Timothee de Fombelle: Marsh Award Winner 2009

Timothee de Fombelle and Sarah Ardizzone arrive at the offices of Walker Books straight off the train from Cornwall, where they had led a translation workshop at the Eden Project based on de Fombelle’s Marsh Award-winning novel, Toby Alone.

The setting for the workshop was an appropriate one, for Toby Alone and its sequel Toby and the Secrets of the Tree have strong environmental themes running through them. 13-year-old Toby is one and a half millimetres tall. His scientist father, Sim, proves that the tree that is their world is alive, but his groundbreaking discovery puts him in conflict with the despotic property developer Joe Mitch, who seeks to exploit the tree for his own gain regardless of the cost.

Toby’s parents are imprisoned but the boy escapes, and the two books recount Toby’s years as a fugitive in and around the tree, and his struggle to rescue his parents and the tree before both are destroyed.

Toby Alone has already been translated into 24 languages and de Fombelle is in discussions with two producers about possible film adaptations.

Both author and translator have a background in the theatre, which has undoubtedly contributed to the book’s strong dialogue and the ease with which the transition to film can be imagined.

Although he is surprised by the success of his debut novel, which has been described as a cross between The Borrowers and Animal Farm, de Fombelle confesses that he secretly had high hopes for it.

I was really alone, with no publishing house. I had this story to tell. But writing the story I knew that there was something a little classic in this story. I decided to protect this classic thing in the book.

'Sometimes I wanted to make little winks to actual things, like reality TV. But I told myself: “No. Reality TV will be dead in 10 years, but your book must stay longer.” So perhaps sometimes I was attentive to have something that lasted. I don’t like books that are like handkerchiefs, you can throw them out. In France we think about sustainable development. Sustainable literature is what I want to write and it’s what I want people to read.’

As a child, the author spent many happy hours exploring the outdoors and he knew instinctively that his first book would be set in a tree. ‘I wanted a real place – a place that I love and that I know,’ he explains. ‘First came the place, then the big rules of the story: having small characters to make nature magic.’ He immersed himself in the setting while writing the book.

A lot of chapters were written under a tree in the south of France or the west of France. I would put my nose on the trunk of the tree to see the canyons.

In order to keep track of the huge cast of characters and the multiple plot threads, he literally mapped out the links between characters and settings, but he left space in the writing process for his creations to surprise him.

‘I didn’t have a psychological profile of each character. I wanted to discover them during the action. I didn’t want to limit it. When I write plays I always have a little thing, which is not to forget the character in the corner – every character has their part to play. It was the same here. I didn’t want to forget one character. Everyone has a destiny.’

For translator Sarah Ardizzone, the fact that Toby Alone is a work of fantasy removed some of the hurdles that often occur when translating a work set in another culture. ‘We didn’t have to deal with many issues about France in this because it’s set in a tree, so it could be anywhere. But we had a very distinctive author’s voice with a real, infectious enthusiasm for these characters, and there was a real dynamism coming from that. My job was to keep that going.’

It’s Timothee’s voice, but in a different culture and a different language. I needed to keep the author’s voice and ensure that for a British audience it’s still a fast, compelling read. It’s got this big sweep of epic, but it’s a very easy read in the sense that it’s not overly dense.

'There are time lag issues, but it flows. So I needed to recreate that experience. What I’m most proud of is that it’s a story that’s really alive and really compelling and is true to Timothee, but it’s completely open to a UK readership and they wouldn’t have been able to read it otherwise.’

'I needed to keep the author’s voice and ensure that for a British audience it’s still a fast, compelling read'

Ardizzone worked with the book’s editor at Walker, Jane Winterbotham, and her assistant editor Helen Thomas, on details of wording as well as larger structural issues. ‘There were aspects where we felt that for a British readership it would be more of a cliffhanger if we ended it there or started it here. Our sense of dramatic timing might be slightly different from the French, so we might want to shunt it slightly.’

At some level, translation is a collaborative art, so particularly on something like this that needs a lot of help with story boarding and keeping it on track, it works very well in a group situation - being precious about it in the right way, holding onto the stuff that’s very dear to you and at the same time being very open about seeing how you can get the best book out of it.

One significant change made to the British version was the title. The French original is called Tobie Lolness and the sequel Elisha’s Eyes. De Fombelle has mixed feelings about the alterations, particularly to the second book – Elisha is the name of his young daughter – but accepts the reasons the changes were necessary for a British readership.

‘For us, Lolness is a fantastic name, but it’s a fantastical name,’ explains Ardizzone. ‘Nobody knows Timothee to begin with, nobody knows the Toby character to begin with, so you want something that’s going to be memorable and that’s going to draw you in.

'For the second book, we had worked hard to get an audience for Toby so we wanted to keep Toby, but show that it was heading off in a different direction. You have to get this character on people’s radar.’

Although the book tackles serious issues such as racism and environmental destruction, de Fombelle keeps the tone light and avoids burdening readers with too many weighty messages.

‘I wanted to take my reader with me,’ he says. ‘A suitcase mustn’t be too heavy to come with me. Young readers have a lot of temptations. They are very busy with their lives, with TV and video games and all that. So because I wanted them to come with me through the story it was really natural for me to be light, light. So the main thing was my story and the destiny of my characters.’

If de Fombelle has an obvious attachment to his characters, this is in large part because many of them are based on himself and his family.

'I put a lot of personal things in this book', he admits. ‘In your first novel you write about your problems, your loves, and here I wanted something very generous and very far from my life, but there’s a lot of my life in this book. There are a lot of escapes from prison. My grandfather was in jails in Germany during the war.

Ever since I was three or four he told me about his escapes in the car when we went to the countryside. He told me, “When you are in prison your mission is to escape.” I thought I would be in prison one day! When you are six that’s really something.

‘Yesterday I talked with Sarah about my sister, who was adopted. She is Indian and she’s French. When I invented the character of Mano, who has problems with his family, it was exactly when my sister has problems with us.

'Four brothers and one sister, and her fight is to say “I’m different from you, and I want to be different.” So she made everything different, so there were problems. When I reread my book, it’s full of personal things…Democracy too.

There were a lot of things in France – Le Pen and the extreme right – when I was writing my book. I wrote very personal plays - very dense and very intimate - but they’re less intimate than the book.

Although some French critics felt that the ending was too optimistic, the author is unapologetic. ‘I wanted something soft, gentle, and I wanted windows open about hope. When I invented the main characters I first wrote “T”, like Timothee, then Tobie. I wanted to recognise myself in this character. I wanted him to be happy at the end, as I wanted to be happy.’