New York Trip Report, Part Two, Belated: BookExpo America

It’s funny how each of my BookExpo America trips has its own feel: this year’s BEA left me with the sense of a stronger-than-ever community of translators and publishers of translations. This wasn’t because China was the market focus country this year and had a ginormous amount of space on the exhibition floor but because of conversations with translators and publishers in and around BEA. As usual, BEA hosted a series of market focus panel discussions about the business of translation, but this year also included announcements of the winners of the Best Translated Book Award as well as a succession of panels organized by the PEN American Center Translation Committee. I came away from all that convinced that recent start-up publishers—Two Lines Press, New Vessel Press, and DeepVellum Press among them—as well as lots of more established small-to-medium publishers—such as Europa Editions, Soho Press, Other Press, and Open LetterBooks—are winning lots of awards, getting reviewed, and (the big thing!) publishing books that they can sell because they know who their readers are. I could double the publisher list without even having to consult Google or my BEA lists but will just add that there’s also a bunch of several London-based publishers of varying sizes and ages—And Other Stories, Pushkin Press, and OneworldPublications, for example—that make me think this isn’t just a U.S.-based phenomenon. On to events and books!

Of course it’s ancient history now, but just for the record and just in case you missed it, the 2015 Best Translated Book Award winners are, for prose, Can Xue’s The Last Lover, translated from the Chinese by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen and published by Yale University Press, and, for poetry, Rocío Cerón’s Diorama, translated from the Spanish by Anna Rosenwong and published by Phoneme Media. Phoneme, by the way, is another pretty new press, and Diorama is their first book of poetry. For more on BTBA 2015.

I loved the PEN Translation Committee’s panels because they were brief and packed with information and tips. “Reaching the Reader: Publicizing International Literature,” with Juliet Grames, associate publisher at Soho Press, and Allison Markin Powell, a translator from the Japanese, looked at issues like the role of the translator, social media versus bookstores (summary: bookstores have it all over Twitter, thinks Grames) (okay, the italics are mine!), online reviewers with good credibility (I noted The CompleteReview, Words Without Borders, and Three Percent), and Google authenticity. Meaning: the panelists looked at online and offline aspects of publicity. “Baiting the Hook: How to Catch an Editor’s Interest” was just as good: among other things, translator Ezra Fitz reminded us that it’s okay to spoil plots when sending book synopses to an editor (why do I always forget this?!) and Corinna Barsan, an editor at Grove Atlantic, said bigger is better when it comes to sample translations, synopses, and, generally, the informational package you send to publishers. Nothing in either panel was a surprise but all the presenters touched on subjects we (or at least I) often need reminders about. I was rather late to Retranslating the Great Works of Literature: How and Why? so didn’t hear all that Robert Weil of Liveright & Co. and translators Tess Lewis and Burton Pike had to say.

Publishers offered picks at two translation “buzz” panels, too: Coach House served up Louis Carmain’s Guano, translated by Rhonda Mullins; Gray Wolf Press listed A Woman Loved, by Andreï Makine and translated by Geoffrey Strachan (this book involves a filmmaker obsessed with Catherine the Great); and Coffee House Press offered The Story of My Teeth, by Valeria Luiselli and translated by Christina MacSweeney. A special thriller and crime buzz panel dished up Soho Press’s recommendation of Fuminori Nakamura’s The Gun, translated by Allison Markin Powell, and Heda Margolius Kovály’s Innocence, translated by Alex Zucker; plus Europa Editions’ Gang of Lovers, written by Massimo Carlotto and translated by Antony Shugaar, and I Will Have Vengeance, written by Maurizio de Giovanni and translated by Anne Milano Appel.

What else? It was great to see translator and writer friend Aviya Kushner, whose The Grammar of God will be out this fall. After working with and quoting from various English and Russian translations of the Bible for my translation of Eugene Vodolazkin’s Laurus, I’m especially looking forward to Aviya’s book because it’s about the Bible, translation, and belief. For now, I always love recommending Aviya’s essay, “Kafka and the Habits of Highly Effective People,” a truly wonderful piece of writing… There aren’t a lot of Russian-English translations to add to the 2015 translation list, though I had no idea (or simply forgot?) the Theatre Communications Group publishes translations: Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard will be out this year in a translation by Robert Nelson, Richard Pevear, and Larissa Volokhonsky; that same trio translated Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, released last year. As for books I picked up… I already read and enjoyed The Man Who Spoke Snakish, a novel by Andrus Kivirähk and translated from the Estonian by Christopher Moseley (Grove Atlantic), which features a stylized version of medieval Estonia, a contemporary-sounding first-person narrator from the forest, cultural clashes between meat-eating forest-dwellers and bread-eating villagers, interspecies marriage, and a charming but vicious adder named Ints. (Truth be told, I especially loved the adders in this book.) I just started Heda Margolius Kovály’s Innocence, in Alex Zucker’s translation (Soho Press), which combines Kovály’s love of American noir (she was a translator, too) with Czech realities. The very first books I picked up at BEA this time around were Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, translated by Ann Goldstein (Europa Editions), and Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation, translated by John Cullen (Other Press). Maybe Camus will come off the shelf for a reread, too.

One other note: next year’s BEA will be in Chicago and the market focus will be Poland. Hmm. I’ve never been to a BEA outside New York but Poland, hmm.

And one truly final note. I didn’t go to many events that were part of the BEA market focus program but a Chinese and American poetry reading at the Bowery Poetry Club—beautifully moderated by translator Eleanor Goodman and with readings from Lan Lan, Zhao Lihong, Edwin Frank, Canaan Morse, and Peter Gizzi—was a perfect way to have no regrets whatsoever about spending a couple hours in a dark room on a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon. Bonus since I’m so clueless about translations from languages other than Russian: learning about Paper Republic, a fantastic site about Chinese literature in translation.

Disclaimers: A million for all the books—thank you to the publishers!—and contacts, plus the usual.

Up Next: A bunch of books: Eugene Vodolazkin’s Solovyov and Larionov, which I’ll start translating this summer, meaning ever sooner, Sergei Nosov’s Член общества, или Голодное время (something like Member of the Society or A Time of Hunger), the sad-but-funny story of a man’s life after selling all his Dostoevsky, and Elena Minkina-Taycher’s The Rebinder Effect, an episodic novel about several families. And then my Big Book Award finalist marathon, which I began with Guzel’ Iakhina’s Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes, which I’m enjoying very, very much and will be finishing this weekend…

BookExpo America 2014 Trip Report, TMI for One Post Edition

First things first: Yes, I did see Grumpy Cat at BookExpo America, though it was all a mistake because the Chronicle Books booth was in the middle of my path to New York Review Books, where I wanted to ask about 2015 translations from Russian… this during the crowded, sweaty BookCon day of BEA, the day when part of the book exhibit was open to the public, the day when big names like John Green, David Mitchell, and Stan Lee came, spoke, and signed books, the day when it was tough to walk five feet without a collision. But I did see Grumpy Cat.

But enough digression! The real highlight of BEA 2014 was a market focus on literature in translation rather than a single country—2012, for example, was Russia and 2015 will be China—which means there were panel discussions and even a venue, distant though it was, for presentations about translation and funding. The day before the book exhibit opened featured a full day of panels, beginning with “Mapping Translation Today: From Niche to Global Bestseller,” which included author Joël Dicker, who wrote The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, (translated from the French by Sam Taylor, published in the US by Penguin, and, I must say, less interesting as a novel than as a phenomenon), and Carol Brown Janeway, an editor, publishing executive, and translator who addressed topics like Alfred A. Knopf’s history of supporting translation and the smoldering question of “Who owns the English language?”

My notes trailed off after that first session, not so much for lack of interest but because so much of the material was familiar, albeit with a slight twist: it confirmed my feel that there’s an upswing in literary translations or, at the very least, that the community is growing and even, perhaps, beginning to thrive. As often happens when there isn’t talk about specific Russian books, I enjoyed hearing about translations from Polish: author Mariusz Szczygieł, his translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones, and editor Sal Robinson of Melville House spoke about Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia, which I made sure to get a copy of when Szczygieł signed books; I loved my visit to the Czech Republic years ago and could tell I’d enjoy Szczygieł’s humor. (Gottland got a good review in today’s New York Times.)… Two days later there was an entire panel devoted to Marek Hłasko that made it thoroughly worthwhile to trundle off to the Javits Center for a 9:30 arrival (on my birthday, no less!) when I was so tired I wanted to sleep in: David Goldfarb moderated a talk with Sal Robinson, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, and Ross Ufberg of New Vessel Press. There were lots of highlights there, including Lloyd-Jones’s account of visiting Hłasko’s grave and collaboration between Melville House and New Vessel when they released two books—The Graveyard, translated by Norbert Guterman for Melville House, and Killing the Second Dog, translated by Tomasz Mirkowicz for New Vessel—in fairly rapid succession. The happiest moment (for me) of the panel was probably Lloyd-Jones’s assertion that she sees new interest in, as I jotted down, “20^th C (dead) classic writers.” Of whom I see an abundance in Russian literature. There is more Hłasko on the way from New Vessel: All Backs Were Turned, also translated by Mirkowicz, is coming late this year. Goldfarb was kind enough to give me copies of The Graveyard and Killing the Second Dog at the Polish Cultural Institute booth, which was nicely stocked with translated books to hand out (sadly, this is a rarity at booths that focus on promoting a country’s literature) and staffed by knowledgeable, very pleasant people.

In Russian book news, I had a nice visit with Mark Krotov of The Overlook Press: Mark was especially excited about Lilianna Lungina’s Подстрочник (Word for Word in Polly Gannon and Ast A. Moore’s translation), which Mark said truly is a transcript of Lungina’s life stories, as told to Oleg Dorman. Lungina was a translator, which means I’ve felt doubly guilty for not having read the book ever since someone insisted, during a snowshoe-and-ski outing several years ago, that I absolutely had to read it… something I’ve heard over and over ever since, even when walking on regular shoes. Overlook is also reissuing some Russian books this year: Gaito Gazdanov’s An Evening With Claire (Jodi Daynard’s translation of Вечер у Клэр) and Fazil Iskander’s Rabbits and Boa Constrictors (Ronald E. Peterson’s translation of Кролики и удавы). Bonus: I can’t wait for my copy of Christina Nichol’s Waiting for the Electricity, which takes place in Georgia and is reputed to be very, very funny.

The upcoming titles from New York Review Books that took me to the borders of Grumpy Cat’s territory are Alexander Boguslawski’s new translation of Sasha Sokolov’s Школа для дураков (A School for Fools) and A Prank, a collection of early stories by Anton Chekhov, translated by Marina Blitshteyn. NYRB has been on a roll with translations from Russian: Joanne Turnbull won the Read Russia Prize for her translation of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s Autobiography of a Corpse: Turnbull was a finalist along with Robert and Elizabeth Chandler, who translated An Armenian Sketchbook by Vasily Grossman (previous post). Both those books are also finalists for the PEN Translation Prize, along with another NYRB title: Anna Seghers’s Transit, translated by Margot Bettauer Dembo, whom I know a bit from the American Literary Translators Association.

The High Line at 10th Ave. & 17th St.

Other highlights and books included meeting with Skyscraper Publications, which is publishing Anna Starobinets’s short story collection Икарова железа (The Icarus Gland), in Jamie’s Rann’s translation, later this year. Skyscraper also published Anna Arutunyan’s The Putin Mystique: Inside Russia’s power cult… I picked up a copy of Brian Moynahan’s Leningrad: Siege and Symphony, which will be out from Atlantic Monthly Press in October: it looks like a promising blend of cultural, military, and political history… The nice people of Duke University Press gave me a copy of The Russia Reader, edited by Adele Barker and Bruce Grant: The Russia Reader is a wonderful brick of a book that contains dozens of pieces and excerpts of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, beginning with Aleksandr Blok’s “The Scythians” and ending with Irina Sandomirskaia’s “Return to the Motherland,” with wonderful stuff like anecdotes about New Russians and a brief bit from Elena Molokhovets’s A Gift to Young Housewives; or a Means of Reducing Household Expenses in various places in between. It’s fun to just pick up and read. And it makes me want to plan imaginary college courses again!… Counterpoint was kind enough to send me a copy of Pushkin Hills, Katherine Dovlatov’s translation of Sergei Dovlatov’s Заповедник, which I’m especially interested in reading after meeting Katherine at two literature and translation events… It was great to see relatively new publishers Stefan Tobler, from And Other Stories, and Will Evans, from Deep Vellum: each is bringing out a Russian book this year. AOS will release Oleg Pavlov’s The Matiushin Case, translated by Andrew Bromfield, this summer in the US; Matiushin is the second book in Pavlov’s Tales from the Last Days trilogy. The first book in the trilogy, known as Captain of the Steppe, was translated by Ian Appleby, and Anna Gunin is working on the third book. Deep Vellum has a collection of Mikhail Shishkin’s works, translated by various translators, coming out late this year… In looking through catalogues, I see a reissue of Michael Glenny’s translation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The White Guard on its way from Melville House as well as Ian Dreiblatt’s new translation of Nikolai Gogol’s “The Nose.” As luck would have it, I met Ian, who works at Seven Stories Press, at the Melville House booth, and thoroughly enjoyed speaking with him about Gogol, retranslation, and lots of other random things that tired translators talk about. Translators seem to enjoy cooking so I’ll mention that I also paged through a copy of The Old World Kitchen: The Rich Tradition of European Peasant Cooking and need to order a copy… On a historical note, Serhii Plokhy’s The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union will be out on in early July from Oneworld Publications, the publisher for two of my works in various stages and states of progress: Eugene Vodolazkin’s Laurus and Vadim Levental’s Masha Regina… To end on a very happy note, one of the most fun meetings during my days at and around BEA happened by chance: my translator friend and colleague Olga Bukhina introduced me to Eugene Yelchin, author and illustrator of Breaking Stalin’s Nose, a Newbery Honor Book that Olga translated into Russian (as Сталинский Нос) with Eugene. Eugene’s new book about Russia, also written for children, Arcady’s Goal, which I’m reading slowly in PDF as I wait for a paper copy, will be out this fall. I can’t believe how much emotion and subtext Eugene manages to work into relatively simple language that tells the story of a boy who’s the son of enemies of the people. Olga, who seems to know all the best places to visit and eat on any Manhattan street or avenue, brought us out-of-towners to the High Line—somehow I’d never been!—and then for snacks. A wonderful time was had by all… To end on another happy note, I also want to thank Read Russia and the Institute of Translation for some books! I just started the book known in English as Children of Rogozhin, by Nadia Guerman (the Russian book’s cover carries the title Рыбы молчат по-испански and the name Nadezhda Belen’kaia), which is about international adoption, a world I’ve seen a bit of in the US and Russia, and I enjoyed reading some of the stories in Anna Matveeva’s story collection Подожди, я умру — и приду (Hold on, I’ll Die and Come Back), a 2013 Big Book finalist. It was also great to find a copy of Masha Regina, which on my to-be-translated list, at the booth: thank you to everyone for the hospitality, events, tasty food from Mari Vanna, and books during BEA!

Disclosures: The usual, including Read Russia and publishers I've worked with.

Up Next: It remains to be seen… but probably Yuri Mamleyev’s The Sublimes.