Find out what's new on our websites, where we've been, what's on our minds and the things we're doing.
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The Man Booker stronglist
Posted Wednesday July 29th 2009
by James SmithThe longlist for the Man Booker Prize was announced last night. It's an embarrassment of riches: novels by Hilary Mantel, JM Coetzee, AS Byatt, Colm Toíbín, and William Trevor for starters, with the addition of some of the finest young writers currently gracing the shelves of your local bookshop – and a ‘biography’ of Tarzan’s simian friend Cheeta, to boot.
I’m particularly pleased to see authors who have won – or been shortlisted for, or judged – Booktrust prizes in the past. Sarah Hall, who won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2007 for The Carhullan Army (the same title that – inexplicably in our view – never made the Man Booker list that year) and was a judge for the prize in 2008, has been longlisted for the wonderful How to Paint a Dead Man; Sarah Waters was a judge for JLR in 2005 – her books are hugely popular among Booktrust staff; Adam Foulds was shortlisted for JLR last year for The Broken Word, his narrative poem about the Mau-Mau uprising; and Samantha Harvey was shortlisted for the Orange Prize (which is administered by Booktrust) and makes the Man Booker longlist for the same book.
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Further despatch from the translation summer school
Posted Monday July 27th 2009
by James SmithFollowing an intense day of head-scratching in the translation workshops, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the students at the BCLT translation summer school would have retired to the bar for the evening to discuss nothing more taxing than which drink to order.
Not a bit of it. On the day I was there, we traded the workshops for the lecture theatre to hear Piotr Kuhiwczak (until very recently Associate Professor at the University of Warwick) ask the question ‘Is Trauma Translatable?’ Using autobiographical narratives such as Ariel Dorfman’s Heading South, Looking North and Binjamin Wilkorminski’s discredited Fragments, alongside a screened excerpt from Claude Lanzman’s harrowing nine-hour documentary Shoah, Kuhiwczak questioned whether traumatic narratives could be communicated across cultural and linguistic boundaries. In the case of Shoah, we saw the testimony of the rural Poles translated twice: vocalised as French by an interpreter, and subsequently translated into English for the subtitles. Kuhiwczak also highlighted a third level of translation, which would have taken place as the Jews on the transports attempted to interpret the gestures made by the Poles.
A much-needed hour’s break later, we regrouped for dinner, after which the workshop leaders told us how they had got…
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Tis the season to be translating ...
Posted Friday July 24th 2009
by James SmithThe British Centre for Literary Translation’s summer school at the University of East Anglia gives experienced and budding translators the opportunity to work with authors and other translators in language-specific workshops. The week-long residential course also includes seminars, lectures and panel discussions.
I went up to Norwich for a day and a night to get more of an idea of how the summer school operates, and was struck first and foremost by the dedication of those attending: the students (for want of a better word), the workshop leaders, the visiting authors and the organisers.
The workshops are the core of the summer school’s activity. This year, BCLT offered Chinese, French, German and Spanish into English; and English into Italian. The groups, ranging from five to twelve in number, work with an experienced translator to translate passages of a book in the source language, the author of which takes part in the sessions. Flitting from workshop to workshop, I was interested to discover that each group worked in similar and yet different ways.
The German group, run by Shaun Whiteside, was concentrating on a novel called Café Cyprus by Yadé Kara. At times it was like sitting in the heart of…
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Books for summer
Posted Tuesday July 14th 2009
by James SmithDespite the odd rainstorm, Britain really does seem to be settling into the season traditionally known as summer. Which means holidays. Which means holiday reading time!
We’ve put together a couple of lists of recommendations for you – one of children’s books with a summery theme, and one of novels, short stories and non-fiction for adults. These are all books that we have loved over the past year or so and will continue to love and which, moreover, are beautifully written and (in some cases) illustrated.
For children, we recommend stunningly illustrated picture books about a teddy bear lost on the beach; a menagerie’s outing to the seaside; fun and frolics with a dog and his crocodile friend; a magic shell; and Michael Foreman’s story of life, death and seals. For older children, there are tales of eccentric sisters holidaying on the Arundel estate; Greek gods living in New York; the sisterhood of the travelling pants; Jacqueline Wilson’s sequel to Cliffhanger; and a more serious tale about family tragedy in Cornwall.
Adults can choose between short fiction set in Pakistan or Wales or a strange city plagued by ‘animal rain’; novels set in Holland, Australia, the USA and…
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Interview with Salena Godden
Posted Thursday July 9th 2009
by Nikesh ShuklaSalena Godden is a shamanistic tour de force, a charismatic, funny and poignant performer, an evocative and emotive writer [would you believe, editing this interview moved me to tears?] and someone who aligns themselves with the best literary talent in the country, providing them a stage to perform and a free space for audiences to engage with them at Monday night's Soho dive bar Book Club Boutique.
Salena is currently working on her first book, a memoir called Springfield Road out in 2010. She has been featured in Punk Fiction, as well as other mainstream and art house literary magazines and anthologies. She occupies a space somewhere between the dreamworld and reality, a sense of realism dipped in mystique, often humourous and always relevant. She has taken Book Club Boutique from a drunken idea in a pub to the most relevant literary night in London, and she is always busy. Which is why this interview is only a small insight into her myriad brain and her process as a writer. Read on, then seek her out.
>Why do you read?
I found books a great way to escape as a kid. If my family caught me…
