February Update: Megan McDowell Wins Premio Valle Inclán

First off, thanks to anyone reading this. You care about literature, and you are a good person, and writing this the day after Valentine’s Day, it’s safe to say I love you. Love y’all. Love each and every one of you.

Second, to honor all the book lovers out there, we’ve put every book and ebook in our webstore on sale, so buy lots of books from us, or subscribe for 10 books so we can put your name in the back of all of those upcoming books we print/sell forevermore!

Next, congratulations to Megan McDowell on winning the Society of Authors‘ Premio Valle Inclán Prize on Wednesday night for the best translation from the Spanish in 2018, for Atlantic Books‘ UK edition of Lina Meruane‘s Seeing Red! The judges had this to say about Megan’s translation and Lina’s exceptional work:

Seeing Red raises difficult questions about the line between love, pity, and sacrifice. Yet, there is a strain of dark humour running through the novel, including word play which rewards multiple readings. The distinctive style of the novel evokes Lina’s trauma, with sentences cut off mid-thought. Translator Megan McDowell expertly captures Meruane’s voice, making the brave decision not to make the text easier for an English reader.

Read about the news in The Bookseller and at Women in Translation, and congratulations to all the other translators who won prizes at the ceremony!

Here’s some awesome reviews & attention the books have been getting out there in the land of the living. As always, thanks for reading, reviewing, discussing, sharing, and thinking about what we do. If you have ideas and want to share, or want a review copy, don’t hesitate to email me!

REVENGE OF THE TRANSLATOR

“MUSLIM” A NOVEL

  • Recommended and reviewed in Words Without Borders February 2019 Watchlist by Tobias Carroll (2-11-19)

    • “‘I was born into a minor language and escaped from a distant nowhere that didn’t want me,’ Zahia Rahmani writes in this chronicle of the numerous forms isolation can take—and the numerous ways that identity can be both claimed and projected onto someone. This novel is brief in length, but Rahmani’s approach to it allows for a constant mutability of its form and a series of limitless stylistic renewals.”

  • Part of the New York Times Globetrotting feature on upcoming 2019 translations

  • Included in Translated Lit’s Most Anticipated Books of February 2019

GEOGRAPHY OF REBELS TRILOGY

MEPHISTO’S WALTZ 

  • The Southwest Review review by Robert Rea 

    • “A dizzying and, at times, disorienting read, yet surely this is what caused Pitol to light up an already-lit Latin scene . . . Pitol’s biggest leaps forward—nesting stories inside one another, analyzing his writing like a critic, blurring the line between life and art—test the limits of what bookfolk today like to call autofiction . . . Together, the fragments add up to a broad snapshot of a time and place and, in hindsight, make the narrative gymnastics of Bolaño seem inevitable.”

NOT ONE DAY

  • Book Marks (Lit Hub) feature “Tainted Love” on four reads for Valentine’s Day, written by Heather Cleary

    • “What is so extraordinary about Garréta’s take on the confessional is the way her formidable intellect braids eros and philosophy together: the women are (di)splayed in alphabetically-ordered vignettes written—and translated—with breathtaking precision and bite. The lovers, for the most part, slip intentionally out of focus, but the desire (or in some cases, the lack thereof) that drives each encounter is always drawn with the clearest of lines. It is ultimately this desire, and the act of remembering, itself, that seem to be the true protagonists of this indispensable, bracing parade. From B*, with her “sensual proclivity for analysis,” to D*, a “typically desirable woman, you saw her in and through the eyes of others,” and H*, “a siren fastened to her chosen rock,” the accumulation pushes us toward the conclusion that the discovery of the other is always also, or perhaps only, a discovery of oneself.”

BANTHOLOGY: STORIES FROM BANNED NATIONS

THE CURIOUS CASE OF DASSOUKINE’S TROUSERS

  • Words Without Borders interviews translator Emma Ramadan about translating the humor of Fouad Laroui!

    • “The situations are absurd but also believable because of the systems in place in countries like Morocco, and therein lies the humor, which I think translates. One thing about Fouad’s humor is that it requires a certain understanding of the world, of what life might be like in other countries. But I think your average reader of short stories in translation is someone familiar with, or at least interested in, other countries and cultures—someone with an open mind and the ability to imagine.”

Reminder, here’s a list of some of the amazing upcoming books we have coming out, subscribe today & receive any of our backlist books or get these books as they come out (with your name included in the subscriber acknowledgments at the back of every book printed!). Get any 10 books for $100 or any 5 for $60! A great deal!

  • “Muslim” A Novel by Zahia Rahmani (Algeria/France), translated by Matt Reeck (subscribers should get their copies before the end of February!!)

  • Blood Sisters by Kim Yideum (South Korea), translated by Ji Yoon Lee

  • The Golden Goblet: Selected Poems by Goethe (Germany), translated by Zsuzsanna Ozsváth & Frederick Turner

  • Honey, I Killed the Cats by Dorota Masłowska (Poland), translated by Benjamin Paloff

  • Life Went on Anyway: Stories by Oleg Sentsov (Ukraine), translated by Uilleam Blacker

  • Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River by Jung Young Moon (South Korea), translated by Yewon Jung

  • The Love Story of the Century by Märta Tikkanen (Finland), translated by Stina Khatchadourian

  • Girls Lost by Jessica Schiefauer (Sweden), translated by Saskia Vogel

  • The Tool and the Butterflies by Dmitry Lipskerov (Russia), translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes & Isaac Wheeler

  • Dans l’beton (translated title TBD) by Anne Garréta (France), translated by Emma Ramadan

NewsWIll Evans