As, Haruki Murakami once said, “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking”. Wednesday’s European Night was the perfect antidote to literary group-thinking — eight distinct and diverse authors from the continent speaking about and reading from work that you are unlikely to have found in last year’s Summer Reading 3-4-2. Amongst others, a Polish crime writer, a German poet, a Danish crime-genre subverter and two MacLehose authors — the sharp and laconic Paulus Hochgatterer and the effervescent Anne Swärd. And we have photos . . .
Wednesday 16 May, 6.30 — 8.30 p.m.
British Library, Conference Centre
We have two authors at this year’s European Literature Night: Anne Swärd, author of Breathless, which we published in April, and Paulus Hochgatter, author of The Sweetness of Life and The Mattress House.
The event is a great way of introducing European writers to a British audience — and similar events take place on the same night all over Europe. Last year, Diego Marani’s New Finnish Grammar was launched there, and has gone on to be shortlisted and hotly tipped for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Our own participant, Peter Terrin, will make his English-language debut in September with The Guard.
Tickets are available from the British Library: http://boxoffice.bl.uk; 01937546546
Whispers from Sweden inform us that Åsa Larsson’s Til offer at Molok (The Sacrifice to Moloch) is riding high at number one in the book charts. It is the fifth novel in Larsson’s series of Rebecca Martinsson/Anna Maria-Mella investigations. We will be publishing The Black Path, the third novel in the series, in hardback in June, and Larsson will be appearing at Bristol’s CrimeFest in May.
Meanwhile, Icelandic author Jon Kalman Stefánsson, of whose landmark trilogy only Heaven and Hell is as yet available in English, has been nominated for the Italian Premio Gregor von Rezzori – City of Florence, a literary award that honours foreign fiction, named for the author of The Snows of Yesteryear, Memoirs of an Anti-Semite and The Czar of Czernopol. Fingers crossed for Mr. Stefánsson.
This month there are no fewer than three new books from the MacLehose stable, two fiction and one non-fiction, a Goncourt winner, an Italian novel about the Sardinian Robin Hood and travelogue about a country that no longer exists . . .
Marie NDiaye must be (or perhaps have been?) the most precocious author on the MacLehose list. Her first novel was published when she was just seventeen: the story goes that legendary French publisher Jerome Lindon waited at the gates of her lycee to sign her up when the school bell rang. Since then she has become the only author to have won the Prix Medici and the Prix Goncourt, and the first black woman to win the latter (for Three Strong Women). Three Strong Women, also the winner of the Berlin International Literary Prize, is a blisteringly powerful novel about three women who almost have it all, who come so close, but end up having to fight and scrap for their very survival.
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One for the ultra-boutique MacLehose non-fiction list this. Jean-Paul Kauffmann is probably best know over here for a book about St Helena called The Dark Room at Longwood. He has a knack for writing about the worlds most obscure and esoteric reaches. A Journey to Nowhere is about a journey Kauffmann made through Courland, a once-independent kingdom that is now a part of Latvia — except that many Latvians you meet will probably scratch their heads if you mention it. Kauffmann has always been irresistibly drawn to this buffer between the Germanic and Slav worlds — not least because a former love hailed from there.
Marcello Fois is a Sardinian author and a member of a groups of Italian writers and crime writers known as “Gruppo 13″, who are particularly interested in exploring the cultural roots of their respective regions. Memory of the Abyss follows the life of the historical and legendary figure of Samuele Stochino, a Sardinian bandit and outlaw who can be thought of almost as the Sardinian Robin Hood — with Mussolini as his Sheriff of Nottingham. Fois’ Stocchino is given two “s”s, and his story — which sees him go from colonial soldier in North Africa to fighting in the First World War, to falling foul of the richest clan in his village — is to some extent . . . embellished. Stirring stuff.
Very impressed to discover, while browsing idly for online reviews, that Jewish Book Week has released the audio of thirteen of their events this February as a podcast. And the best part of it is that the events with Chochana Boukhobza (author of The Third Day) and Daša Drndić (Trieste) are two of them (the first two in fact). So, if you weren’t able to make the events at King’s Place, or you had no earthly idea they were taking place, you can still listen to the full hour’s discussion in both cases. Hats off to Jewish Book Week. Clicking the image below will take you to the podcast page.
