issue 34 - New Books in German

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Katharina Hartwell Das Fremde Meer (The Strange Sea) Berlin Verlag, July 2013, 567pp. ISBN: 978-3-8270-1137-4 A fairytale existence Katharina Hartwell is a thoughtful and ambitious writer with a gift for story-telling. Her deftly written first novel is a pleasingly original tale with a potentially tragic love story at its heart that slips from a recognisable present into an imaginative realm. Marie is an unusually worried child with the exception of some early childhood years spent at her grandparents’ home with its large, wild garden and the woods beyond. There she was a fearless leader in the games with local children, urging them to climb trees to the top and make the most of their freedom. When the family moves back to the city Marie finds it difficult to make friends. She falls into a solitary bookish existence and resigns herself to the fact that a quiet academic life may be the one for her. Fearful of change and anything unpredictable, Marie convinces herself that it is possible to avoid catastrophe and disaster just by expecting those things. But when Marie falls deeply in love with Jan, a photography student, she discovers that she simply cannot prepare herself for every eventuality. One evening Jan is knocked off his bike by a car. He is seriously injured and falls into a coma. Marie struggles to find a way to encourage him back to life until her imagination comes into its own, weaving stories just for him in which he will recognise the two of them as characters and which always end with the promise of reunion and salvation. These stories are a rich mix of science fiction and fairytale: the princess rescuing the prince, the beautiful tarot card reader rescuing the ‘ghost-boy’ from the circus, the mysterious stranger in the belly of the ship that delivers souls to the land of the dead who rescues those she feels do not belong there. The sea in The Strange Sea comes to symbolise life itself, its capricious nature and the challenge of navigating it intact. Each tale features a heroine whose name begins with ‘M’ and a young man whose name begins with ‘J’ or ‘Y’, and each one shares a narrative of separation followed by an eventual reunion. The reader does not realise until the end of the novel what role these made-up stories play in the ‘real’ story of Marie and Jan. The Strange Sea exhibits a skilfully light touch and a delightfully rich vocabulary which guarantees a diverting reading experience. A sample translation of this title is available on the NBG website Application for assistance with translation costs: Germany (see page 40) © Tobias Bohm Katharina Hartwell was born in Cologne in 1984 and read English and American Studies, graduating with distinction. A student at the Leipzig Institute for Literature since 2010, she published a collection of short stories, Im Eisluftballon (‘In the Frozen-Air Balloon’). Katharina Hartwell has won numerous writer’s grants and prizes. Translation rights available from: Berlin Verlag Hedemannstraße 14 10969 Berlin, Germany Contact: Hanna Dürholt Tel: +49 (0)89 381 801 735 Email: hanna.duerholt@berlinverlag.de www.berlinverlag.de ‘A love story so grand and beautiful and sad that one really must try to save it with all means and genres literature can offer.’ – Spiegel online ‘A sublime debut. Magical and disturbing.’ – NDR ‘Gripping, often tragic, and – not least – delightfully consequential.’ – Zeit online Berlin Verlag was founded in 1994 as an independent publishing house and publishes approximately forty titles per year. The list combines international and German literary fiction and a non-fiction program. Several young German authors have made a successful publishing debut with Berlin Verlag, and many authors are internationally renowned prize-winners. Berlin Verlag has been part of the Bonnier Group since 2012. ‘She delivers a daring but convincing debut. (…) Having finished reading, admiration prevails for this high-wire act that wants to prove at all costs what literature can do – if it dares to leave its secure loopholes.’ – Deutschlandradio 12 DEBUTS
Amanda DeMarco, publisher of Readux, talks to NBG The Back Story Amanda DeMarco worked in publishing in the United States before moving to Germany in 2009. Being based in Berlin gave her both the creative impetus and the financial freedom to create start-up publisher Readux, whose first four books were announced in July and will be launched this October. Amanda was also inspired by her work with Swedish short-form publisher Novellix, who publish four high quality books every quarter, each of around thirty pages long. Amanda loved the concept, and decided to adopt a similar model for Readux. The Format Readux will publish essays and stories of between 5,000 and 10,000 words in length, mainly in translation. Its books will be released in sets of four, three times a year, and each set will include one text by an English-language writer. This decision has been made ‘very consciously’, says Amanda, who wants people to think of Readux books as great texts in their own right, whether they are translations or not. Readux aims to give readers access to a wealth of texts which are currently not being published because they are too long to appear in magazines but too short to be novellas: ‘The format is perfect for right now,’ says Amanda. Readux books are affordable and can be read in one sitting, either electronically or in print; the printed books are designed to be beautiful objects that people will want to own. There is no shortage of talented designers in Berlin, as Amanda points out, and the striking covers of the first four books are certainly proof of this. The bold, vibrant designs are the work of André Gottschalk, an award-winning Berlin-based illustrator. The Books Thanks to its location in Berlin and its collaboration with Novellix, Readux has strong ties to both German and Swedish literature; one of its four October titles is translated from Swedish and two are translated from German. Living in Berlin makes Amanda’s relationship with German literature very different from what it would have been had she stayed in the US. She is able to meet authors in person, understand the social conditions from which their books arise, and keep up with developments in the German literary scene as they happen. Because of this – and because the texts are short and therefore quick to translate – Readux is able to publish translations hot on the heels of original texts (two of the three translated texts due to be released in October were also published in their original languages in 2013). The Translators Amanda is herself a translator from German and has translated one of the titles in Readux’s October selection, the essay In Berlin by Franz Hessel. Another of the titles, The Marvel of Biographical Bookkeeping (‘a great story, very readable, formally very unusual and innovative’) was translated by Katy Derbyshire, who Amanda met through an And Other Stories reading group the two ran together in Berlin. Translators have given Amanda many ‘wonderful suggestions’ for texts to add to Readux’s list in the future. The Future Readux books will be available online, via subscription and in bookshops in Germany, the UK and the US. One of Amanda’s main aims in the long term is to build up Readux’s distribution network, and she also hopes eventually to be able to publish more than three sets of books a year. She is optimistic about the future, pointing out that a number of small presses set up in recent years have helped to cultivate a readership with an interest in translated literature. There is much more awareness and discussion of literature in translation now than there was five years ago, she says, which is great news for Readux and other publishers like it. With such an interesting line-up already announced, NBG is looking forward to seeing what exciting new titles Readux will have to offer in 2014. Interview with Romy Fursland. NBG interviews the translator Jamie Bulloch How did you get into translation and how has your career developed? Have you worked closely with any particular publishers? It had not been my original intention to become a translator, but when my attempts to secure a full-time academic career as a historian were thwarted I started to consider it as a serious option. My first commission for a literary translation was awarded on the basis of a sample I had been asked to prepare for the publisher. Since then I have been fortunate to be in regular work, enjoying good contacts with a number of publishers, including Atlantic, Peirene Press and MacLehose Press. What have been your most enjoyable translation projects? My wife and I co-translated two novels by Daniel Glattauer – Love Virtually and its sequel, Every Seventh Wave – both in email format, for which I translated the male character and she the female one. We then spent many evenings editing the text together until we were happy with the finished product. I’m currently working on Timur Vermes’ Er ist wieder da, a hugely entertaining satire on modern German life seen through the eyes of a resurrected Adolf Hitler. I have just finished the first draft and now my task is to inject life into the English text and render it as funny as the German original. Do you get in touch with the living writers you translate? To be able to translate a phrase successfully, you really need to be able to understand it down to the most basic detail. There is no better substitute for achieving this than consulting the person who wrote it in the first place. With Er ist wieder da, I actually had the great fortune to spend a week in Germany with the author and eleven other translators of the novel, working with languages ranging from Chinese to Macedonian. We sat around a large table and discussed the book page by page, addressing every query. It was quite an experience. Do you tend to translate one book at a time, or have several projects on the go at once? What are you working on at the moment? I will only translate one book at a time, but in the middle of one job you will frequently receive queries from an editor regarding a previous translation, so in that sense you can be working on a number of books simultaneously. As I mentioned, I am working on the Timur Vermes satire at present. In the pipeline I have another novel by Daniel Glattauer as well as Jörg Fauser’s classic Rohstoff, which has been reissued in Germany to great acclaim. Which book(s) would you still like to translate? One great book which I loved when I read it a few years ago was Kristof Magnusson’s Das war ich nicht, featuring a translator as one of the main protagonists! Do you have a favourite translated work by somebody else? I particularly enjoyed Umberto Eco’s Prague Cemetery and am sure that Richard Dixon’s fine translation had a lot to do with that. But – and I know that this is a very unoriginal choice – my favourite would have to be the Asterix books translated by Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge. I remember the disbelief I felt when I discovered that these had not been written in English originally. They are prime examples of the confident, risk-taking, creative approach which all translators need to adopt if we are to convince the wider Anglophone public that foreign literature is worth reading. What advice would you give to new translators? For those trying to get a foot on the ladder, I would write to those publishers who do include translated literature in their lists, and offer to become a reader for them. The pay for this will be virtually non-existent, but it will establish contact between you and commissioning editors, and you might just be in the right place at the right time when one of your favourable reports on a book arouses some interest. Likewise, I would offer to produce sample translations. There are many instances where a publisher buys a book and only then embarks on the quest to find a suitable translator for it. Interview with Jenny Watson. interviews 13
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Page 3 and 4: Dear Reader, It is a real pleasure
Page 5 and 6: Helene Hegemann Jage zwei Tiger (Hu
Page 7 and 8: Ralph Dutli Soutines letzte Fahrt (
Page 9 and 10: The Amazon’s Writer-in-Residence
Page 11 and 12: Sarah Stricker Fünf Kopeken (Five
Page 13: Stefanie de Velasco Tigermilch (Tig
Page 17 and 18: Markus Ramseier Vogelheu (Birds’
Page 19 and 20: Anna Weidenholzer Der Winter tut de
Page 21 and 22: Juli Zeh - Fighting the Tide Dear G
Page 23 and 24: A selection of books in English tra
Page 25 and 26: Ann Cotten Der schaudernde Fächer
Page 27 and 28: Judith W. Taschler Die Deutschlehre
Page 29 and 30: © Thorsten Greve Writer and transl
Page 31 and 32: Finn-Ole Heinrich / Rán Flygenring
Page 33 and 34: Johanna Rosen Liberty Bell. Das Mä
Page 35 and 36: Martin Mittelmeier Adorno in Neapel
Page 37 and 38: Jennifer Teege, Nikola Sellmair Amo
Page 39 and 40: Katharina Diel-Gligor, Wolfgang Gr
Page 41 and 42: José F. A. Oliver has been hailed
Page 43 and 44: Issue 34 - The Editorial Committee

issue 34 - New Books in German

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