From the Peirene Press Facebook page:
Peirene No 5, Tomorrow Pamplona, is out next month. On twitter the chat has already started:
@JosephyneT said: Just closed Tomorrow Pamplona. BRILLIANT. Practically in tears. So powerful. Will remain an unforgettable read
@parrishlantern said: I finished my copy of Tomorrow Pamplona ..Loved it, ending is really powerful & shocking
@stujallen said: Tomorrow pamplona is one hell of a ride …yet again top notch
Great comments from the early reviewers!
Just heard that the first copies of Jan van Mersbergen’s Tomorrow Pamplona, which I translated from Dutch, have arrived at the offices of Peirene Press in London. To celebrate the arrival of Peirene’s fifth book, publisher Meike Ziervogel made a Flip video of the occasion.
Happy noughth birthday, Tomorrow Pamplona!
It’s been a busy week for happenings at museums in Amsterdam. Yesterday, I was lucky enough to have a sneak preview of Temporary Stedelijk 2 at the newly reopened Stedelijk Museum, along with a few hundred other people who work with and for the museum. Very interesting to see some classic favourite pieces from the museum’s collection, out of storage for the first time in a while, including works by Mondriaan, Matisse, Malevich and a very shiny and cheeky neon by Bruce Nauman. One new acquisition I’ll definitely go back to visit is Piero Golia’s Double Tumble – completely disorienting shots of a camera freefalling from a plane, looping over and over, as the film itself loops through the room. Fantastically dizzy-making! Great to look at, but I’m glad I waited until after I’d seen it before snagging a mini-doughnut from the museum bar.
Today’s fun was a visit to the Van Gogh Museum for the launch of a new comic book by the museum and EurEducation, based on the life of Van Gogh, with a presentation of the book and book trailer, followed by a reception and signing. Comic-book artist Marc Verhaegen and writer Jan Kragt were both there, along with friends and family and everyone involved with the project, including me as the English translator. The press photographers were particularly keen to capture shots of the first copies of the comic book being presented to the youngest members of Van Gogh’s family. The Van Gogh family still maintains close links with the museum.
It’s great to see Amsterdam’s museums so vibrant and full of people. I’m just a little bit worried about the large shed that I saw on Museumplein, which appears to be announcing itself as the New Rijksmuseum. Oh, those government cuts!
One of my most interesting – and most sociable – jobs last year was translating Brecht Evens’ beautiful graphic novel Ergens waar je niet wil zijn, published by Drawn & Quarterly as The Wrong Place. Why sociable? Well, I was lucky enough to have the chance to work with two other translators, Michele Hutchison and Rhian Heppleston, which involved long chats over kitchen tables, the odd bottle of wine and even a sleepover. We also had a few rather entertaining email exchanges with the author, Brecht Evens, and the publisher, Tom Devlin, as we found ourselves discussing subjects including the finer points of terminology for body parts and the essential differences between boys and girls.
Our experiment with team translation was great fun and a fine exercise in collaboration. I’m hoping that the HepHutWat three-headed translation team will be let loose on another great book before too long.
The Wrong Place is a fine read and packed with wonderful illustrations. I was really pleased to hear that the book recently won the Prix de l’Audace at the Angoulême International Comic Festival and that Brecht’s going to be participating with his own exhibition at the Bilbolbul Comic Festival in March. The Wrong Place – seen in all the right places! Brecht’s certainly one to watch. Hmmm, wonder if he needs anything else translating…
A lovely evening at Architectura & Natura bookshop on Leliegracht in Amsterdam for the launch of Iwan Baan’s photography book Brasilia-Chandigarh: Living with Modernity, published by Lars Müller. I translated “Ex Nihilo: A Tale of Two Cities”, a beautiful and thought-provoking essay by Cees Nooteboom for the book, and it was wonderful to hear him read the original Dutch to a hushed audience in the shop.
Ah, great writing, free wine and cheesy snacks – such is the life of the freelance translator!
This article in the latest London Review of Books is a fascinating read: “Writer’s Writer and Writer’s Writer’s Writer”, Julian Barnes on Lydia Davis’s translation of Madame Bovary. Davis concludes: “So what I’m trying to do is what I think hasn’t been done, which is to create a well-written translation that’s also very close, very faithful to the French.”
MatchBoox are handmade books folded intricately into a tiny concertina that fits inside a matchbox. Authors including Ramsey Nasr, Abdelkader Benali and Joke van Leeuwen have created short, short stories for their own MatchBoox and artists have transformed their words into beautifully illustrated works of art that tuck snugly inside the box.
Xavier and Emmanuel van Leeuwe are behind this project, which has garnered international attention. The Centre Pompidou and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris have both acquired the entire MatchBoox collection and these tiny books have been exhibited in galleries and museums and are on sale in bookshops, alongside books that may be bigger, but not as beautiful.
I’m very pleased to have been involved in a newly published MatchBoox project. Italian author Rita Charbonnier wrote a story called ‘Tre giorni indimenticabili’, which I then translated into English as ‘Three Unforgettable Days’ and artist (and author) Marion Bloem then made the story into a beautiful miniature work of art. It’s one of the shorter translations I’ve worked on, but the finished book certainly makes a big impact.
Here’s what Rita had to say (in Italian) about Gli oggetti d’arte “MatchBoox”.
Rebecca Carter, Editor at Harvill Secker and the publisher of Suite Francaise, reflects on the risks and rewards of publishing in translation and the importance of choosing the right translator for the project. Interview by Liz Thomson
Just got back from the annual celebration of weird and wonderful fiction that is the British Fantasy Society’s FantasyCon – and what a grand few days it was.
For those of us who had the pleasure of not organising it (a big thumbs up to Guy Adams and the FantasyCon committee for their sterling work!), everything appeared to run like clockwork. It was a superbly busy event, with everyone jumbled together in the bar at some point or other for book launches and signing sessions or simply to spin tales of adventure on the high seas over a pint of something cold and fizzy. Okay, that last bit might be romanticising, but only ever so slightly.
One of my highlights was listening to Chaz Brenchley reading his story “2Pi” – fabulously unnerving for 10.30 on a Sunday morning. Mr Brenchley is a fine writer and his tales positively glow when he reads them aloud. I’d happily listen to him for hours.
I also picked up quite a few books at the launches and signing sessions and in the dealers’ room. I’m looking forward to The End of the Line, a collection of new horror stories set on and around the Underground. Hmm, I’ve never been that keen on the Tube anyway. I’d particularly like to thank Conrad Williams and Nicholas Royle for the very touching messages they wrote in the front of my copy of the book. Thanks, guys. I’ll treasure your words and think of them often!
More seriously, Allyson Bird and Joel Lane brought together a fantastic bunch of writers as contributors to Never Again, a unique collection of tales described as “weird fiction against fascism and racism”. Topical. Unfortunately.
Unlike previous years, I didn’t get to many panel discussions, but I made sure I was in the main room for “How Not To Get Published”. This was full of tales both entertaining and cautionary, from four people who know what they’re talking about, given their years of experience in this market: Steve Jones, Gollancz’s Jo Fletcher, Jonathan Oliver from Abaddon Books and Marc Gascoigne. The title of the session was a wee bit tongue in cheek, but there were some very clear messages in there for anyone thinking of submitting stories…
The award ceremony on Saturday evening saw some very deserving winners. As a long-time subscriber, I was particularly pleased to see Terry Martin’s Murky Depths take home the award for best magazine.
The very last talk of the Con this year was an hour with Bryan Talbot on anthropomorphism in comic books and cartoons. And what a trip he took us on! From seventeenth-century political cartoons, through Korky the Cat and Rupert Bear, to Bone and Talbot’s latest works Grandville and the soon-to-be-published Grandville: Mon Amour, he showed how artists, writers and illustrators through the years have used animals in place of humans in their stories and pictures. He also pointed out a few cunning delights in his own works. I now know where to find Rupert’s dad trimming the hedge in Grandville and what Tintin’s dog Snowy dreams about when he’s on opium.
Somehow I managed to fit in a couple of little excursions too: a short walk into town to one of my favourite comic shops Page 45 and a train ride to Chesterfield, where I finally got to see that crooked church spire (all Old Nick’s doing, apparently) and discovered the rather fabulous Cape & Cowl Comics. Owner Martin Shooter gave me some great recommendations for even more reading material, so I’m all set up for the winter months now.
Of course, any visit to Nottingham should include a trip to The Trip. The Trip to Jerusalem is England’s oldest inn – and that’s a fact (so says their website). It’s certainly the only place I’ve ever been where you can drink a pint in a cave, as it’s built into the rocks beneath Nottingham Castle. It also serves a fine selection of real ales, as seen in the Trip Mix below: three halves on a wooden board. I should point out that there were two of us tackling this particular challenge…
So, goodbye, Nottingham. You were great. Next year in Brighton!
Twitter: Laura_Wat
Tomorrow Pamplona – On Tour!
It’s great to see Tomorrow Pamplona receiving positive attention in the British press. Author Jan van Mersbergen has been keeping track of the reactions on his website.
There’s also been very nice feedback on Twitter and from bloggers. Peirene Press are even coordinating a blog tour for Tomorrow Pamplona – Jan and I popped into a number of blogs to perform one-question gigs. It’s all very rock ‘n’ roll! You can find the tour programme on the Peirene website. The latest gigs are at Notes from the North and The Hungry Reader.
Peirene set the following competition, with very strict conditions:
GIVEAWAY: Heading towards publication June 6th of Tomorrow Pamplona: A story about a boxer, about the bullrun in Pamplona. But also a road movie in book form. 4 of the 5 chapters take place in a car. Here is a picture of a car that features in the book. Give us your own road movie in three sentences (less than 30 words). Laura Watkinson, the translator of Tomorrow Pamplona, will choose her best and a runner up. The winners will receive a copy of Tomorrow Pamplona with a personal dedication from the author, Jan van Mersbergen.
I then had the very tricky task of selecting the winners. Here’s my… ahem… award-ceremony speech:
We have our winners! These submissions present some fantastically evocative road-movie scenes: the mother driving in her bra, the doofus, the flexed thumb, the tears of joy and who knows what else, the cod-Kerouac American, the passing Passats, the ocean, the silence, the tape deck, the catalyst for adventure and death. ‘Point car north’ and ‘man, machine and nowhere to go’ both suggest the start of an epic journey.
They were all great entries and I’d like to thank the nymph for the entertaining task of viewing this gripping programme of mini-movies. If Peirene’s tales are ‘Two-hour books to be devoured in a single sitting: literary cinema for those fatigued by film’, these pieces are two-minute literary snapshots to be consumed in a single gulp. So quick to take in, but not so easy to assess…
Of all the submissions, I felt that ‘A car, two guys…’ developed those literary snapshots into an elevator pitch for a full-on road movie. I admire the way the writer (who is it? I haven’t yet allowed myself to peep at the names…) adhered to the strict conditions of the contest (three sentences, no more than thirty words) and actually turned these limitations into an advantage. It’s terse and it’s tense. It packs a punch, then another punch, and another. Lots of action, even more suggestion – very Jan van Mersbergen.
My second choice has to be ‘My bitch, Banner…’ Why? It’s a powerful image, of course, but, even better than that, it’s a shaggy dog story. And everyone loves a shaggy dog story.
So I’ll just whizz down the FB page and check out the names of those winners…
And… *clears throat* … the winners are: Jamie Bulloch and Donald Gardner! Well done, both of you – and thanks to everyone for the fast and thrilling rides and reads.
Here are the winning very, very short road movies:
Jamie Bulloch: A car, two guys, the Stones, some dope, no plans. The road, the heat, no words, the past, bad blood. A chick, a lift, a fight, a knife, more blood.
Donald Gardner: My bitch, Banner, was in the driving seat. My intelligent four-footer, shaggy paws round the wheel in the early-morning M25 traffic flow. There’s a first time for everything, I thought.
Both deserving winners!
So, there’s a lot going on for Tomorrow Pamplona right now. It was a fine book to work on and it’s fascinating to see other people’s reactions to the story, both in the press and online. The social media aspect has made the whole translation and publicity process really interactive and stimulating. How wonderful to be able to reach out through your computer and talk to other people about a book you’ve worked on, while still sitting at home at your desk, with a cup of tea!