Serge Joncour's panorama of rural life in late 20thC France won the Prix Femina in 2020 and was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award in an English translation by Louise Rogers Lalaurie. It's set at Les Bertranges, a family farm deep in the south-west. Opening with the long hot summer of 1976, and closing with the cataclysmic storm of December 31 1999, the novel takes an affectionate look back at the period - Mitterand's presidential campaign, the eco-protests on the Larzac plateau, Chernobyl - with climate alarm bells ringing in the background. Alexandre is set to inherit the family farm, a yoke he assumes unquestioningly. The route of a new motorway poses an existential threat, but his love for a German student from behind the Wall, and the attentions of her eco-terrorist friends may prove his biggest challenge yet.

BUY THE BOOK: https://guardianbookshop.com/human-nature-9781913547196/

"An outstanding, big, compassionate novel... BY telling the stoery of days gone by, Joncour makes us reflect on those yet to come." Le Figaro.

Translator bio
Louise Rogers Lalaurie is a writer and translator from French, with a focus on art, fiction, and travel.

Author bio
Serge Joncour (b. 1961) is the author of 18 acclaimed novels, including three titles translated into English: Human Nature (2022), Wild Dog (2020) and Lean On Me (2022).

Sophia Merwald’s award-winning debut (Alfred Döblin Prize 2025) is a fiercely idiosyncratic novel about queer kinship, anti-establishment homemaking, and the precarious construction of safety. With fairy-tale logic and postmodern mythmaking, it creates a world where utopia and threat sit side by side, and where the most intimate forms of care are constantly tested by memory, violence, and the pressure of the outside world. ‘Outsize’ is not a straightforward realist narrative. It is stranger than that, deliberately surreal, and committed to building its own language. Its voice-led fiction, queer domestic mythologies, and playful forms carry real emotional weight and make it a distinctive, unsettling, and oddly tender read.

Translator bio

Rob Myatt translates into his native English (UK and US) from German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, Polish and Luxembourgish, specialising in legal, ESG, finance, marketing, culture and literary texts.
He is a Qualified Member (MITI) of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, an Intermediate Member of the Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders, and a member of DELT (the Association of Danish-English Literary Translators). His work was recognised with the Goethe-Institut Translation Award 2023. His website is https://polyglotliterature.co.uk/.

Author bio
Sophia Merwald studied Journalism and Film and Media Culture and works as a freelance journalist. Sperrgut (‘Outsize’) is her first novel, and received several awards before even being published, including the Alfred Döblin Prize. She lives and works in Munich.

For rights info contact: Contact: Annemarie Blumenhagen // rights@ullstein-buchverlage.de // Phone +49 (0)30 23456 450

The translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and to share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.

THE POWERLESSNESS OF INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE - THE RETURN OF WAR AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

https://www.new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/the-powerlessness-of-international-law/

With the Nuremberg Trials, a new chapter in the history of international law began after the Second World War. And after the Cold War, a rule-based world order appeared realistic.
However, this is not the reality of the early 21st century – international law appears to be in ruins, brute force seems to prevail, and the global community seems to be settling into cynicism or resignation. Safferling’s treatise is concise, competent, personal, and passionate.
Despite its seemingly sombre title, the book ultimately offers an optimistic outlook:
Safferling argues convincingly that international law should not be written off as a regulatory framework for global relations. In the author’s firm belief, it will ultimately assert its relevance and force. As readers move through the book, it becomes increasingly clear that
there are compelling reasons to share this hope.

"An impressive and simultaneously disquieting book about the capabilities and limitations of the international legal order […] Equal parts analysis, diagnosis and warning cry."– Peggy Fiebig, Deutschlandfunk (Andruck)

"International law has seen better days, and Christoph Safferling does not pretend to his readers that all is well. But it is precisely this realism that makes his book so well worth reading." – NZZ Geschichte

"Safferling skilfully reconstructs the debates on peace and international law from 1945 to the present day, including the very latest developments." – Hendrik Simon, FAZ

Author/translator bio
Christoph Safferling, born in 1971, is Professor of Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure Law, International Criminal Law and International Law at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
He is the director of the International Nuremberg Principles Academy

https://www.dtv.de/autor/christoph-safferling-7908

Translation funding guaranteed by New Books in German. https://www.new-books-in-german.com/

Lilli Tollkien's debut, Two Hands Lifting the Sky, is a 2026 New Books in German pick, and has been published in Germany to great acclaim. Jamie Lee Searle's sample translation can be found on NBG's website: https://www.new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/two-hands-lifting-the-sky/

Lale’s childhood in West Berlin in the 1980s is unlike most others – she grows up in a left-wing male flatshare. Her drug-addicted mother loses custody of her, while her father is in prison for attempting to rob a bank in order to redistribute capital. A friend of her father’s takes Lale out of the children’s home and into his shared apartment in Neukölln. Her guardians vacillate between drug binges and political ambitions, between parties and aid projects in Nicaragua. Women are changed like clothes, and those who complain are dismissed as crazy and bourgeois. While the adults politicize, plan the revolution, and sell hashish in the living room, Lale is left to her own devices – and becomes a victim of the abusive men in her environment. As an adult, she pulls herself out of the mire, fighting her own way as a woman, artist, and mother, driven by her insatiable thirst for a better life. A childhood and youth in left-wing Berlin in the 1980s, in the shadow of the excesses of those who tried their hand at parenting and failed. An outstanding debut which is haunting, but never sentimental.

"After the first page I was shaken, but after the first chapter I was captivated. A novel of improbable gravity, a rare gem." EDGAR RAI

"Lilli Tollkien writes with a ferocity that is almost unbearable – and that is precisely why you have to read her." MAREIKE FALLWICKL

Jamie Lee Searle translates German-language and Portuguese-language works into English. Before becoming a translator, she worked for Reuters and did an MA in Anglo-German Cultural Relations at Queen Mary University in London. Her most recent publications include a translation of Kim de l'Horizon's Blood Book, which won the German and Swiss national book prizes in 2022, and a co-translation of Angela Merkel’s memoirs, Freedom. Jamie is a co-founder of the Emerging Translators' Network, a mentor with the National Centre for Writing and a former Royal Literary Fund Fellow.

Lilli Tollkien, born in Berlin in 1980, studied Directing and Music Therapy in Berlin and Heidelberg, among other things. She worked in a wide variety of professions, including as an addiction counsellor in a prison, a job coach, and a set designer. In addition to her current profession, she is a photographer and has published in anthologies. She lives with her children in Leipzig. Two Hands Lifting the Sky is her first novel.

Translation funding guaranteed by New Books in German. https://www.new-books-in-german.com/

In this latest novel by the prolific Swiss writer Charles Lewinsky, an ageing Jewish film producer, Curtis Melnitz, tries to blag a prescription for sleeping tablets, only to find himself sentenced to regular psychoanalysis instead. What begins as reluctant grumbling turns into something more like pleasure, as Melnitz starts telling his life story on the couch, one session per chapter, with all the gruff asides, punchlines, and evasions of a man who has spent a lifetime performing.

Sheridan Marshall interviewed Lewinsky about the novel for New Books in German here: https://www.new-books-in-german.com/for-me-writing-a-novel-is-a-voyage-of-discovery-an-interview-with-charles-lewinsky/

"Wonderfully told, sophisticated and with a lot of humour." – Young-Sim Song / Watson, Zurich
"A great late work, which is also about storytelling and remembering." – Peter Zander / Berliner Morgenpost, Berlin
"A work with the potential to become a success just as big as Melnitz." – Ellen Presser / Jüdische Allgemeine, Berlin
"An intelligent, entertaining novel, full of spirit and historical depth – worth reading." – Andreas Schröter / Ruhr Nachrichten, Dortmund

About the translator:
Ruth Martin has been translating fiction and nonfiction books since 2010, by authors ranging from Joseph Roth to Angela Merkel. Together with Charlotte Collins and Nino Haratischwili, she won the 2020 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, for Nino’s epic novel The Eighth Life. Her translation of Shida Bazyar’s The Nights are Quiet in Tehran was shortlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize.

About the author:
Charles Lewinsky, born in Zurich in 1946, has been a freelance writer since 1980. He won international renown with his novel Melnitz (Melnitz, Atlantic Books, 2016), which was awarded numerous prizes. His novel Der Halbbart (‘Halfbeard’) was nominated for both the Swiss Book Prize and the German Book Prize. His works have been published in 16 languages. Charles Lewinsky lives in Vereux (France) in summer, and in Zurich in winter.

Translation funding guaranteed by New Books in German. https://www.new-books-in-german.com/

The Wise Man from the Sea: Time and Place, Spirit and Eternity is a collection of previously unpublished texts, collected from letters, notebooks and excerpts from the novels by the acclaimed Faroese writer and artist William Heinesen. It constitutes a key to his thoughtscape.

He writes on the extensive connections between consciousness and cosmos, poetry and religion, humanity and mankind, the human and the humane. The texts contain observations on childhood, old age, and his own life’s work. Additionally, the texts contain thoughts on science, politics, and acculturated European ideas spanning from antiquity up until modern society, leading finally to how Heinesen worked to address his fight against the cultural polarisation that characterised his time. It is a clarion call to remember our connection with our fellow humans and all the other creatures that share in this cosmos. A life wisdom as relevant as ever.

BUY THE BOOK: https://www.ipolari.com/wise-man-1 OR https://www.casemateacademic.com/9798988473275/the-wise-man-from-the-sea/

About the translator:
Marita Thomsen is a literary translator from the Faroes, where the wind often roars, and now lives in Keele, where it whispers. Her love of languages and stories has crystallised into English translations of Faroese, Danish and Spanish language authors, while her work as a conference interpreter satisfies her curiosity and wanderlust. She is also a mentor for emerging translators from Faroese at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich, UK. Marita is keen to collaborate across the North Atlantic and further afield with a special interest in queer, marginalised and women's writing. Hearing readings brings her joy, as does taking part in readings.

Published works include: On the Other Side is March by Sólrún Michelsen (Transit Books, US), the first Faroese queer poetry collection The Suntrap by Beinir Bergsson (Francis Boutle Publishers, UK), contributions to the anthology The Dedalus Book of Faroese Literature (Dedalus, UK) the lyrical novel the play Castle of Joy by Búi Dam, which had a sell-out run at the Barbican, and award-winning children’s books by Bárður Oskarsson. Marita has contributed to Circumference Magazine, Asymptote Journal and anthologies published by Pushkin Press and Dedalus Books, her translation of Dead Men Dancing by Jógvan Isaksen received the 2024 Petrona Award.

About the author:
William Heinesen (born Jan. 15, 1900, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands, Den.—died Mar. 12, 1991, Tórshavn) was a Faroese writer of Danish-language poetry and fiction in which he used his remote North Atlantic homeland as a microcosmic setting for universal social, psychological, and cosmic themes. In 1921, while studying in Copenhagen, Heinesen published a volume of lyric poetry, Arktiske Elegier (“Arctic Elegies”). He wrote three more collections of poetry before he returned to the Faroe Islands in 1932. In his novels, beginning with Blæsende Gry (1934; “Windswept Dawn”), he combined elements of tragedy, comedy, satire, allegory, and social criticism to explore such themes as the harshness of nature and the rights of the individual as opposed to the collective good. His other works include the novels Noatun (1938; Niels Peter), De fortabte Spillemænd (1950; The Lost Musicians), Det gode Håb (1964; “The Good Hope”), and Tårnet ved Verdens Ende (1976; The Tower at the End of the World), as well as several volumes of short stories. He was elected to the Danish Academy in 1961.

This reading was contributed as part of the 2026 Association of Danish-English Literary Translators feature week for Translators Aloud.

The world has ended. The last human being arrives in the last city, where he falls in love with La Maga, a woman who may exist only in the pages of a novel. Presiding over it all is the Great Hare, the world’s creator: sardonic, compassionate, and determined to retell the whole sorry history of humanity before time itself comes to an end.

By turns creation myth, post-apocalyptic fable, and metafictional love story, _The Chronology of Innocence_ follows the last man’s pursuit of La Maga and, in the ruined town of Nod, two women’s struggle to imagine a future after genocide and environmental devastation. At its heart lies a question: might grief, rather than conquest or progress, offer humanity one final chance?

Translator bio
*Misha Hoekstra* has translated more than twenty books from Danish, including novels by Dorthe Nors, Tine Høeg, and Christian Jungersen. His work has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and recognized with a three-year literary fellowship from the Danish Arts Foundation. Based in Aarhus, Hoekstra also writes and performs songs for the duo Bear & Butterfly.
mishap13@gmail.com
https://minkahoist.bandcamp.com/album/croons-tunes

Author bio
*Sofie Kragh-Müller* combines myth, philosophy, and environmental concerns in formally inventive narratives that explore grief, memory, and the limits of language. _The Chronology of Innocence_ (_Uskyldens kronologi_, Jensen & Dalgaard, 2025) is her third novel.

This reading was contributed as part of the 2026 Association of Danish-English Literary Translators feature week for Translators Aloud.

Mathilde Walter Clark’s Det blinde øje (A Blind Eye) is an essayistic work that begins in Autumn 2020, at the height of the COVID pandemic. The author is sitting at home in isolation when she starts to see footage of the cull that would eventually kill the more than 15 million minks being raised on Denmark’s fur farms. The gruesome images she is witnessing do not seem to align with the official story, and she begins to suspect that there are other motives for the cull than protecting public health. The investigation she pursues takes her to different countries and into the past.
The book, which won several prizes, is an indictment of humanity’s relationship with animals and draws attention to why a human-centric worldview is problematic.
This excerpt is taken from the very beginning of the book, where Walter Clark describes the moment that she first heard about the mink cull.

“Wildly fascinating, thorough, and rich in perspective” ~ Kristeligt Dagblad (5 out of 5 stars)

“Nothing less than outstanding” ~ Weekendavisen

“The greedy mink farming industry exposed in a disturbingly good book. Hats off to Mathilde Walter Clark!” ~ Litteratursiden

“Fierce and brilliant (…) a powerful demonstration of linguistic precision, moderation, research, and composition. My perspective has been changed forever.” ~ Information

“A major eye-opener that gives you food for thought” ~ Bogblogger.dk

Translator bio
Tyler Langendorfer is a translator from Danish, Dutch, German, and other languages. He has an MA in Culture, Policy and Management from City St George's, University of London, and his nonfiction interests include film, history, human rights, and music. He also specializes in children’s/YA literature, drama, and poetry. His translations have been featured in Eurozine and Versopolis, among other places.
Originally from the US, Tyler is now based in Berlin, Germany.

Author bio
Mathilde Walter Clark is a Danish-American writer of essays, novels, and short stories who grew up in Denmark. She obtained a master’s degree in Danish and Philosophy from Roskilde University and New York University. Her breakthrough novel, Lone Star, was published in English in 2021 by Deep Vellum, in a translation by K.E. Semmel. In 2023, A Blind Eye was one of two of her bestselling books on animals published that year, the other being the essay Hvordan man laver dyr (How to Make Animals).

This reading was contributed as part of the 2026 Association of Danish-English Literary Translators feature week for Translators Aloud.

Tara Selter has slipped out of time.

Every morning, she wakes up to the 18th of November. She no longer expects to wake up to the 19th of November, and she no longer remembers the 17th of November as if it were yesterday.

She comes to know the shape of the day like the back of her hand - the grey morning light in her Paris hotel; the moment a blackbird breaks into song; her husband's surprise at seeing her return home unannounced. But for everyone around her, this day is lived for the first and only time. They do not remember the other 18ths of November, and they do not believe her when she tries to explain.

As Tara approaches her 365th 18th of November, she can't shake the feeling that somewhere underneath the surface of this day, there's a way to escape.

'What the best novels can do is open up spaces. And she has opened a space in time, and it is absolutely, absolutely incredible. I think it's a fantastic book.' - Karl Ove Knausgård

'Solvej Balle is a prodigious writer who, miraculously, finds the subtlest, most fascinating differences in repetition. You have never read anything like On the Calculation of Volume. This unforgettable novel is a profound meditation on the lonely, untranslatable ways in which each one of us inhabits time-and the tenuous yet indelible traces we leave in the world. Day after day.' - Hernan Diaz

'A total explosion; Solvej Balle has blown through to a new dimension of literary exploration.' - Nicole Krauss

'A startling exploration of profound questions about language, human connection, and time.' - The New Yorker

Translator bio
Barbara J. Haveland, a Scottish literary translator, resides in Copenhagen. She translates fiction, poetry, and drama by many leading Danish and Norwegian writers, both classic and contemporary, into English, including Henrik Ibsen, Peter Høeg, Linn Ullmann, and Carl Frode Tiller.

Author bio
Solvej Balle (b. 1962) made her debut in 1986 with Lyrebird and went on to write one of the 1990s’ most acclaimed works of Danish literature, According to the Law: Four Accounts of Mankind (1993), which was published in more than ten countries. Following this, she moved from Copenhagen to the small island of Ærø, where she wrote a book on art theory, a political memoir and four works of microprose and founded the publishing house Pelagraf. Nearly thirty years later, the first book of a planned septology, On the Calculation of Volume, was self-published. Six books have been published in Danish so far, with translations underway in over 30 countries.


BUY THE BOOK:
https://www.ndbooks.com/book/on-the-calculation-of-volume-book-i/
https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571383375-on-the-calculation-of-volume-i/

This reading was contributed as part of the 2026 Association of Danish-English Literary Translators feature week for Translators Aloud.

Sophia Merwald’s award-winning debut (Alfred Döblin Prize 2025) is a fiercely idiosyncratic novel about queer kinship, anti-establishment homemaking, and the precarious construction of safety. With fairy-tale logic and postmodern mythmaking, it creates a world where utopia and threat sit side by side, and where the most intimate forms of care are constantly tested by memory, violence, and the pressure of the outside world. ‘Outsize’ is not a straightforward realist narrative. It is stranger than that, deliberately surreal, and committed to building its own language. Its voice-led fiction, queer domestic mythologies, and playful forms carry real emotional weight and make it a distinctive, unsettling, and oddly tender read.

Translator bio

Rob Myatt translates into his native English (UK and US) from German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, Polish and Luxembourgish, specialising in legal, ESG, finance, marketing, culture and literary texts.
He is a Qualified Member (MITI) of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, an Intermediate Member of the Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders, and a member of DELT (the Association of Danish-English Literary Translators). His work was recognised with the Goethe-Institut Translation Award 2023. His website is https://polyglotliterature.co.uk/.

Author bio
Sophia Merwald studied Journalism and Film and Media Culture and works as a freelance journalist. Sperrgut (‘Outsize’) is her first novel, and received several awards before even being published, including the Alfred Döblin Prize. She lives and works in Munich.

For rights info contact: Contact: Annemarie Blumenhagen // rights@ullstein-buchverlage.de // Phone +49 (0)30 23456 450

The translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and to share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.

4 0

Lilli Tollkien's debut, Two Hands Lifting the Sky, is a 2026 New Books in German pick, and has been published in Germany to great acclaim. Jamie Lee Searle's sample translation can be found on NBG's website: https://www.new-books-in-german.com/recommendations/two-hands-lifting-the-sky/

Lale’s childhood in West Berlin in the 1980s is unlike most others – she grows up in a left-wing male flatshare. Her drug-addicted mother loses custody of her, while her father is in prison for attempting to rob a bank in order to redistribute capital. A friend of her father’s takes Lale out of the children’s home and into his shared apartment in Neukölln. Her guardians vacillate between drug binges and political ambitions, between parties and aid projects in Nicaragua. Women are changed like clothes, and those who complain are dismissed as crazy and bourgeois. While the adults politicize, plan the revolution, and sell hashish in the living room, Lale is left to her own devices – and becomes a victim of the abusive men in her environment. As an adult, she pulls herself out of the mire, fighting her own way as a woman, artist, and mother, driven by her insatiable thirst for a better life. A childhood and youth in left-wing Berlin in the 1980s, in the shadow of the excesses of those who tried their hand at parenting and failed. An outstanding debut which is haunting, but never sentimental.

"After the first page I was shaken, but after the first chapter I was captivated. A novel of improbable gravity, a rare gem." EDGAR RAI

"Lilli Tollkien writes with a ferocity that is almost unbearable – and that is precisely why you have to read her." MAREIKE FALLWICKL

Jamie Lee Searle translates German-language and Portuguese-language works into English. Before becoming a translator, she worked for Reuters and did an MA in Anglo-German Cultural Relations at Queen Mary University in London. Her most recent publications include a translation of Kim de l'Horizon's Blood Book, which won the German and Swiss national book prizes in 2022, and a co-translation of Angela Merkel’s memoirs, Freedom. Jamie is a co-founder of the Emerging Translators' Network, a mentor with the National Centre for Writing and a former Royal Literary Fund Fellow.

Lilli Tollkien, born in Berlin in 1980, studied Directing and Music Therapy in Berlin and Heidelberg, among other things. She worked in a wide variety of professions, including as an addiction counsellor in a prison, a job coach, and a set designer. In addition to her current profession, she is a photographer and has published in anthologies. She lives with her children in Leipzig. Two Hands Lifting the Sky is her first novel.

Translation funding guaranteed by New Books in German. https://www.new-books-in-german.com/

1 0

The world has ended. The last human being arrives in the last city, where he falls in love with La Maga, a woman who may exist only in the pages of a novel. Presiding over it all is the Great Hare, the world’s creator: sardonic, compassionate, and determined to retell the whole sorry history of humanity before time itself comes to an end.

By turns creation myth, post-apocalyptic fable, and metafictional love story, _The Chronology of Innocence_ follows the last man’s pursuit of La Maga and, in the ruined town of Nod, two women’s struggle to imagine a future after genocide and environmental devastation. At its heart lies a question: might grief, rather than conquest or progress, offer humanity one final chance?

Translator bio
*Misha Hoekstra* has translated more than twenty books from Danish, including novels by Dorthe Nors, Tine Høeg, and Christian Jungersen. His work has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and recognized with a three-year literary fellowship from the Danish Arts Foundation. Based in Aarhus, Hoekstra also writes and performs songs for the duo Bear & Butterfly.
mishap13@gmail.com
https://minkahoist.bandcamp.com/album/croons-tunes

Author bio
*Sofie Kragh-Müller* combines myth, philosophy, and environmental concerns in formally inventive narratives that explore grief, memory, and the limits of language. _The Chronology of Innocence_ (_Uskyldens kronologi_, Jensen & Dalgaard, 2025) is her third novel.

This reading was contributed as part of the 2026 Association of Danish-English Literary Translators feature week for Translators Aloud.

4 0

This video is private.

1 0

This video is private.

4 0

This video is private.

1 0

Distant Signs: A Novel
by Anne Richter, translated by Douglas Irving, published in 2019 by Neem Tree Press.

Distant Signs is an intimate portrait of two families spanning three generations amidst turbulent political change, behind and beyond the Berlin Wall.

In 1960s East Germany, Margret, a professor’s daughter from the city, meets and marries Hans, from a small village in the Thuringian forest. The couple struggle to contend with their different backgrounds, and the emotional scars they bear from childhood in the aftermath of war. As East German history gradually unravels, with collision of the personal and political, acutely observed vignettes quietly reveal their two families’ hidden truths.

“I don't know that I've read a more moving piece of post-war German fiction - and this includes Günther Grass's best efforts.”

Misha, US Online Blog Tour Reviewer

9 0

From the publisher (World Literature Today): “In this story of lengthy quarantine due to an unnamed virus, a woman sneaks into the mountain to collect ferns—many ferns. Simultaneously evoking life under past Chilean political oppression and living under recent worldwide quarantines due to Covid-19, this Cortazarian story marks the author’s English-language debut.”
Catalina Infante Beovic is a Chilean writer, publisher, journalist, and teacher. Follow Catalina on Instagram at @catalinainfantebeovic
Michelle Mirabella is a Spanish to English translator studying at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey. Follow Michelle on Instagram at @mirabella_michelle and Twitter at @MirabellaM_

Find the story at:
English translation, published by World Literature Today in 2020: https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/fiction/ferns-catalina-infante-beovic
Spanish, published by Neón Ediciones: https://www.librospatagonia.com/library/publication/helechos

Follow World Literature Today on Twitter at @worldlittoday.

8 0

It’s 2007 and we are in Bilbao, worn out by the final blows of Basque terrorism. Gorane and Jokin are twenty-five year old twins and children of ETA militants. Raised without rules, they take opposing and complementary directions: compliant and passive to everything, Jokin, a heroin-addict drummer, seems to follow in his parents’ footsteps, while Gorane, ambiguous and introverted, pulls away seeking refuge in an abstract world. When Jokin runs away and their parents become involved in a tragic event, Gorane finds herself prey to strange hallucinations of her parents. Meanwhile in Paris, Jokin struggles with his attraction to the mysterious Germana, yet, despite the distance, the twins’ lives seem destined to never separate and it will be a French writer’s novel that reconnects them.

The Melee is a polyphonic work; a world that connects reality to our most recondite dreams, a world where the only driving force seems to be blind violence. Can freedom reveal itself to be an instrument of torture, and can empathy that resists absolutism prevail in the face of trauma? Valentina Maini responds in the pages of this provocative debut and its web of stories connecting drug dealers, smugglers, psychiatrists, writers, cleaners and fortune tellers - and she does it with the conviction of Roberto Bolaño and Mathias Énard: looking chaos directly in the eye.

THE MELEE BY VALENTINA MAINI (PUBLISHED IN ITALIAN BY BOLLATI BORINGHIERI, 2020)

FIRST PLACE IN THE L'INDISCRETO QUALITY RANKINGS

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SEVERINO CESARI DEBUT AWARD 2020

SHORTLISTED FOR THE FONDAZIONE MONDADORI DEBUT AWARD 2020

CHOSEN BY KOBO IN THEIR 50 BOOKS TO DEFY AND SURVIVE THE YEAR 2020

“What is great European literature today? The Melee by Valentina Maini has the range and complexity to fit the bill and the ambition to be part of it.”
VERONICA RAIMO (The Girl at the Door)

“There are writers who, more than make their debut, burst onto the scene. By writing novels that play havoc with all the rules. Valentina Maini is one of them.”
ANDREA BAJANI (If You Kept a Record of Sins; Every Promise)

“Redolent of Clarice Lispector and Roberto Bolano, a haunted, captivating, poetic novel that tells the story of two children of ETA and their quest for life and the future under the tight rein of a true artist and her unique, visionary freedom of language.”
MARTA BARONE (Città sommersa)

“In The Melee, Valentina Maini unfurls a notable variety of textual typologies – reports, statements, recordings, a novel within the novel – showing that it is still possible to tell stories in an impressive, original manner.”
WU MING 2 (Q; Manituana; 54)


Valentina Maini was born in Bologna in 1987. She completed her PhD in Comparative Literature between Bologna and Paris and has published short stories in retabloid, TerraNullius, Atti Impuri, Horizonte, and other magazines. Some of her articles have appeared in Poetiche, La Deleuziana, and Classiques Garnier. With her collection of poetry, Casa Rotta (2016), she won the Anna Osti literary prize. She translates from French and from English into Italian.

Sean McDonagh is an emerging literary translator who translates from Italian. He is based in London where he works in publishing, and has been pursuing literary translation projects since participating in the Warwick Translates Summer School 2019. He has had a translation published on Asymptote, and as a poet has also had work published on Allegro, Rockland and Foxtrot Uniform. Sean has a BA in English, has lived and studied in Turin, and has completed an advanced course at the Italian Cultural Institute.

@seanpjamcdonagh (Twitter)
seanmcdonaghtranslator.com

For rights info, contact: Flavia Abbinante - flavia.abbinante@bollatiboringhieri.it
Rights Sold: Portuguese

The translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
TO READ A LONGER EXTRACT, please visit: seanmcdonaghtranslator.com/projects-seeking-a-publisher

18 0