A charming Peruvian author and a celebrity translator

It’s a bit of a distant blur now, but the highlight of my last couple of weeks is definitely still the extravaganza that was the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize party in London on 26 May. This is the 4th time I’ve been now and each time I go I find myself recognising more and more faces.

As an aspiring literary translator I try to go along to as many events as I can, and the translated literature community is pretty small after all. I saw Peirene Press’s Meike Ziervogel and Christopher MacLehose and Katharina Bielenberg of MacLehose Press, all of whom I interviewed recently, and also translators Daniel Hahn and Shaun Whiteside, who will be taking part in the next live translation event at the London Review Bookshop’s World Literature Weekend in just over a week’s time. All in all, it’s like an annual reunion for people involved in translated literature, a chance to celebrate all the work that’s gone into promoting, publishing and translating international fiction over the last year.

This time I went along with a clear favourite in mind: Kamchatka by Marcelo Figueras, which I reviewed for Translated Fiction back in December. It’s a moving, bittersweet book about political oppression seen through the eyes of a child, with a great translation by Frank Wynne. So I was disappointed for a split second when head judge Boyd Tonkin announced that the winner was Red April by Peruvian author Santiago Roncagliolo (which I haven’t read…yet). However, any disappointment disappeared after seeing Roncagliolo’s sheer delight when he went on stage to collect his prize. And anyway, Red April sounds like a great novel: a thriller based in the Andes of Southern Peru, apparently influenced by both Ian McEwan and graphic novelist Alan Moore. Roncagliolo dedicated his prize to the 70,000 people killed in Peru during the country’s violent civil war, hoping that the book will help more people to know about what happened to them.

'I will keep the money,' he said. 'But this prize is for you!' As well as being a great author, he seems like a very charming guy; you can read more about him in Ruth Collins’ interview.

Of course, the really special thing about the Independent Foreign FictionPrize is the fact that the £10,000 prize is split evenly between the author and the translator. Red April’s translator Edith Grossman lives in New York and unfortunately didn’t make it over to pick up her half of the prize. I was sorry not to get to meet her. Sometimes winning the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize can be the making of a translator, but this isn’t really necessary in Grossman’s case. She’s translated Cervantes, Vargas Llosa and García Marquez and is probably the closest thing that you get to being a celebrity translator. As Roncagliolo put it, ‘normally people tell translators, oh, I hear you’re translating so-and-so’s latest book. With me, people said, oh, I hear you’re the writer of Edith Grossman’s latest book!’

On my way out I managed to get hold of the last copy of Red April left at the door, and I’m really looking forward to reading it. It’s currently sitting in pride of place on my desk as a reminder of good night out and an important prize which gives a much needed boost to fiction in translation.