edition in English translation.Permissions:This passage of Phileto's Story by Lodovico Corfino. Renaissance and Reformation Texts in Translation, 19 (Toronto: Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2024) is excerpted from pages 47-49 and is used by permission. The book may be purchased at: pubs.crrs.ca/products/tt19.
Isabel Stainsby reads from Patrik Bangas THE TRUE WAY OUT (CEEOL Press, 2024) Translators Aloud 2025-01-22 | The time: the 1990s. The place: Prague’s Žižkov district. A neighbourhood where hopelessness, drugs, alcohol and fights are normal. Growing up in the local Roma community means you are destined to be just another misfit. However, the story of journalist Patrik Banga is strikingly different. It captures his life’s journey, starting with his poverty-stricken childhood in the Roma quarter, and ending with him becoming a journalist in the Czech media. Banga's raw and very open style depicts the reality of a teenage boy who encounters rejection, criminalisation, racism, and police brutality at an early age. And he’s looking for the true way out.Author bio:Patrik Banga is a journalist, musician and IT entrepreneur. He has been working in the newsroom of iDNES.cz, a news portal, since 2007. He has also worked as a reporter for Czech Television’s flagship evening news programme. Patrik is one of the makers of the documentary film The Ghetto as a System / Ghetto jako systém (2012). His blog attracts over one million visitors. His first book, Skutečná cesta ven, was published in 2022 and won the Magnesia Litera award for best debut. He lives in Prague.Translator bio:Isabel Stainsby is a translator from Czech, Slovak, German and occasionally French into English. She studied languages and linguistics at Cambridge and Bristol, with a year in the Czech city of Olomouc and time in Germany and Russia, then tried out various careers before becoming a freelance translator. She has translated eight books, plus a number of chapters and articles, and is looking to translate more. She lives in Glasgow, Scotland, with her husband and a very spoiled greyhound. Follow Isabel on Facebook: @isabeltranslates or bluesky: @isabeltranslatesBuy the book: ceeolpress.com/book/34#gsc.tab=0
Alexandra Cox reads from Laura El Makkis HOW MANY MOONS (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2025-01-15 | The residents of a Normandy village are experiencing an eerie night, and we readers are sharing it. Combien de lunes [How Many Moons] tells the story of an apocalypse where the Moon hangs dangerously near to Earth. Laura El Makki prefaces the novel with a quote from Virginia Woolf’s The Waves: ‘Everybody seems to be doing things for this moment only; and never again.’ She goes on to explain that this novel is ‘pure fiction, while being very personal’.I think the writing in this novel is spellbinding. It’s evocative and immersive, an auditory and visual experience. We feel the gravitational pull of the oversized Moon as a desperate bird struggles to gain height. We see the surface of a stream move in ‘large graceful arcs’ and hear a night’s faint melody: a hooting owl, rustling leaves, ‘the darting current with its old familiar noise’. We see suspended dust sparkling in the empty air and hear an echo that dies in seconds.As the village’s societal fabric comes unravelled, each protagonist undergoes a new stage of personal development. Certainties begin to crumble as to the status of each character, according to both their self-perception and our perception of them.Societal cohesion functions best when the conditions are favourable. In this one night, the conditions have become unfavourable. The moon is affecting Earth’s gravity. There is no sign of morning. Characters evolve as the protagonists grapple with the situation.In this brief video clip you can hear the abridged first two chapters of Combien de lunes. (Chapter One is quite heavily shortened.) The featured protagonists are Anna and Ethel.Ethel: Becoming part of a rural community has sat awkwardly with Ethel. Her unease and longing to develop as a person are voiced through her interaction with Adalric’s wife, Suzanne. Ethel wants to be like other people, and Suzanne, to her, lives the perfect life. Anna: Anna is nearly an adult – the novel opens on that theme – and her chapters contain some detailed memories. The novel is ‘very personal’ – so could Anna be (a version of) the author? Maybe…There are five poetic passages in the novel, each of them appearing to a chapter about Anna – what is their meaning?In my longer Commentary I conclude that it’s likely that the ‘local witch’ who’s supposedly behind the night’s unsettling phenomena is speaking in these passages: but there’s another possibility. If Anna is a version specifically of the author of Combien de lunes, then – taking the passages’ position (next to ‘Anna’) as a clue – the ‘witch’ could be the Author, understood generally. The fourth passage contains a hint: if I wasn’t here what would they do?Combien de lunes is about the all the things people leave unsaid and the impact those unsaid things have on lives and, in this case, on a rural village community. The five poetic passages are quite cryptic and provide much to think about. the forest within us mentioned in the first of these passages is a metaphor for those things people leave unsaid. We read an appeal to take questions regrets by the root before the little branches – the ramifications – grow beneath the skin during silence sleep. We choose to ignore them, because our primary need is to live.Nominated for the Prix Stanislas“An irreal atmosphere haloes this superb novel, a tale that explores the solitude of beings and the way fear transforms them”. Claire Julliard / Le Nouvel Observateur“Powerful. First novels are rarely so assured.” Serge Jancour“A tense novel where the protagonists’ mental state is omnipresent. We find ourselves enveloped by the unsettling ambiance of this village plunged into darkness.” Manon / Libraire CoiffardAuthor BioLaura El Makki is the author of biographies on Henry David Thoreau, H.G. Wells, and the Brontë sisters. She is a radio and podcast producer and directed the series Un été avec Proust (2013) and Un été avec Victor Hugo (2015) on France Inter. Combien de lunes is her first novel. Translator BioAlexandra Cox was born in the UK and has been living and freelancing as a translator in Germany since 2003. She holds an MSc in Translation and an MA in Art History and specialises in literary non-fiction in the fields of art and culture, from French and German into English. She has translated more than 60 publications for, among many others, Kehrer Verlag and arnoldsche publishers, and museums and institutions such as the Museum Tinguely in Basel, the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, and the German Goldsmiths’ House in Hanau. alexandra.cox@coquelicot-translation.com For English-language rights, contact Chrysomethis Armefti at the 2 Seas Agency: 2seasagency.com Translation produced with the agency’s permission.A Commentary and Chapters One to Seven, translated from French into English by Alexandra Cox, are available from 2 Seas. (Or Alexandra will be happy to supply them directly.)
Alice Heathwood reads from Jean-François Beauchemin’s LE JOUR DES CORNEILLES (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2024-12-11 | “Le Jour des corneilles is an outlandish love story, a dazzling, incendiary freak of literature… here, horror flirts with grace.” Martine Laval, TéléramaLe Jour des corneilles is a stand-out work of Quebecois literature. On release, it won both the France-Québec/Jean Hamelin prize and the French readers’ choice award. It has sold over 40 00 copies in French and has been adapted for both stage and screen. Macabre, yet life affirming, it is a fairy-tale-like story of a young boy growing up in the forest with a taciturn, violent father subject to strange bouts of madness. The work shines for its profound sensibility and inventive, lyrical language: the protagonist tells his story in a kind of half-invented French, which lends whimsy to the work. Le Jour des corneilles is a story of grief, cruelty, survival that speaks to the redemptive power of words, and above all, our human yearning for connection and meaning. For fans of dark and beautiful stories, such as Olga Tokarczuk‘s Drive your plow over the bones of the dead. Author Bio “Jean-François Beauchemin has a meditative mind, keenly sensitive to the strange coexistence of body and spirit, his work is pensive, lucid and rich in poetry...” Decitre Jean François Beauchemin is a Quebecois author and poet. His work has been called "one of the best-kept secrets" of Québécois literature. Born in 1960, he worked for a time at Radio-Canada before dedicating his career to writing. He has published over 20 books, 3 collections of poetry and won a range of prizes. His most recent work Le roitelet, was published by Gallimard in France in 2024 and won the French booksellers’ award. Translator Bio Alice Heathwood is an Australian-born, Paris-based literary translator. She won the 2024 Australian literary translator’s association (AALITRA) award for prose translation. Her translations include the poetry collection, Man is a restless night by Léa Abaroa and the graphic novel, Myanmar: the last stand by Fréderic Debomy. She has over ten years experience as a professional translator and holds a double masters in translation from Monash University Melbourne and University Jean Moulin Lyon III.An extract of her translation of this book was published in the journal Asymptote along with an interview with her on the process. You can contact her at alice@alicehtranslation.com She posts videos about books here: @alicetranslates For rights info contact:Célia BénardRights and Export Directorcbenard@quebec-amerique.comThe translator has secured permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and to share a reading of it on Translators Aloud.
Yana Ellis and author Yordan Slaveyjov read from THE HOLIDAY FAMILY (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2024-12-04 | Slaveykov’s short story collection exploits the limitless dimensions of love and searches for the answer where endless love goes in the afterlife. What this gigantic energy transcends into after human bodies simply cease to exist? His stories are direct and beyond stunning. In 2022 the book was shortlisted for the Peroto national award for contemporary Bulgarian prose and also nominated for the Yordan Radichkov national short story award.The Holiday Family talks about pain, the world of this book is harsh. However, the short stories bring a ray of light and hope. Read them, they are like a cure to a suffering soul.– Zornitsa Hristova, Toest MagazineAuthor bioYordan Slaveykov (1976) is a theatre director and writer. He specialized Acting in Moscow (2008) at the International Summer School for Theatre. His monodrama Victoria has been translated into Ukrainian, Serbian, Macedonian, Russian and English. In 2021 Victoria was staged in North Macedonia. The Last Step (2015) is Yordan’s first published novel. It received first prizes at the international competition for debut literature Yuzhna Prolet (2016) as well as Pencho’s Oak. The novel was also shortlisted for the Peroto national award for contemporary Bulgarian Fiction. In 2020 The Last Step went through a second edition.Translator bioYana Ellis translates from Bulgarian and German into English. She holds an MA in Translation from the University of Bristol. She was an ALTA Virtual Travel Fellows in 2022 and was shortlisted for the 2022 John Dryden Translation Competition. Yana’s first full-length book translation of Zdravka Evtimova’s The Wolves of Staro Selo (Héloïse Press, May 2025) received PEN Translated award. Her work has appeared in The Trinity journal of Literary translation, No man's Land, SAND, The Common and Trafika Europe. For rights info contact: Sofia Literary Agency (gergana.panch@gmail.com)The translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and to share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Stephen Campiglio & Elena Borelli read The Night Jasmine by Giovanni Pascoli (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2024-11-27 | Giovanni Pascoli’s popularity in Italy is akin to that of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and E.E. Cummings in the United States, and his popularity, through a series of recent English translations, is growing among anglophone readers. Stephen Campiglio and Elena Borelli are close to completing the first full translation into English of Pascoli’s 1903 volume of poems, Canti di Castelvecchio, and have begun to submit book proposals to various publishers. Should the manuscript be accepted soon, it will take its rightful place among this recent wave of other Pascoli translations (see below) and will also be auspiciously timed to coincide with the forthcoming Italian film on Pascoli’s life and work, “Zvanì,” directed by Giuseppe Piccioni, with Federico Cesari playing the role of Pascoli.By way of historical context: in the decades following Pascoli’s death in 1912, there were only three publications of his selected poems translated into English, but with a new century, a resurgence of critical attention on his work would take place, including that of Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney, who published in 2013 (posthumously) The Last Walk, a translation of Pascoli’s 16-poem sequence, L’ultima passeggiata, a year after delivering a lecture on Pascoli in Bologna, entitled “On Home Ground.” Heaney’s international fame served to further an already-growing interest in Pascoli’s work by other translators who would eventually produce seven book-length translations from 2010 to 2024. Five of these volumes are selected poems, containing only a small sample from Pascoli’s Canti di Castelvecchio (the 2022 title, a complete translation of Poemi Conviviali, and the 2024 title, a complete translation of Myricae). Thus, not only will Campiglio and Borelli’s book-length manuscript of Canti di Castelvecchio result in the first complete translation of this title into English, but it will also bring to anglophone readers dozens of poems presently unknown in English.Copyright: The work of Giovanni Pascoli is in the public domain.Author Bio Giovanni Pascoli, born in 1855 in San Mauro in the Romagna region of Italy, earned a Classics degree at the University of Bologna. His first book of poetry, Myricae, was published in 1891, and in 1906, he replaced his mentor, Giosuè Carducci, as chair of Italian Literature at the University of Bologna, following several years of teaching appointments at secondary schools. In 1895, he had bought a house in Castelvecchio, a hamlet in the Tuscan town of Barga, which became his permanent home for the remainder of his life, and where the poems of Canti di Castelvecchio (1903, 1907) were written. After publishing a few more books of poetry, Pascoli died of cancer in 1912. His house in Castelvecchio has since been transformed into the “Pascoli Museum” and San Mauro maintains the “Accademia Pascoliana,” where scholarly conferences and events are held.Translator BiosStephen Campiglio holds an M.A. in Education from Assumption University and serves as an administrator in Workforce Development and Continuing Education at CT State Community College: Manchester, where he also founded and directed for 12 years the Mishi-maya-gat Spoken Word & Music Series. He recently co-edited Noh Place Poetry Anthology (2022) and was selected as one of the winners in the 2024 contest, Mapping Worcester in Poetry: Poems in and Out of Places. His poetry and Italian translations have appeared of late, or will appear, in Aji Magazine, The Closed Eye Open, Gradiva, Hole in the Head Review, Italian Americana, Open Doors Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Poet Lore, SLAB, and SurVision, and a featured selection of his poems translated into Italian by Barbara Carle will appear in the next issue of Journal of Italian Translation. Campiglio has published two chapbooks, Cross-Fluence (2012) and Verbal Clouds through Various Magritte Skies (2014).Elena Borelli holds a degree in Classics from the University of Bologna and a Ph.D. in Italian Literature from Rutgers University. From 2012 to 2016 she was Assistant Professor of Italian Literature at the City University of New York. Her research focuses on the literature and culture of Italy at the turn of the 20th century, with a focus on Giovanni Pascoli and Gabriele D'Annunzio. Her book, Giovanni Pascoli, Gabriele D’Annunzio, and the Ethics of Desire, explores the notion of desire at the nexus of art, philosophy, and politics in the works of these two authors. Elena teaches courses of Italian language and culture at King’s College London (UK), where is she Deputy Team Leader for Italian, Latin, and Linguistics at the Modern Language Centre. She has also published on the topic of literary translation and is herself a translator, working for journals such as Journal of Italian Translation and Reading in Translation. Her English translation of Pascoli’s Poemi Conviviali/Convivial Poems, in collaboration with James Ackhurst, was published in 2022 by Italica Press (New York, NY).
Marina Sofia reads from Alina Nelegas A CLOUD IN THE SHAPE OF A CAMEL (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2024-11-20 | This is a contemporary retelling of Hamlet, set in a Romanian theatrical family, seen largely through the eyes of the mother-Gertrude character. All of the elements of the Shakespearean play are here: the son who is accused of behaving irrationally, the mother whose husband died and she remarried, the son’s girlfriend who goes mad with grief, even the interchangeable childhood friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who try to betray the son but end up being tricked instead. Witty as all of these allusions are, this is more than just a pastiche. It is a serious examination of life imitating art, of sacrificing family for one’s art, as the mother tries and fails to reconnect with her estranged son. Most of the book is her monologue, as she tries to come to terms with the past and justify her choices, perhaps even admit her mistakes. The final chapter is then from her son’s perspective, and we have to reassess the reliability of the previous narrator and rethink everything we thought we had understood.Author bioAlina Nelega is one of the foremost contemporary Romanian playwrights. She is also a theatre director and critic, as well as a novelist, She is a fellow of The International Writing Program, Iowa (USA) and participated in The Royal Court Theatre residency in London. Her awards include the Play of the Year 2000 (UNITER) and European Author (Heidelberg Stueckemarkt, 2007). Her third novel Un nor în formă de cămilă (published by Polirom in 2021) has won several national awards. Translator bioMarina Sofia is a translator, reviewer and writer, working from Romanian and German into English. She was born and raised in Romania and Austria but has been living in the UK for half of her life. She has previously translated a collection of short stories and an anthology of contemporary Romanian poetry, four crime novels for Corylus Books (which she co-founded in 2020), as well as plays by Mihail Sebastian and Edith Negulici, and short prose by Romanian classics such as Urmuz and Caragiale.For rights info contact Editura Polirom:catalina.staicu@polirom.ro
Simon Pare reads from Katja Lange-Müller’s THE HERMIT CRAB (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2024-11-15 | Surveying the wreckage of her past relationships, 80-year-old Ida believes a turning point may have come when her new acquaintance, Elvira, offers her a room in her house in the countryside just as Ida is being kicked out of her flat. The offer comes with a condition, though: Ida is expected to help care for Elvira’s unpredictable, autistic grandson Ole, who was abandoned at birth by his mother, Manuela.When Elvira suddenly dies, Manuela returns for her inheritance, and Ida has to think fast to avoid being made homeless. Then Ole vanishes . . .With her trademark dark, satirical humour, Katja Lange-Müller tells an affecting tale of three women struggling to come to terms with life and with the inscrutable young man who binds them together. In style and subject matter, it calls to mind some of Ali Smith’s novels.*FUNDING FOR ENGLISH TRANSLATION GUARANTEED FROM NEW BOOKS IN GERMAN*new-books-in-german.com/translation-funding‘Anyone wishing to learn about other mothers – anti-mothers! – in brilliantly written, concentrated form really must read Unser Ole.’ Katja Oskamp, RBB Orte und Worte‘The novel is full of scintillating slapstick’ Ulrike Baureithel, Der Tagespiegel‘This author has an uncommonly sharp eye for people’s weaknesses and flaws.’ Cornelia Geissler, Berliner Zeitunghttps://www.kiwi-verlag.de/buch/katja-lange-mueller-unser-ole-9783462050172 Author bioBorn in East Berlin in 1951, Katja Lange-Müller is one of the most idiosyncratic voices in contemporary German literature. After her short stories had won an array of awards, Lange-Müller’s first novel, Böse Schafe, was shortlisted for the 2007 German Book Prize and the long-awaited follow-up, Drehtür, was longlisted for the same prize in 2016.Translator bioSimon Pare translates non-fiction and fiction, including Katja Lange-Müller’s previous novels, Revolving Door (Seagull Books, 2023) and Bad Sheep (Seagull, Nov 2024). He is currently working on a new translation of Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain for Oxford World’s Classics. www.simonpare.net For rights info contact: aerakovic@kiwi-verlag.de The translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Ruth Martin reads from Lukas Hartmann’s MARTHA AND HER KIN (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2024-11-14 | Published in German by Diogenes Verlag, this is a novel based on bestselling Swiss author Lukas Hartmann’s own family history. Martha rises from desperate poverty to make a decent life for herself. Her formidable work ethic, developed as an indentured child labourer in the Bernese mountains, is passed on to her sons – it is only her grandchildren who dare to dream of a different, freer life. An assured voice that crosses the divide between deeply personal histories and universal themes, Martha and Her Kin is sure to strike a chord with readers of literary and historical fiction. The German edition has sold 20,000 copies and reached no.1 on the Swiss bestseller list. FUNDING FOR ENGLISH TRANSLATION GUARANTEED FROM NEW BOOKS IN GERMAN: new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/martha-and-her-kin Author bioLukas Hartmann was born in Berne in 1944, and studied German and Psychology before going on to be a teacher, journalist and media consultant. He is now a freelance writer, lives in Berne, and writes books for adults and children. He is one of Switzerland’s best-known authors. Translator bioRuth Martin studied English literature before gaining a PhD in German. She has been translating fiction and non-fiction books since 2010, by authors ranging from Joseph Roth and Hannah Arendt to Nino Haratischwili and Shida Bazyar. Ruth.m.martin@gmail.com german-to-english-translation.org For rights info contact: Susanne Bauknecht, Diogenes Verlag bau@diogenes.chTel: +4144 254 8554The translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and to share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Caroline Waight reads from Ruth-Maria Thomas’s THE MOST BEAUTIFUL VERSION (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2024-11-14 | Originally published in German, The Most Beautiful Version is a powerful and affecting debut exploring friendship, domestic violence, and coming of age in the early twenty-first century.‘Herein lies the great advantage of this author: that she allows her readers to take part in Jella and Yannick’s persistent, uncompromising and radical explorations.’ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ‘In attempting to use literature to explore the social nature of violence against women, Thomas situates herself in a tradition that stretches from Ingeborg Bachmann to Lana Lux. Thomas tells a story that is as unflinching as it is empathetic, a story that is far from being an isolated case — and yet is deeply personal.’ Deutschlandfunk*FUNDING FOR ENGLISH TRANSLATION GUARANTEED FROM NEW BOOKS IN GERMAN*new-books-in-german.com/translation-funding Author bioRuth-Maria Thomas was raised in Cottbus. She studied at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig and is a co-founder of the erotic literature magazine Hot Topic! In 2022, she was a finalist in the Open Mike competition. Her writings, which have been featured in radio broadcasts and literary magazines, often explore the pitfalls of female socialization. Find out more at instagram.com/ruthiliciousxoxo Translator bioCaroline Waight is an award-winning literary translator working from Danish, German and Norwegian. She has translated a wide range of fiction and non-fiction. She lives and works near London.www.carolinewaight.com For rights info contact:Erica Lorenzonierica.lorenzoni@rowohlt.de The translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and to share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Jon Cho-Polizzi reads from Lin Hierses THE DISAPPEARING WORLD (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2024-11-13 | The Disappearing World tells the story of Shanghai's historic Embankment Building through the many intersecting lives of its inhabitants. At various times a home for rural Chinese labor migrants, Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, and foreign travelers seeking a new home in the anonymity of its crumbling grandeur, the Embankment Building remained a testament to the voices of those different generations who have called it home. But in the face of rapid modernization, unfettered gentrification, and the demands of a globalizing world, what happens to these stories when their places of memory start to disappear? Author and journalist Lin Hierse is one of the most exciting emerging voices in 21st-century Germany, and an important interlocutor in the growing reception of Asian German perspectives. The Disappearing World is her second novel. Please follow the links to read a recent interview (new-books-in-german.com/lin-hierse) between the author and translator, or to read a longer translated excerpt from the text. (new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/the-disappearing-world) The Disappearing World has been selected to receive funding from the Goethe Institut to support an English translation. Author bioLin Hierse (IG @linhierse) holds an M.A. in Asian Studies and Urban Geography from the Humboldt Universität in Berlin, where she currently lives and works as author and journalist. She has been an editor at die tageszeitung (taz) since 2019, publishing the popular biweekly column “poetical correctness” from 2020-2023. Her first novel, Wovon wir träumen [What We Dream Of], was published by Piper in 2022. Hierse’s poetry and prose have also been featured in prominent independent culture journals such as Literarische Diverse and Das Wetter. Alongside Das Verschwinden der Welt [The Disappearing World], her most recent prose publications include the short stories “KTV Girl,” published in the anthology Das Wetter Buch für Text und Musik [The weather book for text & music] in 2023 and “Das Huhn” published in Delfi Magazin in 2024.Translator bioJon Cho-Polizzi is an Assistant Professor of German at the University of Michigan and a translator of contemporary German-language literature whose work focuses on the polyphony of the contemporary German-language literary scene. His recent book-length translations include Fatma Aydemir's bestselling novel Djinns (2024), Sharon Dodua Otoo's Ada's Room (2023), and Max Czollek's De-Integrate: A Jewish Survival Guide for the 21st Century (2023) which was awarded the prestigious Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize.jon-chopolizzi.comFor rights info contact: Piper Verlag's Elisabeth Wiedemann (Elisabeth.Wiedemann@piper.de)The translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and to share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Linda L. Gaus reads from Patricia Hempels ABANDONED NESTS (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2024-11-12 | It’s summer 1992 on the banks of the Elbe River in the former East Germany. Pilly turns thirteen at the start of the summer vacation and longs to belong. But even two years after the fall of the Berlin wall, her family is still stuck on the ideals of the past. Her father flees to the local pub, her aunts are dreaming of the Golden West yet unsure whether they would fit in there, and there is no trace of Pilly’s mother. It seems that Pilly’s best chance to belong lies with her older classmate Katja, but Katja ultimately disappoints her too. By the end of the summer, Pilly’s world has once again been shaken by changes no one could have predicted.“Abandoned Nests” presents a nuanced and unusual portrait of life in the former East as people in this “Nest” (a word that in German is also shorthand for a backwater town) struggle to adjust to the new political, social, and economic reality imposed upon them.Hempel tells of the great upheavals of a special time in history, of the wastelands it left behind, in a very focused, small-scale way. The place she has chosen basically no longer exists, but it is still there. She recounts these stories with great sensitivity and using exquisite poetic language, drawing the characters in the town precisely and paying careful attention to the abundant nature of the Elbe River region. The result is a novel that was supported with a work grant from the Berlin Senate even before it was published and was nominated for the Alfred Döblin Prize in 2023. The jury of New Books in German has also selected it for translation support from the Goethe Institute, so the translation cost will be subsidized.*FUNDING FOR ENGLISH TRANSLATION GUARANTEED FROM NEW BOOKS IN GERMAN*new-books-in-german.com/translation-fundingAuthor bioPatricia Hempel, born in Berlin in 1983, first studied pre- and early history until she changed from archaeology to the study of literary writing/editing at the University of Hildesheim. In 2017, her first novel “Metrofolklore” was published by Tropen/Klett-Cotta. Since 2020, she has been on the editorial board of the queer literature magazine GLITTER and works in the Queer Media Society (QMS) as a networker for queer visibility and diversity in the literary industry and book trade. She is a founding member of PEN Berlin and participates in the diversity working group. Her texts have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, most recently in "Neue Schule - Prosa für die nächste Generation" Claassen/Ullstein (2021) and in the Literaturboten 141 – Writing with Care (2023). Her current novel, “Abandoned Nests,” was supported by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion with the fellowship for German-language literature and it was nominated for the Alfred-Döblin-Prize 2023.instagram.com/patricia__hempel/profilecard/?igsh=MTRseW5udWVnZXNueQ==https://m.facebook.com/skjaldamerki.jonsdottirhttps://www.klett-cotta.de/personen/patricia-hempel-p-1157https://glitteronline.cargo.site/Translator bioDr. Linda L. Gaus has been a German-English translator for more than 25 years. Although much of her translation work has been of a technical nature, she has a thoroughly literary heart and truly delights in finding -- or making up -- exactly the right word or expression when translating literary texts. She lives near Washington, DC with her husband and her “feline management team,” whose members have occasionally been known to “help” her with her translations.She can be reached at linda@maddocstranslation.com, maddocstranslation.com or linkedin.com/in/maddocsllc For rights info contact:Frauke KnifflerHead of Rights / Leitung Rechte und Lizenzen +49 (0)711 6672-1257f.kniffler@klett-cotta.deORHelen GormanRights Manager - Foreign Rights: Asia - Inlandsrechte: Buchclub, Hörbuch, Sonderausgaben+49 (0)711 6672-1938h.gorman@klett-cotta.deThe translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and to share a recording of it on “Translators Aloud.”
Sharon Howe reads from Lutz Hachmeister’s HITLERS INTERVIEWS: THE DICTATOR AND THE JOURNALISTS Translators Aloud 2024-11-12 | This book is the first work in either German or English to detail Adolf Hitler’s media appearances in such depth and breadth. It delves into over a hundred interviews Hitler gave to foreign journalists throughout his political career in an attempt to understand the dictator’s media strategies and the complicity between propaganda strategists and reporters.Interweaving excerpts from the interviews and other original sources, including diaries and letters, Hitler’s Interviews is organised chronologically, and covers Hitler’s media appearances from 1923 to 1941, with a particular focus on his interviews in the English-language press.Given the current rise in far-right ideology not just in Germany but across Europe and the USA, Hitler’s Interviews is a highly prescient read; Hachmeister draws explicit comparisons between his material and ongoing conversations about the role of social media, trolls and fake news in the political sphere.*FUNDING FOR ENGLISH TRANSLATION GUARANTEED FROM NEW BOOKS IN GERMAN*new-books-in-german.com/translation-fundingAuthor bioLutz Hachmeister (1959-2024) was a German media historian, award-winning filmmaker and journalist. He gained international attention for directing the 2005 film The Goebbels Experiment, starring Kenneth Branagh. Other works include the 2011 docudrama The Real American - Joe McCarthy, starring John Sessions. In 2006, Hachmeister established the Institute for Media and Communication Policy in Berlin and Cologne, which has strong ties to the Anglo-American media scene. He has been acclaimed as "Germany's leading media expert".Translator bioSharon Howe studied Modern Languages at Oxford University, followed by a postgraduate diploma in translating and interpreting at Bradford. She then lived in southern Germany for 10 years, working freelance for a variety of commercial clients. Since returning to the UK she has specialised increasingly in literary translation, and won the 2021 Goethe-Institut Award for New Translation.For rights information please contact: Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch (Germany) Contact: Aleksandra Erakovic aerakovic@kiwi-verlag.deThe translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and to share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Jo Heinrich reads from Marica Bodrožić’s BLADE OF HEARTS (seeking a publisher) Translators Aloud 2024-11-11 | A stunning coming-of-age story with Bodrožić’s lyrical German as the real star, featuring enigmatic, swirling, poetic imagery verging on magical realism. Pepsi starts her life in Dalmatia in the 1970s, surrounded by nature and left to her own devices as she is passed between various relatives, until she writes to her parents asking to go and live with them in Germany, where they are working. 1980s Germany is a very different world, and her new life is no improvement. Her parents are keen for her to bring in some money rather than focus on the education she craves. We see her grow up and witness the Chernobyl disaster and later the Yugoslav War, which results in her home becoming overrun with refugees from home. Pepsi’s ambition is to go to university, much to her parents’ horror – will she manage to escape their oppressive expectations? *FUNDING FOR ENGLISH TRANSLATION GUARANTEED FROM NEW BOOKS IN GERMAN*new-books-in-german.com/translation-fundingDas Herzflorett was published by Penguin Germany in September 2024.© 2024 Luchterhand Literaturverlag, München, in der Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe GmbHAuthor bioMarica Bodrožić was born in 1973 in Dalmatia, Croatia, and moved to Germany in 1983. She writes poems, novels, short stories and essays; this is her nineteenth book. She has also worked as a literary translator from English and Croatian and has taught creative writing. She has won several awards for her work to date. Marica Bodrožić lives with her family as a freelance writer in Berlin and in a small village in Mecklenburg.Translator bioJo Heinrich’s translations include the 2023 Dublin Literary Award winner Marzahn, Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp, Half Swimmer by the same author in 2024 and The Invention of Good and Evil by Hanno Sauer. She was also in a team of translators working on Angela Merkel’s memoirs. For rights info contact: gesche.wendebourg@penguinrandomhouse.deThe translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and to share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
Charlotte Mandell reads from Mathias Énard’s THE DESERTERS (Fitzcarraldo/New Directions, 2025) Translators Aloud 2024-11-07 | Fleeing a nameless war, an unknown soldier emerges from deep within the Mediterranean scrubland, dirty and exhausted. A chance meeting forces him to rethink his journey, and the price he puts on a life. On 11 September 2001, aboard a small cruise ship on the River Havel near Berlin, a conference of scientists pays homage to the late East German mathematician Paul Heudeber, a Buchenwald survivor and steadfast antifascist who remained loyal to his side of the Berlin Wall despite the collapse of the Communist utopia, unaware that a new era of violence is about to descend. Out of the tension between these narratives, everything that is at stake in times of conflict – in love as in politics – comes to light: commitment and betrayal, loyalty and lucidity, hope and survival. Superbly translated by Charlotte Mandell, this latest work from Mathias Enard vividly lays bare the devastations of war on the most intimate aspects of our lives.Mathias Énard’s The Deserters is forthcoming from Fitzcarraldo in the UK and New Directions in the US in May 2025: amazon.com/Deserters-Mathias-Enard-ebook/dp/B0D8KJQVLXCharlotte Mandell has translated over fifty books, including works by Maurice Blanchot, Jean-Luc Nancy, Mathias Énard, and Jonathan Littell. She recently received the honor of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government—the video of the ceremony is here: youtu.be/n06IwsTfjjA?si=0WNyZB7zSO2UKbu6In May 2024, she received the Thornton Wilder Translation Prize from the Academy of Arts and Letters.Her website: charlottemandell.comTwitter: https://x.com/avecsesdoigtsAnd she just recently joined Instagram, please join her there! instagram.com/mandellcharlotte
Charlotte Mandell reads from IN THE SHADOW OF YOUNG GIRLS IN BLOSSOM (Oxford Worlds Classics, 2025) Translators Aloud 2024-11-06 | In the Shadow of Girls in Blossom is the second volume of Marcel Proust's widely recognised masterpiece In Search of Lost Time (1913-27), one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, which ponders questions of time, memory, identity, sensation, art and existence.An accomplished new translation by renowned translator Charlotte Mandell that will be of interest to readers new to Proust and those already familiar with the author and his work.Edward Hughes' introduction offers a stimulating and informative support to all readers of Proust, together with the extensive explanatory notes, a chronology, and suggested further reading.Part of a new Oxford World's Classics edition of the complete In Search of Lost Time in seven volumes, with new translations into English, introduced and annotated by leading experts.Proust’s In the Shadow of Girls in Blossom is forthcoming from Oxford World’s Classics in March 2025: global.oup.com/ukhe/product/in-the-shadow-of-girls-in-blossom-9780192845672?cc=us&lang=enCharlotte Mandell has translated over fifty books, including works by Maurice Blanchot, Jean-Luc Nancy, Mathias Énard, and Jonathan Littell. She recently received the honor of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government—the video of the ceremony is here: youtu.be/n06IwsTfjjA?si=0WNyZB7zSO2UKbu6In May 2024, she received the Thornton Wilder Translation Prize from the Academy of Arts and Letters.Her website: charlottemandell.comTwitter: https://x.com/avecsesdoigtsAnd she just recently joined Instagram, please join her there! instagram.com/mandellcharlotte
Ellen Elias-Bursać and author Damir Karakaš read from CELEBRATION (Selkies House/Two Lines Press) Translators Aloud 2024-10-23 | Mijo, a soldier in the Nazi-allied Ustasa force, has returned to his village at the end of the war. He's hiding in a hole in the woods, watching as the soldiers who want him dead return again and again to his house, disturbing his wife and children at all times of the day. If he can just wait them out, the atrocities of the war and his involvement in it will be forgotten, and then he can have what he really wants: a quiet life farming his land with his family. Or so he naively believes.How did Mijo become the monster we encounter in these pages? Damir Karakaš, a war reporter who witnessed the horrors of the breakup of Yugoslavia firsthand, examines the recent history of an unsettled region in evocative prose, contrasting the beauty of nature against the failings of people.In four fragmentary stories set in the mountainous Lika region of Croatia, Mijo’s life unfurls not with the chronology of time, but in episodes, each in flow with the textural grain of this remote earth. With the sparest of prose, Karakaš has crafted an exquisite sense of place and of family within it. The result is among the most powerful modern homages to a landscape and its people. It is also one of the most subtle evocations of the dark forces at play in the Balkans.CELEBRATION marks the first time any of this award-winning author’s ten novels and three collections of stories has been translated into English.To buy (UK):uk.bookshop.org/p/books/celebration-damir-karakas/7699124?ean=9781917254021To buy (US): catranslation.org/shop/book/celebrationAuthor bio:Damir Karakaš is one of Croatia’s most important contemporary writers. He is also a playwright, musician, and journalist. In 2021 he won the prestigious Meša Selimović award for best novel in the Balkans. Born in 1967 in the mountainous region of Lika, he later studied law and agronomy in Zagreb. During the 1990s he worked as a war reporter from the front lines in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo for Večernji list.Translator bio:Ellen Elias-Bursać is an award-winning translator of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian, who has served as the president of the American Literary Translators’ Association. Between 1972 and 1990 she lived in Zagreb and for six years she worked in the English Translation Unit of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague. She is the translator of celebrated authors including Dubravka Ugrešić and of Daša Drndić, author of Trieste.
Anne Henochowicz and poet Yu Xinqiao read from At Night I Rise to Mop the Floor (Paper Republic) Translators Aloud 2024-10-16 | ‘At Night I Rise to Mop the Floor’, by Yu Xinqiao, translated by Anne Henochowicz, appears on Paper Republic, the not-for-profit website run by translators and promoting Chinese literature in translation. It forms part of our latest free-to-read Read Paper Republic series, entitled ‘Home’, which encompasses themes of refuge, recollections, promised lands, prisons; the arms of family, and four concrete walls in the sky … Author bioYu Xinqiao is one of the most influential contemporary Chinese poets. Born in Fujian and raised in Zhejiang, Yu Xinqiao dropped out of school to work as a labourer. That didn’t stop him reading (Dante included), and writing novels and poetry, and by age seventeen (1985) he was beginning to get noticed and published. Yu has always pushed boundaries politically; his poem ‘If I Have to Die’, set to music, has become an enormous arena-rock hit and stirring anthem of defiance. But as Anne Henochowicz explains, he can also be playful and tender.Translator bioAnne came to literary translation at China Digital Times, where she was Translations Coordinator from 2011 to 2016, and again from 2020 to 2022. There, she first read and translated essayists such as Li Jingrui and Tang Danhong, experimental poet Yu Xiuhua, and many ingenious bloggers and journalists. She also edited the Chinese Corner column at the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel. She lives near Washington, D.C.
