Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Found in Translation: Booktrust puts the world into World Book Day

http://www.translatedfiction.org.uk/

The reading charity Booktrust will be giving away 25,000 copies of their guide to a selection of the best translated fiction in celebration of World Book Day on Thursday 5 March.

The giveaway is the latest development in the charity’s mission to get more people to explore and enjoy fiction from other countries. Booktrust has championed the cause of translated fiction since 2006 with the creation of the first UK-based website solely for fiction in translation.

The aim of the guide is to raise the profile of translated novels, encourage readers to try something different and to celebrate the authors and translators who work so hard to bring these books to an English-speaking readership.
The free guides will be available from more than 1000 independent booksellers and Foyles bookshops across the UK.
Thirteen titles are featured and reviewed in the guide as examples of the very best in translated fiction.

These are:

The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa; translated by Daniel Hahn (Arcadia) – Portuguese
The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany; translated by Humphrey Davies (Harper Perennial) – Arabic
Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida edited by Robert Chandler; translated by Robert Chandler et al (Penguin) – Russian
Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang; translated by the author and Karen S Kingsbury (Penguin) – Chinese
Agamemnon’s Daughter by Ismail Kadare; translated from a French translation of the original Albanian by David Bellos (Canongate) – Albanian/French
Out by Natsuo Kirino; translated by Stephen Snyder (Vintage) – Japanese
Nada by Carmen Laforet; translated by Edith Grossman (Vintage) – Spanish
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson; translated by Anne Born (Vintage) – Norwegian
The Engineer of Human Souls by Josef Škvorecký; translated by Paul Wilson (Dalkey Archive Press) – Czech
Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o; translated by the author (Vintage) – Gĩkũyũ
The Collector of Worlds by Iliya Troyanov; translated by William Hobson (Faber) – German The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vásquez; translated by Anne McLean (Bloomsbury) – Spanish (South America)
Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide to World Fiction, edited by Vincent Cassar and Nik Kalinowski (A&C Black) – reference

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