21 May 2008
U.S. Publishers Work to Correct Literary “Trade Imbalance”
Reading the World program promotes translated works for U.S. audience
Washington -- The lyrical testimony of a Palestinian exile, a harsh growing-up tale set in a war-torn Beirut, four contemporary works from China and new translations of two major world classics are just a few among 25 foreign literature titles that make up this year’s Reading the World list put together by a group of U.S. publishers and booksellers.
The initiative was born in 2005 at the Book Expo, the annual gathering of representatives of the U.S. book industry. “There was a conversation among various booksellers about a need to promote international literature through their stores,” said one of the project’s chief organizers, publisher Chad Post. “We got 10 publishers together and all those independent stores and hooked them up. It is not every independent bookstore in the country, but a good chunk of them.”
For the last three years, each of the 10 participating publishers selected two recent books translated from a foreign language. The project’s artist, Peter Sis, designed promotional brochures and posters for some 240 participating booksellers, who displayed them, together with the selected books, in their stores during the month of June. This year, booksellers were asked to pick an additional five titles, mostly from small “niche” publishers.
“I think that many Americans see these books as challenging and difficult,” said another Reading the World organizer, Karl Pohrt of Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
But he said this is exactly why Americans should be exposed to other cultures and sensibilities. “Just by the process of reading you imaginatively enter into the experience of another people, you get inside somebody else’s head,” said Pohrt.
PORTAL INTO CULTURES
This year’s list includes new English translations of Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, published by Ecco Press and Knopf, respectively. The other selections are works by authors of modern classics, like Stefan Zweig of Austria, Robert Walser of Switzerland and or Victor Serge of Russia; by living literary stars, like German Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass; and by an array of lesser-known names from around the world.
For example, the list features Celestial Harmonies (Ecco Press), a chronicle of the famous European Esterházy clan by its scion, Hungarian writer Peter Esterházy; Life Laid Bare (Other Press), by French journalist Jean Hatzfeld, who has gathered startling first-person testimonies of the survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide; Yalo, by Elias Khoury (Archipelago Books), a violent, surreal story of a young gang member from Beirut; and So What, by Palestinian author Taha Muhammad Ali (Copper Canyon Press), a bilingual collection of poems that shows how imagination and humor can transform the bitterness of exile into art of the highest order.
“Literature is an excellent portal into culture,” said Susan Harris, editorial director of the online magazine Words Without Borders, which highlights literature in translation and serves as an advocacy channel and a resource for translators and publishers. “Great literature is both universal and specific,” she said, lamenting what she calls a “trade imbalance” between English-language literatures and literatures of the rest of the world.
TRADE IMBALANCE
While about 50 percent of books in translation published around the world are translated from English, fewer than 3 percent are translated into English, according to Harris. The American book market, in particular, is so saturated with original English-language output that “there is not much impetus to read another language,” she said.
The effort to bring more balance into international literary “trade” was at the root of the Reading the World initiative. There is a widespread opinion among American book publishers that translations do not sell, said Post. “I think that part of that is wrong, inaccurate,” he said. “Readers do want to read literature in translation and they aren’t afraid of it.”
Jonathan Galassi, editor in chief at the Farrar, Straus and Giroux publishing house, agrees. He says a book in translation unexpectedly can find its moment and reach a sizable audience. For example, he said, an avant-garde novel like The Savage Detectives, by the late Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, sold some 40,000 copies in the United States.
“It has to be a book for which the way has been prepared somehow, so that there is a readiness on the part of the audience,” Galassi said. “If it is too early, it falls on deaf ears.”
CHINA IS BLOWING OPEN
For instance, there is a growing awareness among American publishers and readers about what is happening in contemporary Chinese literature, Galassi said. He cited the presence of no less than four books from China on this year’s Reading the World list.
His own house, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is offering Beijing Coma, by Ma Jian, a Chinese author who lives in London. It is a witty, poetic story of a young man who goes into a coma after being shot during the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests and wakes up in today’s China of hectic economic activity and buried social tensions.
Two other Chinese novels on the list -- Serve the People!, by Yan Lianke (Grove/Atlantic Inc.), and The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, by Wang Anyi (Columbia University Press) -- take a sharp, often satirical look at China’s pre- and post-revolutionary years.
The nonfiction book The Corpse Walker, by Liao Yiwu (Knopf), features interviews with people at the bottom of Chinese society: a professional mourner, a public- toilet manager, a former Red Guard and an illegal border crosser, all of whom manage to retain their dignity under trying circumstances.
“China is blowing open, with a lot of books being translated -- those written inside China and by the expatriate community,” said Karl Pohrt.
RIDING THE MOMENT
Galassi agrees that U.S. readers are ready for those and similar books from other cultures -- “not as many as we would love to have, but the process of translation continues at a very regular pace,” he said.
Reading the World organizers admit that a lot remains to be done, but they point to a growing number of initiatives and events aimed at promoting foreign literature in the United States, including Words Without Borders, which publishes a series of anthologies of new writing from all over the world, and the World Voices festival sponsored by the PEN American Center.
“I feel like we are all riding a certain moment when everyone thought it was important to start looking at international literature to get this new infusion of style, of writers, and bring them to the attention of American authors and readers,” Post said.
For more information, visit the Web sites of Reading the World, Words Without Borders and PEN American Center World Voices.
